Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
MANY KINGDOMS
BY
ELIZABETH JORDAN
AUTHOR OF
"May Iverson--Her Book"
"Tales of the Cloister"
"Tales of Destiny"
Etc. Etc.
... _"The state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection."_
--SHAKESPEARE.
MCMVIII
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. VARICK'S LADY O' DREAMS
II. THE EXORCISM OF LILY BELL
III. HER LAST DAY
IV. THE SIMPLE LIFE OF GENEVIEVE MAUD
V. HIS BOY
VI. THE COMMUNITY'S SUNBEAM
VII. IN MEMORY OF HANNAH'S LAUGH
VIII. THE QUEST OF AUNT NANCY
IX. THE HENRY SMITHS' HONEYMOON
X. THE CASE OF KATRINA
XI. BART HARRINGTON, GENIUS
I
VARICK'S LADY O' DREAMS
Varick laid down the book with which he had beguiled an hour of the
night, turned off the electric light in the shaded globe that hung
above his head, pulled the sheets a little nearer his chin, reversed
his pillow that he might rest his cheek more gratefully on the cooler
linen, stretched, yawned, and composed himself to slumber with an
absolutely untroubled conscience.
He was an eminently practical and almost rudely healthy young man, with
an unreflecting belief in the existence of things he had seen, and
considerable doubt concerning those which he had not seen. In his heart
he regarded sentiment as the expression of a flabby nature in a feeble
body. Once or twice he had casually redressing-case, with its array of
silver toilet articles, the solid front of his chiffonnier, the carved
arms of his favorite lounging-chair, even the etchings and prints on
the walls. Suddenly, as he looked at these familiar objects, a light
haze fell over them, giving him for an instant the impression that a
gauze curtain had been dropped between them and his eyes. They slowly
melted away, and in their place he saw the streets of a tiny village in
some foreign country which he did not know. A moment later, in what
seemed at the time a perfectly natural transition from his bed in an
Adirondack club-house, he was walking up the streets of the little
town, in correct tourist attire, looking in vain for a familiar
landmark, and with a strange sinking of the heart. How he got there, or
why he was there, was equally incomprehensible to him. It was high noon
of a warm summer day, and the red roofs of the old buildings seemed to
glow in the heat. Before him, at the end of the street down which he
was walking, was a public square where marketing was going on in the
open. It was crowded with men and women in picturesque peasant costumes
he did not recognize, though he had travelled a great deal. As he drew
nearer he heard them speaking, but discovered that their tongue was as
unknown to him as their garb. He knew French, German, and Italian well;
he had, in addition, a smattering of Spanish, and was familiar with the
accents of Slavic tongues. But this babel that met his ears was
something new. Taken in connection with the rest of the experience, the
discovery sent a cold chill down the spinal column of Mr. Lawrence
Varick. For the first time in his debonair life he was afraid, and
admitted it inwardly, with a sudden whitening of the lips.
"It's so infernally queer," he told himself, uneasily. "If I could
remember how I got here, or if I knew anything about the place--"
"Have you classified them?" asked a voice at his elbow. It was
feminine, contralto, and exquisitely modulated. The words were English,
but spoken with a slight foreign accent. With a leap of the heart
Varick turned and looked at the speaker.
She was young, he saw at once--twenty-two, twenty-three, possibly
twenty-four. He inclined to the last theory as he observed her perfect
poise and self-possession. She was exquisitely dressed; he realized
that despite the dimness of masculine perception on such points, and,
much more clearly, saw that she was beautiful. She was small, and the
eyes she raised to his were large and deeply brown, with long black
lashes that matched in color the wavy hair under her coquettish hat. As
he stared at her, with surprise, relief, and admiration struggling in
his boyishly handsome face, she smiled, and in that instant the
phlegmatic young man experienced a new sensation. His own white teeth
flashed as he smiled back at her. Then he remembered that it was
necessary to reply to her question.
"I--I--beg your pardon," he stammered, "a--a thousand times. But to
tell you the truth, I'm--I'm horribly confused this morning. I--I don't
seem, somehow, to place myself yet. And I can't understand what these
people say. So, when you spoke English it was such a relief--"
He stopped suddenly and turned a rich crimson. It had occurred to him
that this incoherent statement was not quite the one to win interest
and admiration from a strange and exceedingly attractive woman. What
would she think of him? Perhaps that he was intoxicated, or insane.
Varick's imagination, never lively, distinguished itself during the
next few seconds by the stirring possibilities it presented to his
mind. He grew redder, which was very unfortunate, and shuffled
miserably from one foot to the other, until he noticed that she was
looking at him with a glance that was entirely dignified yet very
friendly. It had an oddly sympathetic quality in it as well. His
spirits rose a trifle.
"You must think me an awful duffer," he murmured, contritely. "I'm not
always like this, I assure you."
"I know," she assented. "I understand. Walk on with me. Possibly I may
be able to help you."
He bowed assent and the two walked toward the crowded square.
"You're awfully good," he said, feeling reassured, yet still boyish and
embarrassed. "I don't want to be a nuisance, but if you'll just put me
right, somehow--start me on a path that will lead me home--"
The entire idiocy of this struck him. He stopped again, then burst into
his contagious, youthful laughter, in which she instantly joined. The
mellow contralto and the clear tenor formed a soft and pleasant duet,
but Varick noticed that not a head in the crowd around them turned
their way, nor did an eye of all the peasant throng give them a glance.
He spoke of this to his companion as they continued their walk.
"The most surprising thing to me in all this--unusualness," he said,
"is the cool manner in which these beggars ignore us. You know how such
people gape, usually; but not a soul among all these people seems to
know we're here."
She looked at him with a gentle amusement and sympathy in her brown
eyes.
"That is not surprising," she said, quietly. "For, you know, we are not
here--really."
Varick stopped for the second time and stared at her, with a repetition
of that new and annoying sinking in the region of his heart. Her words
were certainly disconcerting, but she herself was delightfully human
and most reassuringly natural. She had walked on, and he tried to fall
into her mood as he overtook her.
"Where are we, then?" he asked, with a short and not especially
mirthful laugh.
Her smooth brow wrinkled for a moment.
"I do not know," she said, frankly. "That is, I do not know this place,
where we _think_ we are, though I have been here before, and the
experience does not frighten me now. But I know where we _really_ are.
You are asleep somewhere in America, and I--but oh, my dear, my dear,
you're going to wake!"
The clock that was somewhere struck three. Varick, sitting up in his
bed with eyes staring into the darkness, saw again his familiar room,
the dim light, the silver, the dressing-case, the pictures. He sprang
to the door opening into the hall, and tried it. It was bolted, as he
had left it. So was the other door leading into his sitting-room. The
darkness around him still seemed full of the refrain of the words he
had just heard--where?
_"Oh, my dear, my dear, you're going to wake!"_ And her eyes--her
smile--
Varick got into bed again, in a somewhat dazed condition, with a tremor
running through it. Very slowly he straightened himself out, very
slowly he pulled up the bedclothes. Then he swore solemnly into the
obscurity of the room.
"Well, of--all--the--dreams!" he commented, helplessly.
As the months passed, after Varick got back to town and into the whirl
of city life, he recalled his dream, frequently at first, then more
rarely, and finally not at all. It was almost a year later when, one
night, lying half awake, he saw again the fine, transparent,
screen-like veil enshroud the objects in his bedroom. It was winter,
and a great log was burning in the large fireplace. He had tried to
choke the flames with ashes before he went to bed, but the wood had
blazed up again and he had lain quiet, awaiting slumber and blinking
indifferently at the light. His bedroom overlooked Fifth Avenue. There
was a large club-house just opposite his house, and cabs and carriages
still came and went. Varick heard the slam of carriage doors, the click
of horses' hoofs on the wet asphalt, and congratulated himself on the
common-sense which had inspired him to go to bed at eleven instead of
joining the festive throng across the street. He had dutifully spent
the morning in his father's offices, and then, with a warming sense of
virtue, had run out of town for a late luncheon and a trial of hunters.
To-night he was pleasantly tired, but not drowsy. When the curtain fell
before his surroundings, and he saw them melting imperceptibly into
others quite foreign to them, he at once recalled the similar
experience of the year before. With a little quickening of his steady
heart-beats, he awaited developments.
Yes, here was the old town, with its red roofs, its quaint
architecture, its crowded, narrow, picturesque streets. But this time
they seemed almost deserted, and the whole effect of the place was
bleak and dreary. The leaves had dropped from the trees, the flowers
had faded, the vines that covered the cottage walls were brown and
bare. He was pleasantly conscious of the warmth of a sable-lined coat
he had brought from Russia two years before. He thrust his gloved hands
deep into its capacious pockets and walked on, his eyes turning to
right and left as he went. At intervals he saw a bulky masculine
figure, queerly dressed, turn a corner or enter a house. Once or twice
one came his way and passed him, but no one looked at him or spoke. For
a moment Varick was tempted to knock at one of the inhospitably closed
doors and ask for information and directions, but something--he did not
know what--restrained him.
When she appeared it was as suddenly as she had come before, with no
warning, no approach. She was at his elbow--a bewitching thing of furs
and feminine beauty, French millinery and cordiality. She held out her
small hand with a fine _camaraderie_.
"Is it not nice?" she asked at once. "I was afraid I should arrive
first and have to wait alone. I would not have liked that."
He held her hand close, looking down at her from his great height, his
gray eyes shining into hers.
"Then you knew--you were coming?" he asked, slowly.
"Not until the moment before I came. But when I saw the curtain fall--"
"You saw that, too? A thin, gauzy thing, like a transparency?"
"Yes."
He relapsed into silence for a moment, as he unconsciously adapted his
stride to hers, and they walked on together as naturally as if it were
an every-day occurrence.
"What do you make of it all?" he at length asked.
She shrugged her shoulders with a little foreign gesture which seemed
to him, even then, very characteristic.
"I do not know. It frightened me--a little--at first. Now it does not,
for it always ends and I awake--at home."
"Where is that?"
She hesitated.
"I may not tell you," she said, slowly. "I do not quite know why, but I
may not. Possibly you may know some time. You, I think, are an
American."
He stared hard at her, his smooth face taking on a strangely solemn
expression.
"You mean to say," he persisted, "that this is all a dream--that you
and I, instead of being here, are really asleep somewhere, on different
continents?"
She nodded.
"We are asleep," she said, "on different continents, as you say.
Whether we are dreaming or whether our two souls are taking a little
excursion through space--oh, who shall say? Who can question the
wonderful things which happen in this most wonderful world? I have
ceased to question, but I have also ceased to fear."
He made no reply. Somewhere, in the back of his head, lay fear--a very
definite, paralyzing fear--that something was wrong with him or with
her or with them both. Instead of being in the neutral border-land of
dreams, had he not perhaps passed the tragic line dividing the normal
mind from the insane? She seemed to read his thoughts, and her manner
became more gentle, almost tender.
"Is it so very dreadful?" she asked, softly. "We are together, you
know, my friend. Would it not be worse to wander about alone?"
With a great effort he pulled himself together.
"Infinitely," he said, with gratifying conviction. "And you're--you're
a trump, you know. I'm ashamed of acting like such a boor. If you'll
bear with me I'll try from now on to be more like a man and less like a
fretful ghost."
She clapped her hands.
"Capital!" she cried. "I knew you would--what is the word?--oh
yes--_adapt_ yourself. And it is only for a little while. You will wake
very soon. But you ought to enjoy it while it lasts. There are many
amusing things about it all."
Varick reflected grimly that it was the "amusing things" which
occasioned his perturbation, but he kept his reflection to himself and
smiled down at her sunnily.
"For example," she continued, "as we really do not exist here, and as
we are not visible to these people, we cannot do anything that will
affect them in any way or attract their attention. Look at that!"
They were passing a small house whose front door, opening on the
street, stood ajar. Within they could see a stout woman standing at a
tub and washing busily, and a little girl pouring hot water from a
quaint kettle into a large pan full of soiled blue dishes. The pan
stood near the edge of a wooden table, and the little girl was perched
on a stool just high enough to bring her on a level with her work.
"You are, I am sure, a fine athlete," murmured the woman. "Or else your
looks belie you," she added, with a roguish upward glance. "Yet with
all your strength you cannot push that pan of dishes off the table."
Without a word, Varick passed through the doorway, strode into the
house and up to the table. She followed him closely. He attempted to
seize the pan in his powerful hands--and, to his horror, discovered
that they held nothing. The pan remained on the table and the child was
now unconcernedly washing the blue dishes, humming a little folk-song
as she worked. As if to add to the irony of the situation, the small
laborer quietly lifted the pan and moved it to a position she thought
more convenient. This was the last touch. With a stifled murmur of
intense exasperation, Varick put forth all his strength in a supreme
effort. The pan fell, the water and broken blue dishes covering the
floor. He sprang back and stood aghast, gazing at the havoc he had
wrought.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" murmured the voice at his side. "I never dreamed
you could do it, or I would not have suggested it. Oh, oh, the poor
little darling!"
For the stout woman at the tub had hastily dropped her work, crossed
the room, and was soundly chastising the unhappy infant who she
supposed was responsible for the mischief. Varick caught her arm.
"Oh, I say," he cried, "this won't do at all! She didn't do it; it was
all my fault. I'll pay for the things. Here--here--"
He fumbled in his pockets as he spoke and pulled out several gold
pieces. But the fat arm of the old woman offered no resistance to his
grasp, and the gold pieces did not exist for her. It was evident that
she saw neither him nor them, nor the woman with him. With an unsparing
hand she spanked the child, whose voice rose in shrill lamentations.
Varick and his companion in guilt crept out of the room with a sense of
great helplessness upon them, and he breathed a long breath of relief
at finding himself--in bed, with a cold February sun shining in through
his windows, and the faithful Parker at his side with the quieting
announcement that his bath was ready.
One of Varick's boon companions in camp and hunting excursions was a
distinguished New York specialist in nervous diseases. A day or two
later Varick found it convenient to drop into this man's office and,
quite casually, tell him the story of his dreams, giving it various
light touches that he fondly imagined concealed the anxiety that lay
beneath the recital. "Recurrent dreams," he then learned, were a very
common human experience and not deserving of much attention.
"Don't think about it," said his friend. "Of course, if you worry over
it, you'll be dreaming it all the time. Send this 'personally conducted
tour' to me if you don't like it. I don't mind meeting pretty women who
are 'dreams,' whether in the flesh or out of it."
As time went on and the dream did not return, Varick decided that he
would not mind, either. He thought of her a great deal; he even longed
for her. Eventually he deliberately tried to induce the dream by going
to bed early, putting himself in the proper mental attitude, as he
conceived it, and staring wide-eyed into his dimly lighted room. But
only once in eighteen months was he even partly successful. Then he saw
the haze, saw the familiar streets, saw her far, far ahead of him, and
hurrying onward, saw her turn a sharp corner, caught one backward look
from her dear brown eyes as she vanished--and awoke! He gave much
thought to that look in the months which followed. He was a modest
youth, singularly unconscious of his own charms; but the eloquent
glance had conveyed to him a sense of longing--of more than longing.
Quite an interval elapsed before she came again. There was, first of
all, the inevitable filmy effect, but, in the vision that succeeded it,
instead of finding himself in the little town, he was in the depths of
a great old forest, and in horrible agony. Some accident had
occurred--he did not know what. He only knew that he was shot,
suffering, dying! He groaned, and even as he writhed in a spasm of pain
he saw her sitting on the sward beside him. He turned glazed eyes on
her. Her brown ones looked back into his with a great love and pity in
their depths.
"Oh, my dear," she whispered, "I know it seems terribly hard to you.
And because you think you suffer, it is almost as hard for you as if
you did. But you are not really hurt, you know. You are not suffering.
It is all in the dream. You are sound asleep, far, far away."
He forced a sardonic laugh from his stiff throat.
"Not this time," he managed to articulate. "Whatever the others may
have been, this is no dream. This is the real thing--and death!"
She smoothed the hair back from his damp brow with a beautiful,
caressing touch. He felt her fingers tremble.
"No," she said. "It is a dream, and almost over."
"Then will you stay with me," he gasped, "to the end?"
"Yes," she promised. "Try to bear it just a moment longer. Courage,
dear heart! for already you are waking--you are
waking--_you--are--awake!_"
He was, and it was daylight, and around him were the familiar objects
of his own room. He wiped his forehead, which was cold and wet. He felt
utterly exhausted.
"Stay with me to the end!"
If she only would! If he could find her--find her in this warm, human
world, away from that ghastly border-land where they two met. For in
that hour he knew he loved--what? A woman or a ghost? A creature of
this world or a fantasy of the night? Wherever she was, whatever she
was, he loved her and he wanted her. And in that hour of his agony her
eyes had told that she loved and wanted him.
It was eight months before they met again. Varick's friends thought him
changed, and quite possibly he was. The insouciant boy of twenty-eight
had become a man, a sympathetic, serious, thoughtful man, still given
to sports and outdoor life, but more than all devoted to a search which
had taken him to no end of out-of-the-way European towns. He was
sleeping in one of these one night (not _the_ one, alas!--he had not
found that) when the veil, now so warmly welcome, fell for the fourth
time.
He was in an exquisite Italian garden, a place all perfume and May
breezes and flooding sunshine and overarching blue sky. As he entered
it he saw her coming to meet him, and he went forward to greet her with
his pulses bounding and a light in his eyes which no eyes but hers had
ever seen there. Even in that supreme moment the wonderfully _real_
atmosphere of it all impressed him. He heard a dry twig crack under his
foot as he walked, and he recognized the different perfumes of the
flowers around him--the heavy sweetness of a few belated orange
blossoms, the delicate breath of the oleander, the reminiscent perfume
of the rose. Then their hands met and their eyes, and each drew a long
breath, and neither spoke for a moment. When Varick found words they
were very commonplace.
"Oh, my love, my love!" he said. And she, listening to them with sudden
tears in her brown eyes, seemed to find in them the utmost eloquence of
the human tongue.
"It has been so long, so long!" he gasped. "I began to think I was
never to see you again."
They drifted side by side along a winding, rose-hedged path, past an
old sun-dial, past a triumphant peacock strutting before his mild
little mate, past a fountain whose spray flung out to them a welcome.
She led the way with the accustomed step of one who knew and loved the
place. They came to a marble seat, half hidden by a tangle of vines and
scarlet blossoms, and sheltered by overhanging oleander branches; there
she sat down and moved her skirts aside that he might sit close to her.
Her brown eyes, raised now to his hungry gray ones, looked at him with
the softened brilliance he had sometimes seen in those of a happy child.
"Should you have missed me," she asked, softly, "if you had never seen
me again? Should you have been sorry?"
He drew a long breath.
"I love you," he said. "Whatever you are, wherever you come from,
whatever all this means, I love you. I don't understand anything else,
but I know that. It's the one sure thing, the one real thing, in all
this tangle."
Without a word she put her hand in his. He could feel distinctly its
cool, soft, exquisite texture. With an exclamation of delight he drew
her toward him, but she held herself away, the expression of her
beautiful face softening the effect of the recoil.
"Not yet, dear," she said, gently. "We must be very careful. You do not
understand. If you do anything abrupt or sudden you will wake--and then
we shall be parted again, who knows for how long!"
There were tears in her eyes as she spoke. Seeing them, he buried his
face in his hands and groaned, while the sense of his utter
helplessness rolled over him like a flood.
"God!" he broke out, with sudden fierceness. "What devil's trick is
this? It's not a dream. It can't be a dream. Here we are, two human
beings in a human world--I'll swear it. Smell that oleander. Listen to
that bird sing. Hear the trickle of that fountain. And yet you tell me
that we are asleep!"
She laid her head in the curve of her arm, resting on the ivy-covered
back of the low seat. Bending over her, he saw that her cheeks were
wet. The sight made him desperate.
"Don't!" he cried, hoarsely. "Don't do that! Tell me what is expected
of me. Whatever it is, no matter how hard it is, or how long it takes,
I'll do it."
She did not reply, but she made a quick little gesture with the hand
nearest him. It signified hopelessness, almost despair. Darkness began
to fall, and an early moon hung pale in the heavens. Somewhere in the
thick bushes near them a nightingale began to sing. To Varick's excited
fancy there was a heart-breaking pathos in the soft notes. They seemed
to have been together, he and she, for a long time--for hours. He bent
his head till it touched hers.
"But you love me?" he asked. She moved a little and wiped her eyes with
an absurdly tiny, lace-edged square of linen. One corner, he noticed,
bore an embroidered coronet.
"Yes," she said, very quietly, "I love you."
Her tone as she spoke expressed such entire hopelessness that the full
sense of her words did not at once come to him. When it did, slowly,
sweetly, she was speaking again.
"But oh, dearest, dearest!" she broke out, "why do we love? To what can
love lead us--two poor shadows in a dream world, in which alone we can
meet?"
He was silent. There seemed, somehow, nothing that he could say, though
later he thought of many words with which he might have filled that
throbbing silence. The dusk deepened around them. Off in the thicket
the nightingale still warbled passionately, and now the stars began to
come out over their heads, pale as yet against the warm blue of the
heavens. Varick, sitting stiffly on the old marble bench, became
conscious of an odd dizziness, and set his teeth with a sudden
determination to show no evidence of it. She had risen and was moving
about among the rose-bushes just behind them. Almost before he missed
her she had returned, holding in her hand a beautiful salmon-hued rose,
with a flame-colored, crumply heart. He had never before seen one like
it. As she held it near him it exhaled an exquisitely reminiscent
perfume--a perfume which seemed to breathe of old joys, old memories,
and loves of long ago.
"Is it not beautiful?" she said. "It is called the _Toinnette_. Take
it, dear, and keep it--for memory." Then, as he took it from her, her
eyes widened in a sudden anguish of dread and comprehension.
"Oh, you're leaving me!" she said. "You're waking. Dearest, dearest,
stay with me!"
The words and the look that accompanied them galvanized him into sudden
action. He sprang to his feet, caught her in his arms, held her there,
crushed her there, kissing her eyes, her hair, her exquisitely soft
mouth.
"I will not leave you!" he raved. "I swear I won't! I defy the devil
that's back of this! I swear--" But she, too, was speaking now, and her
words came to his ears as from a long, long distance, sobbingly, with a
catch in the breath, but distinct.
"Alas!" she cried, "you have ruined everything! You have ruined
everything! You will never see me again. Dearest, dearest--"
He awoke. His heart was thumping to suffocation, and he lay exhausted
on his pillow. It was a dark morning, and a cold rain beat dismally
against the window-panes. Gone were the Dream Woman, the Italian
garden, the song of the nightingale, the perfume of flowers. How
definite that perfume had been! He could smell it yet, all around him.
It was like--what was it like? He became suddenly conscious of an
unusual sensation in his hand, lying on the bedspread. He glanced at it
and then sat up with a sudden jerk that almost threw him off his
balance. In his upturned palm was a rose--a salmon-colored rose,
slightly crushed, but fresh and fragrant, with a flame-colored, crumply
heart. Varick stared at it, shut his eyes, opened them, and stared
again. It was still there, and, with the discovery that it was, Varick
became conscious of a prickling of the scalp, a chill along the spine.
His brown face whitened.
"Well, by all the gods!" he gasped. "How did that thing get here?"
No one ever told him. Possibly no one could except the Dream Woman, and
her he never saw again; so the mystery was unfathomable. He put the
rose between the leaves of the Bible his mother had given him when he
went to college, and which he had not opened since until that morning;
and the rose became dry and faded as the years passed, quite as any
other rose would have done.
Varick paid a second and quite casual visit to his medical friend, who
scoffed at him rudely and urged him to go on a long hunting trip. He
went, and was singularly successful, and came back with considerable
big game and a rich, brown complexion. When the doctor asked him
whether he still awoke from his innocent slumbers to find his little
hands full of pretty flowers, Varick swore naturally and healthfully,
turned very red, and playfully thumped the medical man between the
shoulders with a force that sent that gentleman's eye-glasses off his
nose. But, notwithstanding all these reassuring incidents, Varick has
never married; and he remains deeply interested as to the source of
that rose. He would be very grateful to any one who could tell him
where the thing came from. The nearest he ever came to this was when a
man who knew a good deal about flowers once inspected the faded rose,
at Varick's request, and listened to the description of how it looked
when fresh.
"Why, yes," he said, "I know that variety. It grows in Italy, but I
don't think it's known here. They call it the _Toinnette!_"
II
THE EXORCISM OF LILY BELL
It is quite possible that not even Raymond Mortimer Prescott himself
could have told definitely the day or the hour when Lily Bell first
came into his life; and as Raymond Mortimer Prescott was not only the
sole person privileged to enjoy Miss Bell's society, but was also the
sole person who had been permitted to gaze upon her charms at all, it
would seem that inquiries directed elsewhere were destined to prove
fruitless. Raymond himself, moreover, was not communicative; he had the
reserve of an only child whose early efforts at conversation had been
discouraged by parents selfishly absorbed in "grown-up" interests, and
whose home was too remote from other country homes to attract playmates.
His mother was a nervous invalid, and almost in infancy Raymond had
grasped the fact that his absence seemed to be of more definite benefit
to her than any other remedy for neurasthenia. His father was a busy
man, absent from home for weeks at a time, and bearing this exile with
a jovial cheerfulness which did not always characterize his moods when
he deigned to join the family circle. Occasionally the elder Prescott
experienced a twinge of conscience when he looked at his son, ten years
of age now, the possessor of a superbly healthy body and presumably of
the social aspirations of growing Americans. In such moments of
illumination the father reflected uneasily that "the little beggar must
have a beastly lonesome time of it"; then, surveying the little
beggar's choice company of pets, gazing upon the dam he had built with
his own busy hands, inspecting approvingly his prowess in the
swimming-hole and with his fish-rods, even noting, in his conscientious
appraisal of his heir's assets, the self-assertive quality of the
freckles on his nose and the sunburn on the whole of his visage, this
perfunctory American parent easily decided that nothing need be changed
for another year or two. It was impossible even for a scrupulous
conscience to make a youthful martyr of Raymond Mortimer. Not the most
rabid New England brand could compass that, and certainly Raymond
Mortimer Prescott, Sr., had no such possession. The housekeeper, Miss
Greene, a former trained nurse who had charge of the boy in infancy,
looked after his clothes and his meals. Notwithstanding his steadfast
elusiveness, she had also succeeded in making him master of extremely
elementary knowledge of letters and figures. Beyond this he was
arrogantly ignorant, even to the point of being ignorant of his
ignorance. He had his dogs, his rods and tackle, his tool-house,
unlimited fresh air, sunshine, and perfect health; in addition he had
Lily Bell.
How long he may have enjoyed the pleasure of this young person's
company unobserved by his elders is a matter of surmise; it may well
have been a long time, for family curiosity never concerned itself with
Raymond Mortimer unless he was annoyingly obtrusive or disobedient. But
the first domestic records of her arrival, kept naturally enough by
Miss Greene, whose lonely spinster heart was the boy's domestic refuge,
went back to a day in June when he was five. He was in his nursery and
she in an adjoining room, the communicating door of which was open. She
had heard him in the nursery talking to himself, as she supposed, for a
long time. At last his voice took on a note of childish irritation, and
she distinctly heard his words.
"But it won't be right that way," he was saying, earnestly. "Don't you
see it won't be right that way? There won't be nothing to hold up the
top."
There was a long silence, in the midst of which Miss Greene stole
cautiously to the nursery door and looked in. The boy was on his knees
on the floor, an ambitious structure of blocks before him, which he had
evidently drawn back to contemplate. His eyes were turned from it,
however, and his head was bent a little to the left. He wore a look of
great attention and annoyance. He seemed to be listening to a prolonged
argument.
"All right," he said, at last. "I'll do it. But it ain't right, and
you'll be sorry when you see it fall." He hurriedly rearranged the
block structure, adding to the tremulously soaring tower on the left
side. True to his prediction, it fell with a crash, destroying other
parts of the edifice in its downfall. The boy turned on his unseen
companion a face in which triumph and disgust were equally blended.
"There, now!" he taunted; "didn't I tell you so, Lily Bell? But you
never will b'lieve what I say--jes like girls!"
Miss Greene hurriedly withdrew, lifting to the ceiling eyes of awed
surprise. For some reason which she was subsequently unable to explain,
she asked the boy no questions; but she watched him more closely after
this, and discovered that, however remote the date of Miss Bell's first
appearance, she was now firmly established as a daily guest--an honored
one whose influence, though mild, was almost boundless, and whose
gentle behests were usually unhesitatingly obeyed. Occasionally, as in
the instance of the blocks, Raymond Mortimer combated them; once or
twice he disobeyed them. But on the second of these occasions he
drooped mournfully through the day, bearing the look of one adrift in
the universe; and the observant Miss Greene noted that the following
day was a strenuous one, occupied with eager fulfilment of the
unexpressed wishes of Lily Bell, who had evidently returned to his
side. Again and again the child did things he most obviously would have
preferred not to do. The housekeeper looked on with deep but silent
interest until she heard him say, for perhaps the tenth time, "Well, I
don't like it, but I will if you really want me to." Then she spoke,
but so casually that the boy, absorbed in his play, felt nothing
unusual in the question.
"Whom are you talking to, Raymond?" she asked, as she rounded the heel
of the stocking she was knitting. He replied abstractedly, without
raising his eyes from the work he was doing.
"To Lily Bell," he said.
Miss Greene knitted in silence for a moment. Then, "Where is she?" she
asked.
"Why, she's here!" said the child. "Right beside me!"
Miss Greene hesitated and took the plunge. "I don't see her," she
remarked, still casually.
This time the boy raised his head and looked at her. There was in his
face the slight impatience of one who deals with an inferior
understanding.
"'Course you don't," he said, carelessly. "You can't. No one can't see
Lily Bell but 'cept me."
Miss Greene felt snubbed, but persevered.
"She doesn't seem to be playing very nicely to-day," she hazarded.
He gave her a worried look.
"She isn't," he conceded, "not very. 'Most always she's very, very
nice, but she's kind of cross to-day. I guess p'r'aps," he speculated,
frankly, "you're 'sturbing her by talking so much."
Miss Greene accepted the subtle hint and remained silent. From that
time, however, Raymond Mortimer counted on her acceptance of Lily Bell
as a recognized personality, and referred to her freely.
"Lily Bell wants us to go on a picnic to-morrow," he announced, one day
when he was six. "She says let's go on the island under the willow an'
have egg-san'wiches an' ginger-ale for lunch."
Miss Greene carried out the programme cheerfully, for the child made
singularly few requests. Thomas, the gardener, was to row them over,
and Miss Greene, a stout person who moved with difficulty, seated
herself in the stem of the boat with a sigh of relief, and drew Raymond
Mortimer down beside her. He wriggled out of her grasp and struggled to
his feet, his stout legs apart, his brown eyes determined.
"You can't sit there, please, Miss Greene," he said, almost austerely.
"Lily Bell wants to sit there with me. You can take the other seat."
For once the good-natured Miss Greene rebelled.
"I'll do no such thing," she announced, firmly, "flopping round and
upsetting the boat and perhaps drowning us all. You and your Lily Bell
can sit together in the middle and let me be."
An expression of hope flitted across the child's face. "Will that do,
Lily Bell?" he asked, eagerly. The reply was evidently unfavorable, for
his jaw fell and he flushed. "She says it won't," he announced,
miserably. "I'm awful sorry, Miss Greene, but we'll have to 'sturb you."
If Miss Lily Bell had been in the habit of making such demands, the
housekeeper would have continued to rebel. As it was, she had grave
doubts of the wisdom of establishing such a dangerous precedent as
compliance with the absurd request. But Raymond Mortimer's distress was
so genuine, and the pleasure of the picnic so obviously rested on her
surrender, that she made it, albeit slowly and with groans and dismal
predictions. The boy's face beamed as he thanked her.
"I was so 'fraid Lily Bell would be cross," he confided to her, as he
sat sedately on his half of the stern-seat. "But she's all right, an'
we're going to have a lovely time."
That prediction was justified by events, for the occasion was a
brilliant one, and Lily Bell's share in it so persistent and convincing
that at times Miss Greene actually found herself sharing in the
delusion of the little girl's presence. Her good-natured yielding in
the matter of the seat, moreover, had evidently commended her to Miss
Bell's good graces, and that young person brought out the choicest
assortment of her best manners to do honor to the grown-up guest.
"Lily Bell wants you to have this seat, Miss Greene, 'cause it's in the
shade an' has a nice back," said Raymond, delightedly, almost as soon
as they had reached the island; and Miss Greene flopped into it with a
sigh of content in the realization that Miss Bell did not intend to
usurp all the choice spots, as her persistence earlier in the day might
possibly have suggested to a suspicious mind. There, alternately
reading and dozing, she incidentally listened to the flow of
conversation poured forth by her small charge, varied only by
occasional offerings to her, usually suggested by Miss Bell and ranging
from the minnow he had succeeded in catching with a worm and a bent pin
to the choicest tidbits of the luncheon. There were two glasses for the
ginger-ale. Miss Greene had one and Lily Bell the other. Raymond
Mortimer gallantly drank from the bottle.
"Why don't you use Lily Bell's glass?" was Miss Greene's very natural
inquiry. It would seem, indeed, that two such congenial souls would
have welcomed the closer union this suggestion invited, but Raymond
Mortimer promptly dispelled that illusion.
"She doesn't want to," he responded, gloomily.
In other details, however, Miss Lily Bell was of an engaging sweetness
and of a yielding disposition of the utmost correctness. Again and
again Raymond Mortimer succeeded in convincing her, by the force and
eloquence of his arguments, of the superiority of his ideas on fort
building, fishing, and other occupations which filled the day. Miss
Greene's heart yearned over the boy as he came to her during the
mid-day heat and cuddled down comfortably by her side, heavy-eyed and
tired after his exertions.
"Where's Lily Bell?" she asked, brushing his damp hair off his forehead
and wondering whether she was also privileged to enjoy the unseen
presence of the guest of honor.
"She's back there under the tree takin' a nap," murmured the boy,
drowsily, indicating the exact spot with a grimy little hand. "She tol'
me to come an' stay with you for a while."
Miss Greene smiled, deeply touched by this sweet mingling of coyness
and thoughtfulness on the maiden's part.
"What does Lily Bell call you?" she asked, with interest. The boy
snuggled down on the grass beside her and rested his head comfortably
in her lap.
"She knows my name's Raymond Mortimer," he said, sleepily, "but she
calls me 'Bill' for short." Then, more sleepily, "I asked her to," he
added. In another moment his eyelids had dropped and he too was in the
Land of Nod, whither Lily Bell had happily preceded him.
During the next four years Miss Greene was privileged to spend many
days in the society of Miss Lily Bell, and the acquaintance between
them ripened into a pleasant friendship. To her great satisfaction she
found Miss Bell's name one to conjure with in those moments of friction
which are unavoidable in the relations of old and young.
"I don't think Lily Bell would like that," she began to say,
tentatively, when differences of opinion as to his conduct came up
between Raymond and herself. "I think _she_ likes a gentlemanly boy."
Unless her young charge was in a very obstinate mood the reminder
usually prevailed, and it was of immense value in overcoming the early
prejudice of the small boy against soap and water.
"Isn't Lily Bell clean?" she had inquired one day when he was eight and
the necessity of the daily tubbing was again being emphasized to him.
Raymond conceded that she was.
"When she first comes she is," he added. "'Course she gets dirty when
we play. Why, sometimes she gets awful dirty!"
The excellent and wise woman saw her opportunity, and promptly grasped
it.
"Ah," she exclaimed, "that's the point. I want you to start out clean
and to go to bed clean. If you'll promise me to take a tub before you
dress in the morning, and another before you go to bed at night, I
don't care how dirty you get in the mean time."
This happy compromise effected, she was moved to ask more particularly
how Miss Lily Bell looked. She recalled now that she had never heard
her described. Raymond Mortimer, she discovered, was no better than the
rest of his sex when it came to a description of feminine features and
apparel, but on two points his testimony was absolute. Lily Bell had
curls and she wore pantalettes. The last word was not in his
vocabulary, and it was some time before he succeeded in conveying the
correct impression to Miss Greene's mind.
"Don't you remember the little girls in mamma's old Godey books?" he
asked, at last, very anxiously, seeing that his early imperfect
description had led to an apparent oscillation of Miss Greene's
imagination between the paper ruffle of a lamb-chop and a frilly
sunbonnet. "They have slippers an' 'lastic bands an' scallopy funnels
coming down under their skirts. Well"--this with a long-drawn sigh of
relief as she beamed into acquiescence--"that's how Lily Bell looks!"
Long before this the family had accepted Lily Bell as a part of the
domestic circle, finding her a fairly trustworthy and convenient
playmate for the boy. Not always, of course; for it was very
inconvenient to leave a vacant seat beside Raymond Mortimer when they
went driving, but this had to be done or Raymond stayed at home rather
than desert his cherished Lily. It was long before his father forgot
the noble rebuke administered by his son on one occasion when the elder
Prescott, thoughtlessly ignoring the presence of Miss Bell, sought to
terminate the argument by sitting down by the boy's side. The shrieks
of that youth, usually so self-contained, rent the ambient air.
"Father, _father!_" he howled, literally dancing up and down in his
anguish, "you're sitting on Lily Bell!" Then, at the height of the
uproar, he stopped short, an expression of overwhelming relief covering
his face. "Oh no, you ain't, either," he cried, ecstatically. "She
jumped out. But she won't go now, so neither will I"; and he promptly
joined his imaginary playmate in the road. Pausing there, he gave his
abashed parent a glance of indescribable reproach and a helpful hint on
etiquette.
"Don't you know," he asked, stonily, "that gentlemen don't _never_ sit
on ladies?" Striding gloomily back to the house, presumably close by
the side of the outraged maiden, he left his convulsed parent to
survive as best he could the deprivation of their presence. This Mr.
Prescott did with reluctance. He was beginning to find the society of
his son and Lily Bell both interesting and exhilarating. He showed, in
fact, a surprising understanding of and sympathy with "the
love-affair," as he called it. "The poor little beggar had to have
something," he said, indulgently, "and an imaginary play-mate is as
safe as anything I know." Therefore he referred to Miss Bell
respectfully in conversation with his son, and, save on the tragic
occasion just chronicled, treated her with distinguished consideration.
His wife's acceptance of the situation was less felicitous. Mrs.
Prescott, whose utter lack of a sense of humor had long saddened her
domestic circle, suddenly felt the birth of one now that was even more
saddening, and the cause of it was Lily Bell. She referred to that
young person wholly without respect, and was convulsed by foolish
laughter when her son soberly replied. The boy resented this
attitude--first sullenly, then fiercely.
"She acts as if there _wasn't_ really any Lily Bell," he confided to
his father, in a moment of such emotion. "I don't think that's nice or
p'lite, an' it hurts Lily Bell's feelings."
"That's bad," said the father, soberly. "We mustn't have that. I'll
speak to your mother."
He did subsequently, and to such good effect that the expression of
Mrs. Prescott's amusement was temporarily checked. But Raymond
Mortimer's confidence was temporarily blighted, and he kept his little
friend and his mother as far apart as possible. Rarely after that did
Lily Bell seek the invalid's room with the boy, though she frequently
accompanied him to his father's library when that gentleman was home
and, presumably, listened with awe to their inspiring conversation. Mr.
Prescott had begun to talk to his boy "as man to man," as he once put
it, and the phrase had so delighted the boy, now ten, that his father
freely gave him the innocent gratification of listening to it often.
Moreover, it helped in certain conversations where questions of morals
came up. As the small son of an irate father, Raymond Mortimer might
not have been much impressed by the parental theory that watermelons
must not be stolen from the patches of their only neighbor, a crusty
old bachelor. As a man of the world, however, listening to the views of
one wiser and more experienced, he was made to see that helping one's
self to the melons of another is really not the sort of thing a decent
chap can do. Lily Bell, too, held the elder man's opinion.
"She says she doesn't like it, either," the boy confided to his father
with an admiring sigh. "She never would go with me, you know.
My!"--this with a heavier sigh--"I'm 'fraid if I do all the things you
an' Lily Bell want me to I'll be awful good!"
His father sought to reassure him on this point, but he himself was
beginning to cherish a lurking fear of a different character. Was
longer continuance of this dream companionship really wise? So far, if
it had influenced the boy at all, it had been for good. But he was
growing older; he was almost eleven. Was it not time that this
imaginary child friend should be eliminated in favor of--of what? The
father's mind came up against the question and recoiled, blankly. Not
exercise, not outdoor pursuits, not pets, for Raymond Mortimer had all
these and more. His little girl friend had not made him a milksop. He
was an active, energetic, live, healthy-minded boy, with all a boy's
normal interests. When he built kennels for his dogs and made hutches
for his rabbits, Lily Bell stood by, it is true, but her friendly
supervision but added to the vigor and excellence of his work. Indeed,
Lily, despite her pantalettes, seemed to have a sporty vein in her.
Still, the father reflected uneasily, it could lead to no good--this
continued abnormal development of the imagination. For Lily Bell was as
real to the boy at ten as she had been at six.
What could be done? With what entering wedge could one begin to
dislodge this persistent presence? If one sent the boy away, Lily Bell,
of course, would go, too. If one brought--if--one--brought--