THE GUITAR AND THE CASEMENT
"A parcel for you, sir!"
Sergeant Archelaus had spied the Commandant coming up the hill, and met
him on the barrack doorstep with the news.
"A parcel?" The Commandant had walked straight from the bank to Mr.
Tregaskis' shop, and there paid his account; but he had made no
purchases. "There must be some mistake, Archelaus; I have ordered
nothing in the town."
"From the mainland, sir."
"God bless my soul!"
"Yes, sir, and marked 'Fragile'; a good-sized box, but uncommon light
to handle. The steamer brought it across this morning, and I've carried
it into the office and placed hammer and chisel handy."
"Now what in the world can this mean?" asked the Commandant, a minute
later, after studying the box and its label. He turned to Archelaus,
who had followed him into the office in a state of suppressed
excitement. "It is certainly addressed to me; and yet--It must be
half-a-dozen years, Archelaus, since anyone sent me a parcel from the
mainland."
"There's but one way to discover," said Archelaus, picking up the
chisel. "Shall I open it, sir?"
"No; give it to me." The Commandant took the tools from him and easily
pried open the lid, for the scantling was light, almost flimsy. Within
lay an object in an oilskin case, by the shape of it, apparently a
violin; and yet somewhat larger than a violin.
Yes, certainly it was a musical instrument; and the Commandant had no
sooner made sure of this than with his hand on the string that tied the
wrapper, he paused.
"It is evident, Archelaus"--his tone betrayed some
disappointment--"that this parcel belongs to Miss Cara. Having no
address of her own that could be given with safety, she has ordered it
to be sent to me."
"Ben't you even going to open and take a look at it?" asked Archelaus,
as his master slowly replaced it in the box.
"I think not.... Miss Cara will call for it, no doubt, since no doubt
she has been watching for the steamer's arrival."
Archelaus withdrew, reluctantly, not without a sense of expectation
cheated. Nor, as it proved, was his grievance altogether groundless.
The Commandant stood for a minute or so in a brown study, eyeing the
box. Then, his curiosity overmastering him, he reached out and drew the
parcel forth again; turned it over in his hands, and very slowly undid
the strings, which were of green ribbon.
The wrapper fell apart, disclosing a guitar.
The instrument was clearly an old one, and, as clearly of considerable
value, being inlaid with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl in delicate
arabesques that must have cost its unknown maker many months, if not
whole years, of patient labour. Its varnish, smooth and transparent as
finest glass, belonged to the same date, and had been laid on, if not
by the same hand, by one no less careful. Something more than a
craftsman's pride had surely inspired the exquisite workmanship, the
deft and joyous pattern that chased itself in and out as though smiling
at its own intricacy. A gift for the artist's mistress, perhaps? Or a
toy for some dead and gone princess?... Yet it had been played upon,
and recently. One or two of its relaxed strings showed evidences of
fraying; and the sender had tied a small packet of new strings around
the neck.
The Commandant, after peering into its pattern for a while, held the
guitar out at arm's length; and, holding it so, broke into a short
laugh--at the thought that this thing had been sent to him.
Yet, here it was. Undoubtedly it belonged to Vashti, and his heart
leapt at the thought that she would be coming to fetch it. For three
days he had been missing her. It seemed that she had chosen to pass out
of his life as suddenly, as waywardly, as she had invaded it; that,
crossing the threshold of Saaron Farm, she had closed its door upon him
and upon a brief episode to be remembered by him henceforth as a dream
only--a too happy dream.
"Ah, had we never met--or, having met,
Had I been wiser or thy heart less wild!"
He had pulled home that Sunday night, to brood alone over a half-dead
fire; and, brooding there, had surmised what the morrow made
certain--that she had taken with her yet more than she had even
brought; that even what colour, what small interest, had formerly
cheered the daily round on Garrison Hill and made it tolerable, was now
gone out of it forever.
Well, for good or ill, this, at all events, would need to be endured
but a little while longer. His discharge was in sight. He had posted
his letter.
He did not tell himself that but for Vashti it had never been written.
Or, if this crossed his mind, it suggested no more than gratitude.
Quite unwittingly she had helped him play the man. He had done the
right thing, let follow what might.
He could not force his mind upon possible consequences, to face them or
to fret over them. Between this present hour and then, one thought,
like a bright angel, stood in the way. Vashti was coming!
Ah, but when? Would she come openly, by day, as she had invaded
Inniscaw?... He spent the afternoon in his office, sorting out useless
correspondence, clearing desks, drawers, pigeon-holes of the
accumulations of years, unconsciously preparing for the day of his
discharge. It kept his thoughts employed, and he worked hard--reading
through the dusty papers, tearing them up, consigning some to the
waste-paper basket others to the fire, which by-and-by grew sullen
under its task. Twilight fell.... She would come, then, after dusk, and
secretly--mooring her boat in the hiding-place under the Keg of Butter
Battery, away from inquisitive eyes. At half-past five Archelaus
brought him his tea. At six, having washed and refreshed himself, the
Commandant fell to work again more doggedly. Only now and again he
broke off for a few moments to listen. But Vashti did not come.
He worked until half-past nine. He heard the clock strike the half-hour
from the chimney-piece, and looked up almost in dismay. It was certain
now that she would not come. Of a sudden, as though to hide from him
the full measure of his disappointment, as he had been hiding from
himself the full eagerness of his hopes, a loathing took him--a savage
scorn of his useless labour. He stared at his grimed hands with a
shiver of disgust, and, rising impatiently, swept together the
fragments of paper strewn about the floor, tossed them upon the dying
fire, and went off to his room for another wash.
She would not come; and there remained yet an hour between him and his
usual bed-time. Returning to his office, he met Archelaus on the
stairs.
"Going to bed, eh?" asked the Commandant.
"Ay, sir," Archelaus answered, and paused for that remark on the
weather which, in the Islands, always goes with "Good morning" or "Good
night." "Glass don't vary very much, and wind don't vary, though
seemin' to me it's risin' a little. Still in the nor'west it is; and
here ends another day."
The Commandant looked at him sharply, but passed downstairs with no
more than a "Good night." So Archelaus, too, was feeling life to be
empty?... Archelaus had bewailed the past before now, and the vanished
glories of the garrison, but never the tedium of his present lot.
The Commandant, on re-entering his office, did a very unusual thing. It
has been said that he could no longer afford himself tobacco. But an
old briar pipe lay on the chimney-piece among a litter of notes and
memoranda that had escaped the afternoon's holocaust. He took it up
wistfully, and, searching in a jar, at the end of the shelf, found a
few crumbs of tobacco. Scraped together with care, they all but filled
the bowl. He lit the dry stuff from a spill--the last scrap of paper to
be sacrificed--and sank, puffing, into his worn arm-chair.
It was in his mind to map out his domestic expenditure for the coming
month; for the settlement with Mr. Tregaskis had made a desperate
inroad upon his funds in hand, and he gravely doubted that even with
the severest pinching he would be able to remit the usual allowance to
his sister-in-law. The question had to be faced ... he was not afraid
of it ... and yet his thoughts shirked it and wandered away, despite
all effort to rally them. "Old enough to be her father...." He had
foreseen that these words would awake to torment him; but he was not
prepared for the insistency with which the pain stirred, now when long
toil should have deadened it--now when, as the clock told him that his
hopes for to-day were vain, he realised how fondly all the while he had
been building on them.
"Old enough to be her father."--For distraction from the maddening
refrain he rose up, drew the guitar again from its box, unwrapped it,
and took it back to his chair for another examination. He noticed the
wrapper as he laid it aside. It was new; the material new, the
stitching new. She had sent for the instrument with a purpose, and the
oilskin case had been made with a purpose.... How went the old song?--
"Were I but young for thee, as I haz been,
We should have been gallopin' down in your green.
And linkin' it owre the lily-white lea;
And ah, gin I were but young for thee!"
Of a sudden he sat up stiffly, at the sound of a tap-tap on the
window-pane behind him.
Yes, decidedly the sound came from the window. The wind--as Archelaus
had said--was rising; but this was no wind. Someone stood outside there
in the darkness. He sprang up, stepped to the casement and threw it
open. For a moment his eyes distinguished nothing. He peered again and
drew back a little as a figure stepped close to the sill, out of the
night.
"You!"
"Who else?" answered Vashti, with a little laugh. "Give me your hand,
please." He stretched it out obediently, and she took it and clambered
in over the sill.
"It is cold outside," she announced, looking around her with something
between a shiver and a deliberate shake of her cloak. It was the same
furred cloak in which she had come ashore from the _Milo_. Spray clung
to it; and there was spray, too, on her hair. It shone in the
lamplight.
"The wind has been getting up ever since sundown," she announced. "I
have had a pretty stiff crossing; but the boat is all right, under the
Keg of Butter." Then, as he still stared at her, "You don't keep too
warm a fire, my friend."
"I had given you up, and was getting ready for bed."
"Then you expected me? The guitar has come?"
Before he could answer she had caught sight of it, and picking it up
from the arm-chair where the Commandant had dropped it, settled herself
and laid the instrument across her lap.
"Also," she went on, throwing back her cloak, while she examined and
tightened the strings, "I will confess that your guest is hungry." She
looked up with a laugh. "In fact I came not only to fetch my guitar,
but to sup with you and tell you of my doings."
The Commandant turned to the door. His face had suddenly grown gray and
desperate.
"Ah, yes--supper, to be sure!" he said, and strode from the room.
As the latch fell behind him, Vashti glanced over her shoulder, put the
guitar aside, and arose to stir the fire. The poker plunged into a heap
of flaked ashes. "Paper? But the whole grate is choked with it. And,
what is more, the whole room smells of burnt paper."
She turned about, and, with her back to the hearth, surveyed the room
suspiciously. Her gaze fell upon the waste-paper basket, heaped high
and brimming over with torn documents. This puzzled her again, and her
brow contracted in a frown. But just then she caught the sound of the
Commandant's footsteps returning along the flagged passage, and bent
anew over the fire.
The Commandant appeared in the doorway with a plate of ship's biscuit
in his hand, and on his face a flush of extreme embarrassment.
"Do you know, I really am ashamed of myself," he began with a stammer,
holding out the plate. "But Archelaus has gone to bed, and--and this is
all I can find."
"Capital!" she answered gaily. "Let us break into the back premises and
forage. After my burglarious entry that will just suit my mood."
"I'm afraid--" he began, and hesitated. "I am very much afraid--" There
was unmistakable trouble in his voice, and again he came to a halt.
Vashti straightened herself up. Her eyes were on him as he set the
plate down on the table, but he avoided them, attempting a small forced
laugh. The laugh was a dead failure. Silence followed it, and in the
silence he felt horribly aware that she was grasping the truth--the
humiliating truth; that moment by moment the scales were falling from
her eyes that still persistently sought his.
The silence was broken by the noise of a poker falling against the
fender. He started, met her gaze for a moment, and again averted his.
"You don't mean to say----"
Her voice trailed off, in pitiful surmise. Silence again; and in the
silence he heard her sink back into the arm chair--and knew no more
until, at the sound of one strangling sob, terrible to hear, he found
himself standing at the arm of her chair and bending over her.
"My dear!" He used the familiar Island speech. "My dear, you must
not--please!"
"And I have been living on you, ruining you!"
"My dear ... it is all paid for. It was paid for to-day. If ever a man
was glad of his guest, I am he."
But she bent her head over the arm of the chair, sobbing silently. He
saw the heave of her shoulders, and it afflicted him beyond words. But,
though he longed, he dared not put out a hand to comfort her.
"You mistake--yes, you mistake.... It has been nothing.... I was only
too glad," he kept stammering weakly.
She pulled herself together and sat upright. A moment her tear-stained
eyes met his, then turned to the fire, which had begun to dance again
on its small heap of coals.
"Now I see," said she, resting an elbow on the arm of the chair and so
supporting her chin, while she stared resolutely into the blaze. She
had resumed command of her voice. "Ah, pardon me, now I understand many
things that puzzled me at first.... I--I am not a fool in money
matters." She hesitated.
"I know you are not," he assured her gently. "And that, if you will
understand, increased the small difficulty."
"Yes, I understand. But somehow--it was a long time since I had been
acquainted with--with----"
"Want," he suggested. "Since you know the worst, do not hurt me more
than you are obliged."
"God knows," she said, after an interval of musing, "I would hurt you
last of all living men. Will you be kind to me, and trust me?"
"On conditions."
"Yes?" She glanced up with a strange eagerness in her eyes. "What
conditions?"
"That you do not pity me at all; that you believe I have suffered
nothing, or only such pain as has edged the joy of serving you."
She looked away and into the fire. "You make me very proud," she said.
"Yes. I can easily grant your conditions. I could not pity a man who
practised so noble a courtesy."
The Commandant shook his head with a whimsical smile. "My dear," he
answered, "it's undeniably pleasant to stand well in your opinion, but
I am not used to compliments, and you run some risk of making me a vain
fellow. You asked me to trust you. With what?"
"With the reason why you are poor."
"That," said he, "can be very simply told," and, briefly, in the
simplest possible style, he told her of his brother's death, and how
his sister-in-law and her family had been left in destitution. "You
see," he wound up, "it's just an ordinary sad little tale. Cases of
that kind happen daily, all the world over. One must be thankful when
they happen within reach of help."
"Is your sister-in-law thankful?" asked Vashti, sharply. "But there!"
she added, as he stared at her obviously at a loss to find the question
relevant. "You are quite right. It really does not matter two pins
whether she is thankful or not." She turned her eyes to the fire again
and sat musing. "But I am glad to have heard the story," she went on
after a while. "It explains--oh, many things! I have been blind,
inconsiderate; but I am seeing light at last. Do you know, my friend,
that at first I found a great change in you?"
"Why--bless me!--you had only seen me once before in your life, and
then for two minutes!"
"Listen, please, and don't interrupt. I found a great change in you,
and the reason of it seemed to lie all on the surface. You had brought
ambitions to the Islands, but you had forgotten them. You kept your
kindness, your good nature, but you had forgotten all purpose in life.
In all, except a few personal habits, you were neglecting yourself; and
this neglect came of your being content to live purposeless in this
forgotten hole, and draw your pay without asking questions. Forgive me,
but I seemed to see all this, and it drove me half wild."
He bowed his head. "I know it did," he answered very slowly, "and that
is how you came to save me."
"Is--is this another story?" she asked, after eyeing him a moment or
two in bewilderment.
"If you will listen to it." He drew his writing chair over to the
fireside, and then, facing her across the hearth he told her the second
story as simply as he had told the first, but more nervously, leaning
forward with his elbows on his knees, now and again spreading out his
hands to the fire on which he kept his eyes bent during most of the
recital. Vashti, too, leaned forward, intent on his face. One hand
gripped the arm of her chair--so tightly that its pressure drove the
blood from the finger tips, while the wonder in her eyes changed to
something like awe. "And so," the commandant concluded, "the letter has
gone. I posted it to-day."
"What will happen?"
"I really cannot tell." Without lifting his gaze from the fire he shook
his head dubiously. "But at the worst, the girls are grown into women
now. They have been excellently well educated--their mother saw to that
and made a great point of it from the first--and by this time they
should be able to help, if not support her entirely."
"Man! Man! Will you drive me mad?"
Vashti sprang from the chair.
"I have been unjust. I have been worse than a fool!" She flung back her
cloak, and, clasping her hands behind her, man-fashion, fell to pacing
the room to and fro. The Commandant stood and stared. Something in her
voice puzzled him completely. In its tone, though she accused herself,
there vibrated a low note of triumph. She was genuinely
remorseful--why, he could not guess. Yet, when she halted before him,
he saw that her eyes were glad as well as dim. She held out a hand.
"Forgive me, my friend!"
"Do you know," stammered the Commandant, as he took it, "I should
esteem it a favour to be told whether I am standing on my head or my
heels!"
How long he held her hand he was never afterwards able to tell; for at
its electric touch the room began to swim around him. But this could
not have lasted for long; because, as he looked into her eyes, still
seeking an explanation, she broke off the half-hysterical laugh that
answered him, and pulled her hand away sharply at a sound behind them.
Someone was throwing gravel against the window.
"Commandant!" a voice hailed from the darkness without.
For an instant the two stood as if petrified. Then with a second glance
at the window, to make sure that the curtain was drawn, Vashti tip-toed
swiftly to the door, catching up the guitar on her way.
"Hi! Commandant! Are you waking or sleeping in there?"
The Commandant stepped to the curtain. Vashti opened the door and
slipped out into the passage. The door closed upon her as he pulled the
curtain aside for a second time that night and opened the casement.
"Who's there?"
"So you _are_ awake?" answered the voice of Mr. Rogers. "May I come
in?" And, silence being apparently taken for consent, a foot and leg
followed the voice across the window-sill.