Produced by Jason Kwong, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
A FOOL THERE WAS
BY
PORTER EMERSON BROWNE
"A Fool there was and he made his prayer--
(Even as you and I.)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair--
( We called her the woman who did not care)
But the fool he called her his lady fair--
(Even as you and I.)"
ILLUSTRATED BY
EDMUND MAGRATH
AND
W. W. FAWCETT
1909
TO
ROBERT HILLIARD.
CONTENTS
Chapter.
I. Of Certain People
II. Of Certain Other People
III. Two Boys and a Girl
IV. The Child and the Stranger
V. As Time Passes
VI. An Accident
VII. An Incident
VIII. Of Certain Goings
IX. Of Certain Other Goings
X. Two Boys and a Doctor
XI. A Proposal
XII. A Foreign Mission
XIII. The Going
XIV. Parmalee--and The Woman
XV. A Warning
XVI. The Beginning
XVII. In The Night
XVIII. White Roses
XIX. Shadows
XX. A Fairy Story
XXI. A Letter
XXII. Again The Fairy Story
XXIII. Aid
XXIV. The Rescue
XXV. The Return
XXVI. The Red Rose
XXVII. The Red Road
XXVIII. The Battle
XXIX. Defeat
XXX. And Its Consequences
XXXI. That Which Men Said
XXXII. In the Garden
XXXIII. Temptation
XXXIV. The Shroud of a Soul
XXXV. The Thing that was a Man
XXXVI. Again the Battle
XXXVII. The Pity of It All
ILLUSTRATIONS.
"Beautiful, gloriously beautiful in her strange,
weird dark beauty"
"Bye little sweetheart"
"I do forgive--forgive and understand"
"Can't you find in that dead thing you call a
heart just one shred of pity?"
CHAPTER ONE.
OF CERTAIN PEOPLE.
To begin a story of this kind at the beginning is hard; for when the
beginning may have been, no man knows. Perhaps it was a hundred years
ago--perhaps a thousand--perhaps ten thousand; and it may well be, yet
longer ago, even, than that. Yet it can be told that John Schuyler came
from a long line of clean-bodied, clean-souled, clear-eyed, clear-headed
ancestors; and from these he had inherited cleanness of body and of soul,
clearness of eye and of head. They had given him all that lay in their
power to give, had these honest, impassive Dutchmen and--women--these
broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped English; they had amalgamated for him
their virtues, and they had eradicated for him their vices; they had
cultivated for him those things of theirs that it were well to cultivate;
and they had plucked ruthlessly from the gardens of heredity the weeds
and tares that might have grown to check his growth. And, doing this,
they had died, one after another, knowing not what they had done--knowing
not why they had done it--knowing not what the result would be--doing
that which they did because it was in them to do it; and for no other
reason save that. For so it is of this world.
First, then, it is for you to know these things that I have told.
Secondly, it is for you to realize that there are things in this world of
which we know but little; that there are other things of which we may
sometime learn; that there are infinitely more things that not even the
wisest of us may ever begin to understand. God chooses to tell us nothing
of that which comes after; and of that which comes therein He lets us
learn just enough that we may know how much more there is.
And knowing and realizing these things, we may but go back as far toward
the beginning as it is in our power to see.
* * * * *
Before the restless, never-ebbing of the tides of business had
overwhelmed it with a seething flood of watered stocks and liquid
dollars, there stood on a corner of Fifth Avenue and one of its lower
tributaries, a stern, heavy-portalled mansion of brownstone. It was a
house not forbidding, but dignified. Its broad, plate-glass windows gazed
out in silent, impassive tolerance upon the streams of social life that
passed it of pleasant afternoons in Spring and Fall--on sleet-swept
nights of winter when 'bus and brougham brought from theatre and opera
their little groups and pairs of fur-clad women and high-hatted men. It
was a big house--big in size--big in atmosphere--big in manner.
At its left there was another big house, much like the one that I have
already described. It was possibly a bit more homelike--a bit less
dignified; for, possibly, its windows were a trifle more narrow, and its
portal a little less imposing. And across from that there lay a smaller
house--a house of brick; and this was much more inviting than either of
the others; for one might step from the very sidewalk within the broad
hall, hung with two very, very old portraits and lighted warmly with
shades of dull yellow, and of pink.
In the first of the big houses there lived a boy; and in the second there
lived another boy; and across, in the little house of brick, there lived
a girl. Of course, in these houses there dwelt, as well, other people.
Of these was John Stuyvesant Schuyler, who, with his wife Gretchen, lived
in the big house on the corner, was a man silent, serious. He lived
intent, honest, upright. He seldom laughed; though when he did, there
came at the corners of mouth and eye, tiny, tell-tale lines which showed
that beneath seriousness and silence, lay a fund of humor unharmed by
continual drain. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, straight-backed.
And to that which had been left him, he added, in health, in mind, and in
money, and he added wisely and well, and never at unjust expense to
anyone.
His wife was much as he in trait and habit. She, too, was silent,
serious, intent. Of her time, of her effort, of herself, she gave freely
wherein it were well to give. In her youth, she had been a beautiful
girl; as a woman, she was still beautiful; and her husband and her son
were very proud of her, though the one was fifty-five, and the other but
twelve.
In the big house next door, there lived Thomas Cathcart Blake. He, too,
had a wife, and one child--a boy. And of John Stuyvesant Schuyler he was
very fond--even as Mrs. Thomas Cathcart Blake was fond of Mrs. John
Stuyvesant Schuyler; and even as Tom Blake, the son of the one, was fond
of Jack Schuyler, the son of the other. Blake, the elder, was a man
rotund of figure, ruddy of complexion, great of heart. He laughed much;
for he enjoyed much. He gave away much more than he could make; and he
laughed about it. His wife laughed with him. And really it made no
difference; for they had more for themselves than they could ever use. Of
course, you know, it is true that many people have more than they can
ever use; but few ever think so.
In the little, warm house of red brick, across the street, lived Kathryn
Blair, and with her another Kathryn Blair, who was as much like the other
as it is possible for six to be like thirty. They both had wide, violet
eyes and sensitive, red lips, and very white teeth and lithe, slender
bodies. And they were both loved very much by everyone; and everyone said
what a shame it was that he or she hadn't put his or her foot down
_hard_ and made Jimmy Blair stay at home instead of letting him go
down into that unpronounceable Central American place and get killed in
an opera bouffe revolution with which he had absolutely nothing to do
except that he couldn't stand idly by and see women and little children
shot. Still, it was such a blessing to Kate that she had little Kate to
help her bear it all. And she had enough money, too; no one seemed to
know how; for Jimmy Blair was a reckless giver and a poor business men.
But John Stuyvesant Schuyler and Thomas Cathcart Blake had been
executors. And that explained much to those who knew; for once every two
or three months, these two men, so different and yet so alike, would
stalk solemnly, side by side, across the street and, still solemnly,
still side by side, would inform the violet-eyed widow of Jimmy Blair
that the investments that her husband had made for her had been very
fortunate and that there was in the bank for her the sum of many more
hundreds of dollars than poor Jimmy himself could have made in as many
years. And she, deifying the man who had been her husband, endowing him
with the abilities of a Morgan, a Root and a Rothschild, would believe
all that they said; and she would tell the neighbors; and they, being
good neighbors, would nod, seriously, unsmilingly. "Jimmy Blair was a
wonderful, wonderful man," they would say. And the violet eyes would grow
soft and dim, and the sensitive lips tremble a little, and the prettily-
poised head would sink forward upon the rounded breast. And she was less
unhappy; for when others love the one you love, even though that one be
gone, it makes the pain far, far less. Also, it is a great blessing to
have about one those who know enough not to know too much.
So it was of the three houses, and of those who lived therein.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER TWO.
OF CERTAIN OTHER PEOPLE.
In the littleness of things, it so happened that at a time when John
Stuyvesant Schuyler and Thomas Cathcart Blake, serious, solemn, side-by-
side, were telling the widow of Jimmy Blair that the Tidewater Southern
Railroad, in which her husband had largely interested himself before his
death, had declared an extra dividend that had enabled them that day to
deposit to her credit in the bank the sum of four thousand two hundred
and eighty-one dollars and seventy-three cents, in a little hut on the
black Breton coast a woman lay dying.
It was a bare hut, and noisome. In it it were perhaps better to die than
to live; and yet that one might not say. From before it one might gaze
upon league upon league of sullen sea, stretching to where, far in the
dim distance, lay the curve of the horizon upbearing the gray dome of the
sky.
Inside the hovel there was a smoke-stained fireplace beside which was
strewn an armful of faggots. There was before it a number of broken and
greasy dishes, filled with fragments of food. And all about on the floor
lay the litter of the sick-room.
The dying woman was stretched inert, moveless, upon a rough bed of rope
and rush. Perhaps she had been pretty once, in an animal way. She was not
now. Lips that doubtless had been red were white and drawn in pain; and
there was blood upon them, where white, even teeth had bitten in the way
that those who suffer have of trying to hide a greater suffering beneath
a lesser. The eyes, deep and dark, were dull and half-hidden by their
blue, transparent lids. And the cheeks were sunken, and ghastly--touched
by the hand of death.
A heavy, course-featured woman, thin hair streaked with gray, flat-
backed, flat-breasted, sat beside the rude bed, silent, motionless,
awaiting an end that she had so often watched in the sullen ferocity that
is of beast rather than of man. And on her lap lay a little, pink, puling
thing that whimpered and twisted weakly--a little, naked, thing half
covered by roughly-cast sacking.
The tiny, twisting thing whimpered. The woman beside the bed held it,
waiting. The woman on the bed moaned a little, and the glaze upon the
eyes grew more thick. And that was all.
There came to the ears that were not too new come or too far gone to
hear, the sound of hoof beats upon the turf. They came nearer.... They
stopped. Came the sound of spurred heels striking upon the trodden dirt
without the door.... There stood in the opening the figure of a man. He
was tall, and well-proportioned, though if anything a bit too slender--a
bit too graceful; and he was, if anything, a bit too well groomed. He had
light hair, and moustache. He had cold eyes that smiled; cold lips that
smiled. He stood in the doorway, trying to accustom his eyes to the gloom
within, the while playing a deft tattoo upon his booted calf with light
crop that he carried in his right hand.
"Well?" he said, at length, in the French that is of Paris. "Well? ...
What is all this?"
The tiny thing whimpered. The woman upon the bed moaned a little, weakly.
She, who sat beside it, looked up, eyes aflame. She said no word.
The man in the doorway took a step forward, entering. He was still
smiling. He looked about him; and then he continued:
"Sick, eh? ... Dying? ... And that thing that you have in your--_Ma
foi_! A baby, eh?" He laughed, aloud. The broken peals came back to
him from the sodden, smoke-stained rafters. "Strange that I should have
come to-day.... A baby!" He laughed again, modulatedly. And then, with an
air of sympathetic commiseration he said to the gray-haired old woman
with the eyes of fire:
"Too bad that your daughter is not married--since she, I presume, is the
mother! ... And the happy father?--he is--?" He stopped, waiting,
smilingly.
The fierce, blazing eyes were set full upon his own. She said, in the
patois that was of her and hers:
"You ask that? ... You?"
He answered, evenly.
"Yes. I ask that. Even I."
Quickly, with the agility of the brute, she thrust toward him the little,
puling thing that lay upon her lap.
"Look, then," she said, in deep, grating tones.
He leaned forward, crossing his hands behind him, and looked. The crop,
held in his right hand, tapped lightly against his booted left leg. The
woman waited. At length he stood erect. He shook his head and smiled.
"Babies are all alike," he remarked, easily. "Red, dirty, unformed, no
hair.... This is a little redder, a little more dirty, a little more
unformed; it has a little less hair.... Beyond that, _quoi_?"
The shrunken lips of the old woman set tightly; the eyes flared.
"You dare--!" she began. And then: "It is your mouth--your chin. The nose
is yours. The eyes they shall be hers." She nodded her head in the
direction of the dying mother upon the bed. "And perhaps, some day--" She
did not finish. She settled the baby back again upon her knees and sat,
waiting.
The man, still smiling, gazed up the woman on the bed.
"Dead?" he queried, with a lift of the brows.
She did not answer. He bent over the prostrate form; then again stood
erect. He shrugged his shoulders.
He turned again to the shrivelled woman on the chair.
"You have named it?" he asked. "You have named--our child?"
Still she did not answer.
"It were not improper," he continued, smilingly, half-musingly, "for a
father to venture a suggestion anent a name.... _Eh bien_, then. I
should wish that the baby be known as" he stopped for a moment, thinking,
the while lightly tapping booted leg with the tip of his crop. "I should
suggest," he repeated, "calling her Rien. It is an appropriate name,
Rien. It is not a bad name; in fact, it is rather a pretty name....
Rien.... Rien.... Rien...." He repeated it several times. "Yes, it seems
to me that that is an excellent name.... We will, then, consider her name
Rien." He laughed once more.
"Because of certain reasons," he went on, "I'm afraid that my paternal
duties must cease with the naming of our child."
He turned to the dying woman upon the bed.
"Bon voyage, mam'selle--eh, pardon, madame," he said. He lifted his hat,
bowing. To the old woman he turned.
"To you--" he began; she interrupted.
"Her eyes, they will be her mother's," she mumbled, sullenly.
"Which will be well," he smiled. "Her mother had beautiful eyes--
wonderful eyes."
"More wonderful than you knew," muttered the old woman. "Had you come a
day sooner--"
Still he smiled.
"But I didn't," he replied; and then nodding toward the whimpering thing
that the woman held:
"You should guard it well. There is of the best blood of France in its
veins." His lips curled, whimsically. "'Tis strange, that, _n'es-ce
pas_? In that small piece of carrion which you hold there upon your
knees runs the blood of three kings." Again he laughed, musically. He
turned.
He had not seen her stoop. The long-bladed knife struck him in the arm,
piercing flesh and vein and sinew, sticking there. Slowly he plucked it
forth, and turned to her, still smiling.
"You are old, madame. Do not apologize; it was not your fault."
He took the knife delicately by the tip and with a little flip sent it
spinning through the air and over the edge of the cliff. And he was gone.
The woman, shrivelled, gray-haired, sinking back in her chair, sat
silent. The puling thing upon her knees whimpered. The dying woman upon
the rude bed of rope and rush moaned. And that was all.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THREE.
TWO BOYS AND A GIRL.
To the budding mind of young Jack Schuyler, life was a very pleasant
affair. It began each morning at six thirty; and from then on until eight
at night, there was something to fill each moment. He didn't care for
school, particularly; still, it wasn't difficult enough to cause much
discomfort. The natal pains of study were not by any means unbearable
inasmuch as he was quick to see and to understand; and furthermore, he
was possessed of a retentive memory. In his classes he assumed a position
of about eighth from the fore; and he maintained it with but little
fluctuation. In the out-of-door sports of small boys, he was usually
first--that is, when Tom Blake wasn't. When Tom Blake was, Jack Schuyler
was second.
He was a sturdy boy, active, quick, strong of limb and of body. He had
earnest, serious eyes of gray-blue, like those of his father. His mouth
and chin were delicate, like his mother's. And he was thoughtful, rather
than impulsive.
Tom Blake, on the other hand, was impulsive rather than thoughtful. He
had dark eyes and ruddy cheeks; and, at the age of nine, he had learned
to walk on his hands in a manner that caused acute envy to rankle in the
bosom of every boy in the neighborhood. Also, as is most unusual among
boys of whatever station, color or instinct, he was self-sacrificing, and
more than generous, and loyal to a fault.
Kathryn Blair was all that might have been expected of a daughter of her
father and mother. Had you known them, it were difficult to describe
further. You have been told that she was lithe, and dainty and very
pretty. And she was feminine, very, and yet not unhoydenish; for she
played much with Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake. She was natural, and
unaffected, and whole-souled and buoyant, quick to laughter, quick to
tears, with an inexhaustible fund of merriment, and of sympathy.
Of an afternoon, in early December, they lay, these three young animals,
sprawling upon the great room in Blake's house--the room that had been
made for play. The gentle rays of the early-setting sun streamed in
through the broad windows upon a tumbled heap of discarded playthings,
and upon a floor strewn with that which might have appeared to be
drifting snow but which in reality was feathers; for there had been a
fierce pillow fight; and one of the pillows, under the pressure of
rolling little bodies, had burst. Its shrunken shape lay in a far corner
of the room, rumpled, empty, a husk of the plump thing that it had been
but a short time before.
Kathryn Blair, with slender, stockinged legs thrust out before her, was
picking from the tangled masses of her gold-brown hair little clinging
bits of down. Tom Blake, beside her lay flat upon his back; and by him,
was Jack Schuyler, his head resting upon the heaving diaphragm of the
other.
At length Jack Schuyler sat up, looking about him.
"Phew!" he whistled. "It looks like a snowslide.... We'll catch it now!"
Tom Blake rolled over on his stomach. He shook his head.
"Don't worry about that," he said. "Dad won't care, nor mother....
Besides, you're my guests, you know.... What shall we do now?"
Kathryn Blair said:
"I want to get these feathers off first. They stick terribly.... Every
time I think I've got hold of one, I find it's a hair." She shifted, so
that her back was toward Tom Blake. "Help me, Tom," she commanded.
Obediently he rose to his knees. Resting his left hand upon her shoulder,
he plucked, with clumsy masculine fingers at the bits of white that
nestled in her hair.... She gave a little cry.
"Ouch! That hurts, Tom! I guess I'd better wait until I get home and have
Harris do it. Harris isn't pretty, but she's awfully good; and she
doesn't fuss a bit" ... She turned around, suddenly, violet eyes wide
with excitement. "Oh! I forgot to tell you!" she cried. "Doctor DeLancey
said that maybe he'd bring me a baby brother today!"
Tom Blake and Jack Schuyler both turned to her.
"He did!" they cried almost together.
She nodded, profoundly.
"Yes," she said. "That's why they sent me over here to get all mussed up
with feathers. You know baby brothers are bashful. Dr. DeLancey told me
all about it. They like to be all alone in the house with their mothers,
so that they can get acquainted."
Jack Schuyler rose up on his elbows.
"I know a boy," he said, "that was promised a baby brother and all he got
was a sister.... I don't think that was square, do you?"
Tom Blake looked out the window, thoughtfully.
"I don't know," he remarked at length, judicially. "It might not have
been the doctor's fault. Sometimes they get 'em mixed, I guess.... And
anyhow, sisters aren't so bad. I wish I had one right now--one like you,
Kathryn." He turned on her eyes in which were the frank liking and
admiration of boyhood.
She tossed the tumbled braids of her hair back over her shoulders.
"I'd rather be a boy, myself," she said. "They don't have to wear dresses
and things. And people don't give them dolls when they'd rather have
rocking horses.... I wish they'd hurry and bring that brother. I'm just
wild to see it!"
Jack Schuyler sat up.
"Well," he assured her, "They'll send over for you when it comes.... What
shall we do now?"
He waited patiently for suggestions. Tom Blake and Kathryn Blair sat,
foreheads grooved in thought. At length Jack Schuyler cried suddenly:
"I know! Let's play leopard shooting! I saw a picture of one in the
geography. It looked just like Fiddles." Fiddles was the plethoric
Maltese member of the Blake family. "We've got those tin guns, and we can
stalk it. What do you say?"
That which they said was later evidenced; for when Thomas Cathcart Blake
entered the front door of his residence that night and started up the
stairs, he was met by an excited feline, followed by three equally
excited children. And the cat, on seeing him, its cosmogony disrupted to
such an extent that it felt itself no longer able to distinguish friend
from foe, tried to turn back with the result that its first pursuer fell
over it. There was the added result that the next two pursuers tripped
upon the sprawling form of the first. And Thomas Cathcart Blake had great
difficulty in preventing himself from joining the sprawling parade that
tumbled past him to the foot of the stairs, and lay at the bottom, a heap
of tossing legs and arms and ribbons and fur.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER FOUR.
THE CHILD AND THE STRANGER.
It is of necessity that a story such as this should be episodical,
lapsical, disconnected. Its inception lies in two countries, and of
different people. And it is, in its beginnings, a story of contrasts. So
one may be permitted again to say: At a time when pompous, ponderous,
white-whiskered, black-suited old Dr. DeLancey was engaged in bringing to
the daughter of Kathryn Blair a posthumous baby brother that, in the
mystery of things, turned out after all to be a sister, a stranger
chanced to be riding at dusk through the deep shades of the Bois du Nord,
in Brittany. The path was overhung with spreading boughs; it was tumbled
with the wood-litter of a decade. His horse went slowly, lifting each
forefoot daintily and placing it carefully. And the stranger permitted
the animal to take its own time.
At length he came to a turning. The huge bole of a great oak was at his
left. He rounded it. His horse raised its head, nostrils distended, eyes
alert, and stopped.
The stranger looked up. It was a strange picture that met his eyes....
At first he did not believe that that which he saw was human. It seemed
like some nymph of the wood; for there are nymphs in the Bois du Nord,
you know, many of them. Anyone who lives there will tell you that.
But then his eyes fell upon a tumbled heap of clothing; and he knew that
it was not a nymph, after all. For nymphs do not wear clothing.
There was a little woodland pool before him. The sun, straining through
the great, heavy-leafed boughs, specked it with blots and blotches of
gold. Beside it there sat the figure of a girl, naked. She sat there, her
slender legs beneath her, her slender body leaning upon one rounded,
white arm. Great masses of dead-black hair fell about her glowing
shoulders, half covering the arm which supported her. Her other hand
clasped her knee. Her dark eyes were gazing before her toward the trunk
of the oak. The stranger felt that she knew that he was there; and yet
she had not looked at him.
On the bole of the oak was a squirrel. It was motionless, as though
carved out of the trunk itself. Beneath it lay coiled a snake. Its eyes
were fastened upon those of the squirrel and its flat, ugly head was
moving gently to and fro--to and fro--the while its forked tongue played
back and forth between its fangs.
They waited there, the stranger and the naked girl. They waited for a
long, long time....
By and by the squirrel moved a little. One forefoot crept slowly down the
bark of the oak--and then the other--the one hind foot--and then its
mate.... And the squirrel was nearer to the snake.
Again they waited, the stranger and the naked girl.... The squirrel crept
yet further down the trunk, toward the slow-shifting venomous head....
The horse snorted.... The squirrel raised its head; and darted up the
tree trunk. It was gone. And the snake slid noiselessly off into the
underbrush.... The naked girl turned dark, deep eyes upon the stranger.
She seemed not to mind her nakedness. And to him it seemed not strange
that she should not. The horror of it all was deep within him. He
murmured, beneath his breath:
"Good God!"
Then he spoke to her, a muttered word, a meaningless word. She swung her
body over, sinuously, so that she faced him, slender legs half stretched.
The dead black hair rippled over budding breasts. She did not answer. She
merely looked at him.
The stranger sat there. His eyes blinked a little; he brushed his hand
across them, weakly. Then he looked at her again.
Came a sudden rustling in the brush, beside him. His horse leaped
forward, almost unseating him.... He had gone far down the trail before
he reined it in. Then he crossed himself. His eyes showed that he was
frightened.
There was a turning in the path, a turning that led to the main road. The
stranger swung his horse into this turning. He knew that it added to the
length of his journey by a good league and a half. And yet he took that
turning.
And, later, as he turned into the travelled road, he breathed a deep,
deep sigh; and again he crossed himself.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER FIVE.
AS TIME PASSES.
Time passed on over the heads of young Jack Schuyler and young Tom Blake
and the daughter of Jimmy Blair. They grew in stature, and in intellect.
They grew through the grades of school that lie between nine and fifteen;
and then they separated to go to boarding school.
Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake went to one; the daughter of Jimmy Blair and
Kathryn Blair to another. And the baby brother that had turned out to be
a sister, and who had been named Elinor, stayed at home with the widow of
Jimmy Blair; and the widow of Jimmy Blair was now hardly as lonely as
were the parents of Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake.
John Stuyvesant Schuyler had built for himself a place at Larchmont, on
the Sound. "Grey Rocks," he called it. It was a long, low rambling house,
built of stone and of darkened wood. It sat ensconced in a deep phalanx
of great, green trees at the head of a great, green lawn. It was not a
big house, of pretension, of arrogant wealth, of many servants--of
closely-shaven shrubbery and woodeny landscape gardening. It was, rather,
a house that was a home--and there is a distinction--a vast distinction;
for there is many a house that is not a home even as there is many a home
that is not a house.
Thomas Cathcart Blake built for himself another house, next to it. That
also was a rambling, homelike place, with broad halls and deep windows,
and wide doors. And the doors he kept open most of the time; for he liked
good people, and good people liked him. His big yacht lay during most of
the summer a quarter of a mile from the end of his pier. He lived on it
part of the time, with Mrs. Thomas Cathcart Blake, and their guests; part
of the time he lived on the shore, in the house that he had built. Dr.
DeLancey once asked him if he ever moved the yacht from its moorings, and
wanted to bet that the sail covers were stuffed with hay. Thomas Cathcart
Blake grinned and said that, as for taking the yacht out to sea, he was
afraid of getting it wet; and he wouldn't want to bet as to what the sail
covers were stuffed with because it might be excelsior, or cotton, or any
one of a number of things.
They always had much company at "The Lawns," which was the name of the
house, and on the "Idlesse," which was the name of the yacht that seldom
sailed; although Dr. DeLancey begged them to rechristen it "The Dock," or
"The Stake Boat," or something of the sort, which he thought would be
much more appropriate. And among this company, was a great deal, the
widow of Jimmy Blair, and her daughter.
Young Jack Schuyler and young Tom Blake got home from college that year
about the middle of June. Kathryn Blair was a few days later, owing to
certain nonacademic festivities which she didn't want to miss. You can
know, how popular and attractive and altogether charming she was when I
tell you that she was like her mother at her age; and all New York knows
how hard it was even for Jimmy Blair--and there have been very few Jimmy
Blairs, you know--to make any perceptible progress amid the choking
masses of his competing fellows.
Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake went down to the train, in a trap, to meet
her. They hardly recognized the girl with whom they had pillow-fought and
leopard-stalked in the dainty figure that descended from the dusty train.
A year, with a girl of eighteen, means vast changes; and when that year
has been spent at boarding school, it means changes yet more vast,
infinitely. Thus, it was that Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake stood, jaws
agape, eyes wide-open, and stared--frankly, unequivocally stared.... Then
they went to meet her; and both tried to shake hands at once; then both
tried to pick up her travelling case at once; and they bumped their
heads.
For the first half mile of the drive to the shore, they sat dumb,
thinking with sore strainings of mind for things to say, and rejecting
each because it didn't seem to be good enough. Finally Tom Blake ventured
a remark anent the weather. No harm came to him. So Jack Schuyler
ventured one about the wind. He also went scatheless.
At length Tom Blake, looking at the fresh, clean beauty of the girl on
the other seat, forgot himself, and voiced, in the moment of his
temporary aberration, that which was in the two adolescent male minds.
"Doggone, but you've grown pretty, Kate!" and then blushed.
She blushed, too, and looked at Jack Schuyler. At which he blushed and
almost carromed the trap against a telegraph pole. Whereat they all
laughed. And from then on, they were themselves.
They were met by her mother at "The Lawns," and by Dr. DeLancey. Dr.
DeLancey was not bashful. He pinched her glowing cheek and looked her
over, critically.
"A positive symposium of pulchritude," he declared. "I wish I were fifty
or seventy-five years younger, by Jove! If you two boys let any rank
outsider take her out of the family, you'll have me to reckon with. Yes,
by Jove, you will! And you'll find that while I may be a poor fencer, and
a worse boxer, I'm still a good spanker!"
[Illustration]
CHAPTER SIX.
AN ACCIDENT.
Dr. DeLancey, sitting under the awning of the after deck of "The
Idlesse," and gazing out upon the sound where Jack Schuyler, Tom Blake
and Kathryn Blair were defying the laws of nature in a thirty foot
knockabout, much to the unspoken anxiety of two fathers and the spoken
fear of three mothers, again voiced this thought on the following
evening.
"The prettiest, sweetest, finest, loveliest child I ever knew, by Jove,"
he declared; then, bowing, "present company, of course, excepted.... Yes,
sir. If you two old ninnies don't force your sons to marry her, I'll take
it into my own hands, damme if I don't, by Jove!"
"But they can't both marry her," protested the widow of Jimmy Blair,
placing her arm about the baby brother that had turned out to be a
sister.
The Doctor waved his hand, loftily.
"A mere detail," he asserted. "As long as one of 'em marries her, that
fixes it, doesn't it? And it doesn't make any difference which one;
they're equally fine boys, both of 'em. Look at 'em. Did you ever see
better shoulders--better shaped heads--better carriages? Mighty dashed
handsome boys, too, they are--get it from their mothers," he bowed
elaborately to Mrs. Jon Stuyvesant Schuyler and to Mrs. Thomas Cathcart
Blake, then added a look of contempt for, and at their husbands. "Yes,
sir," he went on, "they're fine boys, two of 'em--no denying that. And
she--she's the right sort--no frills, or airs, or bluffs. Sensible,
natural. If I'd have had a few more patients like them, I'd have starved
to death long ago. Why, they didn't have even a single measle--not one
whooping cough out of the lot. Disgraceful!"
In the meanwhile, far out on the sound, the little knockabout was heeling
far over in the playful breath of the summer breeze. Tom Blake, bare-
headed, bare-armed, was at the tiller. Jack Schuyler, also bare-headed
and bare-armed, sat on the after overhang, tending the sheet, and bracing
muscular legs against the swirling seas that, leaping over the low
freeboard, tried to swirl him off among them. Kathryn Blair, leaned
lithely against the weather rail, little, white--canvas-shod feet braced,
skirts whipping about her slender body, rounded arms gripping the wet
edge of the cockpit rail. The gold-brown hair, in loosened strands,
whipped across her tanned cheek; her gown, open at the throat, revealed a
glimpse of straight, perfectly-poised throat; her lips were parted and
her breath came fast in the excitement of it.
Blake held the knockabout to its course, with the confidence of youth in
his prowess, against them. The little boat leaped forward from crest to
crest, stopping between to shake the water from its deck. Above was the
blue sky--all about them the blue water, white crested.
The girl, bracing herself against a particularly hard pitch of the boat,
balancing herself lightly, as the craft recovered and again leaped
forward, cried:
"Isn't this fine!"
Blake nodded. Schuyler, waist deep in a swooping sea, did not hear... The
Long Island shore was close at hand now.
Suddenly Blake shouted: "Hard a lee!" and jammed the tiller over;
Schuyler, on the after overhang, scrambled fast to take in the slack of
the sheet. Kathryn Blair bent, to avoid the swinging boom.
The little boat swung about as though on a pivot. The wind filled the
sail; she sped forward like a hawk unhooded.
Then something happened. A stay parted; there was a great, grinding
crack, followed by the snapping and whipping of canvas. And the mast
fell.
Schuyler was knocked over into the water by the boom. It struck him fair
upon the brow. Kathryn, springing to catch him, was hit by the flapping
canvas. She went overboard, too, and under the sail.
Blake, on the weather side, was free from the wreck. Without even
stopping to turn, he dove backward from the cockpit. Under the cold,
green water he went. He struck out, blindly, frenziedly. His hand felt
something that was not canvas and yet was cloth--struck, and gripped.
Then, holding his breath still until he thought his lungs would burst, he
felt his way out from under the sail. The rail of the boat was at hand;
he gripped it. And he dragged Kathryn to it.
"Hold on!" he cried in her ear. "Jack's gone!"
Though but half conscious, she understood. Her firm, white fingers
gripped the cutting edge of the cockpit rail; she nodded.
Blake struck out again. He had tried to remember where he had seen
Schuyler disappear. Four strokes brought him to the spot; and then he
dove.
Again his hand struck something. Again he pulled, and tugged, and fought.
At length he was at the surface. It was Schuyler. His eyes were closed.
The tide, setting down the sound, was carrying the boat from him; he set
his teeth. He caught Schuyler by the neck of his jersey, over his own
shoulder, bringing his head out of water.
And he struck out, with his free arm, desperately.
It seemed as though he would never make progress. A dead weight, in the
water, is hard to drag. Every ounce of strength that was in his strong,
young body he threw into those long, quivering strokes. He must get to
the boat! He _must_! The shore was too far away.... He stopped for a
minute, treading water. There was no sail in sight. He flattened out in
the water again, breasting it with all his power.
Stroke after stroke he took--stroke after stroke--reaching with strong
right arm, thrusting with strong legs. The boat was no nearer.... He kept
on, doggedly.... He could feel that his strokes were getting weaker; his
mouth was under water more than half the time; he had to raise up to
breathe.... But he fought on.... He began to grow dizzy--there was a
ringing in his ears....
Suddenly he thought he saw, right before him, the face of Kathryn Blair.
He knew that he did not; he thought he did; that was all. Then, suddenly,
his fingers caught a rope; the face was still there; and the rope that he
held led to where it was caught between white, even teeth.
A great wave hit him a buffet, full in the face; it cleared his senses,
for a moment; yet perhaps it was more due to the feel of the rope in his
fingers.... Then he knew that it was she--that the face was real, and the
rope.... Went surging through his mind that she, taking the end of the
sheet in her teeth, had swum to him, and to Schuyler--and that to her
they both owed their lives.
She was beside him, now, swimming strongly. She gripped an arm of the
unconscious Schuyler.... Together, she and Blake, dividing the weight,
slowly, inch by inch, fought their way along the rope. At length they
reached the side of the swamped knockabout.... Blake crawled upon its
slippery deck. He lay for a moment, helpless; she supported Schuyler.
Then he essayed to aid her again; and together they began to lift him out
of the water, and to safety.
Dr. DeLancey, from the after deck of "The Idlesse," had seen the
accident. A minute later, he, John Stuyvesant Schuyler, Thomas Cathcart
Blake, the captain of "The Idlesse," and two sailors were in the
launch.... They reached the side of the knockabout as Blake and Kathryn
were dragging Jack Schuyler from the water; and they took him into the
other boat. Blake, in his father's clutch, followed. At the same time,
Dr. DeLancey leaned over to grasp Kathryn. But she shook her head, and
smiled, weakly:
"No," she said. "I--I had to--to take off part of my clothes. I--"
Dr. DeLancey was an old man; some assert that he fell overboard. However,
be that as it may, when he came to the surface, he had his arm around
Kathryn Blair, and she had his long coat draped around her slender
figure.... And, as they lifted her to the deck, she fainted.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER SEVEN.
AN INCIDENT.
Destiny has a sense of humor; a sense of humor sardonic, it is true,
cruel, sometimes grewsome; and yet it is a sense of humor. Otherwise--
There had been in France a man of the nobility--a man in whose veins
flowed the blood of three kings--a man handsome of face, graceful of
figure, debonair--a man who had sinned much, and who had paid for that
sinning only in the sufferings of others; and they had been many.
That man had many estates--many servants--many horses--much money. He had
been to Brittany twice; and only twice. Yet he went a third time, and
after five years. He went alone. He rode his horse through the narrow,
brush-grown path by which had gone the stranger who had seen the naked
girl, at the edge of the woodland pool, five years before. And he came,
at length, to the edge of the wood, and to the clearing where lay the
little hut, smoky, dirty, littered.
He dismounted from his horse, there, why, he did not know. He went
forward, to the hut.
An old woman, bent, white haired, sat on a rude chair, in the sun, beside
the door. She looked up as he approached. She, in no way, heeded the
elaborate bow that he made--a graceful bow, low and sweeping, and yet a
salutation sarcastic.
"_Bon jour_, madame," he began. "Madame looks well; but Death is
never far from the aged.... It should be a consolation," looking about
him, casually, "for one who lives as madame."
The shrivelled old woman made no answer.
The man went on, evenly, the while tapping; with the end of his slender
crop a booted leg:
"_Eh bien_, I have come, as you see. The paternal passion will not
down in the breast of a man domestically inclined." He laughed. "I have
been going about, seeing my families," he smiled. "It has been
interesting--drolly interesting. _Ma foi_!" Yet again he laughed,
musically. "There have been pleadings, and revilings--tears, and curses--
bended knees, and unbended arms." He indicated with a graceful gesture a
deep cut upon the back of his left hand. "It was a woman--a very pretty
woman," he explained. "At least, she had been pretty; and she was again
pretty; when she did that. Her eyes--it was like lighting a fire in a
cave. Did you ever light a fire in a cave, madame?" he queried, gently,
graciously; and then: "But, of course not! Women kindle their fires in
stoves--or fireplaces. It is for men to light the fires of caves." Yet
once more he laughed, softly.
The old woman, with the white, wispy hair, still was silent, motionless;
though her eyes spoke. And that which they spoke, his eyes heard; and
once more he laughed.
"I had a daughter here," he continued. "Did I not? Or was it a son? _Ma
foi_! It were difficult--ah, yes! I remember now! A daughter. A
little, red, hairless, dirty thing she was. I have a great curiosity--
the blood of three kings, you know; surely that would overcome the blood
of the good God knows how many peasant swine. She is not red, and
hairless, and dirty now, in faith! She is clean-limbed, and straight, and
white. A thousand louis to a sou, that she is!" ... His brow was creased
in the travail or retrospection.
"I gave her a name, did I not?" he asked. "It seems to me--ah, yes. Rien,
it was. A very pretty name--yes, an excellent name--meaning much and
little--everything, and yet nothing." He laughed at his own conceit,
softly. "Tell me, where is she now? It might be that she is dead, eh?" He
eyed the old woman, closely; then he shook his head. "No," he went on,
"she is not dead. She--"
He had seen nothing, that is certain. Yet, suddenly he ceased in his
speech; the smile left his lips; and slowly, very slowly, he turned.
She was standing there, behind him, her eyes upon him.... She was
straight, and slender, and perfectly formed. A single garment covered
her, running across one shoulder, reaching to her knees. It left one
breast exposed, and the white, slender legs and perfect feet. She stood
in a posture of infinite grace--of infinite poise. She looked at him.
Then it was that the shrivelled old woman spoke. She said to the girl:
"_Votre pere_."
And that was all.
The child looked at the man; the man looked at the child; and so for a
long, long time they stood eye upon eye.... At length she began to smile
a little, with her lips. But he did not smile....
After a long, long time, she took a slow, sinuous step toward him--then
another.... He stepped back, still looking at her, his eyes still on
hers.... He was back to the great cliff--the sheer cliff at the base of
which the huge seas ever beat in sullen, unceasing impotence.... Yet,
another step she took, toward him....
His breath came chokingly, gaspingly. Yet another step he took, away from
her.... Yet another.... And then....
It was an accident, perhaps. Yes, of course; it must have been an
accident. He had not noticed.... For, as again she advanced, her eyes on
his, his eyes on hers, again he retreated. And suddenly, in utter silence
save for the rending of crumbling earth and uprooted grass, he slid over
the edge of the great rock.... Before the eyes of the girl lay only the
restless, heaving sea. and beyond the dull gray of the horizon and the
cupped sky.
She turned, slowly, smiling a little. The shrivelled, shrunken old woman
bent her head forward upon her flat breast, thrice.
"_Bien_," she muttered. And that was all.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER EIGHT.
OF CERTAIN GOINGS.
It so happened that, on the winter after Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake
graduated from college, death came to the big houses on the Avenue. Mrs.
John Stuyvesant Schuyler went first; Mrs. Thomas Cathcart Blake went,
almost, with her; for she had been by the bedside of her friend during
all her illness; and her friend, going, had bestowed upon her its
horrible heritage. And so she went, too.
Their going left in the two great houses, monstrous voids that might
never be filled. John Stuyvesant Schuyler and Thomas Cathcart Blake loved
their wives; and when a man has loved a woman, and that woman his wife,
as these two had loved, it seems in a way to disrupt the cosmogony of
things. It takes ambition from the brain, and the stamina from the spine;
and the days are very, very long, while the nights are yet infinitely
longer.
Thomas Cathcart Blake, in the vastness of all that now was not, forgot to
care for himself. He, who had been jovial, became silent. Some times, of
nights, he would walk alone for hours. The weather made no difference--in
fact, he seldom noticed what the weather was. He was an old man now,
close to sixty....
Dr. DeLancey, on a night visit, met him one thick, sodden night at the
corner of Thirty-third Street and the Avenue, coming from the club. The
good doctor bumbled out of his brougham, seized him by the arm and drew
him wet and dripping into its protected interior.
"You fossiliferous-headed old chump," he howled, exasperatedly. "You pin-
headed old amphibian. If your sole and utter ambition is to get pneumonia
and die, I don't know any way in which you can better achieve your
purpose. Sit down in the corner there and drink this," he extracted from
his case a little flask of brandy, "or I'll ask the horse to come in and
bite you!"
"Turn around there, Mose!" he yelled, "and drive to Mr. Blake's house."
Mose did so; and once there, the doctor, abusing and bullying his
patient, got him upstairs and into the bed, and then applied to the
protesting man who seldom had known what it was even to have a cold, all
manner of exposurial antidotes.
"But the patient that you were going to see!" protested Thomas Cathcart
Blake.
"No friend of mine," returned Dr. DeLancey. "Only a patient. Patients are
plenty, but friends are few. Let him get someone else, or die, as he
chooses. It's none of my business. Here, drink this." And he poured
between the protesting lips of Thomas Cathcart Blake a nauseating draught
of something that was most malodorous; for Dr. DeLancey was an allopath,
and a good one.
But, good as he was, he was too late. Pneumonia had been before him; and,
two weeks later, in spite of all that the good doctor, and several other
equally good doctors, could do, Thomas Cathcart Blake died. And he didn't
seem sorry at going.
Before he went, he called to him his son, and to that son he said many
things. Most of the things that he said are neither your business nor
mine. But of the things that he said, we may know one. He wanted his son
to marry the daughter of the widow of Jimmy Blair.
Young Tom Blake, between the sobs that are becoming a man, answered:
"I want to, dad. I've always wanted to. And I will, if I can."
His father counselled, weakly:
"Get her honestly, boy, or not at all. If you get her, cherish her--give
her everything that there is in you to give--for there's nothing that a
man can give that a good woman doesn't deserve. Now, God bless you, son--
and--go."
Tom Blake clung to the sheets. It was hard to lose such a father and such
a mother, and all within a six month. He cried, as you would cry, or I,
and be glad that crying might be.... Dr. DeLancey, at length, managed to
loosen his clenching fingers. Dr. DeLancey was crying, too; the tears ran
down his veined cheeks to lose themselves in the hair of his cheeks. He
tried to fume and fuss and splutter, as was his wont; but he couldn't. He
could just put his hand around Tom Blake's heaving young shoulders,
listen to his choking, broken sobs and say, over and over, and over
again: "There, there, my boy! There, there! There, there!"
It's pretty hard, you know, to lose a father and a mother like that, and
all within six months.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER NINE.
OF CERTAIN OTHER GOINGS.