|ALCOTT came back to the city in the afternoon. At four o'clock he was
on Lower Bank Street, knocking at Henry Champney's door.
“Is Miss Camilla Champney in?”
The startled maid stared at him and showed him into the library, where
Henry Champney's shelves of massive books covered the lower walls, and
over them hung the portraits of Webster, Clay, and Quincy Adams with
solemn, shining foreheads.
He walked up and down, twisting his fingers, stopping now and then to
listen for Camilla's steps. She came soon.
“I'm so glad you're here! I want to ask----” She stopped, caught a quick
breath, and put her hand to her throat.
“What is it?”
Alcott's face was white and damp, and his black eyes stared at her. He
stood very still.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Do I look like that? Do I show what I am, gone blind and mad? Do I look
it? I could only think of this, of you--I must tell someone. There
must be some way. Help me!” He moved about jerkily, talking half
incoherently. “He's been here four years. Allen, you know! If I'd
known, I could have handled him somehow. But--he's--Hicks--he called
himself--Hicks. He killed Wood. I saw him last night, but he's changed,
but--my boy, Lolly! Four years he's been in Port Argent--watching me!
He called himself Hicks. Don't you see, Camilla! It's my boy! Don't you
see! Wait. I'll get buckled down. I can tell you better in a moment.”
Camilla leaned back against Henry Champney's big desk, and stared with
wide grey eyes. Alcott walked away breathing heavily, and returned. He
sat down in the desk chair and dropped his head on his arm.
“It's your brother!”
“I must save him! Don't you understand? No one shall touch him! He's
mine!” He sprang up, walked away, and came again.
Camilla thought of many confused things. The bluebird's note was gone
from her heart, but the current of the tumult that was there ran in one
direction. It poured into Alcott's passion and point of view. Her new
pillar of fire and cloud, the man with the halo of her own construction
was begging for help, a demigod suddenly become human and suffering,
stammering, calling himself blind and mad.
“Why, we must get him out!” she cried.
She thought of Dick. Another instinct warned her that he would not
understand. It was a case where Dick would be a rock in the way, instead
of one to anchor to. But thinking of him served to remind her of what he
had said the night before.
“Listen!” She went on. “He must get out. Listen! Somebody told
Dick--what was it? Something about a crowbar or pair of--nonsense! He
said a prisoner might get out if he had a chisel. Now we must think
about it. Could he get out?”
She sat down too. Alcott stared at her in a kind of dull confusion.
“Now, this is what I'm thinking,” she hurried on. “What is the place
like?”
“The place?”
“When do you go to him again?”
“When I leave here. Perhaps. I hadn't thought.”
They leaned closer together across the desk.
Miss Eunice came in that moment and startled them. She disapproved of
their startled expression, he gave Alcott a gloomy greeting and went
away.
“There's a chest of tools in the storeroom,” Camilla said. “We'll go up
there.”
They mounted to that high-perched room above the mansards, whose windows
looked eastward to the river, whose walls were ranged about with boxes,
trunks, chests, bits of aged furniture.
Here Richard the Second and Camilla, the little maid, used to sit the
long rainy afternoons at their labor. He made bridges, houses, and
ships, his artistry running no further than scroll and square patterns,
while Camilla aspired to the human face divine. Her soul was creative
at ten years. She cut ominous faces on pine shingles, sorrowful
shapes--tombstone cherubs in execution, symbolic in intention--and
her solemn exaltation of mood was commonly followed by anger and tears
because Dick would not admire them.
It was a room full of memories for Camilla. Here and in her father's
library she still passed her happiest hours. Here was the trunk that
held her retired dolls and baby relics. Another was full of her mother's
blue-ribboned gowns. Here was the tool chest, close to the window.
She flung it open, making a great noise and business.
“See! Will this do?”
It was a heavy carpenter's chisel with a scroll design on one side of
the battered handle, and on the other the crude semblance or intention
of a woful face. “I don't know whether it's Dick's or mine. We both
used to make messes here.” She chattered on, and thought the while, “He
called me Camilla--I wish--I wonder if he will again.”
He thrust it into an inner pocket, ripping through the lining of his
coat. She closed the lid, and turned about to the low-silled window,
clasped her hands about her knees, and stared away into the tree tops,
flushed and smiling.
“You needn't go yet?”
“It's three o'clock.”
“You'll come and tell me to-morrow? When?”.
Alcott did not seem to hear her.
“I'm sure I could take care of him now,” he said.
“But you'll remember that I helped!”
“Does anyone ever forget you?”
Both were silent, and then he started up nervously.
“It isn't done yet. Lolly is clever. He lived here four years and kept
out of my sight. But, afterwards, granted he succeeds--but the law is
a great octopus. Its arms are everywhere. But he'll have me with him. I
suppose we must go out of the country.”
“You! Do you mean--do you--you'll go too!”
“Go! Could I stay?”
“Oh! I don't know! I don't know!”
She shivered and leaned against the friendly old chest.
“But could I do it without that? How could I? I couldn't do less than
that.”
He came and sat beside her again, clasping his knees in the same way,
looking off into the tree tops, talking slowly and sadly.
“To be with him always, and give up my life to that, and see that he
doesn't do any more harm. That would be the debt I would owe to the rest
of the world. You see, I know him so well. I shall know how to manage
him better than I used to. I used to irritate him. Do you know, I think
he's better off in places where things are rough and simple. He has an
odd mind or temperament, not what people call balanced or healthy, but
it's hot and sensitive; oh, but loving and hating so suddenly, one never
knows! You understand. I don't know how you do, but you do understand,
somehow, about Lolly and me. You're wholly healthy, too, but Lolly and
I, we're morbid of course. Yes, we're morbid. I don't know that there's
any cure for us. We'll smash up altogether by and by.”
“When will you go?” she asked only just audibly.
“He ought to try it to-night. To-night or to-morrow night. He ought to
be away on one of the early freight trains, to St. Louis, and meet me
there. We know our bearings there.”
Camilla sat very still.
“I must be going,” he said.
“Don't go! You'll come before--when?”
“To-morrow we'll know. To-morrow then.”
After he was gone, she lifted the window and peered over the mansards
to watch him going down the street. The tree tops were thick with busy
sparrows, the railroad yards clamorous, and there was the rattle of the
travelling crane, and the clug-chug of steamers on the river.
She drew back, and leaned against the old chest, and sobbed with her
face against the hard, worn edge of it.
“I didn't suppose it would be like this,” she thought. “I thought people
were happy.”
Meanwhile Miss Eunice sat below in the parlour knitting. Hennion came
in later and found her there. She said that Camilla, she thought, was
upstairs, and added primly:
“I think it will be as well if you talk with me.”
He smothered his surprise.
“Why, of course, Miss Eunice!”
“I think you need advice.”
He sat down beside her, and felt humble.
“That's just what I need. But, Miss Eunice, do you like me well enough
to give it?”
“I like you more than some people.”
“You might do better than that.”
“I like you well enough to give it,” she admitted.
Tick, tick, tick, continued the knitting needles.
“I'm stumped, you know, about Camilla,” Dick went on bluntly. “I don't
get ahead. She has changed lately. Hasn't she changed?”
“She has changed.”
“Well, then, she has! I thought so.”
The knitting needles ticked on, and both Dick and Miss Eunice studied
their vibrating points, criss-crossing, clicking dry comments over the
mystery of the web.
“It is my constant prayer that Camilla may be happy,” said Miss Eunice
at last. “I have felt--I have examined the feeling with great care--I
have felt, that, if she saw her happiness in your happiness, it would be
wise to believe her instinct had guided her well. My brother's thoughts,
his hopes, are all in Camilla. He could not live without her. He depends
upon her to such an extent,--as you know, of course.”
“Of course, Miss Eunice.”
“I have grieved that she seemed so wayward. I have wished to see this
anxious question settled. You have been almost of the family since she
was a child, and if she saw her happiness in--in you, I should feel
quite contented, quite secure--of her finding it there, and of my
brother's satisfaction, in the end. He must not be separated from her.
He could not--I think he could not outlive it. And in this way I should
feel secure that--that you would understand.”
“I hope I should deserve your tribute. I'm more than glad to have it.”
“Perhaps this long intimacy, which makes me feel secure, is, at the same
time, the trouble with her?”
“But why, Miss Eunice? I don't understand that. It has struck me so. And
yet I love Camilla the more for all I know of her, and the better for
the time. How can it be so different with her?”
“That is true. I don't doubt it, Richard.”
“Well, then, is it because I don't wear well?”
“No. It is true, I think, that we don't understand this difference
always--perhaps, not often. But I think,”--knitting a trifle more
slowly, speaking with a shade of embarrassment--“I think, with women, it
must be strange in order to be at all. It must not be customary. It must
always be strange.”
Hennion looked puzzled and frowning.
“Please go on.”
“Lately then, very lately, I have grown more anxious still, seeing
an influence creeping into her life, against which I could not openly
object, and which yet gave me great uneasiness. It--he was here an hour
ago. I should not perhaps have spoken in this way, but I thought there
was something unusual between them, some secrecy or confusion. I was
distressed. I feared something might have occurred already. I wished to
take some step. You know to whom I refer?”
“I think so.”
“A gentleman, in appearance at least. One does not know anything about
his past. He is admired by some, by many, and disliked or distrusted by
others. He has great gifts, as my brother thinks. But he thinks him also
'heady,' 'fantastic.' He has used these words. My brother thinks that
this society called 'The Assembly' is a mere fashion in Port Argent,
depending for financial support, even now, on Mr. Secor, and he thinks
this gentleman, whom I am describing, is not likely to continue to be
successful in our society, in Port Argent, but more likely to have a
chequered career, probably unfortunate, unhappy. My brother regards--he
calls him--'a spasmodic phenomenon.' My own disapproval goes further
than my brother's in this respect. Yet he does not approve of this
influence on Camilla. It causes him uneasiness. I have not thought wise
to speak to her about it, for I am afraid of--of some mistake, but
I think my brother has spoken, has said something. This--this person
arouses my distrust, my dislike. I look at this subject with great
distress.”
Tick, tick, tick, the knitting needles, and their prim, dry comment.
Hennion said gravely:
“I have nothing to say about the gentleman you've been speaking of. I
will win Camilla if I can, but I've come to the point of confessing that
I don't know how.”
Tick, tick, the not uneloquent knitting needles.
“Will you tell me, Miss Eunice? You said something about love as it
comes to women, as it seems to them. I had never thought about it, about
that side of it, from that side.”
“I dare say not.”
Tick, tick, tick.
“You said it must always be strange. I suppose, that is, it's like a
discovery, as if nobody ever made it before. Well, but, Miss Eunice,
they never did make it before, not that one!”
“Oh, indeed!”
“Don't you think I'm coming on?”
“You are progressing.”
Miss Eunice's lips were compressed a little grimly, but there was a red
spot in either cheek.
“I ought to act as if I didn't see how she was possible, ought I?”
“You are progressing.”
“Whether I did see, or didn't?”
“Of course!” Miss Eunice was almost snappish.
“Well, I don't think I do see.”
“You'd better not.”
Hennion went away without seeing Camilla. Going up Bank Street he
thought of Camilla. At the corner of Franklin Street he thought of Miss
Eunice.
“There's another one I was off about. I don't see how she's possible,
either.”