"Because," replied Blake, smiling mirthlessly "it _was_ returned....
Did you ever read that! thing of Kipling's, _The Vampire_?"
"Why, yes, of course," returned Schuyler. "Almost everyone's read that."
"Do you remember how it goes?" persisted Blake.
Schuyler thought a moment. Then, slowly, he recited:
"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--"
He broke off, abruptly. "A weird thing," he said, as though to himself.
"I never thought much about what it meant before...." He turned,
abruptly. "Why did you ask me if I'd read it?" he demanded.
"Well," said Blake, flicking the ashes from his cigarette, "there's the
fool," he nodded toward the drying spot upon the deck. "And there," he
indicated, with a backward toss of his well-shaped head, the corridor
down which had passed the woman, "is his lady fair. I've even heard," he
went on, "that she used to call him her 'fool,' quoting the poem. Pretty
little conceit, eh?" His jaw, firm, square, set tight. Then, with a touch
of deeper feeling. "She murdered that boy just as surely as if she had
cut his throat; and the worst of it is that she can't be held legally
guilty--morally, yes, guilty as sin; but legally--" He shook his head.
"The laws that man makes for mankind are a joke."
"As sometimes seem," added Schuyler, slowly, "the laws that God makes for
mankind.... If what you say about that woman be true, she ought to be
taken by the hair of the head and dragged through the hell she has built
for others." His brows were knitted; he was gazing with unseeing eyes
upon the bustle and confusion of the dock below.
Blake, eyeing him, remarked quietly, but in tones more light:
"However, that's not your job, nor mine, thank God. It would be an
eminently suitable recreation for a debonair young man with a shattered
reputation, a cast iron stomach, several millions of dollars and no
objections to staying up by the year." He turned a little, toward
Schuyler. "What are you thinking about?" he queried.
"Only the fool."
"The generic fool of Kipling, or Young Parmalee?"
"I was thinking of Young Parmalee, then."
"And the woman?"
Schuyler quoted, slowly:
"A fool there was--"
"Oh, but," Blake protested, "I wouldn't call him a fool."
"Why not?" demanded Schuyler. "He was a fool."
"Yes," returned Blake. "But he's dead, now."
"Bosh," retorted Schuyler, impatiently. "I've no sympathy with that false
sentiment that forbids one to speak the unpleasant truth of a dead
person. If a man were a fool while alive, his dying doesn't absolve him
of his folly. Young Parmalee's death was a mitigating circumstance,
however. He killed himself; which shows that he had some manhood left.
But he should have had the decency to choose another place for his self
destruction." He was silent for a moment; at length he went on: "A man is
what he is, and he was what he was. His dying can change nothing of his
living."
He looked up. His wife and child were coming toward him.
"Say nothing to them about all this, Tom," he urged.
"Certainly not," acquiesced Blake.
A steward came down the deck, calling raucously:
"All ashore that's going ashore!"
Kathryn turned to Schuyler.
"And now that the time has really come to say good-bye," she said,
brokenly, "here's something I brought you, Jack."
She handed him a little box of glazed cardboard. Wonderingly he took it.
"For me?" he cried, with simulated gaiety. "That's sweet of you, dear
heart--sweeter, even than are these." For he had opened it, and taken
forth the tiny bouquet of forget-me-nots that had nestled in the depths
of the moist cotton, "and these are sweetness itself. But why forget-me-
nots! As though I could ever forget you, even for one little minute!"
There came again the strident call:
"All ashore that's going ashor-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-e!!!"
Violet eyes suffused, Kathryn was clinging to him.
"Jack," she whispered. "Jack, I'm afraid I'm--going--to--cry."
With infinite tenderness he held her to him.
"There, there, sweetheart mine," he said, soothingly. "Don't be a
silly.... Now we'll all go down to the gangway, where the big hugs
are.... Then I'll rush back here and we can wave one another good-bye and
try to imagine I'm going only over to Staten Island for the afternoon."
Came farewells at the gangway--farewells of tears, of heart-aches, of
quivering lips and moist lids--of laughter quavering and smiles unreal--
of the good hand clasp that good men know--the touch of wet, clinging
lips.
Schuyler came rushing down the deck, keeping to that part of the ship
that lay nearest to the dock. From the bouquet that had been given him,
he plucked tiny, fragrant blossoms, casting them to those that had given,
and with them sending cheery word of hope, tender word of parting.
He could see them there, far below, straining against the ropes, waving
to him. He could see the violet eyes, tear laden, the lithe, slender,
figure of his wife in the glory of her perfect womanhood--the sturdy
little body of his child, barelegged, browned, hair tumbled, waving
frantically a tiny little square of muslin and shouting farewells at the
highest pitch of childish treble. He could see his friend--the friend
such as few men may ever have, and, having, may pray to hold--broad
shoulders protecting wife and child from the pressing throngs--he could
hear his voice booming through all the heterogeneous medley of sound.
His voice choked. Words that he was crying--words lost in all the
confusion of sound and movement--stuck in his throat. Moisture came to
his eyes.... He turned a little.... Came into range of his vision a tiny
streak of shifting crimson. He looked.
She was sitting there, on the deck--she--The Woman. She lay back in her
chair, long, lithe limbs covered with a rug of crimson and black and
dull, dull green. She was dangling gently, sensuously, the great cluster
of scarlet roses that she held, now and again bringing them to where
their fragrance would reach her delicately-chiseled nose, imperious,
haughty.... They looked startlingly red against her cheek--like blood
upon the snow.... She was looking at him.... There was no movement, save
the even, languorous swing of the crimson blossoms. Lips, vivid red, were
motionless, half parted in a little, inscrutable smile.... She was
looking at him.... He forgot.... The whistle had been blowing, sounding
departure. He had not heard. There was a lull. From afar, shrill,
childish voice brought a drifting, "Bye, bye, daddy, dear!" ... He did
not hear.... Her eyes were on his. His eyes were on hers.... And seemed
to be nothing else....
[Illustration]
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
IN THE NIGHT.
He had told Parks to come to him as soon as they were under way. There
were certain letters that he wished to get off in time to send them back
on the pilot boat. Parks found him by the rail, gazing at a tall, darkly-
beautiful woman reclining in a steamer chair, eyes only visible above a
great cluster of crimson blossoms. Parks had spoken to him three times
before there was forthcoming a reply. Then, slowly, as a man awakening
from a heavy sleep, Schuyler had gone with him to his room.
He had tried to dictate his correspondence; had tried, and failed. There
were many mistakes. His thoughts would not seem to coalesce. His mind was
not upon what he was doing, nor could he place it there. And Schuyler's
was a brain that had always been to him an admirably trained servant,
coming when he willed it, doing what he willed and in the way he
willed.... But today it was a servant sullen, rebellious, recalcitrant.
... The letters remained unwritten. Nothing was sent back with the
pilot. And Parks, wondering, puzzled--and, perhaps, a bit perturbed--
watched the pilot swing down the Jacob's ladder, and make across the
water toward his craft, with wonderment, puzzlement, perturbation no bit
abated.
Schuyler paced the deck all that day. Lunch he did not touch. Dinner
found him undesirous of food. He was walking--walking--striding up and
down, up and down--deep in thought, it seemed--and yet he had not been
able to dictate his letters. Parks wondered yet more. At length he went
to his employer and asked him if he were not needed. The answer was curt;
it was "no." And never before had Parks been answered without a cordial
nod, or, perhaps, the good smile of good-fellowship.... He could not
understand.
And Schuyler? His brain was in a tumult. Like us all, there were many
things that he did not know--there were many things that he did not even
know there were to know.... Some of these he was beginning to learn. It
had shaken him--it was shaking him--to his soul.
He did not see The Woman again that day.... Her room was across the
corridor from his. He heard her voice, directing the steward to bring to
her her dinner....
It was dark that night--dark as night seldom gets in the northern
latitudes, in June. The lights of the deck looked like vigorous
glowworms. The stars seemed very far away. Far below, as he paced, he
could see dimly a great blackness that was the sea, and against it the
white of the waves as they broke sullenly against the huge hull.... Later
it became yet more black. The stars vanished.... The ship seemed a world
of its own, hurling through an eternity of utter, deadly space. A wind
sprang up, a wind from the East, wet and vicious, a wind that spat upon
one, that chilled one, that slapped one with clammy fingers.
Schuyler paced the deck. Coming out of the dim half light of the
promenade into the corner of the rail, by the bow, he thought he saw her.
He was not sure at first.... Then, though his eyes pierced no more
clearly, he was sure.... He went closer. She stood there, white hands
clasping the bare rail, lithe, sinewy, lazy body, tilted a bit backward
as though in the grasp of the spitting wind. Her throat was bare to it,
and her breast. Her lips were parted. Her eyes were deep lidded. Her head
was poised like a tiger lily upon its stalk.... He stood there, enveloped
in the blackness.... For a long time she stood motionless. Then she
stretched her white arms above her head, stretched the long muscles of
her body, as a panther stretches. She was very, very beautiful.... He
stood watching.... The ship lurched. It reeled against a huge wave,
shivering it into roaring spume. The wet fingers of the wind had wrapped
her garments about her, every fold tight against her rounded body. She
stood, arms above her head, lips parted, silhouetted against the foam....
The ship reeled again, and there came darkness utter.... When again there
was light so that one might see, Schuyler stood alone.
Six bells had struck ere he went to his room. Then, scourged of body,
scourged of soul, wracked, harassed, torn, he sought his berth. But he
did not sleep. He thought of Parmalee, the boy who was a man. He thought
of The Woman. He thought of himself. He thought of the wife that he
loved. He thought of the child that he loved--the child that had come to
him through that wife. He thought of all these things, and of many more;
and he did not understand; he did not know. For God has shown even the
wisest of us but little of this world in which we live.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
WHITE ROSES.
It was two months later. In the little garden that lay on the side of
the big, rambling house at Larchmont where the sun best loved to dwell,
roses were in bloom; and roses, even as the sun, seemed to love that
garden. They clustered, great masses of glowing white, against the
latticed arbor--they caught playfully at one's hat as one would walk
through the gate that led to the broad green lawn, and to the Sound
beyond--they snatched at one's clothing as one would walk past the
largest bush--the one that stretched its branches across the French
window. It was a real garden--an out-of-door home--a garden in which one
might live, and in which one might be glad that one was alive.
At one side of a tiny writing table set upon the thick, carpet-like
sward, sat the mother, pen in hand, before her a half-finished letter.
Across from her the child pressed strong white teeth into the yielding
wood of her pencil; and before her, too, was a half-written letter--a
sprawling, uncertain letter of childhood.
At length the child looked up. She could see that her mother was not
writing; so if she spoke, she would not be interrupting.
"Mother, dear?"
"Yes, honey?"
"How do you spell love?"
"Don't you know, dearie?"
The child shook her head.
"L," prompted the mother.
Muriel ventured, dubiously:
"L-a-?"
Her mother shook her head. The child ventured again:
"L-i-?"
"No, honey."
The child kicked her brown little legs.
"Tell me, mother dear," she besought. "Please tell me."
"L-o-v-e," spelled the mother.
"Oh, yes! I 'member now.... Mother, dear?"
"Yes, little sweetheart?"
"When is a daddy coming home? It's awfully hard to write letters. He's
been gone a long time now, hasn't he, mother dear?"
"Yes, dearie.... A long, long time." The violet eyes were sad.
"'Most a year?" persisted the little one.
Her mother smiled a little, wanly.
"It seems like it, doesn't it?" she said. "But it's only two months--not
only two months," she corrected; "but two months."
Came a little pause. It was broken again by Muriel.
"Mother, dear."
"Yes?"
"Can't I make the rest just kisses?"
With a smile--a smile of infinite love and tenderness, the mother leaned
across and kissed the child that was hers.
"Of course you may, dearie," she assented, softly.
"Why don't you write kisses, too, mother, dear?" queried the little one.
"It's lots easier.... Oh, mother, dear! I'll tell you what I wrote if
you'll tell me what you wrote. Will you?"
Violet eyes gave loving assent.
"Oh, goody! We won't tell anyone else, will we?"
"No, dearie."
"Then," declared Muriel, "I'll read mine."
She picked up the wrinkled little sheet of sadly irregular chirography.
"Dear father daddy," she read. "It rained yesterday. Mother and I are
well. We hope you are well and God gave our new cat four kittens." She
looked up into the face of her mother. "God is awfully good to cats,
isn't He, mother dear?" she asked. She went on, then, with the assurance
of childhood: "Please come home. We miss you. I fell in the lake
yesterday, but didn't take cold. I love you.... And the rest is just
kisses."
She eyed her mother anxiously.
"Do you think daddy will like that letter?" she asked.
Her mother's voice was a bit uneven as she answered.
"I'm sure he will, little sweetheart I'm _sure_ he will."
"Now," requested the child, "you read yours."
Kathryn, drawing the child to her, bent forward. There was much in her
heart--much that she might not tell to anyone of all the world save two--
and one of these was far away; and, even though the other could not
understand, still--
She read:
"My John: You know how we love you, but you don't know how we miss you.
Please, please come back to us. If it weren't for Muriel I don't know
what I'd do, John, dear. I don't want to make you unhappy. I want you to
have all the honors--all the prominence--everything that a man's heart
holds dear. But I can't help being jealous a little of the things that
are keeping you from us...."
She ceased, turning her head away. A robin, in the roses, lifting its
head, broke into song. The child waited, patiently.... At length she
inquired:
"Is that all, mother dear?"
Kathryn nodded. "Yes, honey."
"Haven't you made any kisses?"
"No, dearie."
"But," protested the child, "daddy'll be so disappointed!"
"Will he, honey? That wouldn't do, would it? ... Very well, then,
mother'll make some kisses."
With Muriel looking on, the mother made several large, and heavy crosses
at the foot of that which she had written. There were other marks on that
letter--marks that were not kisses--marks that had been made by moisture,
and that had smeared the ink as they had been quickly wiped away.
These the child did not notice; she was looking toward the house.
"Here comes Aunt Elinor, mother, dear," she said.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
SHADOWS.
Mrs. VanVorst had been very ill. A fever, contracted in South Africa
where she had been with her husband--a fever gained in a futile effort to
save the life of that husband, had sadly fagged a naturally vigorous
constitution. There had been a recurrence soon after her return to
America. Now she was in that condition of indolent convalescence that is
in women so interesting, in men so uninteresting.
She was an out-of-door woman, tall, lithe, willowy. In the rugged health
that was normally hers, she seemed muscled almost like one of the
opposite sex; yet she lost by it none of the charm of frank femininity
that was hers. She was long-limbed, clean-limbed, quick of mind and of
body.... The forced inaction of illness was irksome to her. It was hard
for her to walk slowly; it was hard for her to sit in silent inaction--
to lie in indolent unrest. Too, she felt more than anyone save herself
might ever know the loss of the man that had been to her not only husband
but as well friend, companion and comrade.
She had been of the world, though anything but worldly. She knew perhaps,
more than many another of the Hidden Things.
She strolled forward through the sun-flecked garden. A magazine, its
leaves still uncut, was in her hand. She sank into a chair, in a spot
from which she might see the Sound and its burden of sails.
"Tom come yet?" she asked.
Kathryn shook her head.
"Not yet."
"Heard from Jack to-day?"
Again Kathryn made negation.
"The foreign mail hasn't come yet," she said. "I told Pierre to stop at
the office for it."
Elinor, selecting a paper knife, ran it slowly between the pages of her
magazine.
"That business of his seems to be keeping him a long time," was her
comment. "What did he say in his last letter?"
"Why, there are several matters of great importance that still remain
unsettled. It's not a little thing, his mission, you know. I don't know
much about such things; but diplomatic questions, it always seemed to me,
take years and years of all manner of serious discussion, and weighty
argument."
Kathryn tried to speak lightly; yet the heaviness of her heart was
pitifully apparent. Elinor was scanning a colored frontispiece--a thing
of vivid yellows and brilliant blues.
"You're feeling almost like yourself again, aren't you, Nell?"
Elinor nodded.
"Yes," she replied. "Thanks to you."
"You were very ill."
"One more doctor would have finished me."
Of a sudden, there came from the drive the quick honking of an automobile
horn, together with the soft purring of an engine. Muriel leaped to her
feet; brown little legs flashed as she made her way across the garden.
Kathryn and Elinor watched her going. They heard her cry, "Oh, Mr. Tom!"
Another moment and Blake, carrying the child in his arms, thrust aside
the bending heads of the white roses and made his way into the garden.
"Hello, folks," was his greeting. "Is God in?"
"Who?" demanded Elinor.
"God," he returned. "This is heaven, isn't it? It certainly does seem
like it to anyone who has just come from the fireless cooker that
sometimes rejoices under the name of Manhattan. My old Aunt Maria! But it
is hot there, though."
"We're very glad to see you, Tom," Kathryn began; "although we do owe you
a scolding."
"What for?" he demanded, setting the child to the sward and taking off
his hat.
"You haven't been near us for a fortnight."
He seated himself, mopping his forehead.
"Business, Kate. Business," he declared, importantly.
Elinor laughed in pleasant irony.
"Business!" she repeated.
"I said, 'business,'" he retorted.
"Yes," she rejoined; "but you can't prove it."
"Can't eh?" he inquired. "Well, you go back to the wicked metropolis and
you'll find that my rent is paid and that a coupon's been cut from one of
my bonds. And who did it, I'd like to know?"
"Oh, your secretary, or the janitor, or somebody," returned Elinor,
easily. "Not you."
Tom laughed.
"I must have a very negligible reputation for industry in this menage.
How do you think I spend all my time?"
Elinor, arms akimbo, half faced him.
"Well, Mr. Bones," she asked. "How do you spend all your time?"
He grinned at her, friendlily.
"Feeling better, aren't you?"
"I feel so well," she returned, "that if this doctor of mine weren't such
a Simon Legree, I could play you eighteen holes of golf for a box of
gloves against a box of cigars."
"Gambler!" he scoffed. "And if I should win, I suppose I'd have to smoke
the cigars."
"Certainly," she countered, easily, "if I should have to wear the
gloves."
He sank back in the big chair.
"Well," he asserted, "it were useless to speculate on that which may
never be. I am at present in that interesting state of a man's career
where golf doesn't belong. A man who is beyond the first flush of
adolescence and not yet in the last pallor of senility, has no business
dallying with golf. He's liable to get sunstruck."
Muriel, who had been listening with round, wondering eyes, ran to her
mother.
"What does he mean, mother dear?" she asked.
Elinor replied instead, laughing.
"Nobody knows, Muriel. Not even he."
"Now that's unkind, Nell," protested Blake; "unkind though true."
The child, eyeing them for a minute in serious non-understanding,
recurred with the facility of the very young to other things.
"Oh, mother dear!" she cried. "We forgot to stick up our letters to
daddy."
Taking her mother's hand, she led her to the little table. Elinor, left
alone with Blake, turned to him and queried:
"Heard from Jack lately?"
He shook his head.
"Not lately. Not since I've seen you."
"Not enjoying himself much, I suppose," she commented. "He always stuck
to this place in summer like a barnacle. Was crazy about it."
Blake, sitting with left fist in right palm, eyes upon the velvety green
of the lawn, shook his head, slowly.
"He shouldn't have left a home like this if they'd offered to make him
Queen of Sheba," was his comment.
Kathryn had turned to him. There was in her eyes a frank gladness--a
sincere welcome. She was glad to see him; how glad, she herself scarcely
knew. She had few friends; for there were but few people for whom she
really cared. She had known Blake for many, many years--known him and
liked him, and liking, had respected. He was of the few men whom money,
and bachelorhood, have no power to spoil. And they are few indeed. The
one has power to spoil, you know, even as has the other; and both
together--unusual indeed is the man who can resist.
"It's good to see you again, Tom," she declared. "It's been lonely
here.... And I never thought that would happen."
"It's good to be here," he returned, looking steadily upon her. "It's
good to be here, Kate. It's a perfect place, this--perfect."
Elinor had risen; plucking a bending blossom, inhaling of its delicate
fragrance, she had wandered through the broad archway of the arbor,
toward the Sound.
There was a moment of silence. There came from between Blake's lips a
deep sigh.
Kathryn looked up, quickly.
"What's the matter, Tom?"
He shook his head again.
"I don't know. Sometimes things go all wrong--dead wrong--and no one can
tell why, or how, or what to do."
"Why, Tom!" she cried. "What do you mean? Has anything--"
"Mean?" he interrupted. "Oh, nothing. Nothing, of course. I--I guess it's
loneliness. There are a lot of people who think because I have a motor to
smell, a yacht to make my friends seasick and a club window to decorate,
that I'm contented with my lot. But at heart I'm the most domestic
individual that ever desecrated a dinner coat; and sometimes the natural
tendencies of the gregarious male animal will not down. There's too much
of the concentrated quintessence of unadulterated happiness lying around
here. Maybe that's it."
"We have been happy here, Tom--very, very happy." Then, quickly: "I'm
sorry, Tom.... I understand, and I'm sorry."
He smiled.
"It's nothing, Kate," he declared, "nothing at all. You've got to expect
a bachelor to kick every once in a while, you know. They're a peevish lot
of old guys."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER TWENTY.
A FAIRY STORY.