When Rosamond stepped over the threshold she was conscious of motion in
the living room. She stood still and strained her eyes into the dusk of
the room. She saw a figure emerge from the shadows and, feeling its way
about, arrive at the table behind the settee which supported one of Mr.
Hibbert Mearely’s genuine antiques--a bronze vase.
“Ah! What’s this?” he muttered, as his fingers felt about its design.
Rosamond knew now that the impossible had occurred: a burglar had
come to Roseborough. Her knees evinced a tendency to fold up and let
her shaking body find support upon the floor; but her soul was not
a coward. She held her breath and tiptoed to the desk. Noiselessly,
she pulled out the drawer and closed her clammy fingers about the
pistol. The dining room and quarters beyond provided the best channels
of escape, if she must flee, so she crept across the room behind the
marauder, just as he moved toward the chimney-piece, where the Louis XV
snuff-boxes were set all in a row and ticketed.
“Stop!--stop!” She quavered sternly, pointing the pistol at him.
He wheeled sharply and exclaimed in surprise:
“Oh! Are you up? er--I beg....”
“Who are you?” she demanded, with an access of courage due to the fact
that he had not immediately murdered her. She recalled that, in books,
one always firmly and at once asked a masked assassin or highwayman to
disclose his identity.
“Ah!” said he, “that is what I was about to ask you.”
“_Who--are--you?_” She wondered if that high, wavering voice was hers.
A sound came from him which she could not associate with any emotion
of fear or shame, proper to a burglarious tramp caught in the act. He
removed his hat with a sweep, and bowed.
“Madam, I am a bird of the air, seeking my meat from God.”
Noting his accent, which was that of an educated man, Mrs. Mearely’s
alarm decreased, but she did not relax vigilance.
“That is poetic, but vague. _Who are you, and what are you doing here?_”
“My biography, in short. Briefly, then, I am a poet out of a job.
Second stanza, I entered your home in the hope of finding food.
Refrain, I am a hungry, hungry, hungry man.”
This, she thought, was obviously insincere and merited rebuke.
“I do not believe you!”
“Well, perhaps not,” cheerfully. “Nevertheless I _am_ hungry. I always
prefer to tell the truth, irrespective of people’s beliefs. Allow me to
turn on the light.”
“Don’t move! Stay where you are.” She waved the pistol at him, as she
saw his hand reach to the mantel.
“I don’t need to move. The globe is here. Allow me.” He turned on the
light. In its soft small gleam they regarded each other, and for the
first few moments had nothing to say.
Rosamond saw a man who was presumably in his “middle thirties”--a
strong, well-built man, with breadth of shoulder and depth of chest,
and with face and hands tanned by years of turning them, unprotected,
toward all weathers. He had no beard or moustache. His face was lean,
and broad at the brow and chin; his eyes large, deep-set, and dark; and
his mouth wide--with firmness, humour, and sympathy in the lines about
it. His hat was a large battered felt, of weather-stained hue, trimmed
with a long, slender feather, dropped on the fields by a pheasant
and appropriated by this tramp who had an eye for ornamentation. He
wore in his belt a spray of pine, with small cones forming on it. His
clothes were brown, rough, and spattered with burrs. The coat--a loose
thing, held in by a dark, carved leather belt, must have had half a
dozen deep pockets in it. His trouser-legs were rolled up and it was
evident that his thick socks and his boots were wet through. His black
hair gleamed about his forehead, suggesting that he had had his head,
as well as his feet, in the brooks that coursed the fields to spill
their crystal into the river. The light was behind him, and she could
not see whether his physiognomy bore the marks of a life of crime, as
his raiment bore the marks of his profession--a gentleman of the road.
Though his speech was peculiar, she noticed, gratefully, that it was
clear. While the double pockets on both sides of his coat bulged, their
irregular convexity, she saw, was not due to bottles.
In the matter of view, he had the advantage; for the globe sent its
rays directly upon her, and she bloomed out of the shadows like some
legendary princess arriving from the Kingdom of Nowhere on a shaft of
light, wrapped in the silver radiance of the moon and the petals of a
rose.
“Why, you are _young_!” he said at last, in a low tone of such charmed
wonder as a wet and burr-bedecked vagabond might naturally feel at the
apparition of a fairy princess. “Only a girl. From your voice, so sweet
and cold and prim, I judged you to be as old as--as my heart.”
[Illustration: “Rosamond saw a man who was presumably in his ‘middle
thirties’--a strong, well-built man, with face and hands tanned by
years of turning them, unprotected, toward all weathers”]
She was unprepared for this mode of address and did not know how to
answer it; but she kept prominently in her mind the rules for
dealing with bandits, as she had gathered them from her reading,
namely, to avoid angering them unduly, and never to show fear. She
waggled the pistol at him and said with dignity:
“You see I am not afraid of you.”
She saw that he smiled.
“Are you not? H’m--I am afraid of you.” He looked about him for some
time before he spoke again, then said, “Since I have answered your
questions so satisfactorily, will you reciprocate by telling what
relation you are to this house?”
“I own it.”
He stared about again before answering.
“Do you? Do you indeed? That is very peculiar. Now, if you had said
you owned a corner in heaven, or a bit of fairyland, I should have
said: ‘Naturally. I believe you.’ But when ‘a rare and radiant maiden’
appears by magic at midnight, in the midst of--of--er--the village
museum, and says ‘I own it’--well, you won’t think me impolite, I hope,
if I say you are mistaken?”
“This is _not_ the ‘village museum’! It is my home, and I own it all
myself.” She spoke heatedly, because the museum character of Villa Rose
was secretly a sore subject with her.
“How interesting. Won’t you be seated? No? As you please. No doubt you
feel safer standing--with three doors to escape by. And I dare say if
I said ‘booh!’ you’d try to dash through all three of ’em at once.” He
walked about slowly, taking different views of the museum’s contents.
“Some very good things--and some ... not” he murmured.
“You--you must understand that I--I do not wish to shoot you unless it
is quite necessary,” she stammered. “But if it _is_ necessary, I--I
do know how to shoot. I--I am not helpless.” She drew herself up and
straightened her pistol arm. “I have _killed_--rabbits!”
“Have you?” He chuckled. “Call me Bunny, but, oh, do not shoot!” At
that moment his gaze fell upon the landscape hanging over the desk.
“Ah!” he cried, “a Turner--a real Turner!” He strode forward to get a
better look at it. His movement brought him close to Rosamond, and,
suspecting attack, she thrust her weapon at him with a violent gesture.
He threw his hands up over his head but continued to enjoy the picture.
“A beautiful thing. A poem in colour. Turner is the poet’s painter. He
not only _saw_ Nature, he _listened_ to her and communed with her, as a
poet; then he translated what he heard through colour. Can’t you hear
the scarlet trumpets blowing across that sunset?” In speaking he moved
back and sidewise, trying different angles of vision, still dutifully
keeping his hands up. Presently he turned to her. The light was on his
face and she saw how warm and merry his smile was. “That is the only
real beauty after all--the beauty of truth. Dear lady, I am sorry I
alarm you so. Just see how thoroughly at home _I_ feel.”
“I am not alarmed,” she protested.
“It is only terror that is evil enough--or mad enough--to point death
at a brother human.”
He put his hand over the pistol, looked into her face, smiling
whimsically, then coolly took the pistol from her and tossed it on the
table.
“You--you are the strangest tramp I ever saw,” she gasped.
“Tramp? Oh! Am I? Then look well at me--that noble and pathetic figure,
the tramp! Madam, the rich world you live in occasionally produces a
man like me, but it soon casts him out!” He sighed heavily.
Like most persons who have been lifted above their original station in
life, Mrs. Mearely thought others should keep to theirs. So she said,
with a degree of pride:
“What do you know of the world I live in?”
“Lady,” he whined, “I’ll tell you my secret. Once I, too, was
respectable; but I have lived it down.” He sat down on the arm of an
old mahogany chair, as casually as if it were a stump by the woodside,
and picked burrs from his stockings. Evidently they had pricked him as
his ankles swung together.
“Why did you leave my world--if, indeed, you were ever in it?”
“My biography, revised edition. I left your world because I had no
affinity with it. I was born to be a poet. I found, however, that
society felt no need of me and my verses. Society does not need poets.
Society’s great need is chauffeurs! And I could never stomach the smell
of gasolene.”
“But, even so, need you have become a tramp--an outcast? A--a vagabond
who enters houses at night for food? Frightening people!” Her
indignation rose. “Why don’t you _work_?”
He looked at her keenly, pointing at her with the burr he had just
caught between forefinger and thumb.
“Madam, do _you_ work? Is this house--that gown--a charming gown,
too--the result of _your_ labour?”
“No,” she admitted; and, after a brief pause, answering the unworded
question she felt those keen eyes were asking, she added: “I married
for this house and this gown.”
“Ah! then you, too, do cowardly things. You dared not face life without
wealth, so you sold yourself at so much per inch of beauty. Dear lady,
you are a parasite--and selfish, withal! What right have you, who
married for food, to blame me for taking food without the preliminary
of a church ceremony?”
Rosamond’s tone was plaintive and offended.
“You say very unpleasant things. You make very severe criticisms.
You have no right to enter my house in the middle of the night and
criticise.”
He made a gesture of alarm, and laughed.
“No, no! Heaven forbid! I make no more criticisms. I’ve suffered too
much from my critical tongue. Do you know there are places where they
put critics in prison?”
“You said you came for food. Did you find it?”
“Not yet,” hopefully. “Occasionally, in my wanderings, I have lived on
the back porches of the charitable in the great cities. Also I have
dined with princes--at great cost!” He smothered a laugh.
There was a silence; then she asked, a little wistfully:
“Who are you?”
He leaned forward, smiling, frankly charmed by her.
“I’ve told you. I am a bird of passage and I skim over the cities, on
my way to places where no cities are. In passing, I stopped but an
instant to sup with you. Only an instant, for summer is fleeing, and I
must away with her.”
“And whither are you and summer going?”
“With summer I turn my back on the crowded marts of men. In the heart
of a forest is a hut, built over a stream that laughs and sings to
me through storm and sun. And there I live till the snows drive me
to the place of humans again. There I write and dream--and dream and
write--with none to say me nay. Some day I shall buy that hut--so that
others may share my knowledge that it is mine.”
“And never have anything more than that?” thoughtfully.
“What more does a man need? See how your world--with its gowns and
houses you married for--has deluded you. You have never found out that
it is not _things_ which make one’s life rich and radiant.”
She heard the tone of sympathy for which, it seemed to her, she had
waited a very long lifetime, and her answer came with a little outburst
of feeling.
“I _have_ found it out. My life is one long boredom. In that respect it
is not so different from the other lives I see lived around me.”
“Only other people deceive themselves more successfully?”
“Yes. How you _understand_!” She smiled, and made a movement of
confidence toward him. “Is it true that you are hungry?”
“_Very_ true.” He rose and stood beside her, smiling down into her
upturned face. “Are you about to offer the vagabond a few crumbs from
the rich man’s table?”
“The rich man is gone. But his goods remain; and I can offer you the
food that is necessary even to a dreamer. Sit down. I will get it for
you.” She went to the tall lamp behind the card table and turned it on.
“The Lord bless ye, kind leddy. It’s a good deed ye are doin’ this day.”
She laughed.
“It’s a fair exchange. You give me a new experience. I give you food.”
“A rare experience to me, if not exactly a new one,” he retorted
cheerily. “It will be very wonderful to be waited on by you--to eat
your supper--surrounded by these--er--beautiful and priceless--that is
to say, high-priced--_objets d’art_.”
In following her toward the dining-room door, he passed the bookcase
with its central ornament, the jade-and-gold Buddha.
“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed. “Here _is_ something!” Catching it up he ran
toward the nearest light with it, and thereby re-awakened Rosamond’s
fears. She flew for her weapon. He put the Buddha back in its place and
came to her.
“And still you fear and doubt,” he chided. “Well, take your little
gun, since you believe that your goods are safe only when you have
death in your hand.”
“I can’t help it!” She looked at him, ashamed, pathetic, defiant.
“Too bad--too bad.” His eyes twinkled.
The colour flamed to her brow. Her eyes wavered from his. With a
sudden, reckless motion, she tossed the little weapon on the table
toward him.
“There! And I don’t know who you are!”
Smiling, with open delight in her, he reached for the pistol, drew the
charges, and dropped them into a vase on the bookcase.
“Much safer on the whole; don’t you think so, _child_?”
“Oh!” she cried passionately. “You make me feel like--like--so
foolish!” Avoiding his merry eyes, she dashed into the dining room.
“It’s extraordinary,” he muttered, moving about the room. “It _should_
be the house. But, of course, it can’t be. And where did she come
from--the little lady curator of the museum?”
He was hampered in his investigations by his hostess. She was in and
out with table-cloth, napkins, trays of bread and butter, sandwiches,
salad, and whatever she felt would appease a hungry, though refined,
tramp’s appetite. At one turn in his peregrinations about the apartment
he arrived at the flower-stand behind the settee, and saw the small
volume lying there.
“What, Browning?” he exclaimed. “Does she _read_ him? or does he only
ornament her table?” He opened it at the flyleaf. “‘From Rosamond
Mearely to herself.’ How delicious!” He explored further, unaware that
the owner of the book was watching him and straining her ears to hear
his self-communings. “Yes, she reads him, and marks her favourite
passages like a girl in her teens----. What’s this?”
There is no good of life but love--but love.
Never you cheat yourself one instant! Love,
Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest.
“Ah ha! ‘Never you cheat yourself.’ With her little pencil she
underscores the line, and so confesses to any one who opens the book
that she cheated herself when she married Mr. Money-Bags Mearely.” He
looked for more self-revelations, and found the passage she had said
aloud to herself, there, just before the one bell-note had rolled
through the valley.
There have been moments if the Sentinel,
Lowering his halbert to salute the queen,
Had flung it brutally and clasped my knees,
I would have stooped and kissed him with my soul.
Who could have comprehended?
Why no one--but this one who did.
----even now perhaps it comes too late.
“Oh, Rosamond Mearely! Oh, merely Rosamond! ‘Who could have
comprehended?’”
He laid the book down, saying her name softly to himself.
“It--it’s all ready,” she called, timidly, hoping that her blush would
not be noticed. She did not wish even so charming a vagabond as this
midnight visitor to see how his reading of her favourite passages had
stirred her. In her own heart, she always held that it was the queen
of Villa Rose and not the queen of Browning’s “In a Balcony,” who had
first uttered those lines.
“The vagabond thanks Mrs. Mearely profoundly for her kindness. You
see I have discovered your name among the treasures of this room.” He
helped her take the dishes off the tray and arrange them on the table.
“Mrs. Mearely accepts no thanks for pleasing herself,” she replied,
colouring again and refusing to let her eyes meet his, lest he should
look through them into her mind and find confirmation of what the
pencil marks in the book had told him. She pointed to a chair. “Eat,
Vagabond!”
“Will you not share the beggar’s crust?” whimsically.
“It does make me feel hungry.”
“Good! Sit, then, and I’ll serve you: for, mind you, you are only a
guest at this wayside meal. I see just one slice of bread and butter I
think I can spare.”
“Oh, stingy!” she cried. A happy little laugh bubbled from her as she
slipped into a chair at his side. He helped her; then, proving his
earlier assertions, fell to with a will.
“Not stingy,” he mumbled, through bread and butter. “But _you_ have
already eaten three big, fat meals to-day.”
“I haven’t!” she protested. This was a most unfair charge. He went on:
“Eating _now_ is a mere--a Mearely--woman’s whim with you. You want
this supper just because it is mine!” He attacked the salad, hungrily.
“Well! _I gave_ it to you, didn’t I?” she demanded indignantly.
“And now, womanlike, you want to take it back. Never!--while I have
teeth!”--biting into the sandwich he had been waving to emphasize his
remarks. “Don’t plume yourself on your charity, either, dear young
Baroness of Castle de Junk----”
“Oh!” she scolded.
“Because you know you had to give me something to keep me from robbing
the museum.”
“It’s not a museum!” She stamped her foot. He laughed. They supped in
silence for several minutes.
“You know,” he said, as he held his cup for coffee, “after all, there
is a certain satisfaction in food. Nothing else gives one quite the
same feeling of completeness.” She nodded. “By the way, you can
probably tell me if this is the only little hillside town like this in
the neighbourhood with houses like this. Even a tramp sometimes likes
to know where he is--on a dark night.”
“There are the two towns, Roseborough and Poplars Vale. Roseborough is
the older. Poplars Vale used to be just a farm and a corner store. Now,
you see, it is quite a place. Almost like Roseborough.”
“Well, well; that accounts for it! Poplars Vale, eh?” he muttered. “And
I thought it was Roseborough.” Busy with the coffee-pot she did not
hear him. He leaned toward her. “Are the two towns comfortably close to
each other?”
“What? Oh, yes. An hour’s ride.”
“Only an hour’s separation? What a charming arrangement,” surveying
her with pleasure as she dropped two lumps into his cup. “What a queer
sugar-bowl?” he lifted it. “Sterling?”
“Oh--no--o. I suppose not.”
He laughed.
“Shame on you for a fibster! you are still a wee mite afraid I may
put it in my pocket. And what would I do with a monstrous thing
like that--all top-heavy with a row of little deformed cupids. ’Tis
cumbersome and unsightly--and quite useless. It reminds me of a royal
tea-service I’ve seen--than which nothing could be uglier. A white
china bowl would be prettier--and cleaner.” He set it down. “If I took
it I would not do so ill as the thief, Ambition, who came into your
house of life before me, and robbed you of your faith and the ability
to be glad. Believe me, faith--joyous faith--is worth more than many
silver bowls--and deformed little cupids,” he smiled.
“True, perhaps,” she said, thoughtfully. Suddenly she was stirred to
resentment at life and at him also; for his joyous, impudent freedom
seemed to make her feel her caged condition more than ever before. She
pushed her plate away, and rose. “And yet--do you suppose I could have
been robbed of it if I’d ever possessed a glad faith? It is not for
you to criticise me, is it?” She spoke with a trace of haughtiness.
“Let us think no more of serious things. Eating, drinking, comfort, and
ease--there’s my definition of life, Vagabond. And it seems to agree
with yours.” She pointed to his plate. He turned on her suddenly.
“Why do you lie to me and to yourself?”
The severity in his tone startled her.
“Oh!”
He went on, more gently, but not inclined to spare her a wholesome
truth or two.
“How can you face life if you are insincere? And that pitiful little
air of authority--because, forsooth, you still have the money you
married for! Fie, for shame! That is _not_ your definition of life.
Did I not tell you that I am a poet? Do you think a poet means only a
writer of rhymes? The poet is one who sees God walking wherever there
is a foothold of earth! What is your poor little mask to me? It is
shaped like a dollar-sign and I can see your eyes--and nose--through
it. Yes, and more: your heart. And I tell you that your place is not
here. Every hour that you lurk here in the shadows, you cheat yourself
of life.”
“Why do you say such things to me?” She was perturbed to the point of
resistance. “You--a vagabond--and outcast! This is my life.”
“Why do you throw _vagabond_ in my teeth, eh?”
“From scorn!”
“From envy. You envy me because I have dared to be a vagabond. I had
my choice once--as you had yours. I could have forsworn my liberty
and my poetry and--written the usual magazine trash. Oh, yes, I had
an ‘opening’ as they call it, into the world of spurious literature.
But, oh, how quickly I shut up that opening! I could also have taught
nice young lads to say _S’il vous plaît, madame_--or _La donna è
mobile_--and _Nein, das will Ich nicht machen!_ Not me. I have been
ridiculed, condemned. I have known poverty and hunger--and despair. But
let me tell you, when men cast me out, God received me. Earth took me
to her infinite embrace. She has fed me even in her deserts. She has
sheltered me among her hills. She has made me little brother to her
rains and her winds. And my despair--do you know what she has done to
that? She has taught me to make songs of it! And you--poor coward--how
you envy me!”
“Stop,” she commanded, hotly. “How dare you compare me with....”
“With a vagabond? Because you are _like_ me. Yes, you are! You hate
the shams as I do. You long for a real life, for a true love--just the
emotions and passions of common earth.”
“Be silent.”
He pursued his advantage relentlessly.
“Underneath that air of Madam Rich-and-Haughty, you are as romantic as
a schoolgirl, you who think you are cold and shallow! You, who.... Are
you crying?” She had dropped into her nook of the settee, with her face
hidden on her arm. He went to her.
“I--I--oh, you are very cruel.”
“Yes. It _is_ torture, to really see oneself.” She resisted this,
feebly.
“Oh, no--I’m not like that. Why should you think...?”
“Because I have read your heart in a book.” He lifted the volume. “How
you are longing for love--for a common, warm, human love. If some man,
no matter who or what he was, came to you--if even a vagabond were to
forget ‘the queen’ and throw himself boldly at your feet--you would
‘stoop and kiss him with your soul.’”
She turned her face up to him, then hid her eyes again from the look
in his--a look, searching and tender, that seemed to envelop her like
a caress, and to deny the trivialities of station and degree and the
opulent solidity of the Mearely house. It spoke from the life in him
to the life in her, with promise. He leaned over, near her, but not
touching her. “Who could have comprehended?” he whispered, wondering
at his own emotion for her, but accepting it with the same faith and
reverence with which he accepted sunrise, the falling of a star, or the
fragrance of the beneficent pines.
She looked up again and no longer hid the need she felt.
“Oh, don’t--don’t just trifle with me! You are the only man who has
ever understood: the only man who has ever....” She could not go on,
but her eyes and quivering mouth mutely besought him to say what she
longed to hear.
“Who has ever loved you?”
The tears filled her eyes again.
“Since you’re only a--a vagabond, and I don’t know you--and you will go
away like--like a make-believe prince--it couldn’t be very wrong for
you to say you love me--just once? I’ll never have anything _real_, so
can’t we just pretend?”
“Just pretend--you think? No. It couldn’t be very wrong for you to hear
me say just once that I love you. Only don’t repent to-morrow that you
heard love to-night from the lips of a vagabond.”
“Love will never come again,” sadly.
“I tell you it will. The very same love will come--not as a vagabond in
the night, but a love that you can accept.”
“Will it really come again?” wistfully.
“Yes. Now--good-night and good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” blankly. “You are going now? Oh--where?”
He picked up his hat and smoothed its pheasant’s feather, while he
smiled at her and said, mysteriously:
“Who knows? On through the woods, over the hills. Autumn is coming, and
the vagabond takes the road again.”
She went to him and put her hand in his. So, hand in hand, they walked
toward the verandah.
“I shall never forget you.”
“That is good,” he said. He stopped her as she was stepping out on
the verandah. “Wait. Go back. There is too much light behind you. Who
knows what curious eyes may lurk in the darkness below?” He leaped
back nimbly and turned off the light from the tall lamp. Pointing to
the valley and the river flooded with moonlight, he said, “See how my
golden path winds before me. Now, I leave you.” With another nimble
movement he had climbed to the railing.
“Oh--not that way,” she urged.
“It’s a quick way. A leap, and I am in the road below. Farewell,
Rosamond Mearely. Till love comes again, my merely Rosamond, say
good-night, and wish me well.”
“Good-night! I--I do not know your name!”
“A vagabond has no name.” he answered. He bent and swiftly kissed the
hand still trying to hold him, unclasped its fingers, and jumped to the
road.
“Good-bye, forever and ever, my vagabond.” Rosamond tried to call the
words to him, but a sob stopped them.
“Here!” “There!” “Get him!” Two rough voices shouted from below, and
there was the noise of tramping feet.
“Nay, nay! Good-night to you!” the vagabond called; his voice sounded
as if he were running.
“Hey! he’s off!” One of the rough voices roared. “Halt!” A shot
snapped through the air, followed quickly by another.
Rosamond stood motionless, stupefied by terror.
“I winged him,” she heard the same voice say. Then she threw off the
spell in which fear had gripped her and rushed out into the garden
and down the drive, calling wildly. Guns were as little known in
Roseborough as tramps. She had no idea what she should find in the
road, or who the men were who had shot at her vagabond and perhaps
killed him. No thought of danger to herself crossed her mind. She
dashed on recklessly, crying:
“Vagabond! My vagabond! Answer me!”
[Illustration]