BY MIC-CO'S POOL
To the dark, old-fashioned house in St. Augustine in which Baron Tregar
was a "paying guest" came one twilight, a man for whom compassionately
he had waited. His visitor was sadly white and tired, with heavy lines
about his sullen mouth and the dust of the highway upon his motoring
rig. There was no fire in his eyes; rather a stupid apathy which in a
man with less strength about the mouth and chin might easily have
become commonness.
"Tregar," he said with an effort, "you told me to come when I needed
you. I am here. I can not see my way--"
Tregar held out his hand in silence. Only he knew the sacrifice of
insolent pride that had brought his guest so low.
Ronador took his hand and reddened.
"My father rightly counts upon your loyalty," he choked and walked away
to the window.
Suddenly he wheeled with blazing eyes of agony.
"Why must that old horrible remorse grind and tear!" he cried, "now
when I can not bear it! It is keener and crueler now than it was that
day when you found me in the forest. Every new twist of this damnable
mess has been a barb tearing the old wound open afresh. And now--I--I
can not even find Miss Westfall. I have motored over the roads in
vain. The van is gone from the lake shore. It seemed that I must make
one final desperate effort to make her understand--"
With the memory of the eyes of Diane and Philip flashing messages of
utter trust that day beneath the trees, the Baron sighed.
"Ronador," he said kindly, "it would have been in vain."
"And now," Ronador moistened his pallid lips, "there is a rumble of war
from Galituria."
"Yes," said Tregar sadly, "Themar was a traitor."
"I told him much," said Ronador, great drops of moisture standing forth
upon his forehead. "It seemed that I must, to make him understand the
urgent need of silencing Granberry forever. He cabled the news to
Galituria and sold it. I am ill and discouraged. There is fever in my
blood, Tregar, from this climate of eternal summer--a fever in my
head--"
Tregar stroked his beard.
"There is a doctor," he said quietly, "of whom Poynter has told me
much--a doctor who healed Granberry's mind as well as his body. I had
thought to go to him myself--to rest. I, too, am tired, Ronador. One
goes to a little hamlet and an old man guides by a road to the south
into the Everglades. Let us go there together."
"No!" said Ronador sullenly. "Let us rather go home. I am sick of
this land of insolent men like Granberry and Poynter, who bend the knee
to no man."
"You would go back then, ill, sullen, resentful, with the news that we
must lay before your father? By Heaven, no!" thundered the Baron with
one of his infrequent outbursts. "Let us go back smiling, for all we
have lost, and seek to tell of this child of Theodomir with what grace
we can muster. Poynter is at the bedside of his father. Granberry has
gone to learn the tale of the other candlestick. These men, Ronador,
we must see again before we sail. In the meantime, there is Poynter's
physician."
"Very well," said Ronador, goaded to a sudden consent by a fevered wave
of nausea and shaking, "let us go to him."
So came Prince Ronador and the Baron to the island lodge of Mic-co.
Though Ronador in the first disorder of rebellious mind and body, had
fancied himself sicker than he really was, he was suffering more now
than even Tregar guessed. The last stage of the journey to a man of
less indomitable grit and courage would have been impossible. It was
no sickness of the mind alone. His body was wildly ravaged by a fever.
Through a dizzy blur which distorted every object and which frowningly
he sought to drive away with clenched hands, he stared at the lodge,
stared at Keela, stared at the grave and quiet face of Mic-co. He was
still staring vaguely about him when night curtained the lilied pool
and the stars flashed brightly overhead.
"I am not ill, Tregar!" he insisted curtly. "Let me rest by the pool.
There is peace here and I am tired. We traveled rapidly--"
Nevertheless, for all his feverish denial, his desperate attempts to
keep to the thread of desultory talk were pitiful. He frowned heavily,
began his sentences slowly and trailed off incoherently to a halt and
silence.
The Baron turned compassionately away from him to Mic-co with a
question.
"Names," said Mic-co, "are nothing to me, Baron Tregar. They are
merely a part of that great world from which I live apart. I am a
Heidelberg man, since you feel sufficiently interested to inquire.
Though my choice of a profession was merely a careless desire to know
some one thing well, I have never regretted it."
"I--I beg your pardon," stammered the Baron and glanced keenly at
Mic-co.
"It is a habit of mine," hinted Mic-co, "to take what confidence a man
may offer and let him withhold what he will."
"There is nothing to withhold!" flashed Ronador with sudden fierceness.
"Why do you speak of it?"
Mic-co thought of a white-faced young fellow who had stubbornly refused
to accept his hospitality, one morning beneath the live oaks, until he
might name aloud his offenses in the sight of God and Man. This man
before him, sweeping rapidly into the black gulf of delirium, was of a
different caliber.
By the pool Ronador leaped suddenly, his face quite colorless save
where the flame of fever burned in his cheeks.
"That Voice!" he said, standing in curious attitude of listening. "You
hear it, Tregar? Always--always it comes so in the quietest hours.
Tell him! Tell him! Why should I tell him? What is he to me? I may
not purchase relief at the price of any man's respect. Only Tregar
knows. Hush!--In God's name, hush! Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt
not kill!" He seemed, without conscious effort, to be repeating the
words of this Voice with which he held this terrible communion, and
waved Tregar back with an imperious gesture of defiance. Facing Mic-co
he flung out his arm.
"I am a murderer in the sight of God and Man!" he choked. "I murdered
my cousin Theodomir for a dream of empire. I can not forget--Oh, God!
I can not forget. The Voice bids me tell!"
He dropped wildly to his knees, his eyes imploring.
"Oh, God!" he prayed with pallid lips, "hear this, my prayer. I have
paid in black hours of bitter suffering. I have played and lost and
the fire of life is but ashes in my hand. Give me peace--peace!"
He stayed so long upon his knees that Tregar touched him gently on the
shoulder.
"Ronador," he said gently. "Come. You are very ill and know not what
you say."
Ronador staggered blindly to his feet. Once more he waved the Baron
aside and took up his terrible dialogue with the inner Voice.
"The Voice! The Voice!" he whispered. "Thou shalt not kill! Thou
shalt not kill! You lie!" he cried in a sudden outburst of terrible
fierceness. "He was not a fool. He loved men more than the mockery
and cant of courts. He loved--he trusted me--and I betrayed him. Who
knew when he fled wildly away from the pomp and inequalities he hated?
I! Who watched for his secret letters? I! Who came to America when
his letter of homesick pleading came? I! I! I! Who killed him when
conscience and duty would have sent him back to the court of his
father? I, his cousin whom he loved above all men. You lie. I did
love him. I was drunk with the royal glitter ahead. I craved it even
as he hated it. Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not kill! Mercy!
Mercy! I can not bear it."
He fell groveling upon the floor and crawled to Mic-co's feet.
"The Voice bids me tell!" he whispered, clutching fearfully at Mic-co's
hand. "Twice, since, I would have killed to keep this thing of the
candlestick from creeping back and back until that thing of long ago
lay uncovered and I disgraced! . . . Theodomir hid in the Seminole
village. No--no, you must listen--the Voice bids me tell or lose my
reason. I came there at his bidding--his marriage to the Indian girl
had been unhappy. He was homesick and this fair land of liberty had a
rotten core. I struck him down and fled. You will heal and fight the
Voice--"
Mic-co bent and raised the groveling figure.
"Peace!" he said, his face very white. "We will heal and quiet the
Voice forever. Come!" Gently he led the sick man away.
"He will sleep now, I think," he said a little later. "A drug is best
when a Voice is mocking?--"
The Baron leaned forward and caught Mic-co's arm in a grasp of iron.
"Who are you," he whispered, "that you suffer with him now? You are
white and shaking. Who are you that you know the tongue of my country?"
Mic-co sighed.
"I," said he sadly, "am that man he thought to kill!"
White-faced, the Baron stared at the snowy beard and hair and the fine,
dark eyes.
"Theodomir!" he whispered brokenly. "Theodomir! It--it can not be."
He fell to pacing the floor in violent agitation.
"The eyes are quieter," he said at length with an effort, "but the hair
and heard so white! I would not have guessed--I would not have
guessed!" Again he stared.
"Are you man or saint," he cried at last, "that you can forgive as I
have seen your eyes forgive to-night?"
"May a man look upon such remorse as that," asked Mic-co, "and not
forgive? I loved him greatly. Had I loved him less--had I loved her
less--that Indian wife who had no love in her heart for me, this hair
of mine would not have turned snow-white when the Indians were fanning
the flickering spark of life into a blaze again."
"There is peace in your face," said Tregar a little bitterly, "and none
of the old fretful discontent. Have you no single thought of regret
for that fair land of ours you left?"
"For that fatherland of rugged mountain and silver waterfall--yes!"
cried Theodomir with sudden fire. "For the festering core of
imperialism that darkens its beauty with sable wing--no! No single
thought of regret. How pitiful and absurd our Lilliputian game of
empire! What man is better than another? Tolstoi and Buddha, they are
the men who knew. Was not my wildest error," he demanded reverting
afresh to the other's reproach, "that homesick letter that brought him
to my side? Peace came to me, Tregar, in building this lodge, in
working in the field and hunting, in doctoring these primitive people
who saved my life, in teaching the child of my Indian wife--"
"The child of your wife! You mean your daughter?"
"I have no child," said Theodomir. "The girl you saw to-night is my
foster daughter, the child of my wife and the man for whose whim she
begged me to divorce her."
"No child!" exclaimed the Baron with a sickening flash of realization.
"My poor Ronador!"
"My kindness to her," said Mic-co, "was at first a discipline. Her
mother deserted her and the old chief granted me half her life. I
could not bear the touch of her hands or the look in her eyes for many
months, but through her, Tregar, at last I learned peace and
forgiveness and forbearance, as men should. I built the lodge for her
and me. I taught her the ways of her white father. I made myself
proficient in the English tongue that those traders and hunters and
naturalists who stray here might guess nothing of my origin. I shall
never again leave the peace and quiet of this island home. And you and
I, Tregar, must quiet that Voice forever!"
"Is that possible?" choked Tregar.
"I think so," said Mic-co. "I think we may some day send him home with
the Voice quieted forever and the remorse and suffering healed. Had I
thought he was strong enough to bear it, I would have told him
to-night."
"Let me tell you," said Tregar with strong emotion, "how I found him in
the forest, when years back I came to know this secret I have tried so
hard to keep for him. I had been hunting with the King and lost my way
in the forests of Grimwald. I found him there in the thickest
part--naked, slashing his body wildly with a knife in an agony of
remorse and penance and the most terrible grief I have ever witnessed.
Before he well knew what he was about he had blurted forth the whole
pitiful story--that he had killed his cousin in a moment of
passion--that he must scourge and torture his body to discipline his
soul. I--I shall not forget his face."
"Poor fellow!" said Mic-co. "My poor cousin!"
They wheeled suddenly at a choking sound in the doorway. Some wild
memory of the Grimwald had surged through the fevered brain of the sick
man. His clothes were gone, his body slashed cruelly in a dozen
places. He had torn down the buckskin curtain at his window and bound
it about his body in the fashion of earlier ages. How long he had
stood there in the doorway they did not know. Now as they turned, he
rushed forward and flung himself with a great heart-broken sob at the
feet of his cousin.
"Theodomir! Theodomir!" he cried.
Tregar turned away from the sound of his terrible sobbing.