For there were strangers at New Helvetia,--two men who knew nobody
and whom nobody knew. Perhaps in all the history of the hotel this
instance was the first. The patronage of New Helvetia, like that of
many other secluded southern watering-places, had been for generations
among the same clique of people, all more or less allied by kindred
or hereditary friendship, or close association in their respective
homes or in business interests, and the traditions of the place were
community property. So significant was the event that it could scarcely
escape remark. More than one of the hereditary sojourners observed
to the others that the distance of fifty miles from a railroad over
the worst stage-road in America seemed, after all, no protection from
the intrusion of strangers. Here were two men who knew nobody, whom
nobody knew, and who seemed not even to know each other. One was a
quiet, decorous, reserved person who might be easily overlooked in a
crowd, so null was his aspect. The other had good, hearty, aggressive,
rustic suggestions about him. He was as stiffly upright as a ramrod,
and he marched about like a grenadier. He smoked and chewed strong,
rank tobacco. He flourished a red-bordered cotton handkerchief. He had
been carefully trimmed and shaved by his barber for the occasion, but
alas, the barber’s embellishments can last but from day to day, and
the rougher guise of his life was betrayed in certain small habitudes,
conspicuous among which were an obliviousness of many uses of a fork
and an astonishing temerity in the thrusting of his knife down his
throat at the dinner-table.
The two strangers appeared on the evening of the dramatic entertainment
among the other guests of the hotel in the ballroom, as spectators of
the “Unrivaled Attraction” profusely billed in the parlor, the office
of the hotel, and the tenpin-alley. The rain dashed tempestuously
against the long windows, and the sashes now and again trembled and
clattered in their frames, for the mountain wind was rising. Ever and
anon the white mist that pressed with pallid presence against the panes
shivered convulsively, and was torn away into the wild night and the
savagery of the fastnesses without, returning persistently, as if with
some fatal affinity for the bright lights and the warm atmosphere that
would annihilate its tenuous existence with but a single breath. The
blended sound of the torrents and the shivering gusts was punctuated
by the slow dripping from the eaves of the covered walks within the
quadrangle close at hand, that fell with monotonous iteration and
elastic rebound from the flagging below, and was of dreary intimations
distinct amid the ruder turmoil of the elements. But a cheerful spirit
pervaded the well-housed guests, perhaps the more grateful for the
provision for pleasantly passing the long hours of a rainy evening in
the country, since it did not snatch them from alternative pleasures;
from languid strolls on moonlit verandas, or contemplative cigars in
the perfumed summer woods under the stars, or choice conferences with
kindred spirits in the little observatory that overhung the slopes. The
Unrivaled Attraction had been opportunely timed to fill an absolute
void, and it could not have been presented before more leniently
disposed spectators than those rescued from the jaws of unutterable
ennui. There sounded a continuous subdued ripple of laughter and stir
of fans and murmur of talk amongst them; but, although richly garbed
in compliment to the occasion, the brilliancy of their appearance was
somewhat reduced by the tempered light in which it was essential that
they should sit throughout the performance and between the acts, for
the means at the command of the Unrivaled Attraction were not capable
of compassing the usual alternations of illumination, and the full
and permanent glare of splendor was reserved to suffuse the stage.
The audience was itself an object of intense interest to the actors
behind the scenes, and there was no interval in which the small rent
made in the curtain for the purpose of observation was not utilized
by one or another of the excited youths, tremulous with premonitions
of a fiasco, from the time when the first groups entered the hall to
the triumphant moment when it became evident that all New Helvetia
was turning out to honor the occasion, and that they were to display
their talents to a full house. It was only when the stir of preparation
became tumultuous--one or two intimations of impatience from the
long-waiting audience serving to admonish the performers--that Lucien
Royce found an opportunity to peer out in his turn upon the scene in
the dusky clare-obscure. Here and there the yellow globes of the shaded
lamps shed abroad their tempered golden lustre, and occasionally there
came to his eye a pearly gleam from a fluttering fan, or the prismatic
glitter of a diamond, or the ethereal suggestion of a girl in white in
the midst of such sombre intimations of red and brown and deeply purple
and black in the costumes of the dark-robed elders that they might
hardly be accounted as definite color in the scale of chromatic values.
With such a dully rich background and the dim twilight about her, the
figure and face of the girl he sought showed as if in the glamours of
some inherent light, reminding him of that illuminating touch in the
method of certain painters whose works he had seen in art galleries,
in which the radiance seems to be in the picture, independent of the
skylight, and as if equally visible in the darkest night. She wore a
green dress of some silken texture, so faint of hue that the shadows
of the soft folds appeared white. It was fashioned with a long, slim
bodice, cut square in the neck, and a high, flaring ruff of delicate
old lace, stiff with a Medici effect, that rose framing the rounded
throat and small head with its close and high-piled coils of black
hair, through which was thrust a small comb of carved coral of the
palest possible hue. She might have been a picture, so still and silent
she sat, so definitely did the light emanate from her, so completely
did the effect of the pale, lustrous tints of her attire reduce to the
vague nullities of a mere background the nebulous dark and neutral
shades about her. How long Royce stood and gazed with all his heart in
his eyes he never knew. He saw naught else. He heard naught of the stir
of the audience, or the wild wind without, or the babel upon the stage
where he was. He came to himself only when he was clutched by the arm
and admonished to clear the track, for at last the curtain was to be
rung up.
What need to dwell on the tremulous eagerness and wild despair of that
moment,--the glee club all ranged in order on the stage, and with
heart-thumping expectation, the brisk and self-sufficient tinkle of the
bell, the utter blank immovableness of the curtain, the subdued delight
of the audience? Another tintinnabulation, agitated and querulous; a
mighty tug at the wings; a shiver in the fabric, a sort of convulsion
of the texture, and the curtain goes up in slow doubt,--all awry and
bias, it is true, but still revealing the “musicianers,” a trifle
dashed and taken aback, but meeting a warm and reassuring reception
which they do not dream is partly in tribute to the clownish tricks of
the curtain.
Royce, suddenly all in heart, exhilarated by the mere sight of her,
flung himself ardently into the preparations progressing in the close
little pens on either side and at the rear of the stage. The walls of
these were mere partitions reaching up only some ten feet toward the
ceiling, and they were devoid of any exit save through the stage and
the eye of the public. Hence it had been necessary that all essentials
should be carefully looked to and provided in advance. Now and then,
however, a wild alarum arose because of the apparent non-existence of
some absolutely indispensable article of attire or furniture, succeeded
by embarrassed silence on the part of the mourner when the thing in
question was found, and a meek submission to the half-suppressed
expletives of the rest of the uselessly perturbed company. It was a
scene of mad turmoil. Young men already half clad in feminine attire
were struggling with the remainder of their unaccustomed raiment,--the
actors to take part in the farce “The New Woman.” Others were in
their white flannel suits,--no longer absolutely white,--hot, dusty,
perspiring, the scene-shifters and the curtain contingent, all
lugubriously wiping their heated brows and blaming one another. The
mandolin and banjo players, in faultless evening dress, stood out of
the rush and kept themselves tidy. And now arose a nice question,
in the discussion of which all took part, becoming oblivious, for
the time, of the audience without and the tra-la-la-ing of the glee
singers, the boyish tones of argument occasionally rising above
these melodious numbers. It was submitted that in case the audience
should call for the author of “The New Woman,”--and it would indeed
be unmannerly to omit this tribute,--the playwright ought to be in
full dress to respond, considering the circumstances, the place, and
the full dress of the audience. And here he was in his white flannel
trousers and a pink-and-white striped blazer at this hour of the
night, and his room a quarter of a mile away in a pitching mountain
rain, whither certain precisians would fain have him hie to bedizen
himself. He listened to this with a downcast eye and a sinking heart,
and doubtless would have acted on the admonition save for the ludicrous
effect of emerging before the audience as he was, and returning to meet
the same audience in the blaze of full-dress glory.
“It’s no use talking,” he said at last, decisively. “We are caught here
like rats in a trap. There is no way of getting out without being seen.
I wonder I didn’t think to have a door cut.”
Repeatedly there rose on the air the voice of one who was a slow
study repeating the glib lines of “The New Woman;” and once something
very closely approximating a quarrel ensued upon the discovery that
the budding author, already parsimonious with literary material, had
transferred a joke from the mouth of one character to that of another;
the robbed actor came in a bounding fury and with his mother’s false
hair, mildly parted and waving away from his fierce, keen young face
and flashing eyes, to demand of the author-manager its restoration.
His decorous stiffly lined skirts bounced tumultuously with his swift
springs forward, and his fists beneath the lace frill of his sleeves
were held in a belligerent muscular adjustment.
“It’s _my_ joke,” he asseverated vehemently, as if he had cracked it
himself. “My speech is ruined without it, world without end! I will
have it back! I will! I will!” he declared as violently as if he could
possess the air that would vibrate with the voice of the actor who
went on first, and could put his collar on the syllables embodying the
precious jest by those masterful words, “I will!”
The manager had talents for diplomacy, as well he should. He drew the
irate antique-seeming dame into the corner by the lace on the sleeve
and, looking into the wild boyish face, adjured him, “Let him have it,
Jack, for the love of Heaven. He does it so badly, and he is such a
slow study, that I’m afraid the first act will break down if I don’t
give it some vim; after _you_ are once on, the thing will go and I
shan’t care a red.”
And so with the dulcet salve of a little judicious flattery peace came
once more.
Royce, as he took his place upon the narrow stage, felt as if he had
issued from the tumultuous currents of some wild rapids into the
deep and restful placidities of a dark untroubled pool. The air of
composure, the silence, the courteous attention of the audience, all
marked a transition so abrupt that it had a certain perturbing effect.
He had never felt more ill at ease, and perhaps he had never looked
more composed than when he advanced and stood bowing at the footlights.
He had forgotten his assumed character of a mountaineer, his coarse
garb, his intention to seek some manner that might consist with both.
He was inaugurating his share of the little amateur entertainment with
a grace and address and refinement of style that were astonishing his
audience far more than aught of magic that his art could command,
although his resources were not slight. He seemed some well-bred and
talented youth of the best society, dressed for a rural rôle in private
theatricals. Now and again there was a flutter of inquiry here and
there in the audience, answered by the whispered conclusions of Tom
or Jack, retailed by mother or sister. For the youth of New Helvetia
Springs had accepted the explanation that he was out of a position,
“down on his luck,” and hoped to get a school in Etowah Cove. He
had gone by the sobriquet of “the handsome mountaineer,” and then
“the queer mountaineer,” and now, “He is _no_ mountaineer,” said the
discerning Judge Fordyce to a man of his own stamp at his elbow.
What might have been the estimate of the two strangers none could say.
They sat on opposite sides of the building, taking no note of each
other, both steadily gazing at the alert and graceful figure and the
handsome face alight with intelligence, and made no sign. One might
have been more competent than the other to descry inconsistencies
between the status which the dress suggested and the culture and
breeding which the manner and accent and choice of language betokened,
but both listened motionless as if absorbed in the prestidigitator’s
words.
Royce had made careful selection among his feats in view of the
character of his audience, and the sustaining of such poor dignity as
he might hope to possess in Miss Fordyce’s estimation. There were no
uncouth tricks of swallowing impossible implements of cutlery, which
sooth to say would have vastly delighted the row of juvenile spectators
on the front bench. Perhaps they were as well content, however, with
the appearance of two live rabbits from the folds of the large white
silk handkerchief of an old gentleman in the crowd, borrowed for the
purpose, and the little boy who came up to receive the article for
restoration to its owner went into an ecstasy of cackling delight,
with the whole front row in delirious refrain, to find that he had
one of the live rabbits in each of the pockets of his jacket, albeit
the juggler had merely leaned over the footlights to hand him back
the handkerchief. The audience applauded with hearty good will, and a
general ripple of smiles played over the upturned faces.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the juggler, picking up a small and
glittering object from the table, “if I may ask your attention, you
will observe that each chamber of this revolver is loaded”--
With his long, delicate, deft white hands he had turned aside the
barrel, and now held the weapon up, the two parts at right angles, each
cartridge distinctly visible to the audience.
But a sudden authoritative voice arose. “No pistols!” called out a
sober paterfamilias, responsible for four boys in the audience.
“No pistols!” echoed Judge Fordyce.
There had been a momentary shrinking among the ladies, whose curiosity,
however, was greater than their fear, and who sustained a certain
doubtful and disappointed aspect. But the shadowy bullet-heads of the
whole front row of small boys were turned with one accord in indignant
and unfilial protest.
Royce understanding in a moment, with a quick smile shifted all the
cartridges out into his hand, held up the pistol once more so that all
might see the light through the empty chambers of the cylinder, then,
with an exaggerated air of caution, laid all the shells in a small
heap on one of the little tables and the pistol, still dislocated,
on another table, the breadth of the stage between them; and with a
satiric “Hey! Presto!” bowed, laughing and complaisant, to a hearty
round of applause from the elders. For although his compliance with
their behests had been a trifle ironical, the youths of New Helvetia
were not accustomed to submit with so good a grace or so completely.
The two elderly strangers accommodated the expression of their views
to the evident opinion of those of their time of life, applauding when
the gentlemen about them applauded, maintaining an air of interest
when they were receptive and attentive. Was it possible, one might
wonder in looking at them, that differences so essential could be
unremarked--that it was not patent to the most casual observer that
they had some far more serious reason for their presence than the
indulgent laudation of the amateur entertainment which inspired the
friends and relatives of the youthful performers? The perspicacity of
the casual observer, however, was hampered by the haze of the pervasive
obscurity; from the stage each might seem to the transient glance
merely a face among many faces, the divergences of which could be
discerned only when some intention or interest informed the gaze.
Lucien Royce saw only that oasis in the gloom where the high lights
of Miss Fordyce’s delicately tinted costume shone in the dusk. He was
keenly mindful of a flash of girlish laughter, the softly luminous
glance of her eye, the glimmer of her white teeth as her pink lips
curled, the young delight in her face. How should he care to note
the null, impassive countenance of the one man, the grizzled stolid
bourgeois aspect of the other?
The manager, keenly alive to the success of the entertainment,
advanced a number of the programme since the pistol trick was
discarded. Having observed the fate of this from the wings, he handed
to Royce a flower-pot filled with earth for a feat which it had been
his intention to reserve until after the first act of the play.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” said the juggler, “oblige me by looking
at this acorn. It is considered quite harmless. True, it will shoot,
too, if you give it half a chance; but I am told,” with a glance of
raillery, “that its projectile effects are not deleterious in any
respect to the human anatomy.”
The ladies who had been afraid of the pistol laughed delightedly, and
the guyed elderly gentlemen good-naturedly responded in another round
of applause, so grateful were they to have no shooting on the stage,
and no possible terrifying accidents to their neighbors, themselves,
and their respective families.
“There is nothing but pulverized earth in this flower-pot,” continued
the juggler, running his hand through the fine white sand, and shaking
off the particles daintily, “a little too sandy to suit my views and
experience in arboriculture, but we shall see--what we shall see! I
plant the acorn, thus! I throw this cloth over the flower-pot, drawing
it up in a peak to give air. And now, since we shall have to wait for a
few moments, I shall, with your kind indulgence, beguile the tedium, in
imitation of the jongleurs of eld, with a little song.”
The audience sat patient, expectant. A guitar was lying where one of
the glee singers had left it. Royce turned and caught it up, then
advanced down toward the footlights, and paused in the picturesque
attitude of the serenader of the lyric stage. He drew from the
instrument a few strong resonant chords, and then it fell a-tinkling
again.
But what new life was in the strings, what melody in the air? And as
his voice rose, the scene-shifters were silent in the glare of the
pens; the actors thronged the wings; the audience sat spellbound.
No great display of art, to be sure! But the mountain wilds were
without, and the mountain winds were abroad, and there was something
strangely sombre, romantic, akin to the suggestion and the sound in
the rich swelling tones of the young voice so passionately vibrant on
the air. Though obviously an amateur, he sang with a careful precision
that bespoke fairly good advantages amply improved, but the singing
was instinct with that ardor, that love of the art, that enthusiasm,
which no training can supply or create. The music and the words were
unfamiliar, for they were his own. Neither was devoid of merit. Indeed,
a musical authority once said that his songs would have very definite
promise if it were not for a determined effort to make all the science
of harmony tributary to the display of Lucien Royce’s high _A_. A
recurrent strain now and again came, interfluent through the drift of
melody, rising with a certain ecstatic elasticity to that sustained
tone, which was soft, yet strong, and as sweet as summer.
As his voice thus rang out into the silence with all its pathos and
its passion, he turned his eyes on the eyes he had so learned to love,
and met those orbs, full of delight and of surprise and a patent
admiration, fixed upon his face. The rest of the song he sang straight
at Gertrude Fordyce, and she looked at the singer, her gaze never
swerving. For once his plunging heart in triumph felt he had caught and
held her attention; for once, he said to himself, she did not look at
him as impersonally as if he were the side of the wall.
It was over at last, and he was bowing his acknowledgments to the
wildly applauding audience. The jugglery was at a discount. He had
drawn off the white cloth from the flower-pot, where a strongly rooted
young oak shoot two feet high appeared to have grown while he sang.
But the walls of the room resounded with the turbulent clamors of an
insistent encore. Only the eyes of the rustic-looking stranger were
starting out of his head as he gazed at the oak shoot, and there came
floating softly through his lips the involuntary comment, “By gum!”
It was necessary in common courtesy to sing at least the last stanza
again, and as the juggler did so he was almost happy in singing it
anew to her starry eyes, and noting the flush on her cheeks, and the
surprise and pleasure in her beautiful face. The miracle of the oak
shoot went unexplained, for all New Helvetia was still clapping a
recall when the juggler, bowing and bowing, with the guitar in his
hand, and ever retreating as he bowed, stepped off at one of the wings
for instructions, and was met there by renewed acclamations from his
fellow entertainers.
“You’d better bring on the play if you don’t want to hold forth here
till the small hours,” he said, flushed, and panting, and joyous once
more.
But the author-manager was of a different mind. The child of his
fancy was dear to him, although it was a very grotesque infant, as
indeed it was necessary that it should be. He deprecated submitting
it to the criticism of an unwilling audience, still clamoring for the
reappearance of another attraction. However, there would not be time
enough to respond to this encore, and yet bring the farce on with the
deliberation essential to its success, and the effect of all its little
points.
“You seem to be the star of the evening,” he said graciously. “And I
should like to hear you sing again myself. But we really haven’t time.
As they are so delighted with you, suppose, by way of letting them
down gently, we give them another sight of you by moving up the basket
trick on the programme, instead of letting it come between the second
and third acts of the play,--we have had to advance the feat that was
to have come between the first and second acts, anyhow,--and have no
jugglery between the acts.”
Royce readily agreed, but the manager still hesitated while the
house thumped and clapped its recall in great impatience, and a young
hobbledehoy slipped slyly upon the stage and facetiously bowed _his_
acknowledgments, with his hand upon his heart, causing spasms of
delight among the juvenile contingent and some laughter from the elders.
Said the hesitating manager, unconscious of this interlude, “I don’t
half like that basket trick.”
“Why?” demanded the juggler, surprised. “It’s the best thing I can do.
And when we rehearsed it, I thought we had it down to a fine point.”
“Yes,” still hesitating, “but I’m afraid it’s dangerous.”
The juggler burst into laughter. “It’s as dangerous as a pistol loaded
with blank cartridges! See here,” he cried joyously, turning with
outspread arms to the group of youths fantastic in their stage toggery,
“I call you all to witness--if ever Millden Seymour hurts me, I
intended to let him do it. Come on!” he exclaimed in a different tone.
“I’m obliged to have a confederate in this, and we have rehearsed it
without a break time and again.”
In a moment more they were on the stage, side by side, and the
audience, seeing that no more minstrelsy was in order, became
reconciled to the display of magic. A certain new element of interest
was infused into the proceedings by the fact that another person was
introduced, and that it was Seymour who made all the preparations,
interspersing them with jocular remarks to the audience, while the
juggler stood by, silent and acquiescent. He seemed to be the victim of
the manager, in some sort, and the juvenile spectators, with beating
hearts and open mouths and serious eyes, watched the proceedings taken
against him as his arms were bound with a rope and then a bag of rough
netting was slipped over him and sewed up.
“I have him fast and safe now,” the manager declared. “He cannot delude
us with any more of his deceits, I am sure.”
The juggler was placed at full length on the floor and a white cloth
was thrown over him. The manager then exhibited a large basket with
a top to it, which he also thrust under the cloth. Taking advantage
of the evident partisanship of the children for their entertainer,
he spoke for a few minutes in serious and disapproving terms of the
deceits of the eye, and made a very pretty moral arraignment of these
dubious methods of taking pleasure, which was obviously received in
high dudgeon. He then turned about to lead his captive, hobbled and
bound, off the stage. Lifting the cloth he found no trace of the
juggler; the basket with the top beside it was revealed, and on the
floor was the netting,--a complete case with not a mesh awry through
which he could have escaped. The manager stamped about in the empty
basket and finally emerged putting on the top and cording it up.
Whereupon one antagonistic youth in the audience opined that the
juggler was in the basket.
“He is, is he?” said the manager, looking up sharply at the
bullet-headed row. “Then what do you think of this, and this, and this?”
He had drawn the sharp bowie-knife with which Royce had furnished him,
and was thrusting it up to the hilt here, there, everywhere through
the interstices of the wickerwork. This convinced the audience that in
some inscrutable manner the juggler had been spirited away, impossible
though it might seem. The stage, in the full glare of all the lamps at
New Helvetia Springs, was in view from every part of the house, and
it was evident that the management of the Unrivaled Attraction was
incapable of stage machinery, trap-doors, or any similar appliance. In
the midst of the discussion, very general over the house, the basket
began to roll about. The manager viewed it with the affectation of
starting eyes and agitated terror for a moment. Then, pouncing upon it
in wrath, he loosened the cords, took off the top, and pulled out the
juggler, who was received with acclamations, and who retired, bowing
and smiling And backing off the stage, the hero of the occasion.
Seymour behind the scenes was giving orders to ring down the curtain to
prepare the stage for “The New Woman.”
“Don’t do it unless you mean it for keeps, Mill,” remonstrated the
property-man. “The devil’s in the old rag, I believe. It might not
go up again easily, and I’m sure, from the racket out there, they are
going to have the basket trick over again.”
For the front row of bullet-heads was conducting itself like a row
of gallery gods, and effervescing with whistlings and shrill cries.
The applause was general and tumultuous, growing louder when the
over-cautious father called out “No pistols and _no knives_!”
“Oh, they can take care of themselves,” said a former adherent of his
proposition, for the feat was really very clever, and very cleverly
exploited, and he was ready to accredit a considerable amount of
sagacity to youths who could get up so amusing an entertainment. No
one was alert to notice--save his mere presence as some messenger or
purveyor of properties--a dazed-looking young mountaineer, dripping
with the rain, who walked down the main aisle and stepped awkwardly
over the footlights, upon the stage. He paused bewildered at the wings,
and Lucien Royce behind the scenes, turning, found himself face to face
with Owen Haines. The sight of the wan, ethereal countenance brought
back like some unhallowed spell the real life he had lived of late
into the vanishing dream-life he was living now. But the actualities
are constraining. “You want me?” he said, with a sudden premonition of
trouble.
“I hev s’arched fur you-uns fur days,” Haines replied, a strange
compassion in his eyes, contemplating which Lucien Royce felt his
blood go cold. “But the Simses deceived me ez ter whar ye be; they
never told me till ter-night, an’ then I hed ter tell ’em why I wanted
you-uns.”
“Why?” demanded Royce, spellbound by the look in the man’s eyes, and
almost overmastered by the revulsion of feeling in the last moment, the
quaking of an unnamed terror at his heart.
Nevertheless, with his acute and versatile faculties he heard the
clamors of the recall still thundering in the auditorium, he noted the
passing of the facetiously bedight figures for the farce. He was even
aware of glances of curiosity from one or two of the scene-shifters,
and had the prudence to draw Haines, who heard naught and saw only the
face before him, into a corner.
“Why?” reiterated Royce. “Why do you want me?”
“Bekase,” said Haines, “Peter Knowles seen ye fling them queer shoes
an’ belt an’ clothes inter the quicklime, an’ drawed the idee ez ye hed
slaughtered somebody bodaciously, an’ kivered ’em thar too.”
The juggler reddened slightly at the mention of the jaunty attire and
the thought of its sacrifice, but he was out of countenance before the
sentence was concluded, and gravely dismayed.
“Oh, pshaw!” he exclaimed, seeking to reassure himself. “They would
have to prove that somebody is dead to make that charge stick.”
Then he realized the seriousness of such an accusation, the necessity
of accounting for himself before a legal investigation, and this, to
escape one false criminal charge, must needs lead to a prosecution
for another equally false. The alternative of flight presented itself
instantly. “I can explain later, if necessary, as well as now,” he
thought. “I’m a thousand times obliged to you for telling me,” he added
aloud, but to his amazement and terror the man was wringing his hands
convulsively and his face was contorted with the agony of a terrible
expectation.
“Don’t thank me,” he said huskily. Then, with a sudden hope, “Is thar
enny way out’n this place ’ceptin’ yon?” he nodded his head toward the
ballroom on the other side of the partition.
“No, none,” gasped Royce, his nerves beginning to comprehend the
situation, while it still baffled his brain.
“I’m too late, I’m too late!” exclaimed Haines in a tense, suppressed
voice. “The sher’ff’s thar, ’mongst the others, in that room. I viewed
him thar a minit ago.”
Assuming that he knew the worst, Royce’s courage came back. With some
wild idea of devising a scheme to meet the emergency, he sprang upon
the vacant stage, on which the curtain had been rung down despite the
applause, still resolutely demanding a repetition of the feat, and
through the rent in the trembling fabric swiftly surveyed the house
with a new and, alas, how different a motive! His eyes instantly fixed
upon the rustic face, the hair parted far to the side, as the sheriff
vigorously stamped his feet and clapped his hands in approbation. That
oasis of refined, ideal light where Miss Fordyce sat did not escape
Royce’s attention even at this crisis. Had he indeed brought this
sorry, ignoble fate upon himself that he might own one moment in her
thoughts, one glance of her eye, that he might sing his song to her
ear? He had certainly achieved this, he thought sardonically. She would
doubtless remember him to the last day she should live. He wondered if
they would iron him in the presence of the ladies. Could he count upon
his strong young muscles to obey his will and submit without resistance
when the officers should lay their hands upon him, and thus avoid a
scene?
And all at once--perhaps it was the sweet look in her face that made
all gentle things seem possible--it occurred to him that he despaired
too easily. An arrest might not be in immediate contemplation,--the
_corpus delicti_ was impossible of proof. He could surely make
such disposition of his own property as seemed to him fit, and the
explanation that he was at odds with his friends, dead-broke, thrown
out of business in the recent panic, might pass muster with the rural
officer, since no crime could be discovered to involve the destruction
of the clothes. Thus he might still remain unidentified with Lucien
Royce, who pretended to be dead and was alive, who had had in trust a
large sum of money in a belt which was found upon another man, robbed,
and perhaps murdered for it. The sheriff of Kildeer County had never
dreamed of the like of that, he was very sure.
The next moment his heart sank like lead, for there amongst the
audience, quite distinct in the glooms, was the sharp, keen, white
face of a man he had seen before,--a detective. It was but once,
yet, with that idea of crime rife in his mind, he placed the man
instantly. He remembered a court-room in Memphis, during the trial of
a certain notable case, where he had chanced to loiter in the tedium
of waiting for a boat on one of his trips through the city, and he
had casually watched this man as he gave his testimony. His presence
here was significant, conclusive, to be interpreted far otherwise
than any mission of the sheriff of the county. Royce did not for one
moment doubt that it was in the interests of the Marble Company, the
tenants of the estate _per autre vie_, although the criminal charge
might emanate directly from the firm whose funds had so mysteriously
disappeared from his keeping, whose trust must now seem so basely
betrayed. There was no possible escape; the stanch walls of the
building were unbroken even by a window, and the only exit from behind
the partition was through the stage itself in full view of the watchful
eyes of the officers. Any effort, any action, would merely accelerate
the climax, precipitate the shame of the arrest he dreaded,--and in
her presence! He felt how hard the heart of the _cestui que vie_ was
thumping at the prospect of the summary resuscitation. He said to
himself, with his ironical habit of mind, that he had found dying a
far easier matter. But there was no responsive satire in the hunted
look of his hot, wild, glancing eyes, the quiver of every muscle, the
cold thrills that successively trembled through the nervous fibres. He
looked so unlike himself for the moment, as he turned with a violent
start on feeling the touch of a hand on his arm, that Seymour paused
with some deprecation and uncertainty. Then with a renewed intention
the manager said persuasively, “You won’t mind doing it over again,
will you? You see they won’t be content without it.”
A certain element of surprise was blended with the manager’s
cogitations which he remembered afterward rather than realized at the
moment. It had to do with the altered aspect of the man,--a sudden
grave tumultuous excitement which his manner and glance bespoke; but
the perception of this was subacute in Seymour’s mind and subordinate
to the awkward dilemma in which he found himself as manager of the
little enterprise. There was not time, in justice to the rest of the
programme, to repeat the basket trick, and had the farce been the work
of another he would have rung the curtain up forthwith on its first
scene. But the pride and sensitiveness of the author forbade the urging
of his own work upon the attention of an audience still clamorously
insistent upon the repetition of another attraction, and hardly
likely, if balked of this, to be fully receptive to the real merits of
the little play.
Seymour remembered afterward, but did not note at the time, the obvious
effort with which the juggler controlled his agitation. “Oh, anything
goes!” he assented, and in a moment more the curtain had glided up with
less than its usual convulsive resistance. They were standing again
together with composed aspect in the brilliance of the footlights, and
Seymour, with a change of phrase and an elaboration of the idea, was
dilating afresh upon the essential values of the positive in life; the
possible pernicious effects of any delusion of the senses; the futility
of finding pleasure in the false, simply because of the flagrancy of
its falsity; the deleterious moral effects of such exhibitions upon the
very young, teaching them to love the acrobatic lie instead of the lame
truth,--from all of which he deduced the propriety of tying the juggler
up for the rest of the evening. But the bullet-heads were not as dense
as they looked. They learned well when they learned at all, and the
pauses of this rodomontade were filled with callow chuckles and shrill
whinnies of appreciative delight, anticipative of the wonder to come.
They now viewed with eager forwarding interest the juggler’s bonds,
little dreaming what grim prophecy he felt in their restraint, and the
smallest boy of the lot shrilly sang out, when all was done, “Give him
another turn of the rope!”
Seymour, his blond face flushed by the heat and his exertions to
the hue of his pink-and-white blazer, ostentatiously wrought another
knot, and down the juggler went on the floor, encased in the unbroken
netting; the cloth was thrown over the man and the basket, and Seymour
turned anew to the audience and took up the thread of his discourse.
It came as trippingly off his tongue as before, and in the dusky
gray-purple haze, the seeming medium in which the audience sat, fair,
smiling faces, full of expectation and attention, looked forth their
approval, and now and again broke into laughter. When, having concluded
by announcing that he intended to convey the discomfited juggler off
the stage, he found naught under the cloth but the empty net without
a mesh awry, the man having escaped, his rage was a trifle more
pronounced than before. With a wild gesture he tossed the net out to
the spectators to bid them observe how the villain had outwitted him,
and then sprang into the basket and stamped tumultuously all around
in the interior, evidently covering every square inch of its surface,
while the detective’s keen eyes watched with an eager intensity, as if
the only thought in his mind concerned the miracle of the juggler’s
withdrawal. Out Seymour plunged finally, and with dogged resolution he
put the lid on and began to cord up the basket as if for departure.
“Save the little you’ve got left,” whinnied out a squirrel-toothed
mouth from the front bench, almost too broadly a-grin for articulation.
“Get a move on ye,--get a move!” shouted another of the callow
youngsters, reveling in the fictitious plight of the discomfited
manager as if it were real.
He seemed to resent it. He looked frowningly over the footlights at the
front row, as it hugged itself and squirmed on the bench and cackled in
ecstasy.
“I wish I had him here!” he exclaimed gruffly. “I’d settle him--with
this--and this--and this!” Each word was emphasized with the successive
thrusts of the sharp blade of the bowie-knife through the wickerwork.
“That’s enough! That’s enough!” the remonstrant elderly gentleman in
the audience admonished him, and he dropped the blade and came forward
to beg indulgence for the unseemly and pitiable position in which he
found himself placed. He had barely turned his back for a moment, when
this juggler whom he had taken so much pains to secure, in order to
protect the kind and considerate audience from further deceits of a
treacherous art, mysteriously disappeared, and whither he was sure
he could not imagine. He hesitated for a moment and looked a trifle
embarrassed, for this was the point at which the basket should begin to
roll along the floor. He gave it a covert glance, but it was motionless
where he had left it. Raising his voice, he repeated the words as with
indignant emphasis, thinking that the juggler had not caught the cue.
He went on speaking at random, but his words came less freely; the
audience sat expectant; the basket still lay motionless on the floor.
Seeing that he must needs force the crisis, he turned, exclaiming with
uplifted hands, “Do my eyes deceive me, or is that basket stirring,
rolling on the floor?”
But no; the basket lay as still as he had left it. There was a moment
of tense silence in the audience. His face grew suddenly white and
chill, his eyes dilated--fixed on something dark, and slow, and
sinuous, trickling down the inclined plane of the stage. He sprang
forward with a shrill exclamation, and, catching up the bowie-knife,
severed with one stroke the cords that bound the basket.
“Are you hurt?” he gasped in a tremulous voice to the silence beneath
the lid, and as he tossed it aside he recoiled abruptly, rising to his
feet with a loud and poignant cry, “Oh, my God! he is dead! he is dead!”
The sudden transition from the purely festival character of the
atmosphere to the purlieus of grim tragedy told heavily on every nerve.
There was one null moment blank of comprehension, and then women
were screaming, and more than one fainted; the clamor of overturned
benches added to the confusion, as the men, with grim set faces and
startled eyes, pressed forward to the stage; the children cowered in
mute affright close below the footlights, except one small creature
who thought it a part of the fun, not dreaming what death might be,
and was laughing aloud in high-keyed mirth down in the dusky gloom.
A physician among the summer sojourners, on a flying visit for a
breath of mountain air, was the first man to reach the stage, and,
with the terror-stricken Seymour, drew the long lithe body out and
straightened it on the floor, as the curtain was lowered to hide the
ghastly _mise en scène_ which it might be terror to women and children
to remember. His ready hand desisted after a glance. The man had died
from the first stroke of the bowie-knife, penetrating his side, and
doubtless lacerating the outer tissues of the heart. The other strokes
were registered,--the one on his hand, the other, a slight graze,
on the neck. A tiny package had fallen on the floor as the hasty
hands had torn the shirt aside from the wound: the deft professional
fingers unfolded it,--a bit of faded flower, a wild purple verbena;
the physician looked at it for a moment, and tossed it aside in the
blood on the floor, uninterested. The pericardium was more in his
line. He was realizing, too, that he could not start to-morrow, as he
had intended, for his office and his rounds among his patients. The
coroner’s jury was an obstinate impediment, and his would be expert
testimony.
Upon this inquest, held incongruously enough in the ballroom, the facts
of the information which Owen Haines had brought to the juggler and the
presence of the officers in the audience were elicited, and added to
the excitements incident to the event. The friends of young Seymour,
who was overwhelmed by the tragedy, believed and contended that since
escape from prosecution for some crime was evidently impossible, the
juggler had in effect committed suicide by holding up his left arm that
the knife might pierce a vital part. Thus they sought to avert the
sense of responsibility which a man must needs feel for so terrible a
deed wrought, however inadvertently, by his own hand. But crime as a
factor seemed doubtful. The sheriff, indeed, upon the representations
of Sims, supplemented by the mystery of the lime-kiln which Knowles had
disclosed, had induced the detective to accompany him to the mountains
to seek to identify the stranger as a defaulting cashier from one of
the cities for whose apprehension a goodly amount of money would be
paid. But in no respect did Royce correspond to the perpetrator of any
crime upon the detective’s list.
“He needn’t have been afraid of me,” he observed dryly; “I saw in a
minute he wasn’t our fellow. And I was just enjoying myself mightily.”
The development of the fact of the presence of the officers and the
juggler’s knowledge that they were in the audience affected the
physician’s testimony and his view of the occurrence. He accounted it
an accident--the nerve of the young man, shaken by the natural anxiety
at finding himself liable to immediate arrest, was not sufficient
to carry him through the feat; he failed to shift position with the
celerity essential to the basket trick, and the uplifting of the arm,
which left the body unprotected to receive the blow, was but the
first effort to compass the swift movements necessary to the feat. The
unlucky young manager was exonerated from all blame in the matter, but
the verdict was death by accident.
Nevertheless, throughout all the years since, the argument continues.
Along the verge of those crags overlooking the valley, in the glamours
of a dreamy golden haze, with the amethystine mountains on the horizon
reflecting the splendors of the sunset sky, and with the rich content
of the summer solstice in the perfumed air; or amongst the ferns
about the fractured cliffs whence the spring wells up with a tinkling
tremor and exhilarant freshness and a cool, cool splashing as of the
veritable fountain of youth; or in the shadowy twilight of the long,
low building where the balls go crashing down the alleys; or sometimes
even in the ballroom in pauses of the dance when the music is but a
plaint, half-joy, half-pain, and the wind is singing a wild and mystic
refrain, and the moonlight comes in at the windows and lies in great
blue-white silver rhomboids on the floor despite the dull yellow glow
of the lamps,--in all these scenes which while yet in life Lucien Royce
haunted, with a sense of exile and a hopeless severance, as of a man
who is dead, the mystery of his fate revives anew and yet once more,
and continues unexplained. Conjecture fails, conclusions are vain, the
secret remains. Hey! Presto! The juggler has successfully exploited his
last feat.
The Riverside Press
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