feels deeply with you, Bella, and desired me to tell you so."
"He is very good--thank him in my name."
* * * * *
But released from the care of thinking for her guests, and sitting
crying alone in her dressing-room, poor Mrs. Clayton could not imagine
what to do with the iron-clamped black box. She had promised Blanche not
to confide in her husband, or Colonel Damer. The latter, having no
family vault, wished to lay the remains of his wife amongst those of the
Claytons in the country churchyard of Molton; but how to get the black
box conveyed to the grave without the knowledge of the chief mourners
was a mystery beyond the fathoming of Bella's open heart. But in the
midst of her perplexity, Fate sent her aid. On the second day of her
cousin's death, a gentle tap sounded at her chamber door, and on her
invitation to enter being answered, she was surprised to see Mr.
Laurence on the threshold--come, as she imagined, to offer his sympathy
in person.
"This is very kind of you, Mr. Laurence," she said.
"I can scarcely claim your gratitude, Mrs. Clayton. I have sought you to
speak on a very important but painful subject. May I ask your attention
for a few moments?"
"Of course you may!" And she motioned him to a seat.
"It concerns her whom we have lost. Mrs. Clayton, tell me truly--did you
love your cousin?"
"Dearly--very dearly, Mr. Laurence. We were brought up together."
"Then I may depend on your discretion; and if you wish to save her
memory you must exercise it in her behalf. There is a small iron-clamped
black trunk amongst her boxes, which must not fall into Colonel Damer's
hands. Will you have that box conveyed from her chamber to your own, and
(if you will so far trust my honour) make it over to me?"
"To you, Mr. Laurence--the iron-bound box? What possible knowledge can
you have of my cousin's secret?"
"Her secret?"
"Yes--she confided that box to my care the night she died. She made me
promise to do (without question) what you have just asked me to perform,
and I did it. The trunk is already here."
And throwing open a cupboard at the side of the room, she showed him the
chest which he had mentioned.
"I see that it is," he answered. "How do you design disposing of it?"
"She wished it to be buried in her grave."
"That is impossible in its present state. The contents must be removed."
"But how?" Mrs. Clayton demanded, in surprise. "It is locked and double
locked, and there is no key."
"_I_ have the key," he answered, gravely.
"Oh! Mr. Laurence," exclaimed his hostess, trembling, "there is some
dreadful mystery here. For heaven's sake tell me what it is! What
connection can you possibly have with this box of my poor cousin's, if
you have only met her once in your life?"
"Did she say so?" he asked.
"No; but I fancied so. Have you known her? When? where? and why did you
not tell us so before?"
"How can I tell you now?" he said, gazing into the pure womanly face
upraised to his own, bearing an expression which was half-surprise and
half-fear but which seemed as though it could never dream of anything
like shame.
"You are too good and too happy, Mrs. Clayton, to know of, or be able to
sympathize with, the troubles and temptations which preceded our fatal
friendship and her fall."
"Blanche's _fall_!" ejaculated Bella Clayton, in a voice of horror.
"Don't interrupt me, please, Mrs. Clayton," he said, hurriedly, covering
his face with his hands, "or I shall never be able to tell you the
wretched story. I knew your cousin years ago. Had you any suspicion that
she was unhappy in her marriage?"
"No! none!" replied Bella, with looks of surprise.
"She _was_ then, thoroughly unhappy, as scores of women are, simply
because the hearts of the men they are bound to are opposed to theirs in
every taste and feeling. I met her when she first returned to England,
and--it is the old story, Mrs. Clayton--I loved her, and was mad enough
to tell her so. When a selfish man and an unselfish woman have mutually
confessed their preference for each other, the result is easily
anticipated. I ruined her--forgive my plain speaking--and she still
loved on, and forgave me."
"Oh, Blanche!" exclaimed Bella Clayton, hiding her hot face in her
hands.
"We lived in a fool's paradise for some months, and then one day she
left her house and went to the Continent, without giving me any warning
of her intention. I was thunderstruck when I heard it, and deeply hurt,
and as soon as I had traced her to Paris, I followed and demanded an
explanation of her conduct. But she refused to see me, and when she
found me pertinacious, left the city as suddenly as she had done that of
London. Since which time she has answered no letters of mine, nor did we
ever meet until, most unexpectedly, I met her in your house. My pride,
after her first refusals to see me, was too great to permit me to renew
my entreaties, and so I called her a flirt, and inconstant. I tried to
banish her remembrance from my heart--and I thought I had succeeded."
"Oh, my poor darling!" exclaimed Mrs. Clayton. "This accounts then for
her holding aloof from all her relations for so long a time, by which
means she estranged herself from many of them. She was working out her
penitence and deep remorse in solitary misery; and she would not even
let me share her confidence. But about the box, Mr. Laurence; what has
all this to do with the black box?"
"When I met her in your shrubbery the other day, and reproached her for
her desertion of me, insisting upon her giving me the reason of her
change of mind, she bade me follow her to her own apartment. There,
unlocking the box before you, she showed me its contents."
"And they are--?" inquired Mrs. Clayton, breathlessly.
"Would you like to see them?" he demanded, taking a key from his pocket.
"I have as much right to show them you as she would have had. But is
your love for her dead memory and reputation strong enough to insure
your eternal secrecy on the subject?"
"It is," said Bella Clayton, decidedly.
"This box," continued Mr. Laurence, applying the key he held to the lock
of the iron-clamped black trunk, "has accompanied my poor girl on all
her travels for the last two years. The dreadful secret of its contents
which she bore in silent, solitary misery all that time has been, I
believe, the ultimate cause of her death, by proving too heavy a burden
for the sensitive and proud spirit which was forced to endure the
knowledge of its shame. She was killed by her remorse. If you have
courage, Mrs. Clayton, for the sight, look at _this_--and pity the
feelings I must endure as I kneel here and look at it with you."
He threw back the lid and the topmost linen as he spoke, and Bella
Clayton pressed eagerly forward to see, carefully laid amidst withered
flowers and folds of cambric, the tiny skeleton of a new-born creature
whose angel was even then beholding the face of his Father in Heaven.
She covered her eyes with her clasped hands, no less to shut out the
sight than to catch the womanly tears which poured forth at it, and then
she cried between her sobs--
"Oh! my poor, poor Blanche, what must she not have suffered! God have
mercy on her soul!"
"Amen!" said Herbert Laurence.
"You will let me take the box away with me, Mrs. Clayton?" he asked,
gently.
She looked up as he spoke, and the tears were standing in his eyes.
"Yes--yes," she said; "take it away; do what you will with it, only
never speak of it to me again."
He never did but once, and that was but an allusion. On the evening of
the day on which they committed the remains of Blanche Damer to the
dust, he lay in wait for Mrs. Clayton on the landing.
"All has been done as she desired," he whispered; and Mrs. Clayton asked
for no further explanation. The secret of which she had been made an
unwilling recipient pressed so heavily on her conscience, that she was
thankful when he left Molton Grange and went abroad, as he had expressed
his intention of doing.
Since which time she has never seen Herbert Laurence again; and Colonel
Damer, whose grief at the funeral and for some time after was nearly
frenzied, having--like most men who mourn much outwardly--found a source
of consolation in the shape of another wife, the story of Blanche
Damer's life and death is remembered, for aught her cousin knows to the
contrary, by none but herself.
I feel that an objection will be raised to this episode by some people
on the score of its being _unnatural_; to whom all I can say in answer
is, that the principal incident on which the interest of it turns--that
of the unhappy Mrs. Damer having been made so great a coward by
conscience that she carried the proof of her frailty about with her for
years, too fearful of discovery to permit it to leave her sight--is _a
fact_.
To vary the circumstances under which the discovery of the contents of
the black box was finally made, and to alter the names of places and
people so as to avoid general recognition, I have made my province: to
relate the story itself, since, in the form I now present it to my
readers, it can give pain to no one, I consider my privilege.
MY FASCINATING FRIEND
William Archer
I
Nature has cursed me with a retiring disposition. I have gone round the
world without making a single friend by the way. Coming out of my own
shell is as difficult to me as drawing others out of theirs. There are
some men who go through life extracting the substance of every one they
meet, as one picks out periwinkles with a pin. To me my fellow-men are
oysters, and I have no oyster-knife; my sole consolation (if it be one)
is that my own values absolutely defy the oyster-knives of others. Not
more than twice or thrice in my life have I met a fellow-creature at
whose "Open Sesame" the treasures of my heart and brain stood instantly
revealed. My Fascinating Friend was one of these rare and sympathetic
beings.
I was lounging away a few days at Monaco, awaiting a summons to join
some relations in Italy. One afternoon I had started for an aimless and
rambling climb among the olive-terraces on the lower slopes of the Tete
du Chien. Finding an exquisite coign of vantage amid the roots of a
gnarled old trunk springing from a built-up semicircular patch of level
ground, I sat me down to rest, and read, and dream. Below me, a little
to the right, Monaco jutted out into the purple sea. I could distinguish
carriages and pedestrians coming and going on the chaussee between the
promontory and Monte Carlo, but I was far too high for any sound to
reach me. Away to the left the coast took a magnificent sweep, past the
clustering houses of Roccabruna, past the mountains at whose base
Mentone nestled unseen, past the Italian frontier, past the bight of
Ventimiglia, to where the Capo di Bordighera stood faintly outlined
between sea and sky. There was not a solitary sail on the whole expanse
of the Mediterranean. A line of white, curving at rhythmic intervals
along a small patch of sandy beach, showed that there was a gentle swell
upon the sea, but its surface was mirror-like. A lovelier scene there is
not in the world, and it was at its very loveliest. I took the _Saturday
Review_ from my pocket, and was soon immersed in an article on the
commutation of tithes.
I was aroused from my absorption by the rattle of a small stone hopping
down the steep track, half path, half stairway, by which I had ascended.
It had been loosened by the foot of a descending wayfarer, in whom, as
he picked his way slowly downward, I recognized a middle-aged German
(that I supposed to be his nationality) who had been very assiduous at
the roulette-tables of the Casino for some days past. There was nothing
remarkable in his appearance, his spectacled eyes, squat nose, and
square-cropped bristling beard being simply characteristic of his class
and country. He did not notice me as he went by, being too intent on his
footing to look about him; but I was so placed that it was a minute or
more before he passed out of sight round a bend in the path. He was just
turning the corner, and my eyes were still fixed on him, when I was
conscious of another figure within my field of vision. This second comer
had descended the same pathway, but had loosened no stones on his
passage. He trod with such exquisite lightness and agility that he had
passed close by me without my being aware of his presence, while he, for
his part, had his eyes fixed with a curious intensity on the thick-set
figure of the German, upon whom, at his rate of progress, he must have
been gaining rapidly. A glance showed me that he was a young man of
slender figure, dressed in a suit of dark-coloured tweed, of English
cut, and wearing a light-brown wide-awake hat. Just as my eye fell upon
him he put his hand into the inner breast-pocket of his coat, and drew
from it something which, as he was now well past me, I could not see. At
the same moment some small object, probably jerked out of his pocket by
mistake, fell almost noiselessly on the path at his feet. In his
apparently eager haste he did not notice his loss, but was gliding
onward, leaving what I took to be his purse lying on the path. It was
clearly my duty to call his attention to it; so I said, "Hi!" an
interjection which I have found serves its purpose in all countries. He
gave a perceptible start, and looked round at me over his shoulder. I
pointed to the object he had dropped, and said, "_Voila!_" He had thrust
back into his pocket the thing, whatever it was, which he held in his
hand, and now turned round to look where I was pointing. "Ah!" he said
in English, "my cigarette-case! I am much obliged to you," and he
stooped and picked it up.
"I thought it was your purse," I said.
"I would rather have lost my purse than this," he said, with a light
laugh. He had apparently abandoned his intention of overtaking the
German, who had meanwhile passed out of sight.
"Are you such an enthusiastic smoker?" I asked.
"I go in for quality, not quantity," he replied; "and a Spanish friend
has just given me some incomparable _cigarritos_." He opened the case as
he ascended the few steps which brought him up to my little plateau.
"Have one?" he said, holding it out to me with the most winning smile I
have ever seen on any human face.
I was about to take one from the left-hand side of the case, when he
turned it away and presented the other side to me.
"No, no!" he said; "these flat ones are my common brand. The round ones
are the gems."
"I am robbing you," I said, as I took one.
"Not if you are smoker enough to appreciate it," he said, as he
stretched himself on the ground beside me, and produced from a little
gold match-box a wax vesta, with which he lighted my cigarette and his
own.
So graceful was his whole personality, so easy and charming his manner,
that it did not strike me as in the least odd that he should thus make
friends with me by the mere exchange of half a dozen words. I looked at
him as he lay resting on his elbows and smoking lazily. He had thrown
his hat off, and his wavy hair, longish and of an opaque charcoal black,
fell over his temples while he shook it back behind his ears. He was a
little above the middle height, of dark complexion, with large and soft
black eyes and arched eyebrows, a small and rather broad nose (the worst
feature in his face), full curving and sensitive lips, and a very strong
and rounded chin. He was absolutely beardless, but a slight black down
on the upper lip announced a coming mustache. His age could not have
been more than twenty. The cut of his clothes, as I have said, was
English, but his large black satin neck-cloth, flowing out over the
collar of his coat, was such as no home-keeping Englishman would ever
have dared to appear in. This detail, combined with his accent,
perfectly pure but a trifle precise and deliberate, led me to take him
for an Englishman brought up on the Continent--probably in Italy, for
there was no French intonation in his speech. His voice was rich, but
deep--a light baritone.
He took up my _Saturday Review_.
"The Bible of the Englishman abroad," he said. "One of the institutions
that makes me proud of our country."
"I have it sent me every week," I said.
"So had my father," he replied. "He used to say, 'Shakespeare we share
with the Americans, but damn it, the _Saturday Review_ is all our own!'
He was one of the old school, my father."
"And the good school," I said, with enthusiasm. "So am I."
"Now, I'm a bit of a Radical," my new friend rejoined, looking up with a
smile, which made the confession charming rather than objectionable; and
from this point we started upon a discussion, every word of which I
could write down if I chose, such a lasting impression did it make upon
me. He was indeed a brilliant talker, having read much and travelled
enormously for one so young. "I think I have lived in every country in
Europe," he said, "except Russia. Somehow it has never interested me." I
found that he was a Cambridge man, or, at least, was intimately
acquainted with Cambridge life and thought; and this was another bond
between us. His Radicalism was not very formidable; it amounted to
little more, indeed, than a turn for humorous paradox. Our discussion
reminded me of Fuller's description of the wit-combats between Ben
Jonson and Shakespeare at the "Mermaid." I was the Spanish galleon, my
Fascinating Friend was the English man-of-war, ready "to take advantage
of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." An hour sped
away delightfully, the only thing I did not greatly enjoy being the
cigarette, which seemed to me no better than many I had smoked before.
"What do you think of my cigarettes?" he said, as I threw away the
stump.
I felt that a blunt expression of opinion would be in bad taste after
his generosity in offering an utter stranger the best he had.
"Exquisite!" I answered.
"I thought you would say so," he replied, gravely. "Have another!"
"Let me try one of your common ones," I said.
"No, you shan't!" he replied, closing the case with a sudden snap, which
endangered my fingers, but softening the _brusquerie_ of the proceeding
by one of his enthralling smiles; then he added, using one of the odd
idioms which gave his speech a peculiar piquancy, "I don't palm off upon
my friends what I have of second best." He re-opened the case and held
it out to me. To have refused would have been to confess that I did not
appreciate his "gems" as he called them. I smoked another, in which I
still failed to find any unusual fragrance; but the aroma of my
new-found friend's whole personality was so keen and subtle, that it may
have deadened my nerves to any more material sensation.
We lay talking until the pink flush of evening spread along the horizon,
and in it Corsica, invisible before, seemed to body itself forth from
nothingness like an island of phantom peaks and headlands. Then we rose,
and, in the quickly gathering dusk, took our way down among the
olive-yards, and through the orange-gardens to Monte Carlo.
II
My acquaintance with my Fascinating Friend lasted little more than
forty-eight hours, but during that time we were inseparable. He was not
at my hotel, but on that first evening I persuaded him to dine with me,
and soon after breakfast on the following morning I went in search of
him; I was at the Russie, he at the Hotel de Paris. I found him smoking
in the veranda, and at a table not far distant sat the German of the
previous afternoon, finishing a tolerably copious _dejeuner a la
fourchette_. As soon as he had scraped his plate quite clean and
finished the last dregs of his bottle of wine, he rose and took his way
to the Casino. After a few minutes' talk with my Fascinating Friend, I
suggested a stroll over to Monaco. He agreed, and we spent the whole day
together, loitering and lounging, talking and dreaming. We went to the
Casino in the afternoon to hear the concert, and I discovered my friend
to be a cultivated musician. Then we strolled into the gambling-room for
an hour, but neither of us played. The German was busy at one of the
roulette-tables, and seemed to be winning considerably. That evening I
dined with my friend at the table d'hote of his hotel. At the other end
of the table I could see the German sitting silent and unnoticing, rapt
in the joys of deglutition.
Next morning, by arrangement, my friend called upon me at my hotel, and
over one of his cigarettes, to which I was getting accustomed, we
discussed our plan for the day. I suggested a wider flight than
yesterday's. Had he ever been to Eza, the old Saracen robber-nest
perched on a rock a thousand feet above the sea, halfway between Monaco
and Villafranca? No, he had not been there, and after some consideration
he agreed to accompany me. We went by rail to the little station on the
seashore, and then attacked the arduous ascent. The day was perfect,
though rather too warm for climbing, and we had frequent rests among the
olive-trees, with delightfully discursive talks on all things under the
sun. My companion's charm grew upon me moment by moment. There was in
his manner a sort of refined coquetry of amiability which I found
irresistible. It was combined with a frankness of sympathy and interest
subtly flattering to a man of my unsocial habit of mind. I was conscious
every now and then that he was drawing me out; but to be drawn out so
gently and genially was, to me, a novel and delightful experience. It
produced in me one of those effusions of communicativeness to which, I
am told, all reticent people are occasionally subject. I have myself
given way to them some three or four times in my life, and found myself
pouring forth to perfect strangers such intimate details of feeling and
experience as I would rather die than impart to my dearest friend. Three
or four times, I say, have I found myself suddenly and inexplicably
brought within the influence of some invisible truth-compelling
talisman, which drew from me confessions the rack could not have
extorted; but never has the influence been so irresistible as in the
case of my Fascinating Friend. I told him what I had told to no other
human soul--what I had told to the lonely glacier, to the lurid
storm-cloud, to the seething sea, but had never breathed in mortal
ear--I told him the tragedy of my life. How well I remember the scene!
We were resting beneath the chestnut-trees that shadow a stretch of
level sward immediately below the last short stage of ascent that leads
into the heart of the squalid village now nestling in the crevices of
the old Moslem fastness. The midday hush was on sea and sky. Far out on
the horizon a level line of smoke showed where an unseen steamer was
crawling along under the edge of the sapphire sphere. As I reached the
climax of my tale an old woman, bent almost double beneath a huge fagot
of firewood, passed us on her way to the village. I remember that it
crossed my mind to wonder whether there was any capacity in the nature
of such as she for suffering at all comparable to that which I was
describing. My companion's sympathy was subtle and soothing. There was
in my tale an element of the grotesque which might have tempted a vulgar
nature to flippancy. No smile crossed my companion's lips. He turned
away his head, on pretense of watching the receding figure of the old
peasant-woman. When he looked at me again, his deep dark eyes were
suffused with a moisture which enhanced the mystery of their tenderness.
In that moment I felt, as I had never felt before, what it is to find a
friend.
We returned to Monte Carlo late in the afternoon, and I found a telegram
at my hotel begging me to be in Genoa the following morning. I had
barely time to bundle my traps together and swallow a hasty meal before
my train was due. I scrawled a note to my new found confidant,
expressing most sincerely my sorrow at parting from him so soon and so
suddenly, and my hope that ere long we should meet again.
III