Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Mary Meehan and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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_The_ PORTAL OF DREAMS
by CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK
_Author of_ "THE KEY TO YESTERDAY" "THE LIGHTED MATCH" etc.
_Illustrated by_ FRANK SNAPP
NEW YORK
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1912
_Published September_
[Illustration: "Sit down!" he thundered.]
CONTENTS
I. A VISION UPON A WARNING
II. PURSUING A WILL-O'-THE-WISP
III. I EMBARK ON A FOOL'S ERRAND
IV. SOME PASSAGES FROM A DIARY
V. PREMONITIONS BECOME REALITIES
VI. THE END OF THE "WASTREL"
VII. IN STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES
VIII. NATURE INDULGES IN SATIRE
IX. A PORTRAIT AND A TEMPLE
X. I SEEK ORCHIDS
XI. I FIND MYSELF A DEMI-GOD
XII. PORT AND STARBOARD LIGHTS
XIII. ENTER THE INFANTRYMAN
XIV. THE "ASH-TRASH LADY"
XV. TWO DISCOVERIES
XVI. AN INTERVIEW AND A CRISIS
XVII. WE GO TO THE MOUNTAINS
XVIII. A CHAT WITH A DICTATOR
XIX. A VOLLEY FROM THE LAUREL
XX. A CAVALCADE FROM THE LAUREL
XXI. I GO WALKING AND MEET ENEMIES
XXII. I FAIL TO RETURN HOME
XXIII. THE OFFER OF PAROLE
XXIV. MY DAY IN COURT
XXV. BEING LAUGHED AT
List of Illustrations
"Sit down!" he thundered.
A young woman was sitting before a counter, with her back to the street,
trying on gloves.
"Frances! Frances! Frances!" I declaimed with the deep profundity of a
ritual.
"You are a great traveler, aren't you, Mr. Deprayne?" she suggested when
the silence had begun to be oppressive.
THE PORTAL OF DREAMS
CHAPTER I
A VISION UPON A WARNING
The doctor was so small and frail that his narrow face was rescued from
inconsequence only by a trimly cropped Van-Dyck with a dignified
sprinkling of gray. I always felt that, should I ever see him in a
bathing suit, I would have to seek a new physician. I could never again
think of him as sufficiently grown-up to practise an adult vocation. Yet
when the doctor spoke his mentality issued out of its small habitation
of flesh and expanded to commanding proportion.
The little doctor was in fine a very great doctor, and on this occasion
he was bullying me with the large authority of a Bonaparte.
"But, Doctor--" I began protestingly.
He raised a small hand which suggested the claw of a delicate bird and
fixed me with quizzical eyes that had the faculty of biting sharply
through a man's unspoken thoughts.
"Don't assume to say 'but' to me," he sternly enjoined; and since we had
long known each other, not only as physician and patient, but also as
men who breakfasted at the same hour and the same club table, I
momentarily heeded.
"Once upon a time," he continued, "the German Kaiser presumed to
question a pilot on his imperial yacht. Do you recall the result?"
"No," said I, "I don't, but----"
Again the doctor eyed me, basilisk fashion, across the bacon and eggs of
our belated morning meal, as he continued:
"He very properly reminded the Emperor that upon a vessel in the high
seas, a pilot acknowledges no superior this side of Eternity. In matters
of health I take the bridge. You obey."
"But--" I weakly insisted.
"You presume to think because you house your nerves in a well-muscled
body that they are infallible," he implacably continued. "I've seen
rotten motors in excellent garages. I've seen unhappy wives immured in
palaces, and I've seen finer figures of men than you in lunatic
asylums."
"My nerves are simply of the high-strung type," I argued.
"Those are the kind that snap," retorted the sage. "If you were a
racehorse, it might be a matter of reasonable pride to you to be bred in
the purple. Being a man with no avocation except the spending of
unearned money, it means that you are perilously over-sensitized."
"What unpleasant pedantry are you leading up to?" I demanded. "Out with
it."
"I mean to. You have the artistic temperament which, without genius, is
worse than useless. You choose to regard yourself a failure and grow
morose because you have found the law uncongenial and because editors
earn their salaries by returning your manuscripts. The durability of
your nervous system depends entirely on how you utilize the next five
years."
"Go on," I encouraged him, "don't mind me. Sentence me to death if it
amuses you."
"It won't be death, but unless you fortify those nerves," he calmly went
on, "there probably will be disaster. It may take any one of several
forms."
"As, for instance?" I inquired, with pardonable curiosity.
"Oh, arterio-sclerosis, paralysis, insanity, something of that sort."
"Thank you kindly," I murmured, as I reached for the matches. "Can I
have my choice of the lot?"
"However," went on the big little doctor, "if you devote the next few
years to a program of diversified travel, you ought to lay up an account
of nerve-strength upon which you can draw _ad lib._ for forty or fifty
years to come. You should even have a surplus against the unfortunate
exigency of living on when you are old and useless."
"But I have traveled," I argued. "I've been to----"
He interrupted me with a snort, and swept my declarations aside,
unfinished.
"You have dabbled at travel, like a school-girl nibbles at chocolates.
Get out on the hike and stay out for a year or two. Build into your
artificial self something of the out-door animal. You have a fair
start--you were once an athlete." He rose to go down to his motor, and I
shouted after him contemptuous and profane criticism. Nevertheless
within the week I booked passage for the Mediterranean.
I found once more that Europe and the African fringe of the land-locked
sea have to offer to the hunger of the wanderlust only a stereotyped
table-d'hote. Shortly it cloys. Within several weeks one thing only had
promised to break the stagnant surface with a riffle of interest. And
that one thing puzzled me in no small degree, since it was not such a
matter as would ordinarily have challenged my attention. I have passed
with a glance many beautiful women, and felt no need to turn my head for
a further inspection. I am not of the cavaliering type, and yet here I
was finding myself interested, in a strange and indefinable way, in a
woman whose face I had not seen, and whose name I did not know. That, I
told myself, was the secret of it. It was exactly because she was
elusive, mysterious in fashion, that I found my flat interest piqued. I
never had more than the swish of her skirt or a glimpse of her
retreating figure, until it came about that sheer inquisitiveness gave
her an augmented importance. At all events, she had eluded me over
southern Europe from Genoa to Constantinople, and thence into Egypt, and
I wanted to see her face. It was at Naples that I had my first hasty and
imperfect view of her. I was hurrying through the Galeria Umberto, on my
way to a luncheon appointment for which I found myself late. As I passed
Merola's a young woman was sitting before a counter, with her back to
the street, trying on gloves. I could appreciate the gypsy grace of her
figure, which was slender, because one of the avocations into which I
have essayed without distinction is painting. The single thing at which
I have not failed, except the success of having selected parents who
bequeathed me money, is an appreciation of the beautiful. That
appreciation, despite my hurry, brought me to a stop for a full glance
at her; but there was no mirror at any part of the shop which gave me a
reflection of her averted face, and as my appointment was imperative, I
refrained from going in to buy gloves. But there was something so
exquisite in her bearing, and in the tasteful lines of her simple
traveling gown, that I caught myself thinking of her. Then as I went
down to the quay a day later to say farewell to some friends, just as
the gangplank of an outgoing steamer was about to be drawn up, I saw her
hurrying across it. Her face was still averted. I strained to catch a
feature, but a wayward gust of bay breeze wrapped a filmy veil about the
profile which was for a moment turned my way--and hid it. She did not
house at the deck rail but disappeared as the gangplank came up and cut
off pursuit. But I had added to my first impression the knowledge that
she did not merely walk. She soared as though her feet were the sandals
of Hermes, and she carried herself with the splendid grace of a slender
young queen.
[Illustration: A young woman was sitting before a counter, with her back
to the street, trying on gloves.]
The luncheon appointment, which had thwarted my impulse to turn into the
glove shop, and so end the mystery in its incipiency, brought a long
trail of complications and caused me to envy those fortunate men who are
not handicapped by the possession of relatives. I have sometimes thought
that the truly ideal existence would be to be born an orphan unhampered
by cousins, aunts or any of those human beings who are privileged to
make demands upon our times and thoughts.
From the moment when I watched the skyline of New York sink slowly
behind the horizon until I reached Naples I had at least been a free
agent. But hardly had I signed my guest card at Parker's Hotel and
strolled out to hail a crazy Neapolitan hack when the angular and
purposeful figure of my Aunt Sarah loomed up in the near foreground
and--saving her grace--eclipsed the picturesqueness of the town and the
distant cone of Vesuvius. I had known vaguely that this estimable lady
was beating her way about Europe, guide-booked and grimly set upon
self-improvement, but I had hoped to keep the area of two or three
monarchies between us.
I knew that from one to the other of the Cook's Agencies she would be
flitting with the same frantic energy that characterizes the industry of
the ant. That I should myself pass within hailing distance of her party
or be recruited in her peregrinations was a disaster which I had not
anticipated. None the less the blow had fallen and I had walked unwarned
into the ambuscade of her fond embrace. Aunt Sarah would now converse
voluminously of cathedrals and old masters, and all the things upon
which tourists are fed to a point of acute mental dyspepsia.
She had ordered me to luncheon with much the same finality as that with
which royalty commands the attendance of guests at court. I had gone
meekly though doing so involved passing Merola's and opened up a series
of events which were destined to alter for the worse my immediate
future. But the luncheon had been only the beginning, and greater
misfortunes were to follow in due order.
I have never since been able to understand precisely what form of
paresis seized upon me, and paralyzed my normally efficient power of
lying, when she instructed me to attach myself to her party for a motor
trip to Villefranche and Nice. I do know that no available mendacity
occurred to my shocked brain and I found myself murmuring an acceptance.
The acceptance was again meek and spineless. I had discovered at
luncheon that Aunt Sarah, with that motherly obsession which appears to
characterize many maiden ladies of fifty and beyond, had under wing a
party of three young ladies who were capping off their educations with
the post graduate "advantages" of the grand tour. That these young
ladies possessed all the homely virtues, I have not the slightest doubt.
Their faces and figures attested the homeliness and their virtue was
such that they seemed always wondering whether their halos were on
straight. Theirs was an insatiate greed for intellectual feeding. They
browsed through their Baedeckers with a seeming terror lest something
erudite escape them. They pursued and captured and assimilated every
fleeting fact which might improve their minds. Until my captivity they
had no man with their party. That was probably because Aunt Sarah had
made the strategic mistake of permitting all those, whom she might
otherwise have annexed, to see her girls. She should have enlisted her
male escort first and held back the introductions until desertion was
impracticable. At all events, I had, like the imbecile I was, "fallen
for it," and surrendered my liberty. When the boat bearing the unknown
divinity set sail I was merely a satellite of Aunt Sarah's constellation
and no longer a free agent.
Because I happened to be, in a superficial way, familiar with the
tourist-tramped sections of the Continent, I became a sort of gentleman
courier, without recompense, and because I had once undertaken to be a
painter, I was expected to give extemporaneous lectures on the art
treasury of the museums. We walked several thousand miles, or maybe it
was millions, over those peculiarly hard floors which make art galleries
penitential institutions. I saw the three plain faces in every phase of
soulful rapture that can be elicited by the labors of the masters, from
Michelangelo to Murillo.
When this had gone on for several centuries, or maybe it was aeons, I
discovered that every art gallery has two or three truly interesting
features, though the full enjoyment of these was denied me. I speak of
the exits. Perhaps to the unintimidated mind of the outsider it may
appear that whatever agonies I underwent were the deserved result of my
own abjectness. It is easy to say that I might have pleaded other plans
and gone on my way enfranchised. To such a critic my only and sufficient
reply is that he or she does not know my Aunt Sarah. My Aunt Sarah says
to whomsoever she chooseth, "Go," and he goeth; "Come," and he cometh.
She knew perfectly well that I had no other plans. She correctly assumed
me to be a derelict floating without purpose and with my chart lost
over-side. She virtuously resolved that for once I should be made of
use, in assisting to improve the minds of the three plain young ladies.
Lying would have been quite futile. Consequently she said, "Come," and I
came. When I learned that we were to make the tour to the Riviera towns
by motor, I welcomed the suggestion as a less evil than cathedrals and
art galleries. At least we should be out of doors and in the
exhilaration of rapid motion one might hope to forget the three young
ladies at brief and blessed intervals. One could not at the same time
think of the culture-pursuing trio and anything rapid.
It has been my curse in life that I have dabbled at so many things that
I can be made of smattering use in almost any circumstance. Our
chauffeur discovered this three and one-half minutes after the
occurrence of our first blow-out, when Aunt Sarah, taking pity upon his
sweating and dust-grimed brow, told me off to help him patch the
puncture. After that it was impossible to feign ignorance as to the
interior workings and deviltries of motor cars.
The Upper Corniche Road is perhaps the most charming driveway of the
world--and I say this with due reverence to Amalfi. By a road as white
as a fresh tablecloth and as smooth as a bowling alley one speeds to the
purring of his motor along the way thrown up for the tramping feet of
Bonaparte's battalions. From a commanding height the traveler looks
down, as from the roof of the world, with close kinship of peaks and
clouds, upon a panorama a-riot with breadth and depth and color.
Fascinating road-houses of stucco walls curtained behind a profusion of
clambering roses tempt one to pause and take his ease to the tinkle of
guitars and mandolins. But Aunt Sarah and the girls, ever bent upon
reaching the next cathedral with a stained glass window or the next
dingy canvas of a saint sitting on a cloud, were scarcely amenable to
the lure of road-house temptation.
They seemed to regard Europe as a transitory effect which might fade
like the glories of sunset before they had finished seeing it, and
anything savoring of the dilatory aroused their suspicion.
Far below us lay the outspread Mediterranean, blue beyond description
and upon her placid bosom sailboats shrunk to the size of swallows and
yachts seemed no larger than nursery toys.
One gracious afternoon, while I was occupying the front seat beside the
driver, I almost attained a state of contentment. I was pretending that
I had forgotten all about the human freight in the tonneau. My eyes were
drinking in the smiling beauty framed by the wide horizon, when suddenly
the droning of the motors fell quiet and with no warrantable reason the
automobile slid to a halt and declined to proceed farther.