EMOLYN’S WEIRD
We maun a’dree our weird.—MEG MERRILES.
They entered the beautiful white hall, with its rainbow windows, around
on which Susan Palmer stared with open-eyed admiration and wonder.
“Mrs. Palmer!” exclaimed the page, throwing wide open a door leading
into an elegant little parlor on the right-hand side of the hall,
opposite the grand saloon.
A lady dressed in gray rose from a sofa and advanced to meet the
visitors.
“Oh, Miss Emolyn!” exclaimed Mrs. Palmer, so overcome with emotion at
the very sight of the lady that she sank down at once into the arm-chair
which Em. quick as thought wheeled to her side.
Meantime Mrs. Lynn took the girl by the hand and kissed her before
turning attention to Susan.
“Oh, Miss Emolyn! That I should live to see you again! Thank Heaven! Oh,
thank Heaven! And you are not changed so much! Oh, no, indeed!”
exclaimed Susan Palmer in almost hysterical excitement.
“Nor are you changed much in all these years, dear old friend, or,
indeed, changed at all, except for the better! You are plumper and
rosier than you used to be, Mrs. Palmer,” said Emolyn, as she stood by
her chair, took her hand and kissed her gently.
“It is the good living, my dear young lady. It is the pure air and fresh
water and abundant food. It is the good living that has given us all new
life, which we owe to your sweet, kind heart, Miss Emolyn!” said Susan
Palmer, weeping for joy while she covered the hands of her benefactress
with kisses.
“It makes me so happy to see you so well and prosperous,” said the lady,
as she gently withdrew her hands from Susan’s clasps and kisses, and
seated herself in the nearest chair.
“Em. has told me all you told her, but, oh, my dear young lady——”
“I am not a young lady any longer, Susan,” said Emolyn, smiling sadly.
“I am thirty-two and a half years old.”
“That don’t seem possible, to look at you, Miss Emolyn, yet it must be
so. You must be thirty-two, for you were sixteen when I saw you last,
and that was nearly seventeen years ago! La! Em. was a baby then, and
now she’s a young woman. And, Miss Emolyn, do you know we all think Em.
the very print of you, as why wouldn’t she be when for months and months
before she was born I did nothing but think of you and your troubles in
your tyrant’s house, my poor, dear young lady, and your image was never
out of my mind. But, oh, my dear child, where have you been all these
years when we thought you in heaven?”
“Oh, Susan Palmer, it is a long story! When I left the city after
passing through that ordeal of fire and water, my guardian, dear Uncle
Lewis Berners, took me to Dranesville for a few days. Then, when Pony
came out to me, he wished to take us home with him to Virginia; but I
could not bear to go. So he took me to Europe. But lay off your bonnet
and shawl, dear old friend, for if I tell you all you wish to know, it
will be some time before I get through.”
“I am very much obleeged to you, Miss Emolyn, but I left my old man down
in the boat, so it ain’t worth while to take off my things.”
“Oh, why did he not come up?”
“Well, honey, he thought we’d like to have a little talk by ourselves
first.”
“And he was right, ma’am, wasn’t he? And, mother, don’t be troubled.
Father’ll fasten the boat and take a walk around the island, where he
will see enough to interest him for hours yet,” said Em., as she took
off her own hat and shawl and went up to Mrs. Palmer to take hers.
“Now do you see the cool manner in which that girl takes her own way?”
said Susan, as she gave Em. her bonnet and wraps.
“Give them to the boy in the hall, my dear; he will put them away for
you. And now, Susan Palmer, be easy until lunch time, which is not far
off, and then I will send your daughter to fetch her father, and by the
time he comes we will have got through all our confidential talk.”
“Well, my dear young lady—for I shall call you my young lady until I see
some signs of middle age come over you—my dear young lady, have your own
way! You can do just as you please with me! And why not, seeing how
heavenly good you have been to me! I’ll stay, ma’am, and very glad to
stay, I don’t deny it,” said Susan with a sigh of satisfaction as she
sank back comfortably in the most luxurious arm-chair she had ever sat
in during her life.
“Draw your chair near me, little namesake, so that I can hold your hand
in mine while I talk,” said Emolyn, as she turned a glance full of
tenderness on Em.’s sympathetic face.
The young girl did as she was requested, and then, with Em.’s hand
clasped closely in hers upon her lap, Emolyn began the story of her
exile.
“I say, after I had passed through that fiery trial my guardian took me
out of the city secretly and hid me at Dranesville, an obscure hamlet,
where I remained in my room at the quiet little hotel, unknown, until
the arrival of Pony with my trunk. Then my guardian wished to take me
home with him to Blackville. But I could not bear the thought of
remaining in my native country, or seeing any one whom I had ever known
before.”
“I don’t wonder, my dear! I don’t wonder, indeed!” sighed Susan Palmer,
half weeping.
“My guardian was very tolerant of my weakness—very tender of my
suffering. He had retired from the practice of law, and having no family
but his aged sisters, he found it easy to go abroad. So after a little
delay necessary to the arrangement of his affairs he took me to New York
and thence to Liverpool. We were attended only by my nurse, Pony, and
his man-servant, Prince, who, coming from Blackville, knew nothing of
the ordeal through which I had just passed.”
Here Emolyn’s glance falling on the upturned face of Em., she said:
“You are looking at me with eyes full of wonder and pity, my child!
Well, let it be so for awhile. You are too young even to _hear_ the
horrors through which I _had to pass_ when I was younger than you are
now. Yet I feel sure, Em., that some day I shall tell you all.”
A convulsive clasp of her hand by the girl’s fingers was her only
answer.
The lady resumed her story.
“It was near the last of July when we landed in Liverpool. It was
perhaps the very best season in which to see England. Better even than
the spring, for midsummer is never intolerably hot and dry there as it
is here. Well, we spent two months in traveling through England, Wales,
Scotland and Ireland. In the latter part of September we went to France,
where we also spent two months in traveling. We did not stop in the
cities nor enter any society. Early in December we went to Italy, spent
six weeks in traveling through that loveliest of lands, and then we
settled down in Rome for the winter.”
“Oh! Oh! And did you see the Pope? And does he really wear three crowns
on his head, one upon top of the other?” eagerly interrupted Susan
Palmer.
“I did not see the Pope. We never tried to see anybody. But I saw the
Vatican—the palace where he lives, and I also saw many grand cathedrals
and palaces.”
Here again Susan Palmer interrupted the narrator with a number of
questions that compelled Emolyn to describe the Vatican, the other
palaces, cathedrals and churches at some length.
“In the spring, just before Lent, we saw the carnival in Rome.”
“Yes! I have heard mention made about that. It is something like a
circus and a panorama and a procession, isn’t it?” inquired Susan.
“Like all of them together, with a great many other spectacles, all on a
tremendous scale.”
“Oh, please tell me all about it,” exclaimed Susan.
So Mrs. Lynn had to recall and describe all the grotesque and gorgeous
phantasmagoria of the carnival at Rome before her hearer could be
satisfied.
“Dear, dear me, what it is to be a traveler!” said Susan.
“As the month of May approached I became very nervous and filled with a
horrible despair that threatened my reason. You know it was the
anniversary of my great agony, Mrs. Palmer. Why, even after all these
years I cannot pass it calmly. And _that_ was the first anniversary.”
“I know, and I do not wonder at anything, my dear child, except that you
were ever able to live over it at all.”
“My guardian was very good to me; may Heaven bless him! He took me to
Venice, the most beautiful and wonderful city in the world, where there
are canals instead of streets and gondolas instead of carriages.”
“Lord bless my soul, Miss Emolyn, how was that?” cried Susan.
Emolyn explained as briefly as she could the building of Venice upon its
cluster of small islands, and then continued:
“We left Italy about the first of June. We spent the summer in traveling
through Russia, Germany, Sweden, Norway and the Shetland and Orkney
Islands. On the first of September we took a steamer from Glasgow to
Constantinople——”
“Constantinople!” eagerly interrupted Susan. “Constantinople! Oh, my
goodness gracious me alive! That’s better than the city of the Pope, or
the city built on the sea, either! It is the city of the Grand Turk! Did
you see the Grand Turk? And does he always sit cross-legged on a
gold-fringed rug, with a long shawl rolled around his head for a turban,
and smoking a long pipe, with a golden bowl and a room full of beautiful
girls dancing before him? And has he really a thousand wives?”
“I don’t know. I did not see him, but I think it quite likely,” said
Emolyn, with a slight smile.
“Think of _that_ now! The pagan Turk to have a thousand wives, more or
less, and the Pope—the poor Pope—to have not one. The laws ought to be
changed! But tell me what you did see in the city of the Grand Turk.
Though it do seem to me, my dear, that in all your travels you saw
nothing but places and things, not people.”
“I did not want to see people,” sighed Emolyn.
“Ah, I know. How thoughtless I am. Go on, my dear young lady.”
Emolyn described Constantinople, with its splendid seraglio, its
magnificent mosques, its squalid streets and mean dwellings.
“Seems to me there’s as much dif’rence between the rich and the poor in
pagan cities as there be in Christian towns.”
“Just as much,” said Emolyn with a sigh; and then she continued—“From
Turkey we went to Greece and to the Ionian Islands, where we spent the
second winter of our travels. In the spring we returned to the United
States because I had come of age and it was necessary for certain legal
forms to be observed by my guardian in turning over my estates to me. We
reached New York about the middle of May, and went down to Wynde Slopes
in Maryland. But, oh, my dear friend, I was scarcely put in possession
of my property before I lost my beloved guardian and last remaining
friend. He passed away at Wynde Slopes after a short and painless
illness, and it is my comfort to think he entered at once into his
eternal rest. You know, by the terms of my father’s will, I was to be
considered of age at eighteen. I was but a few weeks over that age when
my dear guardian left me.”
“Oh, Miss Emolyn! He was a good man. I heard from Pony of all his
devotion to you while you were in your trouble. Do go on, Miss Emolyn,
and excuse my interrupting of you.”
“Well, my dear Susan, what I have to tell you now cannot be dwelt upon
in detail. I sold Wynde Slopes, for I could not bear that my name, all
blurred as it was with falsehood and wrong, should remain connected with
my father’s old ancestral home.”
“But however came you to find out about this beautiful island, honey?”
Emolyn smiled.
“It was not a beautiful island when I found it, Susan; but the way was
this: In my restlessness I was a rambler. I had besides a feeling of
affectionate curiosity to see the old Wilderness manor-house, in which
my mother had been born and been brought up. I came to Greyrock,
accompanied by Pony, and rode over to the Wilderness. I saw the house.
It had long been vacant, the master being then in Europe. I did not
divulge my name to the old servants, nor my relationship to their
master; yet, with the courtesy they always show to strangers, they took
me all over the premises, showed me all I wished to see, told me all I
wished to hear. I returned to Greyrock that night. I had intended to
leave the place early the next morning; but both in going to and coming
from the Wilderness I had taken the river road, and seen from its banks
the desolate, rocky island. It took my fancy and haunted me even after I
had gone home to Greyrock and gone to bed.”
“And so you thought you would like to make that desert bloom and blossom
as the rose, Miss Emolyn?”
“Yes, Susan; and I thought I would like to make a home there, where I
and Pony could come and rest sometimes, ‘the world forgetting, by the
world forgot.’ In a word, before I left the neighborhood I had purchased
the barren island for a mere trifle, but all that it was worth at the
time. It would never have paid as a plantation, Susan; but it was well
adapted to the metamorphosis I made of it, by the three potent
genii—Labor, Time and Money. Fifteen years ago it was a barren rock. You
see what it is now.”
“It is a paradise now,” said Susan with enthusiasm.
“Yet a paradise that could not hold my restless spirit long. After
spending one year here I left it in careful hands and resumed my
travels, this second time accompanied only by Pony and such stranger
guides and couriers as I could pick up _en route_.”
Emolyn here paused so long that Susan Palmer inquired:
“And where did you go, Miss Emolyn? Seems to me as you had seen all the
world before.”
“Not a hundredth part of it, Susan. But I did not go over the same
ground. I sailed for Glasgow and then, without even landing, took ship
for Christiana, Norway, and traveled over the extreme northern part of
Europe, dwelling in the huts of the Lapps and Finns and making reindeer
journeys from place to place. I saw the midnight sun.”
“THE MIDNIGHT SUN, MISS EMOLYN!” exclaimed Susan in open-mouthed
amazement.
“Yes, Susan—it is a sublime and wonderful sight in those regions of
eternal snow.”
“Oome, I feared the poor lady was just a little demented, and now I know
it,” thought Susan mournfully.
“I passed through Russia and into Siberia, a voluntary exile. I spent a
long summer on those savage steppes——”
“Steps!” muttered Susan to herself with a sigh.
“And then I moved southward without stopping until we reached
Alexandria, in Egypt.”
“‘Alexandria, in Egypt!’ Ah, dear, dear, how her mind wanders. Everybody
knows Alexandria is in old Virginy,” moaned Susan to herself.
“I am fatiguing you,” said Mrs. Lynn, perceiving her companion’s
uneasiness. “I must be brief, Susan, and tell you in a few words that
since that time, with the exception of an occasional summer of rest on
the island here, I have spent all my days in travel. I have been all
over the civilized and uncivilized world. I have been where few men and
no women have ever gone before me—from Greenland to Terra del Fuego;
from Behring Straits to Bermuda Isles on this hemisphere; from Cape
North to Cape Colony, and from the coast of Guinea to the Sea of
Kamtschatka on the other.”
“What a life!” exclaimed Susan with a great sigh. “But of all the
countries and the people that you saw, which did you like the best, Miss
Emolyn?”
“You will be surprised when you hear—I liked best to dwell among the
Lapps and Finns!”
Susan was not surprised, for she had got so “mixed in her mind,” as she
said, that she really did not know but that the Lapps and Finns were the
most enlightened of European people instead of being northern
barbarians.
“I have been to this island more regularly to spend the summers for the
last few years until this year, when business connected with my
inheritance of the Wilderness Manor detained me elsewhere until the
first of October.”
“And to think, Miss Emolyn, that the very first thing you did after
entering upon that inheritance was to think of us in our poverty, that
poor, squalid Laundry Lane, and to bring us to this beautiful, wholesome
country,” said Susan Palmer gratefully.
“It is true that my very first thought _was_ of you,” admitted Emolyn.
At that moment a distant clock chimed out musically the hour of noon.
“Now, my little namesake, go find your father and bring him to the house
to lunch with us,” said the lady.
Em. immediately arose and left the room to do this errand. She went into
the hall, where she found her hat and shawl hung on an artistic tree
carved out of malachite. She put them on hastily, and ran out to seek
her father, whom she expected to find near the boat-landing.
Meantime the two women, left alone together, looked into each other’s
faces as if each expected a confidence from the other.
Susan was the first to speak.
“Now, Miss Emolyn, that she is gone and we are by ourselves, tell me why
you have never been able to get over your trouble during all these long
years?”
Emolyn shuddered and covered her eyes with her hands.
“Oh, I have hurt you, Miss Emolyn. I am so sorry. I beg you to forgive
me. I ought not to have asked you a question. But, dear Miss Emolyn,
still you ought not to take that old sorrow so much to heart, innocent
as I know you to be.”
“Oh, Susan, Susan! No one could ever entirely recover from such a
blasting affliction as mine was!” cried the unhappy lady.
“Not even when you know you was innocent, Miss Emolyn?”
“No—not even then! But, Susan, there is the horror of it. I do not know
that I am innocent!” exclaimed Emolyn, with a low moan of anguish.
“Oh, my dear young lady, what_ever_ do you mean?”
“Oh, Susan, Susan! After all I may have—_hurt my child_!”
“Oh, Miss Emolyn, you never, never did! I would stake _my soul_ that you
never did. (This is an awful symptom of derangement.) You never did,
Miss Emolyn. You have thought about it so much that you have got
heartsick and brainsick, and ready to accuse yourself. Don’t think about
it any more, Miss Emolyn. You were right to travel, after all. Oh, pray
don’t let your thoughts dwell upon it any longer, Miss Emolyn. Put it
out of your mind!”
“But, Susan, I cannot. It is a haunting horror. I could—I think I could
get over even the diabolical memory of my trial if only I were quite
sure I never harmed my child. But oh, Susan—on that awful night when she
was born there were hours of agony, followed by hours of
unconsciousness! There may have been between the agony and the
unconsciousness moments of delirium in which I might have harmed my
innocent, helpless child! I do not remember. But then, you know, Susan,
that people recovering from delirium never know or recollect what passed
during the fit. _I might have killed my own child!_ Oh, Heaven! Oh,
Heaven! What a haunting horror that thought is to all my days and
nights!” moaned the miserable woman, swaying herself back and forth and
covering her face with her hands.
“Miss Emolyn, my child, be comforted! You are clear of that sin! As sure
as I am a living woman you have only brooded and brooded over this until
you have got almost insane! Now think of this, Miss Emolyn! When you
were first accused your mind was clear enough on the subject. You knew
then that you had never hurt your child, and you affirmed it most
positive and distinct to every one; and everybody believed you, too! Now
this crazy notion of yours has only come of brooding over it.”
“Oh, Susan, is that possible?”
“Why, yes, ma’am! I have heard of such cases often and often! You aught
to speak to a physician, Miss Emolyn. Here’s Dr. Willet quite
convenient. Did you know he was in the neighborhood, Miss Emolyn?”
“Yes, I knew he was there. He has been to see me on this island.”
“Well, then, honey, speak to him.”
“Perhaps. But, oh, Susan, who can ‘minister to a mind diseased?’ And,
Susan,” she continued, sinking her voice to a whisper, “if _I_ did not
harm my child, _who did_? The child was strangled, Susan! _Who did it?_”
“Ah, dear knows, Miss Emolyn, honey!” sighed the woman. “You must pray!”
“I ‘must pray.’ Perhaps some late remorse—some deathbed confession—may
bring out the truth and give me peace!”