A
BOOK O' NINE TALES
ARLO BATES
[Illustration]
BOSTON
ROBERTS BROTHERS
1891
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Tale the First: A STRANGE IDYL 7
Interlude First: AN EPISODE IN MASK 55
Tale the Second: THE TUBEROSE 67
Interlude Second: AN EVENING AT WHIST 89
Tale the Third: SAUCY BETTY MORK 101
Interlude Third: MRS. FRUFFLES IS AT HOME 131
Tale the Fourth: JOHN VANTINE 141
Interlude Fourth: THE RADIATOR 155
Tale the Fifth: MÈRE MARCHETTE 163
Interlude Fifth: "SUCH SWEET SORROW" 189
Tale the Sixth: BARUM WEST'S EXTRAVAGANZA 201
Interlude Sixth: A BUSINESS MEETING 221
Tale the Seventh: A SKETCH IN UMBER 233
Interlude Seventh: THIRTEEN 253
Tale the Eighth: APRIL'S LADY 263
Interlude Eighth: A CUBAN MORNING 285
Tale the Ninth: DELIA GRIMWET 301
Tale the first.
A STRANGE IDYL.
A BOOK O' NINE TALES.
A STRANGE IDYL.
I.
He lay upon an old-fashioned bedstead whose carved quaintness would once
have pleased him, but to which he was now indifferent. He rested upon
his back, staring at the ceiling, on whose white surface were twinkling
golden dots and lines in a network which even his broken mind knew must
be the sunlight reflected from off the water somewhere. The windows of
the chamber were open, and the sweet summer air came in laden with the
perfume of flowers piquantly mingled with pungent sea odors. Now and
then a bee buzzed by the casement, or a butterfly seemed tempted to
enter the sick-room--apparently thought better of it, and went on its
careless way.
Of all these things the sick man who lay there was unconscious, and the
sweet young girl sitting by his bed was too deeply buried in her book
to notice them. For some time there was no movement in the chamber,
until, the close of a chapter releasing for an instant the reader's
attention, she looked to discover that the patient's eyes were open.
Seeing him awake, she rose and came a step nearer, thereby making the
second discovery, more startling than the first, that the light of
reason had replaced in those eyes the stare of delirium.
"Ah," she said, softly, "you are awake!"
The invalid turned his gaze toward her, far too feeble to make any other
movement; but he made no attempt to speak.
"No," she continued, with that little purring intonation which betrays
the feminine satisfaction at having a man helpless and unable to resist
coddling; "don't speak. Take your medicine, and go to sleep again."
She put a firm, round arm beneath his head, and bestowed upon him a
spoonful of a colorless liquid, afterward smoothing his pillows with
deft, swift touches. He submitted with utter passiveness of mind and
body, ignorant who this maiden might be, where he was, or, indeed, who
he was. Painfully he endeavored to think, to remember, to understand;
but with no result save confusing himself and bringing on an ache in
his head. His nurse, at the convenient end of another chapter, observed
a look of pain and trouble upon the thin face, scarcely less white than
the pillow against which it rested.
"You are worrying," she observed with authority. "Go to sleep. You are
not to think yet."
And, staying himself upon the resolution and confidence in her tone, he
abandoned himself again to the current of circumstances, and drifted
away into dreams.
The girl, watching closely now, with mind distracted from her story to
the more tangible mystery involved in the presence of the sick man, gave
a little sigh of relief when his even breathing indicated that he had
fallen asleep. She removed softly to a seat near the window, and looked
out upon the tranquil beauty of the afternoon. Long Island Sound lay
before her, dimpling and twinkling in the sunshine, while nearer a
sloping lawn stretched from the house to the shore. Glancing backward
and forward between the sunny landscape and the bed where her patient
slept, the maiden fell to wondering about him, recalling the little she
knew, and straining her fancy to construct the story of his life.
Three weeks before a Sound steamer had been wrecked so near this spot
that through the stormy night she had seen the glare of the fire which
broke out before the hull sank, and the next morning's tide had brought
to shore this man, a floating waif, saved by a life-preserver and some
propitious current. A terrible wound upon his head showed where he had
experienced some blow, and left him hesitating with distraught brain
between life and death. In his delirium he had muttered of varied
scenes. He must, the watcher reflected, have travelled extensively. Now
there were words which showed that he was sharing in wild escapades;
cries of defiance or of encouragement to comrades whose shadowy forms
his disordered brain summoned from the mysterious past; strange names,
and words in unknown tongues mingled themselves with incoherent appeals
or bitter reproaches.
To the girl who had been scarcely less at his bedside than the old
woman who nominally nursed him, these broken fragments of wild talk had
been like bits of jewels from which her mind had fashioned a fantastic
mosaic. The mystery surrounding the stranger would, in any case, have
appealed strongly to her quick fancy, but when to this was added the
brilliancy of his delirious ravings, it is small wonder that her
imagination took fire, and she wove endless romances, in all of which
the unconscious sick man figured as the hero. Scraps of talk in an
unknown tongue, a few sonorous foreign words, a little ignorance
concerning matters in reality commonplace enough, have, in many a case
before, been the sufficient foundations for a gorgeous _fata morgana_
of fancy.
The stranger had been thrown ashore only partially dressed, and with
nothing upon him which bore a name. A belt around his waist contained
about fifteen hundred dollars in bills and a small quantity of
gold-dust. From the presence of this latter they had speculated that the
wounded man might be a returning Californian, yet his clothing was of
too fine texture and manufacture for this supposition. Several persons,
seeking for friends lost in the disaster from which he came, had vainly
endeavored to identify him, and his description had been given in the
New York papers; but without result. There seemed, upon the whole, to be
no especial hope of obtaining any satisfactory information regarding the
sick man until he was able to furnish it himself; and to-day for the
first time the watcher found in his eyes the light of returning reason.
She felt as if upon the threshold of a great discovery. She smiled
softly to herself to think how eager she had become over this mystery;
to recognize how large a place the stranger occupied in her thoughts;
yet she could but acknowledge to herself that this was an inevitable
consequence of the existence which surrounded her.
The life into which the wounded man had been driven by the currents of
the sea and those stronger currents of the universe which we call Fate
was a sufficiently monotonous one. The household into which he had been
received consisted of an old gentleman, broken alike in health and
fortune, so that while the establishment over which presided his only
child was not one of absolute want, it was often straitened by the
necessity of uncomfortable economies. Alone with an old family servant,
the father and daughter lived on in the homestead which the wealth of
their ancestors had improved, but which their present revenues were
inadequate to preserve in proper state. One day with them was so like
every other day that the differences of the calendar seemed purely
empirical, even when assisted by such diversity as old Sarah, the
faithful retainer, was able to compass in the matter of the viands
which, at stated periods in the week, appeared upon their frugal table.
Old Mr. Dysart would have failed to perceive the justice of the epithet
"selfish" as applied to himself; yet no word so perfectly described him.
He was absorbed in the compilation of a complete genealogy of the entire
Dysart family, with all its ramifications and allied branches. What
became of his daughter while he delved among musty parchments in his
stately old library; how the burdens of the household were borne; and
how a narrow income was made to cover expenses, were plainly matters
upon which he could not be expected to waste his valuable time. The
maiden could scarcely have been more alone upon a desert island, or in
a magic tower. Her days followed each other with slow, monotonous flow,
like the sands in an hour-glass,--each like the one before, and each,
too, like the one to follow.
Amid such a colorless waste of existence the rich mystery of the wounded
stranger appeared doubly brilliant by contrast; and it is small wonder
that to the watcher the first gleam of returning intelligence in the
sick man's eyes was as the promise of the opening of a door behind which
lay an enchanted palace.
II.
It was yet a day or two before the sick man spoke. He was very weak, and
lay for the most part in a deathlike but health-giving sleep. At length
the day came when he said feebly:--
"Where am I?"
"Here," his nurse answered, with truly feminine irrelevancy.
"Where?"
"At Glencarleon."
He lay silent for some moments, evidently struggling to attach some
meaning to the name, and to collect his strength for further inquiries.
His eyes expressed his mental confusion.
"You were hurt in the steamer accident," she explained. "You came ashore
here, and are with friends. Don't try to talk. It is all right."
He was too feeble to remonstrate,--too feeble even to reason, and he
obeyed her injunction of silence without protest. She retreated to her
favorite seat by the window, and took up her sewing; but her revery
progressed more rapidly than her stitches, and when she was relieved
from her post by old Sarah, she stole softly out of the room to continue
her dreaming in an arbor overlooking the water, where, in pleasant
weather, she was wont to spend her leisure hours.
The next day, when she gave her patient his morning gruel, he watched
her with questioning eyes, as if endeavoring to identify her, and at
last framed another inquiry.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I am Columbine."
"Columbine?"
"Columbine Dysart."
That he knew little more than before was a consequence of the situation,
and Mistress Columbine was wise enough to spare him the necessity of
saying so.
"You do not know us," she said; "but we will take good care of you until
you are well enough to hear all about it."
"But--" he began, the puzzled look upon his wan face not at all
dissipated.
"No," she returned, "there is no 'but' about it. It is all right."
"But," he repeated with an insistence that would not be denied, "but--"
"Well?" queried she, seeing that something troubled him too much to be
evaded.
"But who am I?" he demanded, so earnestly that the absurdity of such a
question was lost in its pathos.
"Who are you?" she echoed, in bewilderment. Then, with the instant
reflection that he was still too near delirium and brain-fever to be
allowed to trouble himself with speculations, she added, brightly, and
with the air of one who settles all possible doubts, "Why, you are
yourself, of course."
She smiled so dazzlingly as she spoke that a complete faith in her
assurances mingled itself with some dimly felt sense of the ludicrous
in the sick man's mind, and although the baffled look did not at once
disappear from his face, yet he said nothing further, and not long
after he fell asleep, leaving Columbine free to seek her arbor again
and ponder on this new phase of her interesting case. She attached no
serious importance then to the fact that her patient seemed so uncertain
concerning his identity; but, as the days went by, and he was as
completely unable to answer his own query as ever, a strange, baffled
feeling stole over her; a teasing sense of being brought helplessly face
to face with a mystery to which she had no key.
His convalescence was somewhat slow, the hurts he had received having
been of a very serious nature; but when he was able to leave his room,
and even to accompany Columbine to her favorite arbor, he was still
grappling vainly with the problem of who and what he was.
This first visit to the arbor, it should be noted, was an event in the
quiet life at the old house. Columbine was full of petty excitement over
it, her fair cheeks flushed and her hair disordered with running to and
fro to see that the cushions were in place, the sun shining at the right
angle, and the breeze not too fresh. She insisted upon supporting the
sick man on one side, while faithful old Sarah, her nurse in childhood,
and since promoted to fill at once the place of housekeeper and all the
departed servants, took his arm upon the other to help him along the
smoothly trodden path through the neglected garden. Mr. Dysart was as
usual in his library, and to disturb him there was a venture requiring
more daring than either of the women possessed. They got on very
tolerably without him, however, and the patient was soon installed amid
a pile of wraps and shawls in the summer-house, where he was left in
charge of Miss Dysart, while Sarah returned to her household avocations.
It was a beautiful day in the beginning of September, warm and golden,
with all the mellowness of autumn in the air, while yet the glow of
summer was not wholly lost. The soft sound of water on the shore was
heard through the chirping of innumerable insects, shrilling out their
delight in the heat; while now and then the notes of a bird mingled
pleasantly in the harmony. The convalescent drew in full breaths of the
sweet air with a sigh of satisfaction, leaning back among his cushions
to look, with the pleasure of returning life, over the fair scene before
him.
For some time nurse and patient sat silent, but the girl, watching
him intently, was in no wise dissatisfied with the other's evident
appreciation of her favorite spot. Indeed, she had dreamed here of him
so often that some subtle clairvoyancy may have secretly put him in
harmony with the place before he saw it. Columbine liked him for the
pleasure so evident upon his handsome, wasted face, while inly she was
aware how great would have been her disappointment had he been less
alive to the charms of the view.
"How lovely it is!" he said, at length. "It is, perhaps, because you
live in so lovely a place," he added, after a trifling pause, and with
a faint smile, "that you are so kind to a waif like myself."
"Perhaps," she answered, returning his smile. "But, really, we only did
what any one would have done in our place."
"Oh, no; and besides, few could have done it so well. It is so pleasant,
I seem to have lived here always."
"It may be," Columbine suggested, with deliberation, "that it recalls
some place you have known."
A shadow came over his face.
"It is a pity," he said, "that if that unlucky disaster could spare me
nothing of my baggage, it could not at least have left me my few poor
wits. I might make an interesting case for psychologists. They might
discover from me in what part of the brain the faculty of memory is
located, for that wretched wound seems to have let mine all ooze out of
my cranium. I do not feel, Miss Dysart, like an idiot in all respects,
since I certainly know my right hand from my left; and I have found,
by experiment in the night-watches, that I could still make myself
understood in two or three languages."
"You had much better have slept," interpolated his listener.
"But as far as my personal history goes," he continued, replying to her
words by a smile, "my mind is an absolute blank. I can give you several
interesting pieces of information concerning ancient history and
chronology; but I haven't the faintest idea what my name is; and you
must acknowledge that it is a little hard for a man to be ignorant of
his own name."
"Yes," Columbine assented, bending forward and clasping her hands in
front of her knees. "Yes; and it is so strange! Try and remember; you
must surely recollect something."
"I have tried; I do try; but I can only conjure up a confused mass of
shifting images; things I seem to have been and to have done, all
indistinguishably mixed with what I have only dreamed or hoped to do
and be."
"How strange!" she said again, fixing her wide-open dark eyes upon him,
and then turning her gaze to the sea beyond; "but it will come to you in
time."
"Heavens!" he exclaimed, energetically, "I hope so, else I shall regret
that you pulled me out of the water. To-day I do seem to have a glimpse
of something more tangible. Since I sat here I almost thought I
remembered--"
He broke off suddenly, his bright look fading into an expression of
helpless annoyance.
"What?" cried Columbine, eagerly.
"I cannot tell," he groaned. "It is all gone."
"Oh, what a pity!" exclaimed she, springing to her feet in a flush of
sympathy and baffled curiosity. "Oh, how cruel!"
Then she remembered that she was absolutely disobeying the doctor's
orders, and was allowing her patient to become excited.
"There, there," she said, "how wrong of me to let you worry! Everything
will come back to you when you are stronger. Now it is time for your
luncheon. It is so warm and bright you may have it here if you will
promise not to bother your head. For I really think," she added, wisely,
giving his wraps a deft touch or two, "that the best way to remember is
not to try."
"I dare say you are right," he agreed. "At least trying doesn't seem to
accomplish much."
She flitted away, to return a moment or two later with an old-fashioned
salver, upon which, in dainty china two or three generations old, Sarah
had arranged the invalid's luncheon. She drew the rustic table up to his
side and served him, while he ate with that mixture of eagerness and
disinclination which marks the appetite of one in the early stages of
a convalescence.
"That pitcher," he observed, carelessly, as she poured out the cream,
"ought to belong to my past. It has a familiar look, as if it could
claim acquaintance if it would only deign."
"It was my grandmother's," Columbine said. "When we were little, Cousin
Tom used to tease me by saying my cheeks looked like those of that fat
face on the handle. I was more buxom then than now."
Instead of replying, her companion laid down his spoon and looked at her
in delighted amaze. Then he struck his hands together with sudden vigor.
"Tom!" he cried. "Tom!"
"Well?" queried she, looking at him as if he had gone distraught. "It
isn't so strange a name, is it?"
"But, don't you see?" he exclaimed, joyously,--"I'm Tom! I have found my
name!"
III.
The rest of Tom's name, however, remained as profoundly and as
provokingly concealed in the wounded convolutions of his brain as
ever. Columbine called him Mr. Tom, and it is not unlikely that the
familiarity of the monosyllable, which seemed to place them at once
upon an intimate footing, had a strong influence upon their relations.
The maiden had a crisp way of pronouncing the name, as if she were half
conscious of a spice of impropriety in a term so familiar, and felt it,
too, to be something of a joke, which was so wholly fascinating that the
patient did not have to be very far advanced toward his normal condition
of health and spirits to enjoy it so well as to reflect that the name so
rendered ought to be enough for any man.
Mr. Tom soon began to gather up a few stray bits from his childhood, his
memory apparently returning to its former state by the same slow road it
had travelled from his birth to reach it.
"I remember a few beginnings," he had said, hopefully, on the day
following that of his first visit to the arbor. "I had a carved coral of
a most luscious pink color. It is even now vaguely connected in my mind
with the idea of eating; so I infer that I must have cherished a fond
delusion that it was good to eat."
"It is at least good to remember," Columbine returned, laughing. "It
wouldn't be a bad idea to open an account of things recovered from the
sea of the past. You can begin by putting down: Item, one coral."
"Yes; and one nurse. I distinctly recall the nurse. She had a large mole
on her chin. Yes; I can certainly swear to the nurse."
He was in excellent spirits to-day. The dawning of recollection gave
promise of the restoration of complete remembrance; the day was
enchanting; his appetite and his luncheon came to a wonderfully good
agreement, while a prettier serving-maid than Miss Dysart could hardly
be found.
"It must be very like being a child again," she observed, thoughtfully;
"and that is a thing, you know, for which the poets are always sighing."
"You will have the advantage of growing up with me," was his gay retort,
"if this process continues. Only you'll have the advantage of superior
age."
After that he told her each morning what he had been able to recover
from forgetfulness since the previous day. It is difficult to imagine
the strangeness of this relation. It possessed all the piquancy of
fiction to which its ingenious author added new incidents from day to
day; yet it had, too, the strong attractiveness of truth and personal
interest. Columbine listened and commented, deeply engrossed and
fascinated by the novel experience which gave her an acquaintance with
the entire past life of her stranger guest, yet an acquaintance which
was etherealized and marked by a certain charm not to be found in actual
companionship. Had she really shared the childhood thus narrated to her
it would have been in no way remarkable; but now she seemed to live it
herself, with a vitality and interest more vivid each day. Often the
freakish faculty, upon whose vigor depended the continuity of Mr. Tom's
narration, would for days concern itself with the veriest trifles,
advancing the essentials of the story not a whit; or, again, it would
seem to turn perversely backward, although no efforts availed to speed
it forward.
The main facts of Mr. Tom's story, so far as they were gathered up in
the first week of this odd story-telling, were as follows: He made his
acquaintance with the world doubly orphaned, his father being lost at
sea upon a return voyage from India before the boy's birth, and his
mother dying in childbed. Reflecting upon what he was able to recall,
Tom concluded that his parents were persons of wealth. His surroundings
had at least been luxurious. The truth was, as he came, in time, to
remember, that, being left without near relatives, he had been, by his
guardian, confided to the care of trusty people, who spoiled and adored
him until he was transferred to boarding-school.
"I have grown to be a dozen years old," Tom remarked to Miss Dysart one
afternoon as they sat in the arbor, she sewing, and he idly pulling to
pieces a purple aster. "I have even conducted myself to boarding-school,
and I cannot conceive why I can't get hold of my family name. I must
have been called by it sometimes. I remember being dubbed Tom, Tommy,
Thomas,--that was when I was stubborn; Tom Titmouse--that was by nurse;
Tom Tattamus--that by the particularly odious small boy next door; but
beyond that I might as well never have had a name at all. My trunks, I
know, were marked with a big W, but all the names beginning with that
letter that I can hit upon seem equally strange to me. I do not see why,
of all things, it is precisely that which I cannot remember."
"It is because you worry about it," his companion suggested; "probably
that particular spot in your brain where your name is lodged is kept
irritated by your impatience."
"Heavens!" laughed he. "How psychologic and physiological you are! Well,
if I've no name, I can invent one, I suppose."
"Or make one. Do you realize what a fascinating position you are in?
Common mortals have only the consolation of speculating about their
future; but you can also amuse yourself with boundless speculations
concerning your past. You are relieved from all responsibility--"
"Oh, no," he interrupted; "that is the worst of it. I have
responsibilities without knowing what they are. The past holds me like
a giant from behind, and I cannot even see my captor."
"Oh, you look at it all too seriously!" Columbine returned. "You can
fashion your past, as we all do our futures, just as you like. I think
you are decidedly to be envied."
"Envied!"
The bitterness of the exclamation brought to her a sudden realization of
the difference of their points of view, and revealed how deep was the
man's humiliation at his helpless position. A quick flush of pity and
sympathy mantled her cheek.
"Forgive me," she exclaimed, impulsively. "I had no right to be so
thoughtless. I beg your pardon."
"There is no occasion. You are right. It is certainly better to laugh
than to cry over the inevitable, especially as things are righting
themselves. But we, or, rather, I, must go into the house. It is growing
cool."
IV.
Life at the old Dysart place went forward in a slow and decorous
fashion, little allied to the bustling manners of the present day. Mr.
Dysart was getting now to be an old man, albeit it is doubtful if in any
abundant sense he can ever have been a young one. In any case he had, by
long burrowing among musty records and genealogical parchments, acquired
a dry and antique appearance, as, to use a somewhat presumptuous yet not
inexact metaphor, certain scholarly worms had taken on a brown hue from
continued dining on the bindings of his venerable folios. He inhabited
a remote and essentially unworldly sphere, from which the existence of
his daughter was wholly separate. He was conscious of her presence in
an unrealizing way; was even aware that just now she had in the house
a guest who had come ashore from a wreck. But that was the affair
of Columbine and old Sarah; he could not of course be expected to
loosen his hold upon the clew which he hoped would lead him to the
exact connection between the Dysarts and the Van Rensselaers of two
generations back, to pay attention to a chance waif from that outer
world with which he had never considered it worth his while to concern
himself.
As far as Mr. Tom was concerned, Mr. Dysart might as well not have
existed. They did once meet in the passage before the study door when
the invalid in his first days of walking was one rainy morning wandering
restlessly about the halls; but the owner of the house hurried furtively
past, as if he were the interloper and the other lord of the manor; and
even when the convalescent was well enough to join the family at table,
Mr. Dysart was very seldom there, so that the meals were for the most
part taken _tête-à-tête_ by Columbine and her patient.
The result of such a situation is evident from the beginning.
Exceptional natures might be imagined, perhaps, that would not have
grown dangerously interested in each other under such circumstances; but
at least these two drew every day closer together. Neither had any tie
belonging to the past; or, more exactly, Columbine had none, and he,
for the time being, at least, had no past. His helplessness and the
mystery enshrouding him would have appealed to the heart of any woman,
and Columbine had no distractions to fill her life and crowd out this
ever-deepening interest. Of Mr. Tom, her beauty and freshness, her
simplicity, which was so far removed from insipidity, her innocence,
which never suggested ignorance, won the respect and admiration long
before he was conscious that love, too, was growing in his heart.
There came a day, however, when he could no longer be ignorant of the
nature of his feelings.
The two had gone past the arbor and down to the shore. Columbine was
seated upon a rock, while Tom lay at her feet, idly tossing pebbles into
a pool left among the sea-weed by the ebbing tide. The maiden wore that
day a dress of gray flannel, almost the color of the stone upon which
she sat, trimmed with a velvet of orange which no complexion less
brilliant than hers could have endured. She twisted in her fingers a
spray of goldenrod, yellow-coated harbinger of autumn.
"The summer is gone," Columbine remarked, pensively. "It is getting late
even for goldenrod."
"Yes," he echoed, "the summer is gone. I lost so much of it I hardly
realize--"
He broke off suddenly, a new thought seizing him.
"Why!" he exclaimed, "how long I have been here! I ought to have
taken myself off your hands long ago. How you must think I abuse your
hospitality!"
"Nonsense!" she returned, brightly; "you of course cannot go until you
are well. It is necessary that you at least conjure from the past the
rest of your name before you start out into the world again. Make
yourself as comfortable as you can, Mr. Tom; you won't be let loose for
a long time to come yet."
Despite the lightness of her manner her companion fancied he detected a
shade of some hitherto unnoted feeling in her words; but whether dread
of his departure or desire to be rid of him he could not divine. The
latter thought struck him with a sudden chill. The love which had been
fostered in his mind by this close and intimate companionship was
not unmixed at this moment with a fear of being thrown upon his own
resources while ignorant alike of his place and his name. He clung
strongly to Columbine as to one who understood and sympathized with his
strange mental weakness. The color flamed into his pale cheeks with a
sudden throb of intense emotion; then faded, to leave him whiter than
ever.
"Besides," Columbine continued, after a moment's pause, her glance still
downcast, "why shouldn't you stay? Your being here makes no difference
to papa; he smokes and grubs after the roots of his ancestral tree the
same as ever; and as for me," lifting her eyes with a sudden smile that
showed all her dimples, "you know how much you amuse me. You are as good
as a continued story, and are alive, too, the last being a good deal in
this desert."
He returned her smile with effort. His moment of intense feeling had so
overpowered him that he felt weak and faint.
"How white you are!" she exclaimed, noting the wanness of his face; "you
should have had your _bouillon_ long ago. A pretty condition you are in
to go roaming off by yourself!"
She tripped lightly off towards the house for the forgotten nourishment,
and Mr. Tom was left to his reflections. He raised himself, as her
graceful figure vanished, then sank back upon his rug with something
like a groan. All in an instant the knowledge had come to him that he
loved her. He had gone on from day to day conscious only of thinking of
his own history, which, bit by bit, he was disinterring from the past,
as men bring to light some buried city, and insensibly Columbine had
become dear to him before he was aware.
He buried his face in his hands in a despair which was in part the
result of his strange mental confusion; in part arose from his physical
weakness. He did not reflect then that his case was not necessarily
hopeless; that nothing in his life which remembrance had recovered need
raise a barrier between himself and Columbine. Afterward this thought
came to him and brought comfort; now he was overwhelmed by a sense of
impotent misery. Helpless in the hand of fate, it seemed to him that
this love, of which he was newly aware, was but a fresh device of
malignant destiny. He did not even consider whether his affection might
be returned; he only felt the impossibility of offering his broken life
to Columbine,--of binding her to a past that was uncertain and a future
that was insecure.
Tears of weakness, and scorn of that weakness, came into his eyes. Their
traces were still visible when Columbine returned.
"Come," she said, ignoring the signs of his agitation, "you have told
me nothing on the story to-day. Just down there," indicating by a pretty
sweep of the hand a little pebbly cove lying just below them, "is where
Sarah and I found you."
"And I would to God," cried poor Tom with sudden fierceness, "that you
had left me there."
Columbine made, for the moment, no reply to this outburst. She
insisted upon his drinking his _bouillon_, despite his protests of
disinclination, and then brought him back to the tale of his life.
"There is an air of improbability about my story," he said, after a
little musing. "Indeed, so much so that I myself begin to doubt the
truth of it. In the first place it seems particularly arranged to
baffle inquiry. Whenever I recall a person to whom I might send for
verification or information, I straightway remember that he is dead, or
that my wanderings have carried me beyond his knowledge. I am apparently
as far as ever from knowing who I am or what I am. And, besides, suppose
your beautiful theory, that my memory acts as it does because the
impressions of youth are strongest, is not true? You put me in the same
category with those whose memory is weakened by age; but this may be
all moonshine. Perhaps this history, to which I am painfully adding
every day, is something I have read, and only a fiction after all."
"But why suppose so many tormenting things?" returned Columbine,
brightly. "The fault of the age, they say,--we know very little of it
here, but cousin Tom sends me a paper occasionally,--is unrest; and
whoever you are, a little tranquillity will scarcely be likely to harm
you. Go on with the life and adventures, and never mind now whether they
are true or not. At least they are interesting. You broke off yesterday
in a most exciting account of a tiger hunt."
"Ah, yes; I got the rest of it together this morning. Where did I leave
off? Had we reached the second jungle?"
V.
The salt meadows were on fire. The pungent odor of burning peat and
saline grasses floated over the Dysart place and about the arbor one
October morning when Tom sat there meditating. He was thinking of
Columbine, and of his passion for her. His health now seemed firmly
re-establishing itself, and his memory had gone on over the old track
of his life in its singular method of progression until he felt
confident that he should ultimately be in possession of all his past.
He reviewed what he remembered, as he sat this morning inhaling
the aromatic scent of the burning lowlands, and the result was not
unsatisfactory. He had recovered from oblivion his life up to the time,
three years before, when he took passage home from India, and his
financial affairs at that period were in an eminently satisfactory
position. He recalled that he had been regarded on shipboard as a person
of more consequence than the British officer who, with his daughter,
occupied the cabin of the Indiaman with him; and he trusted that no
untoward circumstances of the interval had placed him in a condition
less desirable.
He had reconciled himself to remaining at the Dysart mansion by turning
over to old Sarah a goodly portion of the money contained in his
travelling-belt, and blessed himself that his wandering life had led
him to form the habit of always going thus provided. He sat now waiting
for Columbine to appear, and fondly picturing to himself the delight
of telling his love when the time came that he dare speak. Each day
increased his attachment, and he believed, as every lover will, that
his love was returned. A smile of brooding contentment, so deep that
even the impatience of his passion could not disturb it, dwelt upon his
face as he inhaled the fragrant odors from the burning marshes, and
listened for the step of the maiden he loved.
She came at last, moving along the garden paths between the faded
shrubs, a gracious and winning figure. She was dressed that morning in
a gown of russet wool, with a bunch of gold and crimson leaves at her
throat, and never, in Tom's eyes, had she looked so lovely.
"I shouldn't have been so late in getting here," she said, as she took
her accustomed seat, "but Sarah is greatly concerned about the fire in
the salt marshes. She says it is thirty years since they burnt over,
and she presages all sorts of dire calamities from that fact."
"That they haven't burnt over for thirty years?"
"Well," Columbine returned with a pout, "she is not at all clear what
she does mean, so it isn't to be expected that I shall be. We will go
on with the life and adventures, if you please."
"But suppose I haven't remembered anything more?"
"Nonsense," retorted pretty Columbine; "you never really remember. I am
convinced that you make it all up as you go along; but you tell it so
seriously that it might as well be true. And in any case it does credit
to your powers of imagination."
His story now was of his voyage from Calcutta. He told of moonlight
nights in the Indian ocean, of long days of sunny idling on deck, and
all the pleasant details of a prosperous voyage over Southern seas.
"Miss Grant wasn't very pretty," he observed, lying lazily back and
looking up into the blue October sky, "at least not as I remember her;
but she was very good company, only a little given to sentimentalizing.
She had a guitar, and I will confess I did hate to see that guitar come
out."
"She would be pleased if she could hear you," laughed Columbine. "What
was there so frightful about her guitar?"
"Oh, when she had that she always sang moony songs, and after that--"
"Well?" demanded Miss Dysart, mischievously.
"Oh, after that," he returned, with an impatient shake of his shoulders,
"she was sure to talk sentiment."
His companion laughed merrily. The faint, almost unconscious feeling of
jealousy which had risen at the mention of this engaging young lady had
vanished entirely in the indifference with which Mr. Tom spoke of her.
She moved her head with a happy little motion not unlike that with which
a bird plumes itself. Her soft, low laugh did not really end, but lost
itself among the dimples of her cheeks.
Tom regarded her with shining eyes.
"Not that I should mind some people's talking sentiment," he said with
a smile.
She raised her laughing gaze to his, and, as their eyes met, the meaning
of the look in his was too plain to be mistaken. She flushed and paled,
dropping her gaze from his.
"And did nothing especial happen on the voyage?" she asked, with a
strong effort to regain her careless manner.
"Not that I recall," he answered, putting his hand beside hers upon the
rustic table so that their fingers almost touched.
A moment of silence followed, broken only by the chirping of a few
belated crickets, that, despite the advancement of the season, had not
yet discontinued their autumnal concerts. The two, so quiet outwardly,
sat with beating hearts, when suddenly a wandering breeze brought into
the summer-house a puff of smoke from the burning salt meadows. It was
laden with the fetid odor of consuming animal matter, and so powerful
was it that both involuntarily turned away their heads.
"Bah!" Columbine cried. "How horrible! There must be a dead animal of
some sort there that the fire has reached."
She stopped speaking and gazed with surprise at Tom, who had buried his
face in his hands with a groan.
"What is it? Has it made you ill? It is gone now."
He lifted a face white with emotion.
"No," he said, "it has not made me ill,--physically, that is; but it has
done worse, it has made me remember."
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "What is it? is it so terrible?"
She leaned toward him, and to poor Tom she looked the incarnation of
enticing loveliness. Sympathy and interest--not unmixed, she being a
woman, with curiosity--sparkled in her eyes, yet he nerved himself to
tell her all that had come back to him.
"That smell of burning hide," he began, "brought it all up in a flash.
The ship got on fire; Miss Grant clung to me; there was just such an
odor leaking out around the hatches from the hold where the flames were
at the cargo; she--I--when everything else was right, when the fire was
out, I was all wrong."
"I do not understand," Columbine said.
She drew away from him, her cheeks pale, her very lips wan. She did not
meet his gaze, but sat with downcast eyes.
"I was engaged to Miss Grant. I did not pretend to love her, but I
thought we were all bound for the bottom, and"--
He stopped helplessly; her eyes flashed upon him.
"And if a lie would soothe her last moments," she said, bitterly, "you--
No, no; I beg your pardon."
"I remember more," he went on, wrenching each word out as if by a strong
effort of will. "The shock, and, perhaps, previous seeds of disease,
were too much for her father; he died the day before we landed. She was
alone in the world, she had no protector, and I--I married her at once,
to protect her."
A sparrow flew up into the lattice outside the arbor without noticing
the pair within, so dead was the stillness which now fell upon them. At
length Columbine rose and stood an instant by the table which had been
between them. She wavered an instant, then stooped and kissed him upon
the forehead. Then without a word she turned from the arbor and fled
swiftly to the house.
VI.
Left alone in the summer-house Tom's first feeling was a great throb of
joy; but it gave place almost instantly to an aching pang of misery. To
be assured of Columbine's love would have been intense happiness an hour
before; now it could only add to his pain. He raged against the toils
in which fate had entangled him, yet defiance to helplessness and every
paroxysm of rage at destiny ended in a new and humiliating consciousness
of his own impotence. He felt like one who walked blindfolded, with
light granted him, not to avoid missteps, but merely to see them after
they were taken.
One thing at least was clear to Tom,--that he must leave the Dysart
mansion. To go on seeing Columbine day after day, with the knowledge
at once of their love and of the barrier that stood between them,
was a position too painful and too anomalous to be endured. Both for
his own sake and for Miss Dysart's it was necessary that he delay no
longer. Where he was going he was not at all clear; that he left to
circumstances to decide. He quitted the arbor and walked toward the
house, so intent upon his painful thoughts that at a turning of the path
he ran plump against old Sarah, who was hurrying along with a face full
of anxiety.
"Oh, mercy gracious, Mr. Thomas!" the faithful creature cried; "I'm sure
I beg your pardon! But you look as if you'd seen a ghost!"
"So I have," he answered. "Where are you going with that spade?"
"To the salt meadows," she answered. "The fire's sure to come into
the lower garden if we don't ditch it, and if it does, there'll be no
stopping it from the house."
"What!" exclaimed Tom. "Where are the men?"
"There ain't no men," old Sarah returned, philosophically. "Why should
there be?"
"But you are not going down to ditch alone?"
"'D I be likely to stop in-doors and let the house where I've lived
fifty years burn over my head?" demanded she, grimly.
"Give me the spade," was his reply. "A little work will do me good."
Old Sarah remonstrated, but it ended in the strangely matched pair going
together to the meadows below.
The dry sphagnum was readily cut through with the spade, and it was
not a difficult, although a slow task, to dig a wide, shallow trench
between the stretch of burning moss and the gardens. Once the ditch was
complete, it would be easy to fight the fire on the home side, since
there was nothing swift or fierce about the conflagration, it being
rather a sullen, relentless smouldering of the moss and grass-roots, dry
from the long drought.
Zealously as the two labored, the fire gained upon them, and as they
worked, they could not but cast despairing glances at the long stretch
of garden which lay still unprotected.
Meanwhile Columbine from her window had seen the laborers, and, in a
moment realizing the danger, she flew to the library.
"Father," she cried, "the salt marshes have been burning all day, and
the fire is almost up to the garden."
"Good heavens, Columbine, how impetuous you are! You have quite driven
out of my head what became of the second son of--"
"But, father," she interrupted, impatiently, "do you realize that if you
sit here pothering about second sons the house may be burned over our
heads?"
"Burned!" exclaimed the genealogist, in dismay; "and all my papers
scattered about! Oh, help me, Columbine, to pack up my notes; but don't
take up anything without asking me where it goes. Do you think that
iron-bound trunk will hold them all?"
Fearing to trust herself to reply, Columbine darted from the library,
leaving her father to the half-frenzied collection of his papers, and
betook herself to the salt meadows, where, grimed with smoke, Tom and
the old serving woman were sturdily laboring. The pungent smoke eddied
about them, and already old Sarah's gown showed marks of having been
on fire in a dozen places. Columbine stood upon the descending path a
moment and regarded them; then, with a step which bespoke determination,
she went on and joined them.
"Go back!" shouted Tom, hoarsely, as she approached; "don't you see how
the sparks are flying about? You'll be a-fire before you know it."
And, indeed, the fire was becoming more active as it crept nearer to the
edges of the meadows, where the grass was taller. The word of warning
had hardly left Tom's lips before she found her dress burning, and
while, being of wool, it was easily extinguished, Tom found in it an
excuse for taking her in his arms to smother the flame.
"Go back to the house," he said, in a voice which was full of feeling,
yet which it would have been impossible to disobey. "We shall save the
place; but I cannot work while you are in danger."
"And you?" she demanded, clasping her hands upon his arm.
"Nonsense! there is no danger for me," he returned, smiling tenderly.
"Don't think of me."
It was not until late in the night that the contest against the fire was
concluded. Tom worked with an energy in which desperation had a large
place, while old Sarah, with the pathetic fidelity of an animal, labored
by his side, indefatigable and unmurmuring. Faint streaks of light had
begun to show in the east when Tom flung down the spade, upon which he
had been leaning, for a last close scrutiny.
"It is all right now," he said; "there can't possibly be any fire left
on this side of the marshes. It was lucky for us that the tide rose into
the lower part of the trench."
Undemonstratively, as she had worked, old Sarah gathered herself
together, grimy, stooping, quivering with weariness and hunger, and
crept back to the house they had saved; while Tom, with tired step,
climbed the path and took his way past the summer-house toward the other
side of the mansion. As he passed the arbor something stirred within.
"Columbine!" he said, in surprise, recognizing by some instinct that it
was she. "Why, Columbine, what are you here for? You will be chilled to
death."
"You sent me away," returned the girl, with a trace of dogged protest in
her voice. "You wouldn't let me help."
"I should hope not," laughed Tom, nervously, taking off his hat and
passing his hand through his hair, from which odors of smoke flowed as
he stirred it. "You were hardly made to fight fire."
"No," she answered, with sudden and significant vehemence, "I was not
made to fight fire."
He moved uneasily where he stood in the darkness; then he took a stride
forward and sat down beside her. They were silent a moment, his eyes
fixed upon the first far sign of dawn, while hers searched the gloom for
his features.
"Columbine," he began, at length, in a voice of strange softness, "it
would have been better for us both if I had never come here."
"No, no," was her eager reply; "I cannot have you say that. You have put
savor into my life that was so vapid before."
"But a bitter savor," he said.
"Bitter, yes," Columbine returned in a voice which, though low and
restrained, betrayed the fierceness of her excitement. "Bitter as death;
but sweet too, sweet as--"
She left the sentence unfinished. Below on the shore the full tide was
lapping the stones with monotonous melody. Save for their iterance, the
stillness was almost as deep as the marvellous silence of a winter night
which no sound of living thing breaks.
"Whatever comes," Columbine murmured a moment later, her voice changed
and softened so that he had to bend to catch her words, "I am glad of
all that has happened; glad of you; glad, always glad."
He caught her passionately in his arms and covered her downcast head
with kisses, while she yielded unresistingly to his embrace, although
she sobbed as if her heart would break. In the east the promise of the
dawn shone steadily, increasing slowly but surely. It became at last
so strong that Columbine, opening her swollen lids, was able to
distinguish objects a little. At that moment she became conscious that
the arms of her lover had loosened their hold upon her. She looked into
his face with sudden alarm. Mr. Tom had fallen into a dead faint.
VII.