THE GILDED MAN
THE GILDED MAN
A ROMANCE OF THE ANDES
BY CLIFFORD SMYTH
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
[Illustration]
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
NEW YORK 1918
Copyright, 1918
BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
TO
BEATRIX
CONTENTS
_Page_
INTRODUCTION xi
_Chapter_
I. IN WHICH COMET GOES LAME 1
II. IN UNA'S GARDEN 10
III. A CHAPTER ON GHOSTS 19
IV. THE GHOST OF THE FORGOTTEN 30
V. THE SEARCH FOR EL DORADO 41
VI. EMBOLADORES ON THE MARCH 55
VII. LA REINA DE LOS INDIOS 71
VIII. A RIVER INTERLUDE 89
IX. ON INDIAN TRAILS 105
X. AN OLD MYSTERY 125
XI. IN WHICH ANDREW IS FOUND 145
XII. A DEAD WALL 157
XIII. MRS. QUAYLE TAKES THE LEAD 170
XIV. THE BLACK MAGNET 189
XV. AT THE SIGN OF THE CONDOR 212
XVI. NARVA 230
XVII. A SONG AND ITS SEQUEL 251
XVIII. SUBTERRANEAN PHOTOGRAPHY 274
XIX. A QUEEN'S CONQUEST 293
XX. LEGEND AND REALITY 302
XXI. DREAMS 312
XXII. A PEOPLE'S DESTINY 325
XXIII. THE GILDED MAN 344
THE GILDED MAN
FOREWORD
Two dreams have persistently haunted the imagination of man since dreams
began. You find them in all mythologies, and, perhaps most dramatically,
in the Arabian Nights: the dream of the Water of Immortality, and the
dream of the Golden City. Within recent times--that is, during the
sixteenth century--both were lifted out of the region of fairy lore, and
men as far from "dreamers," in the ordinary sense, as the "conquistador"
Ponce de Leon and Sir Walter Raleigh raised them into the sphere of
something like Elizabethan practical politics. Whether or not Ponce de
Leon did actually discover the Fountain of Eternal Youth on the Bimini
Islands concerns us but incidentally here. At all events, he seems to
have died without drinking of it; as death on the scaffold was the
penalty for Raleigh's failure to discover El Dorado. So practically had
the courts of Elizabeth and James regarded the dream of the Golden City,
and so firm had been Raleigh's own belief in it. Though Raleigh's name
is most conspicuously and tragically connected with it, of course it
had been Spanish adventurers for several generations before--exploring
that "Spanish Main" which they had already, and in romance forever, made
their own--who had given that dream its local habitation and its name.
Martinez had been the first to tell how, having drifted on the coast of
Guiana, he had been taken inland to a city called Manoa, whose king
was in alliance with the Incas. Manoa, said he, to opened mouths and
wondering eyes, on his return to Spain, was literally built, walls and
roofs, houses big and little, of silver and gold. His tale, garnished
with many other mysterious matters, soon speeded expedition after
expedition, dreaming across those
"perilous seas
In fairyland forlorn."
All came back with marvels on their tongues. All had caught glimpses
of the gilded domes of the city, but that was all. Gonzales Ximinez
de Quesada from Santa Fé de Bogotá was "warmest," perhaps; but he too
failed. Many a daring sailor since has vainly gone on a like quest. Even
in our prosaic times--in the true Elizabethan spirit, that, for all
their romance, actually animated those enterprises of old time--when
men sought real gold as now, not "faery-gold"--an enterprise, with
a prospectus, shareholders, and those dreams now known as promised
dividends, has made it its serious "incorporated" business to go in
quest of El Dorado.
But, elaborate as all previous expeditions and enterprises have been,
and dauntless as the courage of the individual explorer, one and all
have failed--till now. Till now, I say--for at last El Dorado _has_ been
discovered, and it is my proud privilege to announce, for the first
time, the name of its discoverer--Dr. Clifford Smyth.
Dr. Smyth has chosen the medium of fiction for the publication of
his discovery, like other such eminent discoverers as the authors of
_Erewhon_ and _Utopia_, but that fact, I need hardly say, in nowise
invalidates the authenticity and serious importance of his discovery.
Though truth be stranger than fiction, it has but seldom its charm, and,
to use the by-gone phrase, Dr. Smyth's relation of happenings which we
never doubt for a rapt moment did happen "reads as entertainingly as a
fiction." In fact, the present writer--who confesses to the idleness of
keeping _au courant_ with the good and even merely advertised fiction
of the day, recalls no fiction in some years that has seemed to him
comparable in imaginative quality with _The Gilded Man_, or has given
him, in any like degree, the special kind of delight which Dr. Smyth's
narrative has given him. For any such thrill as the latter part of the
book in particular holds, he finds that his memory must travel back, no
difficult or lengthy journey, to Mr. Rider Haggard's _King Solomon's
Mines_--a book which one sees more and more taking its place as one of
the classics of fantastic romance, the kind of romance which combines
adventure with poetic strangeness; though, at its publication, "superior
persons," with the notable exception of that paradoxical most superior
person, and man of genius, Andrew Lang, disdained it as a passing
"thriller."
Perhaps it is not indiscreet to say that one circumstance of Dr.
Smyth's life gave him exceptional opportunities for that dreaming on
his special object which is found to be the invariable incubation, so
to say, preceding all great discoveries. For some years Dr. Smyth was
United States consul at Carthagena, that unspoiled haunted city of the
Spanish Main, which, it may be recalled, furnishes a spirited chapter
in the history of Roderick Random, Esquire, of His Majesty's Navy. He
was, therefore, seated by the very door to that land of enchantment,
which, as we have been saying, had drawn so many adventurous spirits
under roaring canvas across the seas, in the spacious days. He was but
a short mule-back journey from that table-land raised high in the upper
Andes where Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, is situated, the region
around which all those "superstitions" retailed by Indians to those
early adventurers centre. Descendants of the same Indians still tell
the same stories, and still the average prosaic mind laughs at them
as "superstitions." El Dorado! as if any one could take it seriously
nowadays! Has not the term long been a picturesque synonym for The City
of Impossible Happiness, the Land of Heart's Desire, the Paradise of
Fools, and all such cities and realms and destinations and states of
being, as the yearning heart of man, finding nowhere on the earth he
knows, imagines in the sun-tipped cloudland of his dreams, and toward
which he pathetically turns his eyes, and stretches out his arms to the
end?
But what if El Dorado were no such mere figment of man's aching fancy,
after all; what if the El Dorado, so passionately believed in by those
eminently practical Elizabethans, did all the time, as they surmised,
exist upon this solid earth, and should still quite concretely exist
there....
Is it not likely that such might be the musings of a man situated as was
Dr. Smyth, in the very heart of the mystery, a man of affairs, touched
with imagination, as all really capable men of affairs are; and, as he
listened to the old Indian tales, and talked with miners, and all manner
of folk acquainted with the _terrain_ of the legend, what could he do
but fall under the same spell that had laid its ghostly hand on the
mighty heart of Raleigh centuries before, and follow its beckoning, as
the other inspired madmen before him?
But, as we have seen, his doom was to be different. For so long
generations of dead men had come crying, like those three old horsemen
in Morris's _Glittering Plain_: "Is this the Land? Is this the Land?" to
turn broken-hearted away; but from him, of all men born, throughout the
generations, was to be heard at last the joyous, ringing cry: "This _is_
the Land! This _is_ the Land!"
Pause for one moment more and think what El Dorado has meant to mankind,
think with all your might; and then think what must have been the
feelings of the man who stood looking upon it, and knew that he--that
_he_--had found it. In such moments of transfiguring realization men
often lose their reason, and, as we say, it is not a little surprising
that Dr. Smyth is alive to tell the tale. The lovely knowledge might
well have struck him as by lightning, and the secret once more have been
buried in oblivion.
I have all along taken it for granted that Dr. Smyth's _The Gilded
Man_ is a genuine narrative, the true story of a wonderful happening.
If any one should come to me and tell me that I am simple-minded, that
it is no such thing, and that, as the children say, Dr. Smyth "made it
up all out of his own head," I should still need a lot of convincing,
and, were conviction at last forced upon me, I could only answer that
Dr. Smyth must then possess a power of creating illusion such as few
romancers have possessed. For there is a plausibility, a particularity,
a concreteness about all the scenes and personages in _The Gilded Man_
that make it impossible not to believe them true and actual, however
removed from common experience they may seem. I should like very much
to be more particular, but I cannot very well be so without betraying
the story--or "true and veracious history," whichever it may turn out
to be. Still I can hint at one or two matters without betraying too
much. The mysterious queen, Sajipona, for example, seems not only real,
but she and her love-story make one of the loveliest idylls in what,
for want of a better word, one may call "supernatural" romance that has
ever been written. And all the dream-like happenings in the great cave,
though of the veritable "stuff that dreams are made of," are endowed
with as near and moving a sense of reality as though they were enacted
on Broadway.
Of the cave itself, which may be said to be the Presiding Personage of
the book, it seems to me impossible to speak with too great admiration.
It is, without exaggeration, an astonishing piece of invention; I
refer not merely to the ingenuity of its mechanical devices, though I
might well do that, for they are not merely devised with an exceeding
cleverness, but the cleverness is of a kind that thrills one with a
romantic dread, the kind of awe-inspiring devices that we shudder
at when we try to picture the mysteries of the temples of Moloch.
Dr. Smyth's invention here is of no machine-made, puzzle-constructed
order. We feel that he has not so much invented these devices, but
dreamed them--seen them himself with a thrill of fear and wonder in
a dream. And the great device of them all, that by which the cave is
lighted so radiantly and yet so mystically, outsoars ingenuity, and
is nothing short of a high poetic inspiration. But all these details,
each in itself of a distinguished originality, gain an added value of
impressiveness from the atmosphere of noble poetic imagination which
enfolds them all, that atmosphere which always distinguishes a work of
creation from one of mere invention. I do not wish to seem to speak in
superlatives, but, in my opinion, Dr. Smyth's cave of The Gilded Man
belongs with the great caves of literature. I thought of _Vathek_ as I
read it, though it is not the least the same, except in that quality of
imaginative atmosphere.
With the purely "human" interest of the book, the daylight scenes and
doings, he is no less successful. His plot is constructed with great
skill and is full of surprises. The manner in which he "winds" into it
is particularly original. Then, too, his characters are immediately
alive, and there is some good comedy naturally befallen. General Herran
and Doctor Miranda are delightfully drawn South American characters,
and the atmosphere of a little South American republic convincingly
conveyed, evidently from sympathetic experience. Nor must the absurd
Mrs. Quayle be forgotten, and particularly her jewels, which play such
an eccentric part in the story--one of Dr. Smyth's quaintest pieces of
cleverness.
But it is time I ended my proud rôle of showman, and allowed the show to
begin. So this and no more: If Dr. Smyth has, as I personally believe
from the convincing manner of his book, discovered El Dorado, he is
to be congratulated alike on the discovery and his striking method of
publishing forth the news; but if he has merely dreamed it for our
benefit, then I say that a man whom we have long respected as a wise and
generous critic of other men's books, should lose no time in writing
more books of his own.
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.
THE GILDED MAN
I
IN WHICH COMET GOES LAME
When, one evening in the late Autumn, David Meudon reached the entrance
to Stoneleigh Garden, where Una Leighton awaited him, it was evident
something unusual had happened.
"You are late," she said, as he clasped the slender hand extended to him
in welcome.
"I could ride no faster. Comet is lame."
The tired bay, belying his name, stood dejectedly, one white foreleg
slightly bent, as if seeking relief from a weight it was weary of
bearing. By the friendly way in which he stretched forth his muzzle to
touch the girl's proffered fingers, Comet was evidently not a stranger
to her endearments.
"Poor Comet! Why didn't you take better care of him?"
"I was too impatient at the start, and that got him into trouble. After
that, of course, we had to go slowly. I hated the delay. I hated having
to listen to my own thoughts for so long."
Her gray eyes fixed questioningly upon the bronzed, sharp-featured
man, she noted his restless gaze, his riding-whip's irritable tattoo on
polished boot-top as he stood at her side. Then, flinging her arms about
his neck, her face, flushed with pleasure and expressive of a mingled
tenderness and anxiety, turned expectantly to his.
"David, you are here!" she said impulsively. "You are glad, aren't you?
Say that your thoughts aren't gloomy any more."
"What need to say it--Una!"
Silently the two lovers threaded the box-bordered path leading to the
great stone mansion beyond, pausing to admire the flowers that still
bloomed in a straggling sort of way, or marking the loss of those whose
gay colors and delicate fragrance had formed a part of their own joyous
companionship a month ago. But this evening, as if reflecting Nature's
autumn mood, there was something of melancholy--restraint, where
restraint had never been before--in David's bearing; while with Una
there was an affectionate solicitude that strove to soothe an unspoken
trouble.
"You must stay to-night," she said; "it would be cruel to ride Comet
back."
"But your Uncle--will he care to have me here?"
"What a question! Of course he will."
"Are you sure? He was in town the other day to see me. Did he tell you?"
"No. But then, Uncle Harold seldom tells what he has been doing."
"He was in one of his grim moods; cordial enough outwardly; but, inside,
I felt a curious sort of malevolence. That's an ugly word--but it seemed
just that."
"Uncle Harold malevolent! That isn't very nice of you to say."
"He asked me if I thought our marriage should take place."
"And you said----?"
"Nothing."
"David!"
"I am unworthy of you, Una--I feel it. There are men, you know, who
have in their past things that make them unworthy the woman they love.
I confess, there are dark shadows, haunting things in my past. I
can't explain them, even to myself. I don't altogether know what they
are--queer as that sounds! But--some day they might come between us.
When I rode over just now, I made up my mind to try to tell you. You
ought to know----"
"David," she interrupted, "I don't want to know. I love you as you are
to-day. If you were different in the past, before I knew you, I don't
care to hear about it."
In spite of his self-depreciation, in the eyes of the world David
Meudon would be regarded in every way a worthy suitor for the hand of
Una Leighton. Clean of stock, so far as the gifts of blood and social
station go, he had inherited besides a fortune that would be considered
large even in a nation of millionaires. This inheritance, coming to him
through the death of his father and mother in the middle of his college
course, had not proved a snare to him. After completing his education,
he had traveled extensively, not through an idle curiosity to see the
world, but from a wish to perfect himself in certain studies calling for
a wider knowledge than could be gathered from books or tutors.
It was during his travels abroad, after he had left his eccentric
schoolmate, Raoul Arthur, in India, that David first met Una Leighton,
who was spending a winter in England with her uncle. The meeting ripened
into an intimacy that survived the distractions of European travel, and
drew David, a constant visitor, to the picturesque old mansion, Una's
home, on the outskirts of the little Connecticut village of Rysdale.
There followed those memorable experiences of youth--courtship and
betrothal. David loved with all the fervor of a mature passion, a
passion that quite overshadowed all his former interests. Love for him
was an idyl of dreams and delicious fantasies, a paradise where he and
Una delighted in all the harmless exaggerations of poetry and romance.
No cloud dimmed their happiness. The brightest kind of future seemed to
stretch indefinitely before them.
All the world--the world of Rysdale--knew of their love and discussed
it eagerly. Their daylong wanderings together, their absorption in each
other, appealed to the sensible farmers and their wives, who watched
with tireless interest the development of this romance in their midst.
There was something, besides the rumors of his great wealth, in the
personality of David that would easily account for this interest.
As a result of his long years of solitary travel he had acquired an
indefinable air of reserve that was emphasized by features almost Indian
in their clean-cut sharpness and immobility. His whole appearance,
indeed, was of the kind traditionally suggesting mystery--a mystery that
inevitably arouses curiosity in those who come within its influence.
Had Una been a stranger, spending a summer, as so many strangers did,
in the little mountain hamlet, her intimacy with David might have
passed unheeded. But she belonged very much to the place. Generations
ago her ancestors had settled here. At that initial epoch in local
history, Stoneleigh was the only building of any importance in or near
Rysdale--and from that period to this Stoneleigh had been the home of
the Leightons. Before they bought the gray-gabled mansion (St. Maur's
House it was then called) it was occupied by a small congregation of
Benedictines, who came from France to establish themselves in this quiet
corner of the new world. When the House passed from the monks into the
hands of that stout Scotch pioneer, John Leighton, it was a desolate
sort of ruin. But its walls were well built, and the thrift of its new
owners gradually added the wings and the square, central tower needed
for the family comfort.
Leighton was thus one of the oldest names in the neighborhood. The
family bearing it had always prospered. Years ago their income, what
with careful saving and shrewd investment, was sufficient to let them
give up farming. This they did, and settled down to the dignified ease
that, in an English community, belongs to the household of a county
"squire," or to a "lord of the manor."
Harold Leighton, the present owner of Stoneleigh, was more of a recluse
than any of his predecessors. To the gossips of Rysdale, indeed, who
knew something of the history of the place, it seemed as if the cowl of
the monkish founder of the House had fallen upon the shoulders of this
gray-haired old man. He was looked upon as a student of unprofitable
matters, lacking in the canny enterprise distinguishing the Leightons
before him, and that had built up the family fortunes. By some he was
liked; by others--and these were in the majority--the satirical smile,
the cool reserve, the assumption of superiority with which he met the
social advances of his neighbors, were set down as indications of a
character to be watched with suspicion, and that were certainly not of
the right Rysdale stamp.
Una, however, was different. The villagers did not regard her with
the hostility that they had for her uncle. Orphaned at an early age,
she had easily captured and held the affection of those who knew her.
The tawny-haired girl, bubbling over with friendly prattle, her gray
eyes--bluer then, as with the sky-tint of a clear dawn--sparkling with
youthful enthusiasms, had a host of comrades and admirers long before
she reached her teens. With equal grace and favor this radiant little
creature accepted the tribute of farmer and farm-hand, and when it
came to playmates was decidedly more at ease with the village maidens
than with the decorous young ladies who were occasionally brought to
Stoneleigh on a visit of state from the city. As Una grew older, this
choice of associates, unchecked and even encouraged by her uncle and
Elizabeth Quayle, the worthy but not over-astute matron who looked after
Leighton's household, had its drawbacks. The girl's beauty, which was of
no ordinary kind, inevitably touched with its flame victims who were not
socially intended for this kind of conflagration. Una sometimes shared
in their subsequent misery; but she was unable to lighten their woes in
the only way they could be lightened. And when she discovered that the
refusal of their offers usually meant the breaking up of a treasured
friendship, she had been known to weep bitterly and form all kinds of
self-denying resolutions for the future.
The climax to her griefs in this respect, a climax partly responsible
for her flight to Europe, came through the weakness (so his indignant
aunt called it) of the district schoolmaster, Andrew Parmelee. Andrew
was a solitary dreamer, a friendless, inoffensive sort of person,
absorbed in books, oblivious to the world around him. Learning, such
wisps and strays of it as lodged in his mind as a result of his
omnivorous reading, he was quite incapable of imparting. The use of
the ferule, also, was an enigma to him. Hence, there were those unkind
enough to whisper that the Rysdale school, under his management, was
not what it should be. But every one liked him, in a tolerant sort
of way; and with Una he was in particular favor. Andrew didn't know
this, at least for some time. When he did find it out, that is, when,
quite by accident, as it seemed, Una tripped into his school one day
to pay him a visit, it had quite a disastrous effect on him. Before
that, women, in general and in particular, were utterly unknown to him,
creatures to be shunned, to be feared. He was familiar, of course, with
the eccentricities of his aunt, Hepzibah Armitage. She looked after
his wardrobe, fed him, warned him of the various pitfalls of youth,
stopped his spending the money allowed him by the village trustees on
the ancient histories for which he had an insatiable appetite. She
ruled with a rod of iron, and the rod wasn't always pleasant. But for
all that, he felt that life without Aunt Hepzibah, although it might
give him one mad, rapturous day of freedom, was too bewildering, too
dangerous to contemplate as a steady form of existence. Aunt Hepzibah
was an institution; she was not a woman. He had heard of men falling
in love with women. Such an accident, involving his Aunt Hepzibah,
was unthinkable--unless, indeed, something like the conquest of the
Scythians by the Amazons, of which he had read in his Herodotus, should
be repeated in Rysdale.
As for the girls in Andrew's school, it was impossible to think of them
except as so many varieties of human tyranny. They were more perplexing,
as a rule, certainly more unmanageable, than the boys. This was due
to the languishing friendships which they tried to contract with him,
and which they mirthfully abandoned just so soon as he began to take
them seriously. In fact, there was nothing in Andrew's fancied or
actual experience so terrible--not even Aunt Hepzibah or the Amazons of
Herodotus--as the schoolgirl just old enough to plan and carry out this
kind of campaign against him. Instances are on record, indeed, in which,
convinced that some overgrown girl was in rebellion, he had dismissed
his school on the plea of a hastily imagined holiday, and fled to the
woods.
Una, however, in the full bloom of her eighteen years had not been one
of Andrew's pupils, and thus had not tormented him in this particular
manner. Hence, when she stood at the schoolhouse door, one fine morning,
asking if she might attend one of his classes, he suspected nothing.
Overcome by her murmured assurance of interest, he made room on his
little platform for her and for her two friends from the city, never
dreaming that these demure young ladies were not really so absorbed in
the joys of learning as they appeared to be.
Memorable for him was the next half hour, during which he plunged his
pupils through an incoherent lesson in history, vividly conscious all
the while of the three pairs of eyes that were fastened upon him. When
the ordeal was over, and he succeeded in bowing his visitors out of the
schoolhouse, he had the blissful consciousness that he, Andrew Parmelee,
schoolmaster of Rysdale, had been bidden to Stoneleigh whenever he chose
to visit that historic mansion.
Aunt Hepzibah, as was to be expected from her perverse disposition,
opposed the acceptance of this invitation. But Andrew for once went
his own way. Within a month after Una's visit to the school he called
at Stoneleigh, where he was received with a cordiality that quite
dumbfounded him. There was a brief but miserable period of diffidence
and terror, extending over several subsequent visits; after which Andrew
found that it was really possible to talk to this wonderful, gray-eyed
creature as he had never dared talk to any one before. In fact, Una
listened to him--to his little ambitions, his beliefs, his petty
trials--with a kindly sympathy that was quite the most perfect thing he
had ever imagined.
Then came the end to his romance. It was inevitable, of course. He
wanted her to do more than simply listen to him--and that was just the
one thing more that she could not do. It was all very tragic to both
of them. Andrew was broken-hearted, full of heroics about fidelity,
eternity, death. And Una--it was her first experience in human sorrow,
and she was genuinely shocked and repentant.
II
IN UNA'S GARDEN
Until David told her that evening in the garden at Stoneleigh, Una had
not known that her uncle opposed her marriage. No reason was given for
his opposition--and David's attitude was quite as much of a puzzle.
He talked of some shadow in his past, and was on the point of telling
Una what it was. But she stopped him. Their love, she said, had to
do with the present, the future; it had nothing to do with the past.
Nevertheless, she wished David had set himself right with Leighton.
"Why didn't you answer Uncle Harold?" she asked.
At first he avoided her glance, snapping his riding-whip nervously among
the withered sunflower stalks. Then he turned to her.
"I don't know," he said.
"You knew he was wrong."
"In a way--yes. And then, I wondered if, after all, he was right. As I
said, I can't explain it to myself. You stopped my speaking to you about
it. And yet, do you know, after talking with your uncle, I convinced
myself--I thought I convinced myself--that I was unworthy of you, that
our marriage would be wrong."
"Don't say that!" she exclaimed angrily. "Unless your love for me has
changed, it is the one right thing in the world--as mine is for you."
"Beloved! Let it be so," he said, his dark mood vanishing. "Let the
first day of our new life be the first day of our past. Do you remember
that first day? Coming down the river we spoke hardly a word. You
laughed at me, called me lazy, the boat slipped along so slowly. And
you were right! Watching you I forgot the stupid business of rowing.
Never before were you so beautiful--but now you are a million times
more beautiful! How I wanted to kiss you! If I had dared kiss just a
bit of your dress, anything blessed by touching you! But I didn't--not
then! How it all happened afterward, when we landed at our island, is
the mystery--or, rather, the most natural thing in the world. I was
tongue-tied as ever. Not a word in the language was in reach of me--at
least, I couldn't think of one. Naturally, the dictionary men left
out our words; they didn't know you. And yet, we understood! Did the
birds tell us, I wonder, or was it written on the trees, or whispered
in the golden air? Love talks without words. But now--" he broke off
abruptly--"now I must answer Uncle Harold."
"Why?"
"I wish I could talk it over with Raoul," he went on, not heeding the
question.
"Why with Raoul?"
"You don't know Raoul."
"Tell me about him."
"He understands me, that's all. We have been together a lot. But what's
the use of thinking of him! He's in India, probably--or, maybe,
Bogota--yes, it must be Bogota--and will stay there for years."
"You are fond of him?"
"No! I can't imagine any one being fond of him. He fascinates you. He's
queer. He is my age, yet his hair is white--even his eyebrows and his
eyelashes are white. Fancy a young man with white eyelashes! There's not
a hint of color in his face. And his eyes--you can't tell what they are;
neither can you avoid them when they stop twitching and fix themselves
on you. Did you ever see a human being jump out at you from a pair of
eyes? It sounds foolish; but then, you've never seen Raoul! Love leaps
out of your eyes, and all the beauty of trees and rivers. God made your
eyes and put you in them just to help people. It was the devil who made
Raoul's eyes."
They lingered at the far corner of the terraced garden where a low
hedge of box overlooked a deep, silent grove of balsams. Beyond, at one
side, the gray walls of Stoneleigh, the square tower bearing aloft a
single ray of light, rose indistinctly against a background of firs.
The familiar scene, softened by the twilight, dispelled their first
feeling of uneasiness. Everything had changed. Once more the world was
brightened by their love. The touch of Una's hand, the fragrance of her
hair, the joy of her quivering lips, were, for David, the only things
that mattered.
Since their first meeting, a year ago on the Derwentwater, in England,
love had grown with these two. On the night before that meeting, David
had reached Keswick, where Una was staying. Skiddaw and Helvellyn,
when first he saw those famous peaks, were dimly outlined behind the
evening mists. Next morning the sky was cloudless, and although David
was familiar with the scenery of Alps, Andes and Himalaya, the charm of
this English landscape touched him deeply. The peaceful lake, surrounded
by steep hills of living green, and holding on its breast thickly wooded
islands, stirred a new longing within him. These hills, it is true, were
not comparable in height or sweeping contour to the majestic altitudes
of Southern Asia or Western South America. Neither was the Derwentwater
equal, in certain scenic effects, to similar bodies of water that had
won his admiration in distant countries. Here, nevertheless, Nature was
revealed in her loveliest mood, and David yielded himself delightedly to
her gracious influence.
As he floated dreamily in his skiff on the Derwentwater, the dip of his
oars made the only visible ripple on the glassy surface of the lake,
while the rugged outlines of the hills, drenched in sunlight, seemed to
weave a fairy circle into which the world of ordinary experience might
not enter. The scene reacted inevitably on his own emotions. For the
first time in many months a feeling of complete restfulness possessed
him, a mood ripe for dreams and all that hazy kind of speculation lying
on the borderland of dreams. In this mental state he sought one of the
islands whose sylvan shadows lengthened over the water's sunny surface.
The hollow echo from oar and rowlock, the grating of prow on pebbled
beach, broke the silence that had surrounded him ever since he left the
little wharf at Keswick. The lightest of summer breezes stirred the
topmost branches above him. Invitation was in the air, rest beneath
the trees. This was surely the morning of the world, and he was the
discoverer of this nameless island. Strange that it should be here,
unmarred, untouched, unknown, in populous England!
There was welcome in the crackle of twigs beneath his feet; a responsive
thrill from the green moss upon which he threw himself. As he tried to
catch the blue of the sky beyond the moving canopy of green, he idly
wondered whether he was the first to pierce the island's solitude,
whether its secret had been kept for him.
Perhaps it was in answer to his unuttered query that the stillness was
suddenly broken by the faintest echo of silvery laughter. He listened
in surprise, for the island was far too small, he imagined, to screen
either house or camp from the view of any one approaching it, and before
he left his boat he had satisfied himself that no other summer idler
was here before him. Nevertheless, there was that tantalizing laughter,
coming from a portion of the island opposite the beach on which he had
landed--and there was the shattering of his daydreams.
He parted the low-lying branches of some bushes growing between him and
the shore, but could see nothing save the clear expanse of lake upon
which there was neither sail nor rowboat. He perceived, however, judging
by the distance of the water below him, that the shore of the island
must here become a diminutive cliff, in the shelter of which, doubtless,
was the being whose laughter he scarcely knew whether to welcome or
shun. The fairy-like spot obviously had some prosaic owner who was there
to enjoy what was his--or hers. The laughter was unmistakably a woman's.
David rose hastily from his retreat beneath the trees, uncertain
whether to apologize for his intrusion or to slip away unperceived.
After all, the laughter chimed in pleasantly enough with his roving
fancies. There had been wood-nymphs before, if one can believe the old
romancers, who sang the carefree joys of the glens they inhabited--and
perhaps this was a wood-nymph. His curiosity aroused, David peered again
through the branches. This time he saw her.
She was not a wood-nymph of old mythology, but an incarnation of the
spirit of youth that all morning had pursued him. She was clad in the
simplest of sailor suits, the blouse of gray silk opening loosely about
her delicately moulded throat and neck, her hair straying in tawny
ringlets over her shoulders and reaching down to the book which she held
in her lap. At her side sat an old man, of stalwart frame, white-haired,
with the strongly lined face and sharpened features typical of the
student. A wide-brimmed quaker hat lying at his feet emphasized his
freedom from the conventionalities of dress and was in strict keeping
with his long black coat and voluminous trousers.
They were reading a book together, a book that had evidently provoked
the disturbing laughter and brought a grim look of amusement to the old
man's face. The noise made by David, however, broke up their pleasant
occupation. The girl turned her head, gazing curiously at the spot
whence came the sound of rustling leaves. What she saw stirred her as
nothing ever had before. Her glance met David's; and to both of them it
seemed as if all their lives they had been waiting for the revelation of
that moment. Her pulse quickened; her cheek paled, then grew rosy red;
her gray eyes dilated with mingled alarm and pleasure.
The sudden, deep impression was dashed by a singular interruption.
The girl's companion, his back half turned to David, his face still
expressive of amusement, and looking straight before him at the ripple
of water kissing the pebbles at his feet, spoke in a loud, harsh voice:
"Una," he said, "remember the schoolmaster! This man's world is not
ours. What does he know of Rysdale?"
She looked down confusedly, aware that her uncle--for it was Harold
Leighton--without seeing this stranger who had so quickly aroused her
interest, spoke as if he knew who he was and all about him. When she
looked again, David was gone.
Between that first meeting and this evening, a year after, when they
stood together in Una's garden at Stoneleigh, they had lived through
much of Love's first golden record. Their experiences had not always
been cloudless. Harold Leighton, it is true, did not actively oppose
their marriage; but he had borne himself in a manner that showed, at
times, either a singular indifference, or a covert mistrust of the
man who was so soon to take from him his brother's only daughter. It
might be from jealousy, it might be from a perfectly natural feeling
of caution; at any rate, he never discussed their plans with them, he
never explained his attitude towards them. Never again did he allude to
the schoolmaster, nor account for the strange words he had used on the
little island in Derwentwater.
For the most part he watched their courtship with a sort of whimsical
curiosity, but always withholding his assent from the marriage to which
they looked forward. Una was indignant at his final attempt to separate
them. His suspicions and David's quixotic manner of meeting them
increased her faith in her lover. Never before had she been so perfectly
happy as she was this evening with him in the garden's autumnal silence.
"It will soon be forever," she whispered.
"You are not afraid?"
"If it were possible for our love to die, if it were as shortlived as
the sunflowers, if some one had the power to take it from us, I would be
afraid. Tell me that no one has the power, David."
He held her from him for a space, his eyes searching hers.
"You alone have the power, Una," he said.
From a slowly moving figure amid the bushes behind them came an
uncompromising question:
"David, you have told her?"
The dusky outline, the large quaker hat, the wide-skirted coat catching
occasionally among the dry twigs and branches, revealed Harold Leighton.
He stood in the center of the pathway, his gray eyes fixed upon them,
awaiting an answer.
"David has told me," said Una firmly.
"You have told her?" he repeated.
"I have told her that I love her," he answered.
"Is that all?"
"I told her that I am unworthy of her."
"Why are you unworthy of her?"
"You speak as if you knew something against me," said David. Then added
fiercely, "Tell it!"
With an odd smile on his face the old man looked at Una.
"He says he is unworthy of you--you are free," he said. "Una, how do you
choose?"
She bowed her head before her lover.
"David, I love you," she said.
The old man turned towards the house.
"David, I see your horse is lame; you have ridden him to death," he said
drily. "You had better spend the night at Stoneleigh."
III
A CHAPTER ON GHOSTS
A strange thing happened that night at Stoneleigh.
For the first time in the annals of the younger Rysdale generation, the
great bare room at the top of the house, adjoining Harold Leighton's
laboratory, had a guest. In the days of the St. Maur Brotherhood the
monks used this room as an oratory. The shadowy outline of a crucifix,
which had once risen above an unpretentious altar, could still be traced
in the rough plaster on the narrow east wall. At either side of this
crucifix the blackened marks of bygone sconces were visible, while in
the north and south walls of the apartment there still remained a number
of huge spikes, rusty with age and swathed in cobwebs, from which had
hung the Fourteen Stations of the Cross.
Since the departure of the monks this oratory had been practically
abandoned by their successors at Stoneleigh. The earlier members of the
Leighton family had shared the dislike of their fellow townsmen for
anything approaching "papistry." To this prejudice, as it affected the
use of the oratory, was afterwards added the belief that the gloomy
chamber was still frequented by certain ghostly members of the ancient
Brotherhood into whose spectral doings it was just as well not to pry
too closely. A live monk was bad enough, according to some of Harold
Leighton's ancestors; but a dead monk who "haunted" was too disreputable
altogether to have anything to do with. Hence, as there was more room at
Stoneleigh than could profitably be used, it was thought best to close
up this ancient oratory, leaving it to such grim visitants from the past
as might choose it for a meeting place.
There had been seasons, however, when dust and cobwebs were sufficiently
disturbed to bring some semblance of cheer into the desolate apartment.
Thus, the festivities accompanying the marriage of Una's grandparents
had reached their climax here in a ball at which the local worthies
mingled with a number of excellent persons from that outside world of
fashion vaguely known as "the city." No spectral guest, tonsured or
otherwise, appeared on this occasion, and when the revels were ended the
legend that Stoneleigh's oratory was haunted no longer commanded the
respect, or even the interest, of the credulous.
That was more than half a century ago; and now David Meudon was the
guest of this neglected chamber. He was in a joyous mood. A man more
tenacious of impressions could not have thrown off so easily the
irritation caused by the meeting with Harold Leighton in the garden.
The elder man's suspicions would have poisoned whatever possibility
there might be of immediate enjoyment. The presence of Una, however, her
unqualified acceptance of him, her uncle's suddenly changed attitude,
effectually dulled David's resentment. Leighton had agreed, apparently,
to the plan for an early wedding, and had even proposed that the
married couple should live at Stoneleigh. In spite of David's great
wealth, neither he nor his immediate ancestors had been identified with
a locality peculiarly their own; they had never had a family home.
With Una, on the contrary, the last of the Leightons, the ancestral
tie that roots itself under some particular hearthstone was especially
strong. She was pleased, therefore, with the offer that promised to make
Stoneleigh hers--and so, in the main, was David.
He liked the old house; its history appealed to his imagination. He
stood somewhat in awe, it is true, of its present owner, and the
prospect of living with him did not promise unalloyed happiness. But
there was something about Harold Leighton, a suggestion of mystery,
that went well with this ancient place, and completely satisfied David.
He laughed at the Stoneleigh traditions; but when Leighton proposed
spending the evening in the oratory he gladly assented. David had never
been in this part of the house, although he had often wanted to explore
its possible mysteries. The opportunity to do this had not come until
now.
"Yes, there are ghosts here," Harold Leighton replied to the young man's
jesting query as he, David and Una entered the great bare room together.
"Then you believe in ghosts?"
"Of course Uncle Harold believes in them," exclaimed Una. "I believe in
them, and so do you."
"That depends. Show me one and I might."
"Well," commented Leighton; "this is the ghost room, and here we are.
Perhaps your skepticism will find something to try its teeth on. In
honor of St. Maur we ought to have a demonstration."
"Splendid!" laughed David. "But you don't mean it. People never mean
what they say when they talk approvingly of ghosts. You are known for a
skeptic yourself, Mr. Leighton. You accept nothing that has not passed
muster with science."
"There may be a science of ghosts," retorted the savant. "Science is
not limited to any department of human knowledge. A scientific theory
is based on a collection of facts. How do you know I have not made a
collection of ghost-facts?"
"And so have a new theory of ghosts to offer!"
"You don't really think those old monks come back, uncle?" objected Una.
"Oh, I'm not going to tell the secrets of my laboratory so easily--and
to such a pair of tyros," was the evasive answer.
They stood before the great fireplace which a thrifty ancestor had built
into the east wall, and enjoyed to the full the warmth that had not as
yet reached the remote spaces of the gloomy chamber. It needed a fire
to bring some show of comfort to this wilderness of dust and cobwebs. A
few pieces of colonial furniture stood out in the melancholy wastes--a
faded lounge, a gargantuan dresser, several stiff-backed chairs still
nursing their puritanism. At the far end of the room various objects of
a decidedly modern appearance, suggesting the workshop of a physicist,
aroused David's curiosity. For an explanation of these he turned to
Leighton.
"Is this your laboratory?" he asked.
"What do you think of it?" was the reply. "Plenty of space, isn't
there? A man could have a score of ghosts here--ghosts of monks, you
know--nosing about for their comfortable old quarters."
"Not so very comfortable in their day, Uncle," suggested Una; "nor in
ours, for that matter."
Leighton chuckled grimly. "Are you interested in ghosts, David?" he
asked, looking keenly at him.
"What do you mean by ghosts?"
"Ah, that's it! This old room--are there ghosts in it, I wonder? The
nail marks in the walls, the stains where the lights were hung, the
shadowy remains of the altar--can you shake off the feeling that the
Brotherhood is still at prayers here, that it still has Stoneleigh for
its home?"
"The Brotherhood no longer exists."
"There's a family tradition, anyway, that assures us of its ability
to produce some excellent examples of the old-fashioned, conventional
ghost. A very great aunt of mine, for instance, once ventured alone into
this room and was met by a stalwart being who scowled at her from under
his brown hood and waved her majestically out of his presence."
"That's the kind of ghost one likes to hear about and see," commented
David.
"It didn't please my aunt particularly. The fright prostrated her for
months. Other imaginative ancestors have heard the monks chanting
together, and seen spectral lights moving about here at midnight."
"You speak as if you believed it all."
"I can't be defrauded of my family traditions."
"How queer it is!" exclaimed Una, who had been wandering about the room
and now rejoined Harold and David before the fireplace. "I like it,
even if it is dirty. Why have you broken your rule and brought us here,
Uncle? And why do you talk as if you believed in the Stoneleigh ghosts?
You know you don't."
"Ghosts!" he ejaculated. "I have been making some experiments recently.
I thought you might be interested in them."
"Experiments in ghosts," ruminated David, who believed Leighton capable
of anything.
"Yes," said the old man, enjoying his bewilderment. "My ghosts may be
different from those you have in mind. If you have followed the recent
developments in psychology you probably know that there are ghosts
attached to the living, whatever the case may be in regard to the dead."
"No, I never heard that."
"Not in those words. 'Ghosts' is not a term used by the scientist.
It involves a medieval superstition. But I am interested in things
more than in words, and I am not afraid to say that we have been
rediscovering ghosts."
"Uncle, don't talk enigmas--or nonsense," remonstrated Una.
"I confess, sir, I don't follow you," added David.
"Did you ever feel that you had lost yourself?" asked Leighton abruptly.
"I don't understand."
"If you forget a thing, you lose just that much of yourself, don't you?
When you sleep, you enter a world of dreams. In that world you think,
speak, go through a set of vivid experiences. Awake, you are aware that
you have had these vivid experiences--and yet, you can't possibly
remember them. You are dimly conscious that you were in another world
and that while there you thought, suffered, rejoiced, much in the same
way that you do here. At times you have a vague feeling that you have
undergone some important crisis in your dream-existence, or you wake
up with the sensation of having reached some high peak of happiness.
But you cannot recall the details, or even the general outlines, of
what has happened. Not a scene of this dreamland, of which you are an
occasional inhabitant, can you picture to your waking thought; nor does
your waking memory hold the visage, or even the name, of one of your
dream-associates."
"All this has to do with dreams," objected David. "It is admittedly
unreal."