wonderful mission and that it had to do with the other world--all
you're taught when they teach you to say your prayers. Little by little
she made me understand. I grew up before I understood fully. The
Guides--Aunt Paula's--I have none as yet--had told her that I was a
Light."
He caught at this word, for his lover's impatience was burning and
beating within him.
"Light!" he said; "my Light!"
She regarded him gravely, and then, as though his fervor had frightened
her, she looked beyond at the apple leaves.
"Don't--you'll know soon why you mustn't. Oh, help me, for I am
unhappy!" She controlled a little upward ripple of her throat. "She,
the Guides say, is a great Light, but I am to be a greater. They sent
her to find me, and they directed her to keep me as she has--away from
the world. When she first told me that, I was terrified. She had to sit
beside me and hold my hand until I went to sleep. It's wonderful how
quickly I do sleep when Aunt Paula's with me--she's the most soothing
person in the world. If it weren't for her, I don't know what I'd do
when I get into my tired times."
"You're never going to have any more tired times, Light," he said.
She went on inflexibly, but he knew that she had heard:
"There was one thing which I did not understand, and neither perhaps
did Aunt Paula. The Guides sometimes seem foolish, but in the end
they're always wise; I suppose they waited until the time should come.
Though I tried to help it along, though I cried with impatience, I
couldn't begin to get voices. I've sat in dark rooms for hours, as Aunt
Paula wished me to do. I've felt many true things, but I could never
say honestly that I heard anything. But the Guides told Aunt Paula
'wait.' And at last she learned what was the matter.
"I don't know quite how to tell you this next. It came on the way back
from India. She had gone there--but perhaps you won't be interested to
know why she went. Though I was more than twenty, I'd never had what
you might call a flirtation. I'd been kept by the Guides away from
men--as I'd once been kept from other children. There was a young
Englishman on the steamer. And I liked him."
Blake gave a sudden start, and rose automatically. So this confidence
led to another man--that was the obstacle! She seemed to catch his
thought.
"Oh, not that!" she cried; "he was only an incident--won't you hear
me?" Blake dropped at her feet again.
"But I liked him, though never any more--he was a friend and girls need
to play. But he wanted to be more than a friend. Aunt Paula passed us
on the deck one evening. After I had gone to bed, she came into my
stateroom. When the power is in her, I know it--and I never saw it so
strong as that night. It shone out of her. But that wasn't the strange
thing. Only twice before, had I heard the voices speak from her
mouth--mostly, she used to tell me what they said to her. But it was
not Aunt Paula talking then--it was Martha, her first and best control.
Shall I tell you all she said?"
Out of the confused impulses running through Dr. Blake, his sense of
humor spurted a moment to the fore. He found himself struggling to keep
back a smile at the picture of some fat old woman in a dressing gown
simulating hysteria that she might ruin a love affair. He was hard put
to make his voice sound sincere, as he answered:
"Yes, all."
"She said: 'Child, you are more influenced by this man than you know.
It is not the great love, but it is dangerous. You are to be the great
Light only after you have put aside a great earthly love. This vessel
from which I am speaking'--she meant Aunt Paula of course--'yielded to
an earthly love. That is why she is less than you will be. Would you
imperil truth?' It was something like that, only more. Ah, do you see
now?"
"I see," said his sense of humor, "that your Aunt Paula is a most
unlimited fakir."
"I see," said his voice, "but do you _believe_ it?"
"I've so much cause to believe that I can never tell you all. After
Aunt Paula came out of it, I told her what Martha had said. She was
dear and sympathetic. She put me to sleep; and when I woke, I was
resigned. I did not see him alone again. Now I understand more clearly.
When I have had that earthly love and put it aside, when I have
_proved_ myself to my Guides--then the voices will come to me. Martha
has repeated it to Aunt Paula whenever I have gone away from home. She
repeated it before I came up here--"
"They had cause to repeat it," he took her up fiercely; "cause to
repeat it!"
"I--I'm afraid so. But how should I know? I looked at you--and it
seemed right, everlastingly right, that I should know you. And then I
did--so suddenly and easily that it made me shudder afterwards for fear
the test had come--the agony which I have been afraid to face. Ah, it's
bold saying this!" She drooped forward, and her porcelain skin turned
to rose.
Blake sat breathless, dumb. Never had she seemed so far away from him
as then; never had she seemed so desirable. He struggled with his
voice, but no word came; and it was she who spoke first.
"Now I know--it is the agony!"
At this admission, all the love and all the irritation in him came up
together into a force which drove him on. They were alone; none other
looked; but had all the world been looking, he might have done what he
did. He rose to his feet, he dropped both his hands on her shoulders,
he devoured her sapphirine eyes with his eyes, and his voice was steel
as he spoke:
"You love me. You have always loved me. In spite of everything, you
will marry me! You will say it before you are done with me!"
He stopped suddenly, for her eyelids were drooping. Had he not been a
physician, he would have said that she was going to faint. But her
color did not change. And suddenly she was speaking in a low tone which
mocked his, but with no expression nor intonations:
"I love you. I have always loved you. In spite of everything, I shall
marry you."
He dropped his hands from her shoulders with a bewildered impulse to
seize her in his arms; then the publicity of the place came to him, and
he drew his hands back. On that motion, her eyes opened and she flashed
a little away from him.
"What did I say?" she exclaimed; "and why--oh, don't touch me--don't
come near--can't you see it makes it harder for me to renounce?"
"But you said--"
"I said before you touched me--ah, don't touch me again--that I
_should_ make it hard--the harder I make it, the more I shall grow--but
I can't bear so much!" She had risen, was moving away.
"Let's walk," he said shortly; and then, "Even if you put me aside,
won't you keep me in your life?"
"The Guides will tell me," she answered simply.
"But I may see you--call on you in the city?"
"Unless the Guides forbid."
They were walking side by side now; they had turned from the sunken
arena, which surrounded the tennis court, toward the house. Blake saw
that the driver of the Mountain House stage was approaching. He waved a
yellow envelope as he came on:
"Been looking for you, Miss Markham. Telegram. Charges paid."
Dr. Blake stepped away as Annette, in the preliminary flutter of fear
with which a woman always receives a telegram, tore open the envelope
and read the enclosure. Without a word, she handed it over to him. It
read:
ANNETTE MARKHAM:
Take next train home. Advice of Martha. Wire arrival.
PAULA MARKHAM.
"Perhaps the Guides know," she said, smiling but quivering, too.
"Perhaps they're going to make it easier for me."
IV
HIS FIRST CALL
Dear Mr. Blake (read the letter): It was nice to get your note and
to know that you are back in town so soon. Of course you must come
to see me. I want Aunt Paula to know that all the complimentary
things I have said about you are true. We are never at home in the
conventional sense--but I hope Wednesday evening will do.
Cordially,
ANNETTE MARKHAM.
He had greeted this little note with all the private follies of lovers.
Now for the hundredth time, he studied it for significances, signs,
pretty intimacies; and he found positively nothing about it which he
did not like. True, he failed to extract any important information
from the name of the stationer, which he found under the flap of the
envelope; but on the other hand the paper itself distinctly pleased
him. It was note-size and of a thick, unfeminine quality. He approved
of the writing--small, fine, legible, without trace of seminary
affectation. And his spirits actually rose when he observed that it
bore no coat-of-arms--not even a monogram.
At last, with more flourishes of folly, he put the note away in his
desk and inspected himself in the glass. To the credit of his modesty,
he was thinking not of his white tie--fifth that he had ruined in the
process of dressing--nor yet of the set of his coat. He was thinking
of Mrs. Paula Markham and the impression which these gauds and graces
might make upon her.
"What do you suppose she's like?" he asked inaudibly of the correct
vision in the glass.
He had exhausted all the possibilities--a fat, pretentious medium whom
Annette's mind transformed by the alchemy of old affection into a
presentable personage; a masculine and severe old woman with the
"spook" look in her eyes; a fluttering, affected _precieuse_,
concealing her quackery by chatter. Gradually as he thought on her, the
second of these hypotheses came to govern--he saw her as the severe and
masculine type. This being so, what tack should she take?
The correct vision in the glass vouchsafed no answer to this. His mood
persisted as his taxicab whirled him into the region which borders the
western edge of Central Park. The thing assumed the proportions of a
great adventure. No old preparation for battle, no old packings to
break into the unknown dark, had ever given him quite such a sense of
the high, free airs where romance blows. He was going on a mere
conventional call; but he was going also to high and thrilling
possibilities.
The house was like a thousand other houses of the prosperous middle
class, distinguishable only by minor differences of doors and steps and
area rails, from twenty others on the same block. He found himself
making mystery even of this. Separate houses in New York require
incomes.
"Evidently it pays to deal in spooks," he said to himself.
His first glimpse of the interior, his subsequent study of the
drawing-room while the maid carried in his name, made more vivid this
impression. The taste of the whole thing was evident; but the apartment
had besides a special flavor. He searched for the elements which gave
that impression. It was not the old walnut furniture, ample, huge,
upholstered in a wine-colored velours which had faded just enough to
take off the curse; it was not the three or four passable old
paintings. The real cause came first to him upon the contemplation of a
wonderful Buddhist priest-robe which adorned the wall just where the
drawing-room met the curtains of the little rear alcove-library. The
difference lay in the ornaments--Oriental, mostly East Indian and, all
his experience told him, got by intimate association with the
Orientals. That robe, that hanging lantern, those chased swords, that
gem of a carved Buddha--they came not from the seaports nor from the
shops for tourists. Whoever collected them knew the East and its
peoples by intimate living. They appeared like presents, not
purchases--unless they were loot.
And now--his thumping heart flashed the signal--the delicate feminine
flutter that meant Annette, was sounding in the hall. And now at the
entrance stood Annette in a white dress, her neck showing a faint rim
of tan above her girlish decolletage; Annette smiling rather formally
as though this conventional passage after their unconventional meeting
and acquaintance sat in embarrassment on her spirits; Annette saying in
that vibrant boyish contralto which came always as a surprise out of
her exquisite whiteness:
"How do you do, Dr. Blake--you are back in the city rather earlier than
you expected, aren't you?"
He was conscious of shock, emotional and professional--emotional that
they had not taken up their relation exactly where they left it
off--professional because of her appearance. Not only was she pale and
just a little drawn of facial line, but that indefinable look of one
"called" was on her again.
All this he gathered as he made voluble explanation--the attendance at
the sanitorium had fallen off with the approach of autumn--they really
needed no assistant to the resident physician--he thought it best to
hurry his search for an opening in New York before the winter should
set in. Then, put at his ease by his own volubility, and remembering
that it is a lover's policy to hold the advantage gained at the last
battle, he added:
"And of course you may guess another reason."
This she parried with a woman-of-the-world air, quite different from
her old childlike frankness.
"The theatrical season, I suppose. It opens earlier every year."
He pursued that line no further. She took up the reins of the
conversation and drove it along smooth but barren paths. "It's nice
that you could come to-night. Looking for a practice must make so many
calls on your time. I shouldn't have been surprised not to see you at
all this winter. No one seems able to spare much time for acquaintances
in New York."
"Not at all," he said, ruffling a little within, "I shall find plenty
of time for my _friends_ this winter." Deliberately he emphasized the
word. "I hope nothing has happened to change our--friendship. Or does
Berkeley Center seem primitive and far away?"
For the first time that quality which he was calling in his mind her
"society shell" seemed to melt away from her. She had kept her eyelids
half closed; now they opened full.
"I am living on the memory of it," she said.
Here was his opening. A thousand incoherences rushed to his lips--and
stopped there. For another change came over her. Those lids, like
curtains drawn by stealth over what must not be revealed, sank half-way
over her eyes. An impalpable stiffening ran over her figure. She became
as a flower done in glass.
Simultaneously, an uneasiness as definite as a shadow, fell across his
spirit. He became conscious of a presence behind him. Involuntarily he
turned.
A woman was standing in the doorway leading to the hall.
An instant she looked at Blake and an instant he looked at her. What
she gained from her scrutiny showed in no change of expression. What he
gained showed only in a quick flutter of the eyelids. He had, in fact,
taken an impression of mental power as startling as a sudden blow in
the face. She had a magnificent physique, preserved splendidly into the
very heart of middle age; yet her foot had made no sound in her
approach. Her black velvet draperies trailed heavy on the floor, yet
they produced not the ghost of a rustle. Jet-black hair coiled in
ropes, yet wisped white above the temples; light gray eyes, full and
soft, yet with a steady look of power--all this came in the process of
rising, of stepping forward to clasp a warm hand which lingered just
long enough, in hearing Annette say in tones suddenly dead of their
boyish energy:
"Aunt Paula, let me introduce Dr. Blake." With one ample motion, Mrs.
Markham seated herself. She turned her light eyes upon him. He had a
subconscious impression of standing before two searchlights.
"My niece has told me much about Dr. Blake," she said in a voice which,
like Annette's, showed every intonation of culture; "I can't thank you
enough for being kind to my little girl. So good in you to bother about
her when"--Aunt Paula gave the effect of faltering, but her smile was
peculiarly gracious--"when there were no other men nearer her own age."
[Illustration: HE HAD TAKEN AN IMPRESSION OF MENTAL POWER AS STARTLING
AS A SUDDEN BLOW IN THE FACE]
Curiously, there floated into Blake's mind the remark which Annette
made that first day on the train--"I should think you were about
twenty-eight--and that, according to 'Peter Ibbertson,' is about the
nicest age." Well, Annette at least regarded him as a contemporary! He
found himself laughing with perfect composure--"Yes, that's the trouble
with these quiet country towns. There never _are_ any interesting young
men."
"True," Mrs. Markham agreed, "although it makes slight difference in
Annette's case. She is so little interested in men. It really worries
me at times. But it's quite true, is it not so, dear?"
Mrs. Markham had kept her remarkable eyes on Dr. Blake. And Annette, as
though the conversation failed to interest her, had fallen into a
position of extreme lassitude, her elbow on the table, her cheek
resting on her hand.
At her aunt's question, she seemed to rouse herself a little. "What is
it that's quite true, Auntie?" she asked.
Mrs. Markham transferred her light-gray gaze to her niece's face. "I
was saying," she repeated, speaking distinctly as one does for a child,
"that you are very little interested in men."
"It is perfectly true," Annette answered.
Mrs. Markham laughed a purring laugh, strangely at variance with her
size and type. "You'll find this an Adam-less Eden, Dr. Blake. I'll
have to confess that I too am not especially interested in men."
This thrust did not catch Dr. Blake unawares. He laughed a laugh which
rang as true as Mrs. Markham's. He even ventured on a humorous
monologue in which he accused his sex of every possible failing, ending
with a triumphant eulogy of the other half of creation. But Mrs.
Markham, though she listened with outward civility, appeared to take
all his jibes seriously--miscomprehended him purposely, he thought.
Whereupon, he turned to the lady's own affairs.
"Miss Markham told me something about your stay in India. I've never
been there yet. But of course no seasoned orientalist has any idea of
dying without seeing India. I gathered from Miss Markham that you had
some unusual experiences."
"It's the dear child's enthusiasm," Mrs. Markham said. And it came to
Blake at once that she was a little irritated. "I assure you we did not
stir out of the conventional tourist route." Then came a few minutes
about the beauties of the Taj by moonlight.
Blake listened politely. "Your loot is all so interesting," he said,
when she had finished. "Do tell me how you got it? Have you ever
noticed what bully travelers' tales you get out of adventures in
bargaining? Or better--looting? Those Johnnies who came out of Pekin--I
mean the allied armies--tell some stories that are wonders."
"That is true generally," Mrs. Markham agreed. "But I must confess that
I did nothing more wonderful than to walk up to one of the bazaars and
buy everything that I wanted."
"That," Dr. Blake said mentally, "is a lie."
Almost as if Annette had heard his thought--were answering it--she
spoke for the first time with something of the old resiliency in her
tone. "Auntie, do tell Dr. Blake about some of your adventures with
those wonderful Yogis, and that fascinating rajah who was so kind to
us."
"The Yogis!" commented Dr. Blake to himself; "Ha, ha, and ho, ho! I bet
you learned a bag of tricks there, madam."
"Why, Annette, dear." Mrs. Markham laughed her purring laugh--that
laugh could grow, Dr. Blake discovered, until it achieved a singularly
unpleasant quality. "Your romantic ideas are running away with you.
Whenever we arrived anywhere, of course, like anybody else, I called at
Government House and the authorities there always put me in the way of
seeing whatever sights the neighborhood afforded. I met one rajah in
passing and visited one Yogi monastery. Do tell me about the
Philippines!" Annette settled back into her appearance of weariness.
Dr. Blake complied.
He had intended to stay an hour at this first formal call. He had hoped
to be led on, by gentle feminine wiles, to add another hour. He had
even dreamed that Aunt Paula might be so impressed by him as to hold
him until midnight. As a matter of fact, he left the house just
thirty-five minutes after he entered. Just why he retreated so early in
the engagement, he had only the vaguest idea. Even fresh from it as he
was, he could not enumerate the small stings, the myriad minor goads,
by which it became established in his mind that his call was not a
success, that he was boring the two ladies whom he was trying so hard
to entertain. At the end, it was a labored dialogue between him and
Mrs. Markham. Again and again, he tried to drag Annette into the
conversation. She was tongue-tied. The best she did was to give him the
impression that, deep down in her tired psychology, she was trying to
listen. As for Aunt Paula--if his gaze wandered from her to Annette and
then back, he caught her stifling a yawn. Her final shot was to
interrupt his best story a hair's breadth ahead of the point. When he
said good-night, his manner--he flattered himself--betrayed nothing of
his sense of defeat. But no fellow pedestrian, observing the savage
vigor of his swift walk homeward, could have held any doubt as to his
state of mind.
V
THE LIGHT WAVERS
As Blake drove the runabout north through the fine autumn morning, he
perceived suddenly that his subconscious mind was playing him a trick.
He had started out to get light, air, easement of his soul among woods
and fields. And now, instead of turning into Central Park at Columbus
Circle, he was following Upper Broadway, where, in order to reach the
great out-of-doors, he must dodge trucks and cabs between miles of
hotels and apartment houses. In fact, he had been manoeuvering,
half-unconsciously, so that he might turn into the park at the
Eighty-Sixth Street entrance and so pass that most important of all
dwellings in Manhattan, the house where Annette Markham lived. Any
irritation which he had felt against her, after the unpleasant evening
before, was lost in his greater irritation with her aunt. Annette
appeared to him, now, as the prize, the reward, of a battle in which
Mrs. Paula Markham was his antagonist.
As he turned the corner into her street, ten years rolled away from
him; he dreamed the childish, impossible dreams of a very youth. She
might be coming down the steps as he passed. Fate might even send a
drunkard or an obstreperous cabman for him to thrash in her service.
But when he reached the house, nothing happened. The front door
remained firmly shut; no open window gave a delicious glimpse of
Annette. After his machine had gone ahead to such position that he
could no longer scan the house without impolite craning of his neck, he
found that his breath was coming fast. Awakened from his dream, a
little ashamed of it, he opened the control and shot his machine ahead
to the violation of all speed laws. He was crossing Central Park West,
and the smooth opening of the park driveway was before him, when he
looked up and saw--Annette.
Her honey-colored hair, glistening dull in the autumn sunshine,
identified her even before he caught her characteristic walk--graceful
and fast enough, but a little languid, too. She was dressed in a plain
tailor suit, a turban, low, heavy shoes.
He slowed down the automobile to a crawl, that he might enter the park
after her. A boyish embarrassment smote him; if he drove up and spoke
to her, it would look premeditated. So he hesitated between two
courses, knowing well which he would pursue in the end. As he entered
the park, still a dozen yards behind her, he saw that the footpath
which she was following branched out from the automobile drive. Within
a few paces, she would disappear behind a hydrangea bush. On that
perception, he gave all speed to his machine, shot alongside and
stopped.
Even before he reached her, she had turned and faced him. He fancied
that the smile of recognition on her face had started even before she
began to turn; she did not appear surprised, only pleased. Beating
around in his mind for a graceful word of introduction, he accomplished
an abrupt and ungraceful one.
"Will you ride?" he asked.
"With pleasure," she responded simply, and in one light motion she was
in the seat beside him. He turned at low speed north, and as his hands
moved over wheels and levers, she was asking:
"How did you happen to be here?"
He put a bold front on it.
"I drove past your home, by instinct, because I was coming north. And I
saw you. Which of your spirits"--he was bold enough for the moment to
make light of her sacred places--"sent you out-of-doors just before I
passed?"