Robert Winthrop, laden with bag, overcoat and umbrella, left the
sleeping-car in which he had spent most of the last eighteen hours and
crossed the narrow platform of the junction to the train which was to
convey him the last stage of his journey. It was almost three o’clock
in the afternoon――for the Florida Limited, according to custom, had
been two hours late――and Winthrop was both jaded and dirty; and I might
add that, since this was his first experience with Southern travel, he
was also somewhat out of patience.
Choosing the least soiled of the broken-springed, red-velveted seats
in the white compartment of the single passenger car, he set his bag
down and sank weariedly back. Through the small window beside him he
saw the Limited take up its jolting progress once more, and watched
the station-agent deposit his trunk in the baggage-car ahead, which,
with the single passenger-coach, comprised the Corunna train. Then
followed five minutes during which nothing happened. Winthrop sighed
resignedly and strove to find interest in the view. But there was
little to see from where he sat; a corner of the station, a section of
platform adorned with a few bales of cotton, a crate of live chickens,
and a bag of raw peanuts, a glimpse of the forest which crept down
to the very edge of the track, a wide expanse of cloudless blue sky.
Through the open door and windows, borne on the lazy sun-warmed air,
came the gentle wheezing of the engine ahead, the sudden discordant
chatter of a bluejay, and the murmurous voices of two negro women in
the other compartment. There was no hint of Winter in the air, although
November was almost a week old; instead, it was warm, languorous,
scented with the odors of the forest and tinged at times with the
pleasantly acrid smell of burning pitch-pine from the engine. It
was strangely soft, that air, soft and soothing to tired nerves, and
Winthrop felt its influence and sighed. But this time the sigh was not
one of resignation; rather of surrender. He stretched his legs as well
as he might in the narrow space afforded them, leaned his head back and
closed his eyes. He hadn’t realized until this moment how tired he was!
The engine sobbed and wheezed and the negroes beyond the closed door
murmured on.
“Your ticket, sir, if you please.”
Winthrop opened his eyes and blinked. The train was swaying along
between green, sunlit forest walls, and at his side the conductor was
waiting with good-humored patience. Winthrop yielded the last scrap of
his green strip and sat up. Suddenly the wood fell behind on either
side, giving place to wide fields which rolled back from the railroad
to disappear over tiny hills. They were fertile, promising-looking
fields, chocolate-hued, covered with sere, brown cotton-plants to which
here and there tufts of white still clung. Rail fences zigzagged
between them, and fire-blackened pine stumps marred their neatness.
At intervals the engine emitted a doleful screech and a narrow road
crossed the track to amble undecidedly away between the fields. At
such moments Winthrop caught glimpses of an occasional log cabin with
its tipsy, clay-chinked chimney and its invariable congress of lean
chickens and leaner dogs. Now and then a commotion along the track drew
his attention to a scurrying, squealing drove of pigs racing out of
danger. Then for a time the woods closed in again, and presently the
train slowed down before a small station. Winthrop reached tentatively
toward his bag, but at that instant the sign came into sight, “Cowper,”
he read, and settled back again.
[Illustration]
Apparently none boarded the train and none got off, and presently the
journey began once more. The conductor entered, glanced at Winthrop,
decided that he didn’t look communicative and so sat himself down in
the corner and leisurely bit the corner off a new plug of tobacco.
The fields came into sight again, and once a comfortable-looking
residence gazed placidly down at the passing train from the crest of
a nearby hill. But Winthrop saw without seeing. His thoughts were
reviewing once more the chain of circumstances which had led link by
link to the present moment. His thoughts went no further back than
that painful morning nearly two years before when he had discovered
Gerald Potter huddled over his desk, a revolver beside him on the
floor, and his face horrible with the stains of blood and of ink from
the overturned ink-stand. They had been friends ever since college
days, Gerald and he, and the shock had never quite left him. During the
subsequent work of disentangling the affairs of the firm the thing
haunted him like a nightmare, and when the last obligation had been
discharged, Winthrop’s own small fortune going with the rest, he had
broken down completely. Nervous prostration, the physician called it.
Looking back at it now Winthrop had a better name for it, and that
was, Hell. There had been moments when he feared he would die, and
interminable nights when he feared he wouldn’t, when he had cried like
a baby and begged to be put out of misery. There had been two months
of that, and then they had bundled him off to a sanitarium in the
Connecticut hills. There he, who a few months before had been a strong,
capable man of thirty-eight, found himself a weak, helpless, emaciated
thing with no will of his own, a mere sleeping and waking automaton,
more interested in watching the purple veins on the backs of his thin
hands than aught else in his limited world. At times he could have wept
weakly from self-pity.
But that, too, had passed. One sparkling September morning he lay
stretched at length in a long chair on the uncovered veranda, a flood
of inspiriting sunlight upon him, and a little breeze, brisk with the
cool zest of Autumn, stirring his hair. And he had looked up from the
white and purple hands and had seen a new world of green and gold and
blue spread before him at his feet, a twelve-mile panorama of Nature’s
finest work retouched and varnished overnight. He had feasted his eyes
upon it and felt a glad stirring at his heart. And that day had marked
the beginning of a new stage of recovery; he had asked, “How long?”
The last week in October had seen his release. He had returned to his
long-vacant apartment in New York fully determined to start at once
the work of rebuilding his fallen fortunes. But his physician had
interposed. “I’ve done what I can for you,” he said, “and the rest is
in your own hands. Get away from New York; it won’t supply what you
need. Get into the country somewhere, away from cities and tickers.
Hunt, fish, spend your time out of doors. There’s nothing organically
wrong with that heart of yours, but it’s pretty tired yet; nurse it
awhile.”
“The programme sounds attractive,” Winthrop had replied, smilingly,
“but it’s expensive. Practically I am penniless. Give me a year to
gather the threads up again and get things a-going once more, and I’ll
take your medicine gladly.”
The physician had shrugged his shoulders with a grim smile.
“I have never heard,” he replied, “that the hunting or fishing was
especially good in the next world.”
“What do you mean?” asked Winthrop, frowning.
“Just this, sir. You say you can’t afford to take a vacation. I say you
can’t afford not to take it. I’ve lived a good deal longer than you and
I give you my word I never saw a poor man who wasn’t a whole lot better
off than any dead one of my acquaintance. I don’t want to frighten
you, but I tell you frankly that if you stay here and buckle down to
rebuilding your business you’ll be a damned poor risk for any insurance
company inside of two weeks. It’s better to live poor than to die rich.
Take your choice.”
Winthrop had taken it. After all, poverty is comparative, and he
realized that he was still as well off as many a clerk who was
contentedly keeping a family on his paltry twenty or thirty dollars
a week. He sub-rented his apartment, paid what bills he owed out of
the small balance standing to his name at the bank, and considered
the question of destination. It was then that he had remembered the
piece of property in Florida which he had taken over for the firm and
which, having been the least desirable of the assets, had escaped the
creditors. He went to the telephone and called up the physician.
“How would Florida do?” he had asked. “Good place to play invalid,
isn’t it?”
“I don’t care where you go,” was the response, “so long as there’s pure
air and sunshine there, and as long as you give your whole attention
to mending yourself.”
He had never been in Florida, but it appealed to him and he believed
that, since he must live economically, there could be no better place;
at least there would be no rent to pay. So he had written to Major
Cass, whose name he had come across in looking over his partner’s
papers, and had started South on the heels of his letter. The trip
had been a hard one for him, but now the soft, fragrant air that blew
against his face through the open car window was already soothing him
with its caressing touch and whispering fair promises of strengthening
days. A long blast of the whistle moved the conductor to a return of
animation and Winthrop awoke from his thoughts. The train was slowing
down with a grinding of hand-brakes. Through the window he caught
glimpses of gardens and houses and finally of a broad, tree-lined
street marching straight away from the railroad up a sloping hill to
a gray stone building with a wooden cupola which seemed to block its
path. Then the station threw its shadow across him and the train, with
many jerks and much rattling of coupling, came to a stop.
[Illustration]
“Corunna,” drawled the conductor.
Outside, on the platform which ran in front of the station on a level
with the car floors, Winthrop looked about him with mingled amusement
and surprise. In most places, he thought, the arrival of the daily
train was an event of sufficient importance to people the station
platform with spectators. But here he counted just three persons
beside himself and the train crew. These were the two negresses who
had travelled with him and the station agent. There was no carriage in
sight; not even a dray for his trunk. He applied to the agent.
“Take that street over yonder,” said the agent, “and it’ll fetch you
right square to the Major’s office, sir. I’ll look after your bag until
you send for it. You tell the nigger to ask me for it, sir.”
[Illustration]
So Winthrop yielded the bag, coat and umbrella and started forth. The
station and the adjoining freight-shed stood, neutral-hued, under the
wide-spreading branches of several magnificent live-oaks, in one of
which, hidden somewhere in the thick greenery, a thrush was singing.
This sound, with that of the panting of the tired engine, alone stirred
the somnolent silence of mid-afternoon. A road, deep with white sand,
ambled away beneath the trees in the direction of the wide street which
Winthrop had seen from the car and to which he had been directed. It
proved to be a well-kept thoroughfare lined with oaks and bordered
by pleasant gardens in front of comfortable, always picturesque and
sometimes handsome houses. The sidewalks were high above the street,
and gullies of red clay, washed deep by the heavy rains, divided the
two. In front of the gates little bridges crossed the gullies. The
gardens were still aflame with late flowers and the scent of roses was
over all. Winthrop walked slowly, his senses alert and enravished.
He drew in deep breaths of the fragrant air and sighed for very
contentment.
“Heavens,” he said under his breath, “the place is just one big rest
cure! If I can’t get fixed up here I might as well give up trying. I
wonder,” he added a moment later, “if every one is asleep.”
There was not a soul in sight up the length of the street, but from one
of the houses came the sound of a piano and, as he glanced toward its
embowered porch, he thought he caught the white of a woman’s gown.
“Someone’s awake, anyhow,” he thought. “Maybe she’s a victim of
insomnia.”
The street came to an end in a wide space surrounded by one- and
two-story stores and occupied in the centre by a stone building which
he surmised to be the court-house. He bore to the right, his eyes
searching the buildings for the shingle of Major Cass. A few teams
were standing in front of the town hitching-rails, and perhaps a dozen
persons, mostly negroes, were in view. He had decided to appeal for
information when he caught sight of a modest sign on a corner building
across the square. “L. Q. Cass, Counsellor at Law,” he read. The
building was a two-story affair of crumbling red brick. The lower part
was occupied by a general merchandise store, and the upper by offices.
A flight of wooden steps led from the sidewalk along the outside of
the building to the second floor. Winthrop ascended, entered an open
door, and knocked at the first portal. But there was no reply to his
demands, and, as the other rooms in sight were evidently untenanted, he
returned to the street and addressed himself to a youth who sat on an
empty box under the wooden awning of the store below. The youth was in
his shirt-sleeves and was eating sugar-cane, but at Winthrop’s greeting
he rose to his feet, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and
answered courteously:
“Waynewood is about three-quarters of a mile, sir,” he replied to the
stranger’s inquiry. “Right down this street, sir, until you cross the
bridge over the branch. Then it’s the first place.”
He was evidently very curious about the questioner, but strove politely
to restrain that curiosity until the other had moved away along the
street.
The street upon which Winthrop now found himself ran at right angles
with that up which he had proceeded from the station. Like that, it was
shaded from side to side by water-oaks and bordered by gardens. But
the gardens were larger, less flourishing, and the houses behind them
smaller and less tidy. He concluded that this was an older part of the
village. Several carriages passed him, and once he paused in the shade
to watch the slow approach and disappearance of a creaking two-wheeled
cart, presided over by a white-haired old negro and drawn by a pair
of ruminative oxen. It was in sight quite five minutes, during which
time Winthrop leaned against the sturdy bole of an oak and marvelled
smilingly.
[Illustration]
“And in New York,” he said to himself, “we swear because it takes us
twenty minutes to get to Wall Street on the elevated!”
He went on, glad of the rest, passing from sunlight to shadow along the
uneven sidewalk and finally crossing the bridge, a tiny affair over a
shallow stream of limpid water which trickled musically over its bed
of white sand. Beyond the bridge the sidewalk ceased and he went on
for a little distance over a red clay road, rutted by wheels and baked
hard by the sun. Then a picket fence which showed evidence of having
once been whitewashed met him and he felt a sudden stirring within him.
This was Waynewood, doubtless, and it belonged to him. The thought was
somehow a very pleasant one. He wondered why. He had possessed far
more valuable real estate in his time but he couldn’t recollect that he
had ever thrilled before at the thought of ownership.
[Illustration]
“Oh, there’s magic in this ridiculous air,” he told himself whimsically.
“Even a toad would look romantic here, I dare say. I wonder if there is
a gate to my domain.”
Behind the fence along which he made his way was an impenetrable mass
of shrubbery and trees. Of what was beyond, there was no telling. But
presently the gate was before him, sagging wide open on its rusted
hinges. From it a straight path, narrow and shadowy, proceeded for some
distance, crossed a blur of sunlight and continued to where a gleam of
white seemed to indicate a building. The path was set between solid
rows of oleander bushes whose lanceolate leaves whispered murmurously
to Winthrop as he trod the firm, moss-edged path.
The blur of sunlight proved to be a break in the path where a driveway
angled across it, curving on toward the house and backward toward
the road where, as Winthrop later discovered, it emerged through a
gate beyond the one by which he had entered. He crossed the drive and
plunged again into the gloom of the oleander path. But his journey was
almost over, for a moment later the sentinel bushes dropped away from
beside him and he found himself at the foot of a flower garden, across
whose blossom-flecked width a white-pillared, double-galleried old
house stared at him in dignified calm. The porches were untenanted and
the wide-open door showed an empty hall. To reach that door Winthrop
had to make a half circuit of the garden, for directly in front of
him a great round bed of roses and box barred his way. In the middle
of the bed a stained marble cupid twined garlands of roses about his
naked body. Winthrop followed the path to the right and circled his
way to the drive and the steps, the pleasure of possession kindling
in his heart. With his foot on the lowest step he paused and glanced
about him. It was charming! Find his health here? Oh, beyond a doubt
he would. Ponce de Leon had searched in this part of the world for the
Fountain of Youth. Who knew but that he, Robert Winthrop, might not
find it here, hidden away in this fragrant, shaded jungle? And just
then his wandering glance fell on a sprawling fig-tree at the end of
the porch, at a white figure perched in its branches, at a girl’s
fresh young face looking across at him with frank and smiling curiosity.
Winthrop took off his hat and moved toward the fig-tree.