MAGGIE TELLS WHAT BEFEL HER
I think I came to the rescue, but I was so flurried, so completely
driven out of myself, that ordered recollection begins only in the
middle of the blather which usually serves as conversational counters
at such meetings. I made myself known to Mrs. Hutchinson, and she,
worthy soul, much perplexed by certain mysterious incidents soon to be
made clear (after a fashion), extricated us from a difficult situation
by the true motherliness of her surprise and admiration at finding Karl
grown to be a bigger man than his father.
She was a Scotswoman, and she delighted in proclaiming the fact. Thus,
although a lady of good birth and refined manners, she did not disdain
to use the homely phrases of “her ain people” when they expressed
her thoughts better than the polished slang which passes current for
English in society nowadays.
“Eh, but it’s a cure for sair e’en to see you, honey,” she cried, when
she had assured herself that this six-footer was really the young Grier
whom she had heard so much about of late. (This cryptic remark will
explain itself presently.) “I was sure my letter to your mother would
bring you quickly to us if you were not abroad. Did she telegraph to
you? I suppose she could not have written in the time. And how kind it
is of you to hurry up to London in time to receive us! Did you say you
came from Oxford? Well, from what I have heard of young gentlemen at
the ’Varsity, they seldom object to an urgent call that brings them to
London.”
Now that sort of rattling talk is admirably calculated to dissipate
metapsychic puzzles into thin air. I was exceedingly grateful to Mrs.
Hutchinson. From that moment dated my lasting admiration for her dear,
outspoken, open-hearted qualities. Excellent soul! She was trustworthy
as oak, and quite as dense to anything beyond the circle of her
comprehension.
The two young boobies gazing so pathetically at each other were enabled
in the interim to recover their speech and their every-day faculties.
Karl’s eyes kindled with a friendly interest which threatened
developments, and Maggie gazed at him with a smiling, fawn-like
wistfulness calculated to drive any heart-whole and well-regulated
young man frantic in five minutes by the clock.
It was my first actual, if vicarious, acquaintance with that pleasant
malady known as love at first sight, and, judging by the symptoms of
this well-matched pair, the disease is one which, like measles in
childhood, is calculated to do the cynic good.
I suppose it is my duty, right here, as Hooper would say, to describe
Maggie Hutchinson. I would prefer to give a definition of the
differential calculus--one can hunt up these things so readily in
any work of reference--but to what encyclopedia can a man turn when
he wishes to limn in mere words the elusive charms of a beautiful,
well-educated girl, in whom a delightful femininity is blended with the
rare artistic temperament--blended, too, with the deftness of a skilled
gardener who grafts one lovely and sweet-scented plant on another? If
the human soul were ever visible to our mortal senses it must most
nearly attain tangible form in fragrant young womanhood. Every artist
who seeks inspiration in nature, every poet who writes a stanza to
Spring or the Dawn, knows that this is so. And that is why it is not
good for mankind that woman should, by training or environment, weaken
the God-given maternal instinct which is the golden halo of the Madonna.
Some such thought came to me when I first set eyes on Maggie
Hutchinson. She realized an ideal and that is saying much. Not that
she was so strikingly handsome that men must stare and women sniff
merely because she passed, nor that her pose of head and general
shapeliness would have enraptured a Greek sculptor. No, I am compelled
to state that by the generality of critics Maggie would only be placed
among the nondescript “good-looking” section of young ladies, and she
might, or might not, be molded like the Capuan Venus for all that her
orthodox “tailor-built” (that is the right description, I believe)
traveling costume revealed.
But the peculiar circumstances under which I met her, and the rapt
spirituality of that look which she flashed at Karl through the
gathering tears, added a spice of romance to an otherwise colorless
incident. The musician who extracts a thousand tumultuous words out
of a single _lied ohne wörte_ can best understand the emotional flood
of thought which conveys a whole volume of meaning. For an instant I
experienced some glimmering perception of Karl’s sixth sense. I fancied
I actually felt the physical and psychic influence of that “magnetic
personality” which we all of us talk about but seldom endeavor to
explain.
And then “Miss Hutchinson” told me that she was not tired, “not the
least little bit”; that mother and she had “dined on the train”;
that it was, indeed, most kind on my part to have secured a private
sitting-room for the joint and several use of our party and our
party’s friends. So you see, the first impression fled quickly
enough, leaving behind it a glowing streak of recollection like unto
the half-remembered track of a shooting star. But, thank Heaven,
in Maggie’s case it was renewed and developed and perfected until,
whether under the spell of her unwavering friendship or thrilled to
ecstasy by the inarticulate rapture which, at times, she drew from the
infinite storehouse of the violin, in order to please those near and
dear to her, I can say candidly that she was the goddess of one small
circle, its Athéne and Euterpe rolled into one. Nor was it long before
my wife claimed her as her greatest friend. That last saving clause
is necessary. This is not _my_ love story, but, as the astute reader
must have perceived long since, Maggie’s and Karl’s. Yet I shall be
exceedingly surprised--almost as greatly taken aback as I was by the
discoveries of the next hour--if the said reader, though an expert
dissector of love stories, from the long-drawn-out wooing of Rachel
by Jacob, down to the _motif_ of the very latest _crime passionel_ in
Paris, shall have guessed already the reason why Maggie wept when first
she met Karl in the vestibule of the Pall Mall Hotel.
Apparently, we have all been standing there an unconscionably long
time. Really, we have done nothing of the sort, for I am quite adept
in bringing about the right combination of luggage porters, lift
attendants, chambermaids and waiters, to secure the best and quickest
results in making people at home in a modern big hotel.
“I am so glad to be off the steamer,” sighed Mrs. Hutchinson,
gratefully, as she sank into a spacious chair in our sitting-room.
“Walking along the corridor just now, I caught myself wondering why the
other folk using it did not lean over at absurd angles. Even yet the
carpet seems to heave gently each half-minute.”
That was just the sort of remark calculated to place us at our ease. We
chatted freely while the ladies drank a little champagne and nibbled a
biscuit; I sampled the hotel whisky, and smoked, together with Karl, at
the earnest request of our fair companions.
Karl, by the way, did not know the taste of alcohol, or of any
intoxicant. The wisdom of the gods kept him free from that obsession.
Goodness only knows what would have happened if the man with a
superhuman sense (which it was, according to our present lights)
yielded to drink!
Hence, when Mrs. Hutchinson, beginning at the end of the story, told
us that she wrote to Mrs. Grier from Queenstown, and a computation of
hours revealed that the mystery of the telegram was no mystery at all,
the way was paved by growing familiarity to permit the conversation
to wander off into less well-defined paths. For the good lady made no
secret of the _raison d’être_ of her letter.
“Maggie had a dream, or a vision--something akin to what my old
Highland nurse used to call _taichitaraugh_, a Gaelic mouthful meaning
‘shadow-sight.’ It was so realistic that it nearly made her ill, and
she startled me considerably, when she confided it to me, which was not
until twenty-four hours later.”
Mrs. Hutchinson, of course, could not guess what a spark on tinder was
one of those time-worn words in Karl’s ears. I glanced at him to see
if the winged barb had struck home, but I was not long in discerning
that Maggie’s presence occupied his ordinary senses quite sufficiently
to keep his telegnomic sense dormant. It might, indeed, stimulate and
intensify the others, but no man would use a telephone or an opera
glass to hear or see his best girl when she was seated in the same room
as himself, would he? Science can do a lot for us, but I will back Dame
Nature’s idea of a magnet in the shape of a pretty woman against any
wizard device of the latter-day alchemist.
Then the mother, at Maggie’s request, essayed to give us the history
of an afternoon dream on board the good ship _Merlin_. The day was
Sunday, and the weather had been bad. The ship was traversing that
choppy belt of the Atlantic which makes the day of rest so particularly
unrestful in the majority of vessels sailing from New York or Liverpool
on a Wednesday. Indeed, the “White Star Sunday” is an ocean proverb.
“Neither of us felt equal to taking luncheon in the saloon,” said she,
“so a deck-steward brought us some tempting dishes. The sea subsided
rapidly under the change of wind, and we were comfortable enough after
our meal. I fell into a slight doze. Maggie says she did not.”
“No, mother, I am sure I was awake, because I was running over in
my mind Almaviva’s song, ‘Ecco ridente il cielo,’ with the guitar
accompaniment for the violins,” interrupted Maggie.
Then why, my dear young lady, should your cheeks flutter _now_ between
white and pink, like a Marie Vornhoot rose, beneath the most attractive
and healthy brown with which sun and sea have decorated you? And why,
with even greater emphasis, should you have been warbling to yourself
_then_ the love-sick outpourings of the Seville gallant to his Rosina?
I thought those old operas were, if not dead, for they are immortal,
at least buried alive beneath a mound of Gaiety muslin and the striped
cotton habiliments of many musical comedy coons.
“Girls get such whimsies in their heads that they often do not know
what they are thinking about,” replied practical Mrs. Hutchinson. “Yet
there can be no doubt, my dear, that something extraordinary did occur.”
“When I woke up,” she continued, addressing Karl and me, “I found
Maggie crying softly to herself. Naturally I was alarmed, and when she
did not answer I caught her arm. Then she appeared to recover her wits,
but she frightened me even more thoroughly by murmuring something about
the utter bliss--”
“Mother!” broke in the girl, evidently nerving herself for an ordeal,
though her face was aflame, “let me describe what happened.”
“Well, well!” said Mrs. Hutchinson, “tell it your own way. I admit I
never got the hang of it to rights.”
It was impossible to watch both Karl’s face and Maggie’s, so I devoted
myself to an intent study of the subtle emotions which sent their
undecipherable shadows across the girl’s eyes. But the woman does not
breathe, or is not worthy of breath, who cannot be an actress when
the great crises of existence throb across life’s stage. Indeed, she
controlled her expression and chose her words so well that she soon led
my rambling fancy back to the sufficiently bewildering climax of her
own adventure.
“Mother has left out what you might call a predisposing influence,” she
said, smiling, and she spoke to me, not to Karl. “Have you ever heard
of the agonic line?”
“Has it anything to do with the ‘Personal’ column in the _Times_?” was
my banal reply.
“No!” It was Karl who answered, and there was a timbre in his voice
I had not heard before. It silenced Maggie for the moment. Perhaps
it suggested a chord drawn with nerve-thrilling effect from her own
beloved violin. Anyhow, he took up the parable.
“An agonic line is an irregular line, running generally north and
south, which marks those parts of the earth’s surface where the
magnetic needle points to the true north. There are three of them, and
they are slowly changing their positions,” he said.
“Thank you! I could not have explained it so clearly,” smiled Maggie,
though she persistently averted her eyes. “Well, during the morning,
the Chief Officer had been telling me things about the deviation of the
compass, the importance of the agonic lines, the magnetic vagaries of
some parts of the globe, and the great value to sailors of a recent
discovery that at a certain point in front of the foremast the compass
ceases to be affected by the polarization which is set up in all iron
ships.”
Ting! Some tiny nerve-bell jingled in my head. Polarization! Karl and
I exchanged looks. We had rapidly made the same calculation. Allowing
for difference of sun-time, Miss Margaret’s disturbing dream-vision,
whatever it disclosed, must have been exactly contemporaneous with
Karl’s poker-juggling in the Mitre Hotel.
“_Now_ what is it?” demanded Mrs. Hutchinson, whose shrewd Scottish
eyes were quick to detect the secret telegraphy between the others,
for Maggie flushed most charmingly again, and we three established a
circuit of intelligence. “Why do you all gowp like that? You make my
flesh creep. The next thing you will be telling me is that there are
ghosts in the room!”