THE SUBSTANCE OF A DREAM
Scarcely even for a passing glance did Elizabeth pause at the front door
of the cottage although it stood open, as Miss Miranda had left it, with
the lamp still burning cheerfully on her sewing table inside. Weary and
breathless, she stumbled along the path, turned the corner of the house,
and saw the brightly lighted workshop with its door also standing open
to the warmth of the night. It was as she thought, the stranger was
here, sitting on the high stool beside the table, talking volubly,
thrusting forward his long-chinned, dark face and pounding on his knee
to give emphasis to what he said. Mr. Reynolds sat opposite in the one
arm chair the place afforded, looking white and frail and old in
contrast to his visitor, very quiet, and listening with earnest
attention. Like an image of carved ebony, Dick sat immovable on one of
the posts of the back of the chair. The green-shaded light, with its
brilliant, narrow circle of illumination, showed nothing else clearly,
but gave only faint vision of wheels and pulleys, of shining glints that
sparkled back from polished steel or ruddy copper, while through the
whole room droned the slow song of turning wheels.
There was a step on the flagstones behind Elizabeth just before she
mounted the doorstep. As she had hoped, David had followed her. Both men
glanced up as the boy and girl entered, but there was no pause in the
talk, since any new presence seemed to make no impression on the
tenseness of the scene. Even Dick scarcely turned his head as he sat
like some brooding spirit above his master.
“Can’t you stop those infernal wheels?” Donald Reynolds said, as they
came in. “I cannot hear my own voice with them grinding away in my
ears.”
“David!” said the older man in tone of request.
With quick obedience, David stepped to the end of the room, pulled a
lever, jerked a protesting, crackling switch and brought the whirring
song to an end. Without the familiar sound the place seemed uncannily
silent as Donald went on talking. To the presence of David and Betsey he
gave no heed, having apparently but one thought, to speak the words he
had come to say before Miss Miranda should return.
“So I made up my mind that you should be told what a great wrong you are
doing Miranda,” he resumed. “For ten years you have spent time and money
on this worthless piece of work, pottering and tinkering and pretending
that you really hoped to accomplish something in the end.”
“But I have accomplished something,” returned the old man gravely. “I am
very near to success now and ten years is not long when you remember
that I lost all my records and all my models when the house was burned.
No, ten years has not been too much to spend.”
“It is not time alone that you have spent, but money, spent it like
water when it should have been making Miranda comfortable. Have you
stopped, ever, to think of how she works and saves and pinches, how she
toils in that garden and fattens miserable fowls for the market so that
you can go on with this game of yours?”
“Miranda chose to have it so,” Mr. Reynolds returned quietly, but the
two onlookers could see him wince.
“Have you known Miranda longer than any of us and have not yet learned
that she would give the breath out of her body to make other people
happy? Would she complain or choose otherwise if she thought your desire
was set upon this one thing, this machine that you call a life work, but
that any one else would call a pleasant fad, a plaything that would
never succeed?”
“If my recollection is correct,” Mr. Reynolds said, “she used to make
some sacrifices for you, when you lived with us, that you might be
happy.”
His chance shot seemed to strike at some more vivid memory than he knew.
The other was silent for a minute, but then burst forth again, more
sharply and bitterly than before.
“Is that any reason why I should stand by now, and see her robbed and
cheated as you are cheating her? You are willing to spend your life
following a dream, but you have no right to spend hers. You say that she
is willing, but do you really know it? Do you notice how worn and tired
and anxious she begins to look?”
Elizabeth would have broken in upon him, checking his words with a wild
tumult of indignant protest, but David laid a hand upon her arm. This
was a matter for their elders alone, his look seemed to say, and must
not be interrupted.
“Suppose, Donald,” Mr. Reynolds was beginning gently, “suppose this
affair were to turn out less of a dream than you think? We have followed
dreams before, we and our forbears in this family, and they have led to
success and—what appeals to you far more—to fortune. Miranda is, I know,
looking worn and troubled; I think it is her home that she is grieving
for. It is my belief that in a very little time she may have it back
again.”
“People like you are always hopeful,” returned Donald, “always declaring
that with a little more time and a great deal more money, success will
come. Can you not stop deceiving yourself, can you not give up and admit
that you have failed? You have a handful of screws and wires and a few
turning wheels here—” he waved his hand to include the whole workshop in
the scorn of a person who knows nothing of mechanics—“but what do they
signify? What do they count for compared to ten years of your life, or
of Miranda’s?”
He leaned his elbows on the table, brought his face closer yet to his
unhappy uncle’s and spoke with even fiercer accusation.
“You say that you will be able to give back to Miranda the house she
loves, when all that you have ever done is to destroy it for her. Have
you ever looked over the ruins, as I have, noticed that the blaze was
hottest at the south end, and hottest of all where your workshop stood?
That was where the fire began, there can be no doubt of it. Miranda says
it was lightning that set the house on fire, but—” he lowered his
voice—“I know better. A spark from one of your wires, a blaze in some
oily packing, that is what brought about the tragedy. You mechanical
geniuses are too much in the clouds to safeguard those you pretend to
love. The burning of the house was due to your own heedlessness!”
“No, no, Donald,” cried the old man, driven out of his calmness at last,
and with his voice betraying cruel pain. “I can’t—I won’t believe that
it was my doing!”
“You may be certain that it was,” returned the other without mercy, “and
I think, in your inmost heart, you have long suspected that it was so.”
Betsey was no longer to be silenced, not even by David’s insistent
pressure on her arm.
“It’s not true,” she burst out. “We saw ourselves where the lightning
struck, that began the fire. The chimney was split from top to bottom.”
“Yes?” assented Donald, turning to her and speaking in a tone of hard,
cold quiet. “You can prove that, I suppose? You can show the marks to my
uncle here? Real evidence would comfort him greatly.”
“No—no,” she faltered in reply. “We were exploring in the ruins and some
of the walls fell. The marks of the lightning don’t show now. But we
both saw them.”
“I will hold to my own opinion still,” answered Donald Reynolds, “and my
uncle, though he would like to, will not be able to disagree with me.
Isn’t it—hullo, there’s something wrong with the old man.”
For Mr. Reynolds was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed,
unmoving and unhearing. Betsey ran to his side and took up one of his
hands. It was limp and lifeless, although she could feel the faint pulse
still beating. Donald, in evident concern, was coming closer, but David
barred the way and warned him off.
“You are an impudent pair of young ones,” exclaimed Donald. “Who are you
and what is your business here, anyway?”
“We are friends of Miss Miranda’s,” Betsey explained briefly. “I think
you have done her father some very great harm.”
“I thought it was only my duty to say a word or two to put things
right,” the man answered. “It is not fair to Miranda that no one should
tell her father the truth.”
“You did not speak one word of truth,” returned David heatedly. “You
guessed about the burning of the house and you guessed wrong. And you
did not even guess about the invention. You know as much of mechanical
things as—as Dick does.”
“I am a practical man,” Donald Reynolds said, “and I have no patience
with toys and dreams.”
He spoke with less bluster than was to be expected, for he seemed truly
disturbed by the evident harm he had brought about. His words roused his
uncle from the lethargy into which he had fallen for the old man spoke
suddenly and very clearly.
“There are many idle dreams and some true ones,” he said, “and it is
only through the true dreams that the world goes forward.”
Then he closed his eyes once more, drew a long sigh and sank lower in
the chair. Donald Reynolds stood irresolute, troubled but unconvinced
and ready to argue his case still.
“You had better go,” Betsey had the courage to tell him with blunt
plainness. “Mr. Reynolds will be better when you are out of sight.
There’s no use in your waiting to talk to Miss Miranda.”
Donald Reynolds, it seemed, thought the same thing. He took up his hat,
began to say something, perhaps in apology or excuse for what he had
done, made such small success of it that he gave up the attempt, and
turned to the door. The two beside Mr. Reynolds paid little attention to
his going, only Dick hailed his departure with a defiant caw.
“I suppose he is telling himself that he has acted for the best,”
commented David bitterly. “At least he has sense enough to seem a little
sorry for what he has done.”
“I see now why Miss Miranda has looked so worried,” Betsey added. “She
has been afraid he would come here and say just such cruel, untrue
things.”
When David had brought a glass of water for Mr. Reynolds and Betsey had
propped him up with cushions, he seemed to feel better, although still
to be rather dazed.
“Did he mean it? Was he right?” he questioned them pitifully, looking
across at his well-beloved wheels hanging in idleness. “Have I really
been so blind and selfish as to do Miranda such great wrong?”
It seemed a long wait before they heard her step outside.
“Go to meet her, tell her that—that nothing is wrong,” he directed. “Do
not let her be anxious. I am sure you can explain it all.”
David stayed by his side while Betsey went to tell what had happened. It
was not easy, especially after she saw the look of alarm that came into
her friend’s face the moment she heard that Donald Reynolds had been
there. She listened quietly, however to all that Betsey had to tell.
“Oh, why was I away!” she exclaimed at the end, but it was her only
lamentation. “He can say very hard and cruel things,” she added; “you
have not told me all of them, but I can guess.”
She went to the workshop to speak to her father, but David met her at
the door.
“He feels better,” the boy reported, “but he said he would like to be by
himself a little. He is up and walking about; I really think he will be
happier if he is left alone.”
They peeped in at the door and saw that Mr. Reynolds was, as David had
said, standing at the bench, busy as ever, with a tool in his hand. He
was handling the wrench awkwardly, as though his fingers had not much
strength, but he appeared intent and absorbed, almost himself again.
Elizabeth, nevertheless, was not satisfied. She could not believe that
any one so stricken as had been Mr. Reynolds an hour before, could have
really recovered so quickly. Rather shyly she suggested that she should
stay all night, “just so that you will not be all alone, if he should be
ill again,” as she told Miss Miranda, and, on her friend’s relieved
acceptance of the suggestion, was glad that she had offered. David went
across the hill to get the things that she had telephoned to Anna to
pack, while Betsey mounted the stairs with Miss Miranda to prepare a
sleeping place.
“We have so few guests that I have no regular spare bedroom,” her
hostess explained. “If you do not mind, you will have to sleep on the
couch here beside the toy-cupboard.”
Later, as she went to and fro about the house, Elizabeth peeped in more
than once to see how Mr. Reynolds was faring in the workshop. She stood
at the door, not daring to speak or to disturb him, so busy did he seem.
His face looked white, deeply lined and very tired; never had he
appeared to her so really old. He was toiling very earnestly so that she
felt sure he must be gaining some comfort from his work. Once, however,
when she looked in she did not see him. The far corners of the room were
so very dim that he might be there among the shadows, but she did not
like to go in to make sure. Miss Miranda called her for something at
that moment and kept her longer than she expected. Later, when she went
back to make sure of his absence before she mentioned it, she saw that
he was at work again by the bench and she began to believe that she must
have been mistaken. He was standing beneath the light, putting away a
great array of tools in a drawer.
David, returning from his errand, came whistling up to the door.
“Are you sure you do not need a doctor?” he inquired anxiously.
Miss Miranda was certain that a doctor would only disturb and upset her
father. She had broached the subject to him earlier and had found the
idea so distressed him, that she had given it up.
“I met Michael when I came through the garden,” David told Betsey, “and
when I let him know what had happened he seemed dreadfully upset. He
just sat down on the bench and groaned out, ‘I knew that fellow would be
coming here to make some mischief, but I never knew quite what it would
be. And with me watching and watching for him, he slipped in just the
same. I was certain just some such unlucky thing would happen, I have
been feeling it this long time back.’ Poor Michael, he will probably be
saying charms and repeating spells for good luck all night now.”
“Did you stay long enough on the wall to—to see anything?” Betsey asked
hesitatingly.
“No,” he answered, “I waited minute after minute, but the Thing was so
slow, and what you said had worried me too, so in the end I came away. I
will have to try again.”
It was very late, so that David, after some lingering and wishing that
he could be of service, took his leave, Betsey walking with him as far
as the gate. Here, in the moonlight they came upon Michael, sitting on a
three-legged stool, his pipe in his hand and the collar of his worn coat
turned up against the dews of the spring night.
“It is best that I should just wait here for a while,” he explained. “I
heard a step in the lane and was afraid that blackguard might be back
again. Ah, what did I tell you?”
For a figure had come into the moonlit open and Donald Reynolds had laid
a hand on the gate.
“You will not be entering here, sir,” declared Michael severely. “You
have lived up, this night, to what I always thought of you, but you have
had your fling and done your work and that has been enough.”
Donald shrugged his shoulders.
“You seem to have the place well guarded,” he responded, “and I only
came back for one thing. They gave me some letters at the post office
for my uncle when I was getting my own, earlier in the day. Somehow I
forgot to leave them, so, when I found them in my pocket, I brought them
back rather than have a delay on my conscience. I will be going away
early in the morning.”
He gave the letters to Elizabeth, who took them mechanically.
“And—and how is my uncle now?” he asked hesitatingly; “if I had only
known—if there is anything I can do—”
“You were always a cruel one with your tongue, Mr. Donald,” Michael
interrupted him drily, “and you should have learned by now that where
words have hurt, words cannot heal. It is against the nature of things.”
“I see, Michael, that you are the same stiff-necked old bigot still,”
returned the other. “Do you remember how Ted and I caught you burning
three feathers of the black cock’s tail on Midsummer Eve, to keep off
bad luck for the year? Do you do such things still?”
“To burn the whole black cock would not lift the ill luck falling on the
house that shelters you,” retorted Michael hotly, “and if I do such
things still it is no concern of yours. But you will not be entering
this gate. Good night, sir.”
The hint was so firm a one that Donald Reynolds argued no further but
turned away and strode out of sight into the darkness. David was about
to go through the gate and follow him down the lane, when Michael
stopped him.
“Go up and look at Mr. Reynolds again before you go,” he begged. “I have
a feeling that all is not well with him, even yet.”
“You have so many feelings, Michael, how do you know what they mean?”
inquired David with interest.
The old man seated himself on his stool once more and began filling his
pipe.
“Men of Ireland are not quite like the rest of the world,” he said
slowly. “We do not often say so, but I think it is in the hearts of all
of us to think that since our fathers’ fathers knew the Little People,
we of their blood can feel a little deeper and see some things a little
clearer than others. You wouldn’t understand, not either of you, though
you have keen, kind eyes yourselves.”
Betsey looked back at him anxiously as they went toward the house to
fulfill his request. He was lighting his pipe, the glow of the match
shining picturesquely on his battered features and mild blue eyes.
“He is too old to sit there in the damp and the dark,” she said, “and I
am afraid he will stay in that one spot all night. But I suppose there
is no use in trying to persuade him not to.”
Yes, it was quite possible that Michael would sit there all night in
faithful guardianship of the people he loved. He would have many quaint
thoughts for company so that the time would not be dull, he would have
memories of those wide, free plains and towering mountains where he once
was lonely lord of thousands of sheep, memories of those giant,
white-coated dogs that sped to his rescue on the night that Ted Reynolds
had saved him and won his devoted service for all time. But it was more
likely that his thoughts would wander farther yet, that it was fairy
hounds and fairy hills that his mind’s eye would see, magic rings and
dancing leprechauns and many another thing that only Michael’s kind can
know. So clear would be his vision—as he grew a little drowsy—that the
very flowers and hedges about him would seem crowded with tiny, rustling
figures and the warm night air be full of the beat of little wings. For
such a person as Michael, no night spent in the garden could be really
dull.
As David and Elizabeth came to the workshop door they were startled by a
rush and flutter of black feathers as Dick came flying out in great
excitement. Yet, within, the place seemed more peaceful than ever. Mr.
Reynolds had ceased his work and was sitting at the table, a place once
littered inches deep with papers and tools, but now swept bare and
clean. His hands lay idly before him and he sat staring, although it
seemed he saw only the blank wall opposite. Again it struck Betsey how
unnatural was the silence when those busy, familiar wheels stood still.
He looked up at them strangely when they came in and said almost the
same words he had spoken before, his voice steady but unnaturally loud.
“It is through the true dreams that the world goes forward.”
Then after a moment’s pause he added—
“And I have always said that a man could know a true dream from a false
one, could be sure when he was working for a great good and not for a
play-thing and a failure. But I was wrong—all wrong! Those wheels shall
never turn again.”
His head dropped suddenly on his arm and rested upon the table. Then his
whole body slipped forward and would have fallen had not David caught
him.