Mr. Lanter’s; and the answering squeeze of Miss Minota’s large hand
said, “Thank you for helping me to die so like an ordinary-sized girl!”
But the hand she pressed seemed to melt in hers and slip away, and,
groping downward in the dun-colored smother, the giantess touched the
senseless body of Mr. Lanter lying at her feet. And then she gave a cry
of love and grief and anger mingled, as an ordinary-sized woman might
have done--and lifted her lover from the blistering floor as though he
had been a baby. The smoke seemed less dense a few feet beyond where
she stood, and, moving forward with Mr. Lanter held upon one arm, the
other outstretched gropingly, Miss Minota bruised her knuckles against
a wooden door. It was the high, narrow door of solid, iron-clamped
timber (usually situated at the back of the scene-dock), by which
scenery and the more bulky properties were hoisted up to or removed
from the stage of Kneeman’s Musée. In the joy of the discovery Miss
Minota cried out. Then she laid down Mr. Lanter very gently on the
floor, and fumbled for the door-bolts. But the door opened by a winch
and lever, and Miss Minota fumbled in vain. A chill despair seized her.
He lay so helpless and inert at her feet that he might have been dead!
“O Lord!” Miss Minota prayed, “where’s the use in You havin’ made me so
much bigger than other folk if I can’t save him? Help me to do it, and
I’ll never go back on You by grumblin’ at my size any more!”
A dizziness overcame her, she reeled and staggered against the side
wall of the scene-dock, bruising her knee against something that fell
with a dull, reverberating crash. It was a solid bar of iron used by a
professional athlete in a weight-lifting exhibition, and it might have
weighed a hundred and sixty pounds. The crash of its fall brought Miss
Minota to herself. She stooped, and found and lifted it, and exultant,
for the first time, in the stature and the strength that marked her
out and set her apart from her ordinary-sized sisters, the giantess
attacked the door. One battering blow from the weapon wielded by those
tremendous arms, and the hinges started and the stout planks split; a
second, and a plank crashed splintering outward; a third, and a shout
went up from the crowd assembled in the street below, as, amid volumes
of escaping smoke, the begrimed and fire-scorched figure of Miss Minota
appeared, carrying the insensible body of Mr. Lanter in her arms.
* * * * *
“Well,” said Madame Lanter, the Colossal American Marvel, some months
later, to an interviewer specially despatched from the office of the
_Boston Magpie_, “I guess you know what happened after that!” She
blushed a little, being yet a bride, and coyly turned her wedding
ring, a golden circlet of the dimensions of a baby’s bracelet, upon
her colossal finger. “We brought him to, and then _he_ brought it
off. Flesh an’ blood is flesh an’ blood, an’ we all have our weak
p’ints!--and if I did lay out never to marry a man as I couldn’t look
up to--I guess it would take half a dozen of my size, standing on each
other’s heads, to equal the loftiness of Mr. Lanter’s mind!”
The young man thus eulogized presented to the reporter’s view a spare
and rather undersized personality, plain of feature, and awkward
of manner, drawbacks afterward transmuted by the magic touch of
the stylographic pen into “_slightness, unpretending elegance, and
unaffected simplicity. The beaming affection discernible in the glance
he turned upon his stately bride justified the eulogistic terms in
which that lady spoke of her husband. Their brief but thrillingly
romantic courtship, with its strikingly sensational ‘dénouement,’
created a ‘furore’ when detailed by the New York press. The
disinterested nature of the attachment of Mr. Lanter (who is a member
of one of our oldest New England families) to the superb specimen of
American womanhood who bears his aristocratic name may be gathered
from the fact that the marriage ceremony was some weeks old before
Mr. Lanter discovered that Mrs. Lanter had amassed, during the period
of time spent by her in exhibiting her personal developments in the
principal cities of Europe and the States, a fortune of ninety-five
thousand dollars._”
And in this final statement the stylographic pen distilled pure truth.
HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME
The avenue of lofty elms was veiled in a white fog; upon the low-lying
parklands, cropped meadows, and sere stubble-fields, the same woolly
vapor lay dankly. But the square windows of the fine old Tudor
manor-house flashed with ruddy light, and the hospitable hearth-fires
of the hall diffused glow and radiance through open doors. Sir Vivian
and Lady Wroth were coming home after a honeymoon of eight months’
duration spent in scampering over the face of the habitable globe; and
the village was in a state of loyal ferment over the advent of the lord
and lady of the manor. Already the local band, heavily primed with
home-brewed, was posted at the station in readiness to burst into the
strains of “See the Conquering Hero” upon the arrival of the London
express. Eight sturdy laborers, in clean smock-frocks, waited, rope
in hand, for the opportunity of harnessing themselves to the bridal
brougham, while Venetian masts, upbearing strings of flags and fairy
lanterns, testified to the strength and temperature of popular goodwill.
“A sweet pretty creature, ’m, I hear!” said Mrs. Ansdey, the
white-haired, handsome, black-silk-clad housekeeper to the Rector’s
wife, who had driven up to the house to ask for a cup of tea, and leave
a parcel addressed to the new mistress of the manor, containing three
dozen very raspy cambric handkerchiefs, hemmed and initialed by the
Girls’ Sewing Class at the National Schools.
“Quite a picture, Sir Vivian’s valet said!” added the butler, who was
comparatively young, not being over sixty, and therefore looked down
upon by Mrs. Ansdey from her vantage of fifteen summers.
“Beauty is grass!” said the Rector’s wife, who was not overburdened
with the commodity. She was a long, thin, high-nosed woman, with color
distributed over her countenance in little islands. She drank her
tea, and toasted her large, useful feet at the glowing wood-fire, and
praised the Sally Lunns.
Her reverend partner was down at the village reading-rooms, rehearsing
the shrill-voiced school children in the “Greet Ye To-night, Thrice
Happy Pair,” chorus from _Lohengrin_. She knew the quality of the cocoa
to be obtained there, and longed to share with him the hospitable
burden of Mrs. Ansdey’s silver tray. But as this amicable division of
spoil was manifestly impossible, the Rector’s wife consoled herself
by making a clean sweep. And so she ate and drank and chatted to the
not displeased Mrs. Ansdey with unflagging vigor, while the famous
Reynolds portraits of departed ladies of the manor smiled and simpered
from the shining paneled walls, and the gray-muzzled bloodhounds, last
of a famous race and favorite of the last Baronet, snored upon the
leopard-skin hearthrug.
“You have had many visitors this season?” queried the Rector’s wife,
with a calculating glance at the donation box, the contents of which
went to the Cottage Hospital twice in the year.
“Troops of them,” returned the housekeeper, nodding her lace lappets.
“And, as usual, half of ’em with American twangs. Even if they didn’t
talk through their noses, I should guess ’em from the States, shouldn’t
you, Mr. Cradell?”
“Without doubt, ma’am,” rejoined the butler. “There’s a feverish
anxiety to get the greatest amount of information in the shortest
possible time, and an equally ardent determination to finger what isn’t
meant to be fingered, price what can’t be priced, and buy what isn’t
for sale, which, to my mind, is a trademark distinguishing the bearer,
male or female, as hailing from the other side of the Atlantic.”
“Even if he didn’t call me ‘marm’--if he’s a man and middle-aged, and
put American dollars in the box instead of English half-crowns if he
happens to be a lady,” continued Mrs. Ansdey. “But what I will say is,
if it was with my latest breath, that the young ladies are most elegant
and have a real appreciation for old and what you might call romantic
things,” she added somewhat hastily; and the Rector’s wife said, as she
added sugar to her fourth cup:
“The new Lady Wroth is an American, I have always understood.”
“Born in Washington, but edicated in Paris,” said Mr. Cradell, putting
a fresh log of apple-wood upon the glowing fire at the lower end of the
hall.
“She comes of a fine old family, we have always understood,” said
the housekeeper, smoothing her lace apron with her plump white
hands. “Rutherfoord her maiden name was, and with her beauty and her
jewels--for her late papa was a Senator, besides being what I’ve heard
called a Railway King--she created a sensation when she was presented
by the Duchess of Balgowrie last May but one.”
“As to her style of good looks,” said Mr. Cradell, dusting lichen from
his coat, “Sir Vivian was always partial to dark beauty. ‘What is she
like?’ says he to me when I took the liberty of asking, as an old
servant may. ‘A black pearl, Cradell, and I hope to wear my jewel in
my bonnet as my ancestor Sir Guy wore Queen Elizabeth’s ruby--until the
day I die!’ He’d a light in his eyes when he said it, and what with
love and happiness and all, he looked more like a boy of twenty-three
than a man of forty. And I said to Mrs. Ansdey, ‘If ever there was
a love-match,’ I says, ‘Sir Vivian’s is one.’ And now the carriage
is waiting at the station to bring home both the master and the
mistress--bless them both!”
“She wrote to me from Mentone,” went on Mrs. Ansdey, “and I truly
call it a pretty thought, and a gracious one, of me that have been my
master’s nurse, and held him on my knees when he picked out bounding
‘B’ and curly ‘Q’ with an ivory crotchet-hook.” She produced from a
morocco pocketbook, of solid and responsible appearance, a letter
written with violet ink on thin, foreign paper, in delicate upright
characters. “‘_My husband has told me of all your faithful service and
true devotion to him and his_,’ she read; ‘_and I hope before long to
take your kind hand in mine and thank you for him and for myself!_’
There now!”
“Gracious and graceful too,” said old Cradell, who had beaten noiseless
time to the reading of the young mistress’s letter with one wrinkled
finger on a withered palm. “Good breeding there--and old blood--in
every line!”
“And she looks forward to seeing her husband’s dear old English home,”
went on the housekeeper, “and prays God to give them many days in it
together--and I trust He will!”
“Let us hope so, for all concerned!” said the Rector’s wife, who
resented theological references as trenching upon her own particular
province.
“Though in this family it’s been like a fate, or a doom, or whatever
you might please to term it,” said Mrs. Ansdey, “that the course of
true love, the deeper it was and the truer it was, was always to be
broken--not by change or faithlessness of one that loved, but by the
hand of death. There was Sir Geoffrey and Lady Euphrasia--hundreds
of years back--that were drowned crossing the ford on the ride home
from their baby’s christening and the baby lived to be Sir Launcelot,
whose bride was carried off by the Black Death before the roses on
her wedding garland were withered.... And then there were Sir Alan
and Sir Guy, who were both killed in battle within a year of their
weddings, and Sir Vivian’s great-grandfather, old Sir Vivian, found
his young wife dead at her tapestry-frame when he’d crept up quiet to
surprise her with his unexpected return from the Embassy to Rome. And
Sir Vivian’s own dear mother lived but a very few years after the dear
child came to comfort her for his father’s early loss. But time goes
by, and the curse--if it be a curse, as they say it is, brought upon
the founder of the family for some secret deed of evil--the curse may
have passed over, or worn itself out. What’s that?”
“What’s what, ma’am?” asked the butler, as Mrs. Ansdey rose in her
rustling silks and made a sign for silence.
“I fancied I heard a timid kind of tap on the hall door,” said the
housekeeper.
“A robin blew against it, perhaps,” said the butler. “They’re stupid
with the frost.”
“There was a footstep too,” said Mrs. Ansdey, holding up her hand and
making her old-fashioned rings gleam and twinkle in the firelight. “At
least, if there wasn’t, Mr. Cradell, I admit I’ve been deceived!”
“We’ll see, we’ll see!” said Cradell, moving to the great oaken door.
“It may be a tramp.” The handle turned, the massive oak door moved
inward. The fog had thinned, it had grown clearer beyond doors. Within
the frame of the massive lintels appeared the glimmering stone steps,
a segment of the formal garden, with its black Irish yews, pale marble
urns, and cartwheel beds of late flowers, enclosed within borders
of box. Beyond the trees reared a somber barrier, shutting out the
sky, and the chill wind of winter drove the dead leaves in swirls and
drifts across the melancholy picture. The Rector’s wife, thinking of
her walk across the park to the Rectory, sniffed and shivered, and the
housekeeper motioned to the butler to shut the door.
“For I was mistaken, as you see, and there’s not a living soul about,
unless it’s skulking in the shadow of the trees,” she said. “Another
cup of tea, or a drop of cherry-brandy, ma’am, to keep the bitter
air out as you walk home? Though there’s no reason you should walk
when there’s the pony-chair.... Or perhaps you would rather----” She
started. “Call me nervous, or finical, or what you like,” she said,
peering anxiously through her gold-rimmed spectacles in the direction
of the door. “But, if I spoke with my dying breath, there was a tap,
and then a pause, and then another tap, as plain as plain could be!”
“Dear me!” The Rector’s wife, alarm in her eyes and crumbs on her
chin, rose from her chair, dropping her imitation sable boa. “I really
believe I heard it too!... Had you not better----?”
Cradell shook his old head and clucked softly with his tongue. “The
ladies must always have their way!” he said, shuffling on his neatly
polished shoes toward the hall-door. He opened it, and both the
housekeeper and the Rector’s wife uttered a simultaneous exclamation
of surprise.
For a woman was standing in the moonlight outside. She was of slight
form, and wore a wide-brimmed feathered hat, and the heavy shadow of
the portico fell blackly over her, so that she seemed no more than a
silhouette with a pale glimmering background. But a delicate perfume
stole upon the senses of those who, from within, looked out at her, and
when she moved there was the unmistakable frou-frou of silken linings.
“Ma’am!” the butler began.
“I came on before,” a sweet plaintive voice said--a voice that was
viola-like in its rather thin, but sweet and vibrating quality. “And
you must be Cradell.”
“_Ma’am?_” the old servant said again, while the Rector’s wife and the
housekeeper listened with strained anxiety.
“I am Lady Wroth,” came in the clear, vibrating tones. “I came on
before.... It does not matter why. There was a slight accident between
Greystoke Station and the Elvand Tunnel. Do not be alarmed. Sir Vivian
is safe, quite safe,” she went on, as agitated exclamations broke from
the three listeners. “Indeed only one person was killed, though two or
three are injured, and he--my husband--is helping the sufferers. He is
always like that, so ready to help, so full of sympathy....”
She was now standing in the firelight, whose ruddy glow illumined the
slight figure, and drew gleams of crimson and emerald from the jewels
at her throat and shone in the depths of her great dark eyes. Her face
was of delicate, pearly paleness, her hair had the tints of autumn
leaves, and her draperies, too, were of the tints of autumn. She drew
off a glove, and her wedding ring, with its diamond keeper, showed upon
the slight and pretty hand, as her traveling mantle of velvet trimmed
with costly sables fell to the floor.
“Oh, your ladyship!” cried the housekeeper. “What must you think of
us--standing here and staring? But as goodness sees us--what with your
sudden coming, and the news about the accident, and all--we’ve lost our
heads, me and Mr. Cradell!”
“So very alarming!” said the Rector’s wife. “I trust Lady Wroth will
excuse what may seem like an intrusion----”
“The intrusion is mine,” said the sweet viola-voice. “I should have
given warning of my coming, but it was not to be. Oh! the dear house!”
She looked with wondering, shining eyes upon the paneled walls, the
trophied arms, the noble pictures, and the quaint antique furniture,
and between her lips, of the faintest rose, her delicate teeth gleamed
like pearls, as her breath came quick and eager. “Vivian’s old home ...
Vivian’s home, and mine!” she whispered to herself, and laid a hand
upon her heart, as though to check its beating.
“I will not intrude,” said the Rector’s wife. “I will hope for
the pleasure of calling, with the Rector, at a more fitting time.
Good-night, Lady Wroth.”
The Rector’s wife had held out her large hand in its cheap glove, but
the new mistress of the manor only smiled upon her with vague wistful
sweetness, and did not touch the massive extremity. Whereupon its owner
set down Lady Wroth as “proud,” and made a mental note to tell the
Rector so, as her large feet carried her out of the house and out of
the story.
The two old servants exchanged a glance as the slight figure of their
mistress moved across the polished floor, strewn with Oriental rugs and
skins of wild beasts.
“Would my lady wish to go to her room, or to have some refreshment in
the dining-room?” the housekeeper asked.
My lady declined.
“I have no need of anything. I only wish to rest a little and see my
husband’s home before starting upon a journey,” she explained.
“A journey? Dear, gracious me! And your ladyship just fresh from
travel, and shaken by an accident and all!” cried Mrs. Ansdey, shaking
her lace lappets.
“I am so used to travel,” said her ladyship, “though this is the
longest journey I have ever taken--or ever shall take!” She smiled upon
the two old people, and settled herself in the seat she had chosen,
and resting her elbow upon the arm of it, and her pretty chin in her
delicate palm, let her sweet shining eyes travel about the place. “All
as he described it, yes!” she whispered to herself. “The mullioned
windows with the coats of arms, the carved and painted ceiling, the
hooded Tudor fireplaces, the arms and the pictures.... That is the
great Gainsborough portrait of Sir Alan’s young wife, the girl who died
of grief when they brought her husband’s _bâton_ of Field Marshal to
her--won an hour before he was killed in battle. There is the painting
by Velasquez of the Wroth who was made Bishop of Toledo. That must be
the Vandyck of Lady Marjorie with the deerhound by her side, and there
is the Watts picture of Vivian’s young mother playing ball with her
boy. Ah! what a sweet, sweet child!”
The plaintive voice thrilled and trembled. Tears might not have been
far from the shadowy dark eyes, as Lady Wroth rose and moved to the
foot of the great staircase, attended by the housekeeper.
“Shall I show you your rooms, my lady?” Mrs. Ansdey began. “The fires
are burning beautifully, and everything is quite ready, and I feel
sure your ladyship must need rest after----”
“I will rest presently. But what I wish now, is to be shown the house,
if you are not too tired. Lady Audrey’s turret, and the paneled chamber
where Sir Roger fought the duel with the Spanish cavalier, and the
bedroom where Queen Elizabeth slept, and the banqueting-hall and the
chapel where the Templar’s heart is buried under the altar, and the
gallery where Lady Euphrasia danced with King Henry VIII., in masquing
dress, and the whispering corridor, and the painted room----”
“And the ghost-chamber, my lady? Oddly enough, that’s the first room
that American ladies ask to see!... But maybe your ladyship doesn’t
believe in ghosts, or the fact of its being late and getting dark----”
Lady Wroth laughed quietly and sweetly. “Do you believe that the
spirits of those who have passed on can only appear in the dark, dear
Mrs. Ansdey?”
The housekeeper rustled her stiff silken skirts as she followed her new
mistress up the broad staircase with its carven balusters and mossy
carpets.
“I don’t believe in ghosts at all, my lady!”
“Not in ghosts as they are commonly imagined; those shadowy white
things that point and scare and hover,” came floating back in the thin,
sweet tones; “but in the spirits of the departed--it may be long-dead,
or newly called from earth--who borrow for a little while the semblance
in which they lived and loved, and return for one last look at a
beloved home, or come for one dear glimpse of what might, but for the
Infinite Eternal Will, have been a home. You believe in them, do you
not? Or, if you do not now, you will! Ah, yes! you will, dear Mrs.
Ansdey!”
Looking upward from the hall, the butler saw the slight figure
of Sir Vivian’s bride traverse the first landing and pass out of
view, followed by the portly figure of the housekeeper; and in that
moment came the grind of wheels upon the avenue, a loud knock at
the hall-door, and a sharp peal at the bell. Two liveried servants,
appearing in haste, admitted the master of the house, and at the first
glimpse of Sir Vivian’s ghastly face and torn and disordered garments,
Cradell cried out in alarm.
“Sir Vivian--sir! It’s worse than what my lady said!... You’ve been
hurt! Shall I send for the doctor?”
“He is with us!” came the hoarse reply, and Cradell, peering out into
the chill, gathering darkness, saw a strange carriage drawn up before
the door, whose lamps threw a yellow reflection on the clouds of steam
rising from the flanks of a pair of jaded horses. They were busy
about the door; something was being lifted out? _What?_ asked the old
servant’s shaking lips dumbly.
“Drove in from Greystoke ... hospital carriage.... Send the men
to help.... Get me some brandy,” came from Sir Vivian in hoarse
shaking tones. “I can’t ... my arm ... dislocated, that’s all. I
wish to Heaven----” His face expressed the nature of the wish, and
the old butler cried with spirit, as he brought the brandy from the
dining-room. “You should be thankful, sir, that you’ve been spared to
her!”
“Spared to--her?”
The decanter clinked against the glass. Sir Vivian set it down upon the
tray, and turned a white, seamed face and haggard eyes upon Cradell.
“Spared to my lady, sir, God bless her!” the old servant said. “Your
hand shakes sadly; let me pour the brandy out.”
Sir Vivian laughed, or made a grimace of laughter, showing his teeth
and stretching his pale lips.
“Lord, sir! don’t look like that!” Cradell begged. “Think if her
ladyship were to see you! She----”
“If her ladyship were to see me!” repeated Sir Vivian. He drank off a
glass of brandy and laughed again. “Cradell--are you mad, or am I?”
“Neither of us, sir, I hope!” said Cradell. Then a light broke upon
him, and he cried, “Good gracious, Sir Vivian, is it possible that you
don’t know ... my lady is here?”
“I know it.” An awful agony was expressed in Sir Vivian’s face. “I know
it too well!” Great drops stood upon his forehead; he turned aside,
clenching his hand, and fighting for self-command.
“She came half an hour ago,” began the butler. “Me and Mrs. Ansdey were
quite took aback. Mrs. Ansdey is upstairs with her ladyship now....”
“Man--man!” cried Sir Vivian, “do you know what you are saying?”
He turned his streaming face upon the frightened butler and gripped him
by the arm, fiercely.
“Lady Wroth--my wife, she is dead! There was an accident--she was
killed instantaneously, with little pain, thank God! They said so at
the Greystoke Hospital.... She is outside--there!” He pointed a shaking
hand toward the partly open hall-door, through which a pale line of
moonlight came stealing as the careful, measured tread of men carrying
a precious burden sounded on the stone. “Yet you say to me--she arrived
half an hour ago! You are raving--or I am delirious!”
For answer the butler pointed to the velvet mantle trimmed with costly
sables that lay upon the floor.