_The Arsdales_
Miss Arsdale hurried upstairs to where in a rear room Marie, with a
candle burning beside her, lay in bed done up like a mummy.
"Par Di', Mam'selle Elaine," exclaimed the old housekeeper, her eyes
growing brighter at sight of her. "I had a dream about a black horse.
Is anything wrong with you?"
"Nothing. And your poor lame knees, Marie--they are better?"
"N'importe," she grunted, "but I do not like the feel of the night.
Was M'sieur Ben down there with you?"
"Yes."
"You should be in bed by now. You must go at once."
"I think I shall sleep in the little room off yours to-night."
"Bien. Then if you need anything in the night, you can call me."
Marie was scarcely able to turn herself in her bed, but, she still felt
the responsibility of the house.
"Very well, Marie. Good night."
She kissed the old housekeeper upon the forehead and was going out when
she heard the latter murmur as though to herself,
"The black horse may mean Jacques."
"Have you heard nothing from him in his new position?" she asked,
turning at the door.
"Non," she answered sharply. "Go to bed."
So the girl went on into a darkness that she, too, found ridden by
black horses.
For three generations the Arsdales had been a family of whom those who
claim New York as their inheritance had known both much and little. It
was impossible to ignore the silent part Horace Arsdale, the
grandfather, had played in the New York business world or the quiet
influence he had exerted in such musical and literary centres as
existed in his day. Any one who knew anybody would answer an inquiry
as to who they might be with a surprised lift of the eyebrows.
"The Arsdales? Why they are--the Arsdales."
"But what--"
"Oh, they are a queer lot. But they have brains and--money."
Horace Arsdale died in an asylum, and there were the usual ugly rumors
as to what brought him there. He left a son Benjamin, and Benjamin
built the present Arsdale house at a time when it was like building in
the wilderness. Here he shut himself up with his bride, a French girl
he had met on his travels. Ask any one who Benjamin Arsdale was and
they would be apt to answer,
"Benjamin Arsdale? Oh, he is Benjamin Arsdale. They say he has a
great deal of talent and--money."
The first statement seemed to be proven by some very delicate lyrical
verse which appeared from time to time in the magazines. Though a
member of the best half dozen New York clubs, not a dozen men out of
the hundreds who knew his name had ever seen him.
His wife died within three years, some say from a broken heart, some
say from homesickness, leaving a boy child six months old. At this
point Benjamin Arsdale's name disappeared even from the magazines, and
save to a very few people he was as though dead and buried beneath his
odd house. An old Frenchman, his wife, and his son Jacques Moisson
seemed content to live there and look after the household duties. Some
ten years later a little girl of nine appeared, a niece of Arsdale's,
it was said, and this completed the household, though old Père Moisson
died in the course of time, leaving his wife and Jacques as a sort of
legacy to his old master, for a body-guard. The only reports of the
inmates to the outside world came through the other servants who were
employed here from time to time, and the most they had to say was that
Arsdale was "queer," and they did n't think it was the place to bring
up young children, though the master did adore the very ground they
walked on. When the children were older, Arsdale was seen at concerts
and the theatre with them, but seemed to resent any attempt on the part
of well meaning acquaintances to renew social ties. People remarked
upon how old for his age he had grown, and some spoke in a whisper of
the spirituality of his features.
So much every one knew and that was nothing. What Elaine Arsdale, whom
he had legally adopted, knew, was what caused the white light about the
bowed head of the man. When she first learned she could not tell, but
as a very young girl she remembered days when he came to her with his
face very white and tense, and in his eyes the terror of one in great
pain, and said to her,
"Little girl, will you sit with me a bit?"
So she would take a seat by the window in the library and he would face
her very quietly with his long fingers twined around the chair arms.
He would not speak and she knew that he did not wish her to speak. He
wished for her only to sit there where he could see her. She was never
afraid, but at times there came into his eyes a look that tempted her
to cry. Sometimes an hour, sometimes two hours passed, and then he
would rise to his feet and walk unsteadily towards her and say,
"Now I may kiss your forehead, Elaine."
He would kiss her, and shortly after fall into a deep sleep of
exhaustion.
Between these periods, which she did not understand save that in some
way he suffered a great deal, he was to her the gentlest and kindest
guardian that ever a girl had. He personally superintended her studies
and those of Ben, her only other playmate. The day was divided into
regular hours for work and play. In the morning at nine he met them in
the library and heard their lessons and gave them their tasks for the
next day. He seemed to know everything and had a way of making one
understand very difficult matters such as fractions and irregular
French verbs. In the afternoon came the music lessons. He was anxious
for them both to play well upon the violin, for he said that it had
been to him one of the greatest joys of his life. Each night before
bedtime he used to play for them himself and make her see finer
pictures than even those she found in her fairy tales. But there were
other times when he could make his violin terrible. He used to punish
Ben in this way. When the latter had been over wilful, he made the boy
stand before him. Then taking a position in front of him, he played
things so wild, so fearful, that the boy would beg for mercy.
"Do you wish your soul to be like that?" he would demand sternly.
"No, father, no," Ben would whimper.
"Then you must control yourself. If ever you lose a grip upon yourself
in temper or anything else, it will be like that."
But the music even at such times never frightened her, though it
sounded very savage, like the wind through the trees in a thunder storm.
The only time that he had ever seemed the slightest bit angry at her
was once during that wonderful summer when he had taken them abroad.
She was seventeen, and on the boat she met a man with whom she fell in
love. He was very much older than she, and possessed a glorious
mustache which turned up at the corners. He helped her up and down the
deck one day when the wind was blowing, and that night she lay awake
thinking about him. When she appeared in the morning with her eyes
heavy and her thoughts far away, the father put his arm about her and
escorted her to the stern of the boat. Then sitting down beside her,
he said,
"Tell me what is on your mind, little girl."
She told him quite simply, and had been surprised to see his face grow
white and terrible.
"He put those thoughts into your heart?"
He rose to his feet and started towards the saloon. She knew what he
was about to do. She flung her arms around his knees and, sobbing,
pleaded with him until he stayed. Then after she had calmed a little,
he talked to her and she listened as though to a stranger.
"Little girl," he cried fiercely, "there is much that you do not
understand, and much that I pray God you never will understand. One of
these things is the nature of man. If it were not for all the other
fair things there are in life I would place you in a convent, for the
best man who ever lived, little girl, is not good enough to take into
his keeping the worst woman. They break their hearts with their
weaknesses--they break their hearts."
"But you, dear Dada--"
"I did it! God forgive me, I did it, too!"
At this point he gained control of himself and his wild speech, but the
words remained forever an echo in her heart.
They passed the next summer in the Adirondacks, and here in the deep
woods she spent the pleasantest period of her life. She was strangely
atune with the big pines and the fragrant shadows which lay beneath
them. Arsdale used to sit beside her in these solitudes and read aloud
by the hour from the poets in his sweet musical voice. At such times
she wondered more than ever what he had meant in that outburst on the
steamer. Here, too, he told her more of her mother who had died at
almost the same time that Ben's mother had died. But of the father all
he ever told her was,
"My brother was an Arsdale--like the rest of us."
So she lived her peaceful life and was conscious of missing nothing,
save at odd moments the man with the beautiful mustache. Marie, the
old housekeeper, was as careful of her as Jacques was of her father.
Ben was kind to her, though during the latter years he had grown a bit
out of her life. This had worried the father--this and other things.
One day he had called her into the library, and though he was greatly
agitated she saw that it was not in the usual way.
"Little girl," he said, "if it should so happen that you are ever left
alone here with Ben and he--he does not seem to act quite himself, I
want you to promise me that you will go to this address which I shall
leave for you."
She had promised, knowing well to what he referred.
Then his face had hardened.
"There is still another thing you must promise; if at the end of six
months he is no better I wish you to promise that you will not live in
this house with him or anywhere near him--that you will cut off your
life utterly from his life."
"But, Dada--"
"Promise."
She promised again, little thinking that the crisis of which he seemed
to have a foreboding was so near at hand. A dark day came within two
months when her soul was rent with the knowledge that he lay stark and
cold in that very library where so much of his life had been lived.
Marie gathered her into her arms and held her tight. She stared aghast
at a world which frightened her by its emptiness. At her side stood
Ben, his lips twitching, and in his eyes that haunting fear which
always foreran the father's struggles. A month later the boy did not
come home one night, but came after three days, a feeble wreck of a
man. She tore open the letter the father had left, and this took her
to Barstow, with whom he had evidently left instructions. That was
five months ago, and in the meanwhile she had grown from a very young
girl into a woman.
This was the sombre background to her frightened thoughts as she lay in
her bed next to Marie. In the midst of all the figures which haunted
her, there stood now one alone who offered her anything but fearful
things--and he was a stranger. Out of the infinite multitude of the
indifferent who surrounded her, he had leaped and within these few
hours made her debtor to him for her life, and now for partial relief
from a strain which was worse than sudden death might have been. In
spite of other torments it was like a cool hand upon her brow to know
that out in that chaos into which the boy had plunged, this other had
followed. She had perfect confidence in him. After all, it is as easy
in a crisis to pick a friend from among strangers as from among friends.