THE MELANCHOLY OF MR. GILLESPIE
I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the
musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud;
nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is
politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all
these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples,
extracted from many objects; and indeed the sundry contemplation of my
travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous
sadness.--_As You Like It_.
I laughed a moment ago when, in looking over my notes of these affairs,
I marked the swift transition from those peaceful days to others of
renewed suspicions and strange events. I had begun to yield myself to
blandishments and to feel that there could be no further interruption
of the idyllic hours I was spending in Helen Holbrook's company. I
still maintained, to be sure, the guard as it had been established; and
many pipes I smoked on St. Agatha's pier, in the fond belief that I was
merely fulfilling my office as protector of Miss Pat, whereas I had
reached a point where the very walls that held Helen Holbrook were of
such stuff as dreams are made of. My days were keyed to a mood that
was impatient of questions and intolerant of doubts. I was glad to
take the hours as they came, so long as they brought her. I did not
refer to her appearance in the parade of canoes, nor did Miss Pat
mention it to me again. It was a part of the summer's enchantment, and
it was not for me to knock at doors to which Helen Holbrook held the
golden keys.
The only lingering blot in the bright calendar of those days was her
meeting with Gillespie on the pier, and the fact that she had accepted
money from him for her rascally father. But even this I excused. It
was no easy thing for a girl of her high spirits to be placed in a
position of antagonism to her own father; and as for Gillespie, he was
at least a friend, abundantly able to help her in her difficult
position; and if, through his aid, she had been able to get rid of her
father, the end had certainly justified the means. I reasoned that an
educated man of good antecedents who was desperate enough to attempt
murder for profit in this enlightened twentieth century was cheaply got
rid of at any price, and it was extremely decent of Gillespie--so I
argued--to have taken himself away after providing the means of the
girl's release. I persuaded myself eloquently on these lines while I
exhausted the resources of Glenarm in providing entertainment for both
ladies. There had been other breakfasts on the terrace at Glenarm, and
tea almost every day in the shadow of St. Agatha's, and one dinner of
state in the great Glenarm dining-room; but more blessed were those
hours in which we rode, Helen and I, through the sunset into dusk, or
drove a canoe over the quiet lake by night. Miss Pat, I felt sure, in
so often leaving me alone with Helen, was favoring my attentions; and
thus the days passed, like bubbles on flowing water.
She was in my thoughts as I rode into Annandale to post some letters,
and I was about to remount at the postoffice door when I saw a crowd
gathered in front of the village inn and walked along the street to
learn the cause of it. And there, calmly seated on a soap-box, was
Gillespie, clad in amazing checks, engaged in the delectable occupation
of teaching a stray village mongrel to jump a stick. The loungers
seemed highly entertained, and testified their appreciation in loud
guffaws. I watched the performance for several minutes, Gillespie
meanwhile laboring patiently with the dull dog, until finally it leaped
the stick amid the applause of the crowd. Gillespie patted the dog and
rose, bowing with exaggerated gravity.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I thank you for your kind attention. Let my
slight success with that poor cur teach you the lesson that we may turn
the idlest moment to some noble use. The education of the lower
animals is something to which too little attention is paid by those
who, through the processes of evolution, have risen to a higher
species. I am grateful, gentlemen, for your forbearance, and trust we
may meet again under circumstances more creditable to us all--including
the dog."
The crowd turned away mystified, while Gillespie, feeling in his pocket
for his pipe, caught my eye and winked.
"Ah, Donovan," he said coolly, "and so you were among the admiring
spectators. I hope you have formed a high opinion of my skill as a dog
trainer. Once, I would have you know, I taught a Plymouth Rock rooster
to turn a summersault. Are you quite alone?"
"You seem to be as big a fool as ever!" I grumbled in disgust, vexed at
finding him in the neighborhood.
"Gallantly spoken, my dear fellow! You are an honor to the Irish race
and mankind. Our meeting, however, is not inopportune, as they say in
books; and I would have speech with you, gentle knight. The inn,
though humble, is still not without decent comforts. Will you honor
me?"
He turned abruptly and led the way through the office and up the
stairway, babbling nonsense less for my entertainment, I imagined, than
for the befuddlement of the landlord, who leaned heavily upon his scant
desk and watched our ascent.
He opened a door, and lighted several oil lamps, which disclosed three
connecting rooms.
"You see, I got tired of living in the woods, and the farmer I boarded
with did not understand my complex character. The absurd fellow
thought me insane--can you imagine it?"
"It's a pity he didn't turn you over to the sheriff," I growled.
"Generously spoken! But I came here and hired most of this inn to be
near the telegraph office. Though as big a fool as you care to call me
I nevertheless look to my buttons. The hook-and-eye people are
formidable competitors, and the button may in time become
obsolete--stranger things have happened. I keep in touch with our main
office, and when I don't feel very good I fire somebody. Only this
morning I bounced our general manager by wire for sending me a letter
in purple type-writing; I had warned him, you understand, that he was
to write to me in black. But it was only a matter of time with that
fellow. He entered a bull pup against mine in the Westchester Bench
Show last spring and took the ribbon away from me. I really couldn't
stand for that. In spite of my glassy splash in the asparagus bed, I'm
a man who looks to his dignity, Donovan. Will you smoke?"
I lighted my pipe and encouraged him to go on.
"How long have you been in this bake-oven?"
"I moved in this morning--you are my first pilgrim. I have spent the
long hot day in getting settled. I had to throw out the furniture and
buy new stuff of the local emporium, where, it depressed me to learn,
furniture for the dead is supplied even as for the living. That chair,
which I beg you to accept, stood next in the shop to a coffin suitable
for a carcass of about your build, old man. But don't let the
suggestion annoy you! I read your book on tiger hunting a few years
ago with pleasure, and I'm sure you enjoy a charmed life.
"I myself," he continued, taking a chair near me and placing his feet
in an open window, "am cursed with rugged health. I have quite
recovered from those unkind cuts at the nunnery--thanks to your
ministrations--and am willing to put on the gloves with you at any
time."
"You do me great honor; but the affair must wait for a lower
temperature."
"As you will! It is not like my great and gracious ways to force a
fight. Pardon me, but may I inquire for the health of the ladies at
Saint What's-her-name's?"
"They are quite well, thank you."
"I am glad to know it;"--and his tone lost for the moment its
jauntiness. "Henry Holbrook has gone to New York."
"Good riddance!" I exclaimed heartily. "And now--"
"--And now if I would only follow suit, everything would be joy plus
for you!"
He laughed and slapped his knees at my discomfiture, for he had read my
thoughts exactly.
"You certainly are the only blot on the landscape!"
"Quite so. And if I would only go hence the pretty little idyl that is
being enacted in the delightful garden, under the eye of a friendly
chaperon, would go forward without interruption."
He spoke soberly, and I had observed that when he dropped his chaff a
note of melancholy crept into his talk. He folded his arms and went
on: "She's a wonderful girl, Donovan. There's no other girl like her
in all the wide world. I tell you it's hard for a girl like that to be
in her position--the whole family broken up, and that contemptible
father of hers hanging about with his schemes of plunder. It's
pitiful, Donovan; it's pitiful!"
"It's a cheerless mess. It all came after the bank failure, I suppose."
"Practically, though the brothers never got on. You see my governor
was bit by their bank failure; and Miss Pat resented the fact that he
backed off when stung. But the Gillespies take their medicine; father
never squealed, which makes me sore that your Aunt Pat gives me the icy
eye."
"Their affairs are certainly mixed," I remarked non-committally.
"They are indeed; and I have studied the whole business until my near
mind is mussed up, like scrambled eggs. Your own pretty idyl of the
nunnery garden adds the note _piquante_. Cross my palm with gold and
I'll tell you of strange things that lie in the future. I have an
idea, Donovan; singular though it seem, I've a notion in my head."
"Keep it," I retorted, "to prevent a cranial vacuum."
"Crushed! Absolutely crushed!" he replied gloomily. "Kick me. I'm
only the host."
We were silent while the few sounds of the village street droned in.
He rose and paced the floor to shake off his mood, and when he sat down
he seemed in better spirits.
"Holbrook will undoubtedly return," I said.
"Yes; there's no manner of doubt about that!"
"And then there will be more trouble."
"Of course."
"But I suppose there's no guessing when he will come back."
"He will come back as soon as he's spent his money."
I felt a delicacy about referring to that transaction on the pier. It
was a wretched business, and I now realized that the shame of it was
not lost on Gillespie.
"How does Henry come to have that Italian scoundrel with him?" I asked
after a pause.
"He's the skipper of the _Stiletto_," Gillespie replied readily.
"He's a long way from tide-water," I remarked. "A blackguard of just
his sort once sailed me around the Italian peninsula in a felucca, and
saved me from drowning on the way. His heroism was not, however,
wholly disinterested. When we got back to Naples he robbed me of my
watch and money-belt and I profited by the transaction, having intended
to give him double their value. But there are plenty of farm-boys
around the lake who could handle the _Stiletto_. Henry didn't need a
dago expert."
The mention of the Italian clearly troubled Gillespie. After a moment
he said:
"He may be holding on to Henry instead of Henry's holding on to him.
Do you see?"
"No; I don't."
"Well, I have an idea that the dago knows something that's valuable.
Last summer Henry went cruising in the Sound with a pretty rotten
crowd, poker being the chief diversion. A man died on the boat before
they got back to New York. The report was that he fell down a hatchway
when he was drunk, but there were some ugly stories in the papers about
it. That Italian sailor was one of the crew."
"Where is he now?"
"Over at Battle Orchard. He knows his man and knows he'll be back.
I'm waiting for Henry, too. Helen gave him twenty thousand dollars.
The way the market is running he's likely to go broke any day. He
plays stocks like a crazy man, and after he's busted he'll be back on
our hands."
"It's hard on Miss Pat."
"And it's harder on Helen. She's in terror all the time for fear her
father will go up against the law and bring further disgrace on the
family. There's her Uncle Arthur, a wanderer on the face of the earth
for his sins. That was bad enough without the rest of it."
"That was greed, too, wasn't it?"
"No, just general cussedness. He blew in the Holbrook bank and
skipped."
These facts I had gathered before, but they seemed of darker
significance now, as we spoke of them in the dimly lighted room of the
squalid inn. I recalled a circumstance that had bothered me earlier,
but which I had never satisfactorily explained, and I determined to
sound Gillespie in regard to it.
"You told me that Henry Holbrook found his way here ahead of you. How
do you account for that?"
He looked at me quickly, and rose, again pacing the narrow room.
"I don't! I wish I could!"
"It's about the last place in the world to attract him. Port Annandale
is a quiet resort frequented by western people only. There's neither
hunting nor fishing worth mentioning; and a man doesn't come from New
York to Indiana to sail a boat on a thimbleful of water like this lake."
"You are quite right."
"If Helen Holbrook gave him warning that they were coming here--"
He wheeled on me fiercely, and laid his hand roughly on my shoulder.
"Don't you dare say it! She couldn't have done it! She wouldn't have
done it! I tell you I know, independently of her, that he was here
before Father Stoddard ever suggested this place to Miss Pat."
"Well, you needn't get so hot about it."
"And you needn't insinuate that she is not acting honorably in this
affair! I should think that after making love to her, as you have been
doing, and playing the role of comforter to Miss Pat, you would have
the decency not to accuse her of connivance with Henry Holbrook."
"You let your jealousy get the better of your good sense. I have not
been making love to Miss Holbrook!" I declared angrily and knew in my
heart that I lied.
"Well, Irishman," he exclaimed with entire good humor; "let us not
bring up mine host to find us locked in mortal combat."
"What the devil _did_ you bring me up here for?" I demanded.
"Oh, just to enjoy your society. I get lonesome sometimes. I tell you
a man does get lonesome in this world, when he has nothing to lean on
but a blooming button factory and a stepmother who flits among the
world's expensive sanatoria. I know you have never had 'Button,
button, who's got the button?' chanted in your ears, but may I ask
whether you have ever known the joy of a stepmother? I can see that
your answer will be an unregretful negative."
He was quite the fool again, and stared at me vacuously.
"My stepmother is not the common type of juvenile fiction. She has
never attempted during her widowhood to rob the orphan or to poison
him. Bless your Irish heart, no! She's a good woman, and rich in her
own right, but I couldn't stand her dietary. She's afraid I'm going to
die, Donovan! She thinks everybody's going to die. Father died of
pneumonia and she said ice-water in the finger-bowl did it, and she
wanted to have the butler arrested for murder. She had a new disease
for me every morning. It was worse than being left with a button-works
to draw a stepmother like that. She ate nothing but hot water and
zweibach herself, and shuddered when I demanded sausage and buckwheat
cakes every day. She wept and talked of the duty she owed to my poor
dead father; she had promised him, she said, to safeguard my health;
and there I was, as strong as an infant industry, weighed a hundred and
seventy-six pounds when I was eighteen, and had broken all the prep
school records. She made me so nervous talking about her symptoms, and
mine--that I didn't have!--that I began taking my real meals in the
gardener's house. But to save her feelings I munched a little toast
with her. She caught me one day clearing up a couple of chickens and a
mug of bass with the gardener, and it was all over. She had noticed,
she said, that I had been coughing of late--I was doing a few
cigarettes too many, that was all--and wired to New York for doctors.
She had all sorts, Donovan--alienists and pneumogastric specialists and
lung experts.
"The people on Strawberry Hill thought there was a medical convention
in town. I was kidnapped on the golf course, where I was about to win
the eastern Connecticut long-drive cup, and locked up in a dark room at
home for two days while they tested me. They made all the known tests,
Donovan. They tested me for diseases that haven't been discovered yet,
and for some that have been extinct since the days of Noah. You can
see where that put me. I was afraid to fight or sulk for fear the
alienists would send me to the madhouse. I was afraid to eat for fear
they would think _that_ was a symptom, and every time I asked for food
the tape-worm man looked intelligent and began prescribing, while the
rest of them were terribly chagrined because they hadn't scored first.
The only joy I got out of the rumpus was in hitting one of those
alienists a damned hard clip in the ribs, and I'm glad I did it. He
was feeling my medulla oblongata at the moment, and as I resent being
man-handled I pasted him one--he was a young chap, and fair game--I
pasted him one, and then grabbed a suit-case and slid. I stole away in
a clam-boat for New Haven, and kept right on up into northern Maine,
where I stayed with the Indians until my father's relict went off
broken-hearted to Bad Neuheim to drink the waters. And here I am, by
the grace of God, in perfect health and in full control of the button
market of the world."
"You have undoubtedly been sorely tried," I said as he broke off
mournfully. In spite of myself I had been entertained. He was
undeniably a fellow of curious humor and with unusual experience of
life. He followed me to the street, and as I rode away he called me
back as though to impart something of moment.
"Did you ever meet Charles Darwin?"
"He didn't need me for proof, Buttons."
"I wish I might have had one word with him. It's on my mind that he
put the monkeys back too far. I should be happier if he had brought
them a little nearer up to date. I should feel less lonesome,
Irishman."
He stopped me again.
"Once I had an ambition to find an honest man, Donovan, but I gave it
up--it's easier to be an honest man than to find one. I give you
peace!"
I had learned some things from the young button king, but much was
still opaque in the affairs of the Holbrooks. The Italian's presence
assumed a new significance from Gillespie's story. He had been party
to a conspiracy to kill Holbrook, _alias_ Hartridge, on the night of my
adventure at the house-boat, and I fell to wondering who had been the
shadowy director of that enterprise--the coward who had hung off in the
creek, and waited for the evil deed to be done.