misquoted a tall, thin personage with an elongated face and sepulchral
voice. “The gods made you poetical, Mr. Cassidy. Do you find your gift
of sentiment of use on the force?”
“Yes, sir,” shouted Cassidy, inadvertently touched on one of innumerable
hobbies and beginning to pound one hand excitedly with the fist of the
other. “In fine cases, sir, the ordinary detective slips up on just that
point. Now let me tell you, Mr. Mavering--”
“Tell me whether that is not Mignon's 'mari.' What sort of a man is he?”
“Mignon's what? Oh--Manager Scott. He isn't married, further than that
he's liable to rows on account of Mignon, who--has a face to upset
things as you justly observe, not to speak of a disposition according.
At least, I don't know but what they may be married. If they are,
they're liable to perpetuate more rows than anything else.”
“'Does something smack, something grow to, has a kind of taste?”'
“Eh?” said Cassidy, inquiringly.
Sanderson, standing silently by, as silently turned and walked toward
the crowd drifting back and forth in front of the stables. Portly Judge
Carter of Gilead, beaming through gold-rimmed glasses, side-whiskered
and rubicund, stopped him to remark tremendously that he had issued an
injunction against the stallion going out of the state. “A matter of
local patriotism, Joe, eh?”
“Hear, hear,” commented the Honorable Gerald Map. A crowd began to
gather anticipating a conference of notables. Sanderson extricated
himself and walked on, and two small boys eventually smacked each
other over the question whether Judge Carter was as great a man as Mr.
Sanderson.
Mavering's eyes followed him speculatively.
“What's the particular combination that troubles the manager's rest?”
“Eh?” said Cassidy. “Oh, I don't know. Bob Sutton mostly. He's here
somewhere. Swell young fellow in a plush vest, fashionable proprietor of
thread mills.”
The yellow, dusty road ran between the stables and a battle line of
sycamores and maples. Over the stables loomed the brick wall of the
theatre, and at the end of them a small green door for the private use
of exhibitors gave exit from the Fair Grounds. Sanderson stopped near a
group opposite it, where Mignon stood slapping her riding-boot with her
whip.
“Mr. Sanderson,” said Mignon, liquidly, “how can I get out through that
door?”
Sanderson considered and suggested opening it.
“But it's locked! Ciel! It's locked!”
Sanderson considered again. “Here's a key,” he said hopefully.
“There!” shouted the plush vest. “I knew there'd be some solution. You
see, mademoiselle, what Ave admire in Sanderson is his readiness of
resource. Mademoiselle refused to melt down the fence with a smile or
climb over it on a high C, and we were quite in despair.”
Outside the gate, in the paved courtyard between the theatre and the
hotel, Mignon lifted her big brown eyes which said so many things,
according to Cassidy, that were not so, and observed demurely, “If you
were to leave me that key, Mr. Sanderson, well, I should steal in here
after the performance tonight and ride away on the little red mare,
certainly.”
Sanderson gravely held out the key, but Mignon drew back in sudden alarm
and clasped her hands tragically.
“Oh, no! You would be on guard and, what! cut up? Yes. Ah, dreadfully!
You are so wise, Mr. Sanderson, and secret.”
And Jack Mavering, following slowly after, chuckled sepulchrally to
himself. “Pretty cool try sting. Peace to the shades of Manager Scott. I
couldn't have done it better myself.”
The Fair Grounds were as dark and lonely at eleven o'clock as if
the lighted street were not three hundred feet away with its gossipy
multitude going up and down seeking some new thing. The stands yawned
indifferently from a thousand vacant seats and the race-track had
forgotten its excitement. Horses stamped and rustled spectrally in their
stalls. The shadow under the maples was abysmal and the abyss gave forth
a murmur of dialogue, the sound of a silken voice.
“Oh,” it sighed in mock despair, “but Americans, they are so very
impassive. Look! They make love in monosyllables. They have no passion,
no action. They pull their mustachios, say 'Damn!'--so, and it is
tragedy. They stroke their chins, so, very grave. They say 'It is not
bad, and it is comedy. Ah, please, Joe, be romantique!”
“Why,” drawled the other voice, “I'll do whatever you like, except have
spasms.”
“Indifferent! Bah! That's not romantique. How would I look in the house
of your fathers?”
“You'd look like thunder.”
“Would I?” The silken voice sank low and was quiet for a moment. “Well
then, listen. This shall you do. You shall give me that key and an order
to your man that I ride the little mare of a Sunday morning, which is
to-morrow, because she is the wind and because you are disagreeable. Is
it not so?”
A ripple of low laughter by the green door, and “There then. You drive a
hard bargain in love, monsieur.” The door opened and she stepped with
a rustle of skirts into and through the paved courtyard, now unlit by
lamps at the theatre entrance, dark enough for the purposes of Manager
Scott, in an angle of the entrance pulling his mustache and speaking
after the manner described by Mignon as tragedy.
In the valley of the Wyantenaug many stopped and listened breathlessly
by barn-yard and entry door to a voice that floated along the still air
of the Sabbath morning, now carolling like a bobolink, now fluting
like a wood-thrush, now hushed in the covert of arching trees, and now
pealing over the meadows by the river bank; others only heard a rush of
hoofs and saw a little red horse and its rider go by with the electric
stride of a trained racer. Each put his or her interpretation thereon,
elaborately detailed after the manner of the region, and approximated
the fact of Mignon and her purposes as nearly as might be expected.
Delight in the creation of jewelled sounds as an end in itself; delight
in the clear morning air of autumn valleys, the sight of burnished
leaves and hills in mad revelry of color; delight in following vagrant
fancies with loose rein, happy, wine-lipped elves that rise without
reason and know no law; delight in the thrill and speed of a sinewy
horse compact of nerves; however all these may have entered in the
purposes of Mignon, they are not likely to have entered the conjectures
of the inhabitants of Wyantenaug Valley, such pleasures of the flesh.
Mignon let the mare choose her road, confining her own choice to odd
matters of going slow or fast or not at all, pausing by the river bank
to determine the key and imitate the quality of its low chuckle, and
such doings; all as incomprehensible to the little red mare as to the
inhabitants of Wyantenaug Valley.
The valley is broad with cup-shaped sides, save where the crowding of
the hills has thrust one forward to stand in embarrassed projection.
Some twenty miles above Hamilton rises Windless Mountain on the right,
guarding from the world the village of Hagar behind it. Northward
from Windless lie irregular hills, and between them and the long
westward-inclining tumulus of the Cattle Ridge a narrow gorge with a
tumbling brook comes down. Up this gorge goes a broad, well-kept road,
now bridging the brook, now slipping under shelving ledges, everywhere
carpeted with the needles of pines, secret with the shadows of pines,
spicy and strong with the scent of pines, till at the end of half a mile
it emerges from beneath the pines into Sanderson Hollow. The little red
mare shot from the gloom into the sunlight with a snort and shake of the
head that seemed to say: “Oh, my hoofs and fetlocks! Deliver me from a
woman who makes believe to herself she is n't going where she is, or if
she is that it's only accidental.”
Mrs. Cullom Sanderson ponderously made ready for church, not with a
mental preparation of which the minister would have approved unless
he had seen as clearly as Mrs. Cullom the necessity of denouncing in
unmeasured terms the iniquity of Susan. Susan was a maid who tried to
do anything that she was told, and bumped her head a great deal. Her
present iniquity lay in her fingers and consisted in tying and buttoning
Mrs. Cullom and putting her together generally so that she felt as if
she had fallen into her clothes from different directions. A ring at the
door-bell brought Mrs. Cullom down from heights of sputtering invective
like an exhausted sky-rocket, and she plumped into a chair whispering
feebly, “Goodness, Susan, who's that?” Susan vaguely disclaimed all
knowledge of “that.”
“You might find out,” remonstrated Mrs. Cullom, the reaction precluding
anything but a general feeling of injury. Susan went down-stairs and
bumped her head on the chandelier, opened the door and bumped it on the
door.
“Ouch,” she remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. “Please, ma'am, Miss
Sanderson wants to know, who's that?”
“Ah,” said the trim little lady in riding-habit, “will you so kindly ask
Miss Sanderson that I may speak to her?”
But Mrs. Cullom was already descending the stairs, each step appearing
to Mignon to have the nature of a plunge. “My goodness, yes. Come in.”
Mignon carried her long skirt over the lintel.
“I am quite grieved to intrude, mademoi--” Mrs. Cullom's matronly
proportions seemed to discountenance the diminutive, “a--madame. Mr.
Sanderson permitted me to ride one of his horses. He is so generous.
And the horse brought me here, oh, quite decisively,” and Mignon laughed
such a soft, magical laugh that Susan grinned in broad delight. “It is
such a famous place, this, is it not,--Back Meadows? I thought I might
be allowed to--to pay tribute to its fame.”
Mrs. Cullom's cordiality was such that if, strictly speaking, two
hundred pounds can flutter, she may be said to have fluttered. She
plunged through two sombre-curtained parlors, Mignon drifting serenely
in the wake of her tumult. Something in the black, old colonial
furniture sent a feeling of cold gruesomeness into her sunny veins, and
she was glad when Mrs. Cullom declared it chilly and towed her into the
dining-room, where a warm light sifted through yellow windows of
modern setting high over a long, irregular sideboard, and mellowed the
portraits of departed Sandersons on the walls: honorables numerous of
colonial times (Blake, first of the horse-breeding Sandersons, booted
and spurred but with too much thinness of face and length of jaw for a
Squire Western type), all flanked by dames, with a child here and there,
above or below--all but the late Israel, whose loneliness in his gilt
frame seemed to have a certain harmony with his expression.
“That was Joseph's father, my brother Israel,” said Mrs. Cullom, as
Mignon's eyes travelled curiously along and rested on the last. “Joseph
keeps his mother hung up in his den.”
“Hung up? Den?” cried Mignon, with a recurrence of the gruesome feeling
of the parlors. “Oh, ciel! What does he keep there? Bones?”
“Bones! Goodness no. Books.”
Mrs. Cullom pushed open a door to the right and entered a long, low room
piled to the ceiling and littered with books, which, together with the
leathern chair and red-shaded lamp before the fireplace, gave a decided
air of studious repose, nothing suggesting a breeder of fancy stock. An
oil painting of a lady hung over the mantel, and near it some mediæval
Madonna, not unresembling the portrait in its pale cheeks, unworldly
eyes, and that faint monastic air of vigil and vision and strenuous
yearning of the soul to throw its dust aside. Nevertheless the face of
the lady was a sweet face, quiet and pure, such as from many a Madonna
of the Old World in tawdry regalia looks pityingly down over altar and
winking tapers, seeming to say with her tender eyes, “Is it very hard,
my dear, the living? Come apart then and rest awhile.” Mignon turned to
Mrs. Cullom. “You are dressed for going out, madame,” she said, looking
at that lady's well-to-do black silk. “Am I not detaining you?”
“Oh, I was going to church. Goodness, are n't you going to church?”
A sudden thought struck her and she added severely: “And you've been
riding that wicked little mare on Sunday. And she might have thrown you,
and how'd you look pitched headfirst into heaven dressed so everybody ud
know you weren't going to church!”
“Oh,” cried Mignon, “but I was good when I was a child. Yes! I went to
mass every day, and had a little prie-dieu, oh, so tiny!”
“Mass!” gasped Mrs. Cullom. “Well, I declare. What's a pray-do?”
Mignon surveyed her riding-skirt regretfully. “Would it not be
appropriate, madame? I should so like to go with you,” she said
plaintively.
“Goodness! I'll risk it if you will. I'd like to see the woman who'd
tell me what to wear to church.” She plunged suddenly out of the room,
leaving Mignon thinking that she would not like to be the woman referred
to. She listened to the ponderous footsteps of Mrs. Cullom climbing
the stairs, and then sank into the leathern chair facing the picture.
Possibly the living and the dead faced each other on a point at issue;
they seemed to debate some matter gravely and gently, as is seldom done
where both are living. Possibly it was Mignon's dramatic instinct
which caused her to rise at last, gathering up her riding-skirt, at
the approaching footsteps of Mrs. Cullom, and bow with Gallic grace and
diminutive stateliness to the pure-faced lady with the spiritual eyes.
“C'est vrai, madame,” she said, and passed out with her small head in
the air.
The congregation that day in the little church of the bended
weather-vane, where Hagar's cross-roads meet, heard certain ancient
hymns sung as never before in the church of the bended weather-vane.
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” pleaded the silken voice, like a visitant
invisible, floating from fluted pillar to fluted pillar, calling at
some unseen door, “Let me in! Ah, let me in!” Somewhat too much of
rose leaves and purple garments in the voice for that simple, steadfast
music. The spirit seemed pleading rather for gratification than
rest. The congregation stopped singing, save Mrs. Cullom, who flatted
comfortably on unnoticed. Deacon Crockett frowned ominously over his
glasses at a scandalous scene and a woman too conspicuous; Captain David
Brett showed all the places where he had no teeth; Mr. Royce looked down
from the pulpit troubled with strange thoughts, and Miss Hettie Royce
dropped her veil over her face, remembering her youth.
How should Mignon know she was not expected to be on exhibition in that
curious place? Of course people should be silent and listen when an
artist sings. Mignon hardly remembered a time when she was not more or
less on exhibition. That volatile young lady cantered along the Windless
Mountain Road somewhat after twelve o'clock not in a very good humor.
She recognized the ill humor, considered ill humor a thing both
unpleasant and unnecessary and attributed it to an empty stomach;
dismounted before an orchard and swung herself over the wall reckless of
where her skirts went or where they did not.
“Them apples is mine,” growled a gray-bearded person behind a barn-yard
fence.
“Then why didn't you get them for me, pig?” returned Mignon sharply,
and departed with more than her small hands could conveniently carry,
leaving the gray-bearded person turning the question over dubiously in
his mind.
It happened to have occurred to Sanderson that certain business of his
own pointed to Back Meadows that Sunday morning. The up-train on Sunday
does not leave till after eleven, and he took the valley road on the red
stallion of uncertain temper. The inhabitants of Wyantenaug Valley heard
no more carolling voices, or fitful rush and clatter of hoofs. The red
stallion covered his miles with a steady stride and the rider kept his
emotions, aesthetic or otherwise, to himself. The twain swung into the
Hollow about eleven o'clock, and Sanderson presently found himself in
his leathern chair debating a question at issue with the lady of the
spiritual eyes. What passed between them is their own secret, quite
hopeless of discovery, with one end of it on the other side of the
“valley of the shadow,” and the other buried in close coverts of
Sanderson reserve. When the door-bell rang and Susan appearing bumped
her head against the casing and announced, “Mr. Joe, it's a red-haired
gentleman,” having no dramatic instinct, he passed into the dining-room
without salutation to the lady of the spiritual eyes.
“How are you, Scott? Sit down,” he drawled placidly.
“I suppose you know what I'm here for,” said the other, with evident
self-restraint.
“Can't say I do,” returned Sanderson, cheerfully. “It needn't be
anything in particular, need it?” He sat down, stretched his legs under
the dining-room table and his arms on top of it. Manager Scott paced the
floor nervously. Suddenly he stooped, picked up something and flung it
on the table--a strip of thin gray veil. “You can save yourself a lie,
Mr. Sanderson.”
Sanderson gravely regarded the delicate article which seemed to be put
forth both as an accusation and a proof of something. Then he leaned
forward and rang the bell. “I will overlook that implication for the
present, Mr. Scott,” he remarked. “If it's a bluff, it's a good one. I
take it it is n't. Susan, has any one been here this morning?” as that
maiden tumbled into the room in a general tangle of feet.
“Yes, sir, and she's gone. My! She ain't comin' back to dinner! Lady
rode the little mare and she went to church with Miss Sanderson.”
“Mademoiselle Mignon,” drawled Sanderson, turning to Manager Scott,
“asked permission to ride the mare this morning. I was not aware she
intended making an excursion to Back Meadows or I should have asked
permission to attend her. It seems she went to Hagar with my aunt and
proposes to ride back to Hamilton from there. It's my turn now, old man,
and I'd like to know what was the necessity of making your visit so very
tragic.”
“Oh, I presume I'm an ass,” returned the other, with a noticeable
nervous twitching of the mouth and fingers, “and I presume I owe you an
apology. I shall probably shoot the man that comes between Mignon and
me, if he doesn't shoot first, which is all very asinine.”
“Quite irrespective of what mademoiselle may think about it?”
“Oh, quite.”
“Well,” said Sanderson, after a pause, “I rather sympathize with your
way of looking at it. I shouldn't wonder if I had some of that primeval
brutality myself.”
“Look here, Sanderson,” said the manager. “Without going into
humiliating details as to how I came by the fact, which I don't know
why you take so much pains to conceal, I know as well as you do that the
issue is between you and me.”
“You don't mean to threaten, do you, Scott?”
“Oh, no. I'm going back to Hamilton. I was looking for a row, and you
don't give me enough to go on.”
“Can't do it just now, old man,” said Sanderson, gently, shaking hands
with him at the door. “I'll let you know when I can. In that case we 'll
have it out between us.”
The manager strode off across the Hollow and down the Gorge to the
valley station, and Sanderson mounted and took the road to Hagar. He
passed the village about one. The red stallion thundered through the
pine avenues at the foot of Windless and swept around the curve into
Wyantenaug Valley, but it was not till within a few miles of Hamilton
that the speedy little mare, even bothered as she was by her rider's
infirmity of purpose, allowed herself to be overtaken. The road there
turned away from the river and went covered with crisp autumn leaves
through chestnut woods. Mignon looked up and laughed, and the two horses
fell sympathetically into a walk.
“Don't you think you owe me an explanation?” asked Sanderson, in a low
tone.
“Indeed, sir, I owe you nothing, not even for this ride. It was paid
for,” rippled the silken voice, and stopped suddenly in a little sob.
Sanderson turned quickly and bent over her.
“By the living God,” he said solemnly, “I swear I love you. What barrier
is strong enough to face that?”
“It is because you do not know me, that. Listen, Joe. I have not been
what you call good nor pure in the past and shall not in the future. No,
hush. I know what I am and what I shall be always. If I swore by
your living God that I loved you now, it would not mean that I should
to-morrow, and the next day, oh, not at all. There are no deeps in me,
nor what you call a faith or principle in life. Listen, Joe. That lady
whose portrait I saw is your guardian angel. Look, I reverence now.
To-morrow I shall mock both her and you. This that I speak now is only
a mood. The wind is now one thing and then quite another, Joe. It has no
centre and no soul. I am an artist, sir. I have moods but no character.
Morals! I have none. They go like the whiff of the breeze. Nothing that
I do lowers or lifts me. It passes through me and that is all. Do you
not understand?” which indeed was hard to do, for the brown eyes were
very soft and deep.
“If any one else had told me this,” said Sanderson, between his teeth,
“man or woman, it would never have been said but once.”
“It is harder for you than for me, for to-morrow I shall not care and
you, you will care perhaps a long time. You are fast like these hills.
Listen. Now, sir, this is our last ride together. We are a cavalier and
his lady. They are gallant and gay. They wear life and love and death
in their hair like flowers. They smile and will not let their hearts
be sad, for they say, 'It is cowardly to be sad: it is brave only to
smile.' Is it not so?”
Sanderson's New England reserve fled far away, and he bent over her
hand.
“It shall be as you say.”
And to-morrow seemed far enough away, and an hour had its eternal value.
But the steady old hills could not understand that kind of chronology.