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Title: Amos Judd
Author: John Ames Mitchell
Illustrator: Arthur Ignatius Keller
Release date: November 7, 2023 [eBook #72058]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895
Credits: Donald Cummings, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMOS JUDD ***
AMOS JUDD
AMOS JUDD
BY
J. A. MITCHELL
ILLUSTRATED BY A. I. KELLER
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1901
_Copyright, 1895, 1901, by Charles Scribner’s Sons_
ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM DRAWINGS IN COLOR BY A. I. KELLER
[Illustration]
_Vignette_ Title-Page
“_How much do they represent, the whole lot_” Facing page _18_
“_I beg your pardon, I--I was startled_” _48_
_It seemed a long five minutes_ _136_
_Gently rocking with both feet on the ground_ _168_
“_I thank you, Bull, for chasing me into Molly Cabot’s heart_” _182_
“_He is the image of you_” _206_
“_The end has come, my Moll_” _250_
AMOS JUDD
I
At the station of Bingham Cross Roads four passengers got off the
train. One, a woman with bundles, who was evidently familiar with her
surroundings, walked rapidly away through the hot September sunshine
toward the little village in the distance.
The other three stood on the platform and looked about, as if taking
their bearings. They were foreigners of an unfamiliar species. Their
fellow-passengers in the car had discussed them with an interest
not entirely free from suspicion, and their finally getting out at
such an unimportant station as Bingham Cross Roads caused a surprise
which, although reasonably under control, was still too strong for
concealment. From the windows of the car at least a dozen pairs of
eyes were watching them. The two men and the little boy who composed
this group were of dark complexion, with clean-cut, regular features.
The oldest, a man of sixty years or more, had a military bearing, and
was, if one could judge from appearances, a person of authority in his
own country, wherever that might be. Although the younger man seemed to
resemble him, it was in such a general way that he might be either his
son or no relation whatever.
But the little boy had excited a yet greater interest than his
companions. Although but six or seven years old, he comported himself
with as much dignity and reserve as the gentleman with the silver hair.
This gave the impression, and without apparent intention on his part,
that he also was an important personage. His dark eyes were strikingly
beautiful and, like those of his seniors, were distinctly foreign in
design.
When the train moved away the three travellers approached the man
with one suspender, who filled the position of station agent,
baggage-master, switchman, telegraph operator and freight clerk,
and inquired if there was a conveyance to the village of Daleford.
He pointed to a wagon at the farther end of the platform; that was
the Daleford stage. In answer to further questions they learned that
the next train back again, toward New York, left at six-thirty; that
Daleford was seven miles away; that they could spend an hour in that
village and catch the train without hurrying.
The only baggage on the platform consisted of two peculiar-looking
trunks, or rather boxes, which the multifarious official knew to be
theirs, as no similar articles had ever been manufactured in America.
They were covered with designs laid on in metal, all elaborately
engraved, and it was not suspected along the route that these profuse
and tarnished ornaments were of solid silver. This luggage was
strapped behind the stage, two venerable horses were awakened and the
travellers started off. Joe, the driver, a youth with large ears and
a long neck, soon gave his passengers some excellent opportunities
to explain themselves, which they neglected. Aside from a few simple
questions about Daleford and Mr. Josiah Judd, to whose house they were
going, the conversation was in a language of which he had no knowledge.
The first two miles of their route lay along the Connecticut valley,
after which they climbed to higher ground. The boy seemed interested in
the size of the elms, the smell of the tobacco fields, the wild grapes,
and the various things that any boy might notice who had never seen
their like before.
The day was warm, and the road dusty, and when they entered Daleford
the boy, with the old gentleman’s arm about him, had been asleep for
several miles. Coming into the village at one end, they drove down the
main street, beneath double rows of elms that met above their heads in
lofty arches, the wide common on their right. The strangers expressed
their admiration at the size and beauty of these trees. Moreover the
cool shade was restful and refreshing. No signs of human life were
visible either in the street or about the white houses that faced the
common, and this with the unbroken silence gave an impression that the
inhabitants, if they existed, were either absent or asleep.
The driver stopped for a moment at the post-office which occupied a
corner in the only store, and gave the mail-bag to the post-mistress,
a pale young woman with eye-glasses and a wealth of artificial hair;
then, after rumbling through the village for half a mile, they found
themselves again in the country.
The last house on the right, with its massive portico of Doric columns,
seemingly of white marble, had the appearance of a Grecian temple.
But these appearances were deceptive, the building being a private
residence and the material of native pine.
As they approached this mendacious exterior the little boy said
something in the foreign language to his companions, whereupon they
told the driver to stop at the door, as Mr. Judd was inside.
“That ain’t Mr. Judd’s house,” he answered. “His is nearly a mile
farther on, around that hill,” and he gave the horses a gentle blow to
emphasize the information. But the boy repeated his statement, whatever
it was, and the younger man said, with some decision:
“Mr. Judd is inside. Stop here.”
As the driver drew up before the house he remarked, with a sarcastic
smile:
“If Mr. Judd lives here, he’s moved in since mornin’.”
But the remark made no visible impression. They all got out, and
while the two men approached the front door by an old-fashioned brick
walk, the boy strolled leisurely through the grassy yard beside the
house. The driver was speculating within himself as to what kind of a
pig-headed notion made them persist in stopping at Deacon Barlow’s,
when, to his surprise, Mr. Judd emerged from a doorway at the side and
advanced with long strides toward the diminutive figure in his path.
Mr. Judd was a man about sixty years of age, tall, thin and
high-shouldered. His long, bony face bore no suggestions of beauty,
but there was honesty in every line. The black clothes which hung
loosely upon his figure made him seem even taller and thinner than he
really was. The boy looked him pleasantly in the face and, when he had
approached sufficiently near, said, in a clear, childish voice, slowly
and with laborious precision:
“Josiah Judd, the General Subahdàr Divodas Gadi and the Prince Rájanya
Kásim Mir Dewân Musnud desire to speak with you.”
Mr. Judd stopped short, the bushy eyebrows rising high in astonishment.
His mouth opened, but no sound came forth. The foreign appearance of
the speaker, his familiar manner of addressing one so much older than
himself, together with a demeanor that showed no signs of disrespect,
and above all, his allusion to the presence of titled strangers
caused the American to suspect, for a few seconds, that he was the
victim of some mental irregularity. He pushed the straw hat from his
forehead, and looked more carefully. The youthful stranger observed
this bewilderment, and he was evidently surprised that such a simple
statement should be received in so peculiar a manner. But Mr. Judd
recovered his composure, lowered the bushy eyebrows, and drawing his
hand across his mouth as if to get it into shape again, asked:
“Who did you say wanted to see me, sonny?”
A small hand was ceremoniously waved toward the two strangers who were
now approaching along the Doric portico. Coming up to Mr. Judd they
saluted him with a stately deference that was seldom witnessed in
Daleford, and the General handed him a letter, asking if he were not
Mr. Josiah Judd.
“Yes, sir, that’s my name,” and as he took the letter, returned their
salutations politely, but in a lesser degree. He was not yet sure that
the scene was a real one. The letter, however, was not only real,
but he recognized at once the handwriting of his brother Morton, who
had been in India the last dozen years. Morton Judd was a successful
merchant and had enjoyed for some years considerable financial and
political importance in a certain portion of that country.
DEAR JOSIAH: This letter will be handed you by two trustworthy
gentlemen whose names it is safer not to write. They will explain all
you wish to know regarding the boy they leave in your charge. Please
take care of this boy at least for a time and treat him as your own
son. I am writing this at short notice and in great haste. You have
probably read of the revolution here that has upset everything. This
boy’s life, together with the lives of many others, depends upon the
secrecy with which we keep the knowledge of his whereabouts from
those now in power.
Will write you more fully of all this in a few days. Give my love to
Sarah, and I hope you are all well. Hannah and I are in excellent
health. Your affectionate brother,
MORTON JUDD.
P. S. You might give out that the boy is an adopted child of mine and
call him Amos Judd, after father.
These words threw a needed light on the situation. He shook hands with
the two visitors and greeted them cordially, then, approaching the boy
who was absorbed in the movements of some turkeys that were strolling
about the yard, he bent over and held out his hand, saying, with a
pleasant smile:
“And you, sir, are very welcome. I think we can take good care of you.”
But the child looked inquiringly from the hand up to its owner’s face.
“Mr. Judd wishes to take your hand,” said the General, then adding, by
way of explanation, “He never shook hands before. But these customs he
will soon acquire.” The small hand was laid in the large one and moved
up and down after the manner of the country.
“Don’t they shake hands in India?” asked Mr. Judd, as if it were
something of a joke. “How do you let another man know you’re glad to
see him?”
“Oh, yes, we shake hands sometimes. The English taught us that. But
it is not usual with persons of his rank. It will be easily learned,
however.”
After a word or two more they took their seats in the wagon, the boy
at his own request getting in front with the driver. They soon came
in sight of the Judd residence, a large, white, square, New England
farmhouse of the best type, standing on rising ground several hundred
feet from the road, at the end of a long avenue of maples. Clustered
about it were some magnificent elms. As they entered the avenue the
driver, whose curiosity could be restrained no longer, turned and said
to the boy:
“Did you ever see Mr. Judd before?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know ’twas him?”
“By his face.”
He looked down with a sharp glance, but the boy’s expression was
serious, even melancholy.
“Ever been in this town before?”
“No.”
“Did Mr. Judd know you was comin’?”
“No.”
“Then what in thunder made you s’pose he was in Deacon Barlow’s?”
“In thunder?”
“What made you think he was in that house?”
The boy looked off over the landscape and hesitated before answering.
“I knew he was to be there.”
“Oh, then he expected you?”
“No.”
Joe laughed. “That’s sort of mixed, ain’t it? Mr. Judd was there
to meet you when he didn’t know you were comin’. Kinder met you by
appointment when there wasn’t any.” This was said in a sarcastic
manner, and he added:
“You was pretty sot on stoppin’ and I’d like to know how you come to
be so pop sure he was inside.”
The dark eyes looked up at him in gentle astonishment. This gave way to
a gleam of anger, as they detected a mocking expression, and the lips
parted as if to speak. But there seemed to be a change of mind, for he
said nothing, looking away toward the distant hills in contemptuous
silence. The driver, as a free and independent American, was irritated
by this attempted superiority in a foreigner, and especially in such a
young one, but there was no time to retaliate.
Mrs. Judd, a large, sandy-haired, strong-featured woman, gave the
guests a cordial welcome. The outlandish trunks found their way
upstairs, instructions were given the driver to call in an hour, and
Mrs. Judd, with the servant, hastened preparations for a dinner, as the
travellers, she learned, had eaten nothing since early morning.
When these were going on Mr. Judd and the three guests went into the
parlor, which, like many others in New England, was a triumph of
severity. Although fanatically clean, it possessed the usual stuffy
smell that is inevitable where fresh air and sunlight are habitually
excluded. There were four windows, none of which were open. All the
blinds were closed. In this dim light, some hair ornaments, wax
flowers, a marriage certificate and a few family photographs of
assiduous and unrelenting aspect seemed waiting, in hostile patience,
until the next funeral or other congenial ceremony should disturb their
sepulchral peace. While the men seated themselves about the table, the
boy climbed upon a long horse-hair sofa, whence he regarded them with
a bored but dignified patience. The General, before seating himself,
had taken from his waist an old-fashioned money-belt, which he laid
upon the table. From this he extracted a surprising number of gold and
silver coins and arranged them in little stacks. Mr. Judd’s curiosity
was further increased when he took from other portions of the belt
a number of English bank-notes, which he smoothed out and also laid
before his host.
“There are twelve thousand pounds in these notes,” he said, “and about
two thousand in sovereigns, with a few hundred in American money.”
“Fourteen thousand pounds,” said Mr. Judd, making a rough calculation,
“that’s about seventy thousand dollars.”
The General nodded toward the boy. “It belongs to him. Your brother,
Mr. Morton Judd, perhaps told you we left in great haste, and this is
all of the available property we had time to convert into money. The
rest will be sent you later. That is, whatever we can secure of it.”
Now Mr. Judd had never been fond of responsibility. It was in fact his
chief reason for remaining on the farm while his younger brother went
out into the world for larger game. Moreover, seventy thousand dollars,
to one brought up as he had been, seemed an absurdly large amount of
money to feed and clothe a single boy.
“But what am I to do with it? Save it up and give him the interest?”
“Yes, or whatever you and Mr. Morton Judd may decide upon.”
While Mr. Judd was drawing his hand across his forehead to smooth out
the wrinkles he felt were coming, the General brought forth from an
inner pocket a small silk bag. Untying the cord he carefully emptied
upon the table a handful of precious stones. Mr. Judd was no expert
in such things, but they were certainly very pretty to look at and,
moreover, they seemed very large.
“These,” continued the General, “are of considerable value, the rubies
particularly, which, as you will see, are of unusual size.”
He spoke with enthusiasm, and held up one or two of them to the light.
Mr. Judd sadly acknowledged that they were very handsome, and threw a
hostile glance at the gleaming, many-colored, fiery-eyed mass before
him. “How much do they represent, the whole lot?”
The General looked inquiringly at his companion. The Prince shook his
head. “It is impossible to say, but we can give a rough estimate.”
Then taking them one by one, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and
sapphires, they made a list, putting the value of each in the currency
of their own country, and figured up the total amount in English pounds.
“As near as it is possible to estimate,” said the Prince, “their value
is about one hundred and sixty thousand pounds.”
[Illustration: “How much do they represent, the whole lot”]
“One hundred and sixty thousand pounds!” exclaimed Mr. Judd. “Eight
hundred thousand dollars!” and with a frown he pushed his chair from
the table. The General misunderstood the movement, and said: “But, sir,
there are few finer jewels in India, or even in the world!”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Mr. Judd. “I’m not doubting their worth.
It’s only kind of sudden,” and he drew his hands across his eyes, as
if to shut out the dazzling mass that flashed balefully up at him from
the table. For a New England farmer, Josiah Judd was a prosperous man.
In fact he was the richest man in Daleford. But if all his earthly
possessions were converted into cash they would never realize a tenth
part of the unwelcome treasure that now lay before him. He was,
therefore, somewhat startled at being deluged, as it were, out of a
clear sky, with the responsibility of nearly a million dollars. The
guests also mentioned some pearls of extraordinary value in one of the
trunks.
“Well,” he said, with an air of resignation, “I s’pose there’s no
dodgin’ it, and I’ll have to do the best I can till I hear from Morton.
After the boy goes back to India of course I sha’n’t have the care of
it.”
The General glanced toward the sofa to be sure he was not overheard,
then answered, in a low voice: “It will be better for him and will save
the shedding of blood if he never returns.”
But the boy heard nothing in that room. He was slumbering peacefully,
with his head against the high back of the sofa, and his spirit, if
one could judge from the smile upon his lips, was once more in his own
land, among his own people. Perhaps playing with another little boy
in an Oriental garden, a garden of fountains and gorgeous flowers, of
queer-shaped plants with heavy foliage, a quiet, dreamy garden, where
the white walls of the palace beside it were supported by innumerable
columns, with elephants’ heads for capitals: where, below a marble
terrace, the broad Ganges shimmered beneath a golden sun.
Maybe the drowsy air of this ancestral garden with its perfume of
familiar flowers made his sleep more heavy, or was it the thrum of
gentle fingers upon a mandolin in a distant corner of the garden,
mingling with a woman’s voice?
Whatever the cause, it produced a shock, this being summoned back to
America, to exile, and to the hair-cloth sofa by the voice of Mrs.
Judd announcing dinner; for the step was long and the change was
sudden from the princely pleasure garden to the Puritan parlor, and
every nerve and fibre of his Oriental heart revolted at the outrage.
There was a war-like gleam in the melancholy eyes as he joined the
little procession that moved toward the dining-room. As they sat at
table, the three guests with Mrs. Judd, who poured the tea, he frowned
with hostile eyes upon the steak, the boiled potatoes, the large
wedge-shaped piece of yellow cheese, the pickles, and the apple-pie. He
was empty and very hungry, but he did not eat. He ignored the example
of the General and the Prince, who drank the strong, green tea, and
swallowed the saleratus biscuits as if their hearts’ desires at last
were gratified. He scowled upon Mrs. Judd when she tried to learn
what he disliked the least. But her husband, swaying to and fro in
a rocking-chair near the window, had no perception of the gathering
cloud, and persisted in questioning his visitors in regard to India,
the customs of the people, and finally of their own home life. Mrs.
Judd had noticed the black eyebrows and restless lips were becoming
more threatening as the many questions were answered; that the
two-pronged fork of horn and steel was used solely as an offensive
weapon to stab his potatoes and his pie.
At last the tempest came. The glass of water he had raised with a
trembling hand to his lips was hurled upon the platter of steak, and
smashed into a dozen pieces. With a swift movement of his arms, as if
to clear the deck, he pushed the pickles among the potatoes and swept
his pie upon the floor. Then, after a futile effort to push his chair
from the table, he swung his legs about and let himself down from the
side. With a face flushed with passion, he spoke rapidly in a language
of which no word was familiar to his host or hostess, and ended by
pointing dramatically at Mr. Judd, the little brown finger quivering
with uncontrollable fury. It appeared to the astonished occupant of the
rocking-chair that the curse of Allah was being hurled upon the house
of Judd. Standing for a moment in silence and glowering upon them all
in turn, the boy swung about with a defiant gesture, stalked through
the open door and out of the house.
Josiah Judd, whose heart was already sinking under the responsibility
of the crown jewels of a kingdom, experienced a sickening collapse in
the presence of the Oriental thunderbolt that had just exploded on his
peaceful New England hearthstone. His jaw fell, he ceased rocking, and
turned his eyes in painful inquiry upon his guests.
There was an awkward silence. The General and the Prince had risen
to their feet as if in apology to the hostess, but she had accepted
the outburst with unruffled calmness. Her kind, restful, homely face
showed no annoyance. Rising quietly from the table she followed the
stormy guest and found him around in front of the house, sitting upon
the granite doorstep, his chin in his hands, frowning fiercely upon
the quaint old flower-garden before him. He got up as she approached
and stood a few feet away, regarding her with a hostile scowl. Seating
herself upon the step she said, with a pleasant smile:
“Of course you are tired, sonny, we all understand that, and you are
unhappy to-day, but it won’t be for long.”
These assuring words failed of their purpose, and he eyed her sidewise,
and with suspicion. He was too old a bird to be fooled so easily. A
few sprigs were torn from the box border within his reach as if the
conversation bored him.
“I had a boy once,” continued Mrs. Judd. “I understand boys, and know
just how you feel. We shall be good friends, I’m sure.”
After a pause devoted to serious reflection, he inquired:
“Did your boy like you?”
“Oh, yes.”
He came nearer and stood in front of her. Then, slowly and with the
precision with which he always delivered himself when speaking English,
he said:
“My mother was different from you, and her clothes were more beautiful,
but if one boy liked you another might. I might. Would you like to see
my mother’s portrait?”
Mrs. Judd said she would like very much to see it, and he began
fumbling about and seemed to be tickling himself near the buckle of
his belt. But, as it proved, he was ascertaining the whereabouts of
a locket, which he finally fished up by means of a gold chain about
his neck. The chain was of such a length that the locket, instead of
reposing near the heart of the wearer, hung a little below the centre
of the stomach. When it finally emerged above his collar, he placed the
warm miniature in her hand, saying:
“That is my mother.”
It was a dark face, surmounted by a jewelled head-dress of a style
that Mrs. Judd had never seen, even in pictures. After looking more
carefully at the miniature and then up into the eyes that were watching
hers, she found the same square forehead and sensitive mouth, and the
same dark melancholy, heavily fringed eyes, by far the most beautiful
she had ever seen. The picture in her hand was a truthful portrait of
himself. As she looked from the portrait into the face before her she
felt it was perhaps fortunate this mother was ignorant of the changes
that already had turned the current of his life. With a brown hand
on each of her knees he was looking into her eyes with the anxious
gaze of a hungry soul, seeking for sympathy, and too proud to ask it.
But Mrs. Judd understood. She laid a hand upon his shoulder with an
expression upon her honest face that rendered words unnecessary. He
blinked and swallowed in a mighty effort to suppress what he evidently
considered an undignified and compromising sentiment. But in vain.
Sinking upon his knees he buried his face in her lap and gave way to
the most vehement, uncontrollable grief. The small frame shook with
sobs, while her apron grew wet with tears. He took his sorrow with
the same passionate recklessness that characterized his anger at the
dinner-table. Mrs. Judd rested her hand upon the short black hair and
tried to summon words of solace for a grief that seemed to threaten the
integrity of his earthly body. She could only stroke his head and tell
him not to be unhappy; that all would end well; that he should soon
return home.
In the midst of these efforts the voice of Mr. Judd came around the
corner calling out that the wagon was here. The boy jumped to his
feet as if he had received a shock. Drawing the sleeve of his jacket
across his tear-stained face, he summoned an expression of severity
and indifference that under other circumstances would have forced a
smile from his newly acquired friend. The soldier was himself again;
the warrior was on parade. As they walked together around the house to
the dining-room, he beside her with a resolute step and chin in the
air, she wondered what manner of training could have taught him at the
age of seven to suppress all boyish emotions, and put on at will the
dignity of a Roman Senator.
The General and the Prince were awaiting them. With many compliments
they thanked the host and hostess for their hospitality, and regretted
the necessity that took them away in such unfortunate haste; it was a
flying trip and their absence must not be lengthened by an hour, as
these were troublous times in their part of India. As they moved toward
the wagon Mrs. Judd held her husband back, believing there might be a
parting at which strangers would not be welcome. But the parting, like
all else, was dignified and ceremonious. She could not see the boy’s
face, for he stood with his back toward her, but as far as she could
judge he also was calm and self-possessed. She noticed, however, that
the General had to swallow, with a sudden gulp, a large portion of what
appeared to be a carefully constructed sentence.
They drove in silence down the long avenue beneath the maples, and the
driver, perhaps to put them at their ease, said something about getting
along faster in this light wagon than with the stage, but both his
passengers seemed in a silent mood and made no answer. As they turned
into the main road the General, who was on the side nearest the house,
looked back. At the farther end of the avenue stood the boy in the same
position, still watching them. The old soldier brought his hand to his
hat and down again in a military salute that was evidently familiar
to the little person at the farther end of the driveway, for it was
promptly acknowledged, and although a farewell to the last ties between
himself and his country, was returned with head erect, as from one
veteran to another.
II
Twenty years have passed.
The corner mansion of the Van Koovers is ablaze with light. Long rows
of carriages surmounted by sleepy coachmen extend along Madison Avenue
and into the neighboring street. The temporary awning from the front
door to the curbstone serves only to shield the coming and departing
guest from the gaze of heaven, for the moon and stars are shining
brightly, as if they also would like to enter. But when the front door
opens, which is frequent, it emits a blast of music, taunting and
defiant, reminding the outside universe of its plebeian origin.
Inside there is a scene of festivity and splendor, of dazzling
gayety, of youth and mirth and decorous joy. The opulence of the
Van Koovers is of sanctifying solidity, and when they give a ball
they do it in a style to be remembered. The house itself, with its
sumptuous furniture, its magnificent ceilings and stately dimensions is
sufficiently impressive in every-day attire, but to-night it reminds
you of the Arabian Tales. The family portraits, the gracious dignity
of the host and hostess, the bearing of the servants, all speak of
pedigree and hereditary honors.
Roses and violets, in lavish profusion, fill every corner, are
festooned around doors and windows, even along the walls and up the
stairs, their perfume mingling with the music. And the music, dreamy
yet voluminous, sways hither and thither a sea of maidens with snowy
necks and shimmering jewels, floating gracefully about in the arms
of anxious youths. These youths, although unspeakably happy, wear
upon their faces, as is usual upon such occasions, an expression of
corroding care.
As a waltz came to an end, a tall, light-haired girl with crimson roses
in her dress, dropped into a seat. She fanned herself rapidly as if
to drive away a most becoming color that had taken possession of her
cheeks. Her breath came quickly, the string of pearls upon her neck
rising and falling as if sharing in the general joy. With her long
throat, her well-poised head, and a certain dignity of unconscious
pride she might be described as old-fashioned from her resemblance to a
favorite type in the portraits of a century ago. Perhaps her prettiest
feature was the low, wide forehead about which the hair seemed to
advance and recede in exceptionally graceful lines. Her charm to those
who know her but superficially was in her voice and manner, in the
frankness of her eyes, and, above all perhaps, in that all-conquering
charm, a total absence of self-consciousness. But whatever the reason,
no girl in the room received more attention.
Her partner, a sculptor with a bald head and a reputation, took the
chair beside her. As her eyes wandered carelessly about the room she
inquired, in an indifferent tone: “Who is that swarthy youth talking
with Julia Bancroft?”
“I don’t know. He looks like a foreigner.” Then he added, with more
interest, “But isn’t he a beauty!”
“Yes, his features are good.”
“He is an Oriental of some sort, and doesn’t quite harmonize with a
claw-hammer coat. He should wear an emerald-green nightcap with a ruby
in the centre, about the size of a hen’s egg, a yellow dressing-gown
and white satin trousers, all copiously sprinkled with diamonds.”
She smiled. “Yes, and he might be interesting if he were not quite so
handsome; but here he comes!”
The youth in question, as he came down the room and passed them,
seemed to be having a jolly time with his companion and he failed to
notice the two people who were discussing him. It was a boyish face
notwithstanding the regular features and square jaw, and at the present
moment it wore a smile that betrayed the most intense amusement. When
he was well out of hearing, the sculptor exclaimed: “He is the most
artistic thing I ever saw! The lines of his eyes and nose are superb!
And what a chin! I should like to own him!”
“You couldn’t eat him.”
“No, but I could put him on exhibition at five dollars a ticket. Every
girl in New York would be there; you among them.”
Miss Cabot appeared to consider. “I am not so sure. He probably is much
less interesting than he looks. Handsome males over three years of age
are the deadliest bores in life; sculptors of course excepted.”
“It does seem to be a kind of prosperity the human male is unable to
support without impairment.” Then addressing a blasé young man lounging
wearily by:
“Horace, do you know who that is talking with Miss Bancroft?”
Horace, a round-shouldered blond whose high collar seemed to force his
chin, not upward, but outward horizontally, fingered the ends of a
frail mustache and asked:
“You mean that pigeon-toed fellow with the dark face?”
Miss Cabot could not help laughing. “There’s a summing up of your
beauty,” she exclaimed, turning to the sculptor.
He smiled as he answered: “It is evident you are an admirer. But do you
know who he is?”
“Yes, I know him.”
“Well, what is it? A Hindu prince, a Persian poet, or a simple corsair
of the Adriatic?”
“He is a Connecticut farmer.”
“Never!”
“And his name is Judd--Amos Judd.”
“Oh, dear!” sighed Miss Cabot. “What a come down! We hoped he was
something more unusual than that.”
“Well, he _is_ more unusual than that. He is a paralyzer of the female
heart. I knew him in college. At dances and parties we were generally
sure to find him tucked away on the stairs or out on a porch with the
prettiest girl of the ball, and he looked so much like an Oriental
prince we used to call him the Bellehugger of Spoonmore.”
“Disgusting!”
“But that is a trifling and unimportant detail of his character, Miss
Cabot, and conveys a cold impression of Mr. Judd’s experiences. Don
Giovanni was a puritanical prig in comparison. Then at college he had
the bad taste to murder a classmate.”
Miss Cabot looked up in horror.
“But then he had his virtues. He could drink more without showing it
than any fellow in college, and he was the richest man in his class.”
“Oh, come now, Horace,” said the sculptor, “you are evidently a good
friend of his, but your desire to do him a good turn may be carrying
you beyond the limits of--how shall I say it?”
“You mean that I am lying.”
“Well, that is the rough idea.”
Horace smiled. “No, I am not lying. It is all true,” and he passed
wearily on.
It was not many minutes before Molly Cabot was again moving over the
floor, this time with the son of the house. Stephen Van Koover was one
of those unfortunates whose mental outfit qualified him for something
better than the career of clothes and conversation to which he was
doomed by the family wealth.
“This recalls old times. Isn’t it three or four years since we have
danced together?” he asked. “Or is it three or four hundred?”
“Thank you! I am glad you realize what you have missed.”
“You do dance like an angel, Miss Molly, and it’s a sin to squander
such talent on me. I wish you would try it with Judd; my sisters say
his dancing is a revelation.”
“Judd, the murderer?”
“Who told you that?”
“Horace Bennett.”
“I might have guessed it. Truth and Horace were never chums. Judd bears
the same relation to Horace as sunshine to a damp cellar.”
As the music ceased they strolled to a little divan at the end of the
room.
“He did kill a man, a classmate, but he had the sympathies of his
entire class. It was partly an accident, anyway.”
“I am glad for his sake, as there seems to be a prejudice against
murder.”
“This was a little of both. We were having a supper, about twenty
of us, just before class-day. After the supper, when we were all
a trifle hilarious, Slade came up behind Judd and poured some wine
down his neck. Judd faced about; then Slade made a mock apology, and
added an insulting speech. He was a master in that sort of thing, and
while doing it he emptied his wineglass into Judd’s face. Now Judd is
overweighted with a peculiar kind of Oriental pride, and also with
an unfortunate temper; not a bad temper, but a sudden, unreliable,
cyclonic affair, that carries the owner with it, generally faster than
is necessary, and sometimes a great deal farther. Now Slade knew all
this, and as he was an all-around athlete and the heavier man, there
was no doubt in our minds that he meant Judd should strike out, and
then he would have some fun with him.
“Well, Judd grew as black as a thundercloud, but he kept his temper.
His hand shook as he wiped his face with his handkerchief and
quietly turned his back upon him. Then it was that the other man made
the crowning error of his life. He was just enough of a bully to
misunderstand Judd’s decent behavior, and his contempt was so great
for one who could accept such an indignity that he kicked him. Judd
wheeled about, seized him by the throat and banged his head against the
wall with a force and fury that sobered every fellow in the room. Close
beside them was an open window reaching to the floor, with a low iron
railing outside. Judd, half lifting him from the floor, sent him flying
through this window, and over the balcony.”
“Gracious! Was he dead from the blows on his head?”
“No, but a blow awaited him outside that would have finished an ox.
This window was about thirteen feet from the ground, and below it stood
a granite hitching post. When Slade came down like a diver from a boat
and struck head foremost against the top of this post something was
sure to suffer, and the granite post is there to-day, with no signs of
injury.”
“How can you speak of it in such a tone!”
“Well, I am afraid none of us had a deep affection for the victim. And
then Judd was so refreshingly honest! He said he was glad Slade was
dead; that the world would be better if all such men were out of it,
and refused to go to the funeral or to wear the usual class mourning.”
“Which was in disgustingly bad taste!”
“Possibly, but uncommonly honest. And then it is hardly fair to judge
him by our standards. He is built of foreign material, and he had
received something that it was simply not in his nature to forgive.”
Their voices were drowned in the music that again filled the room. The
dance over, they sauntered out into the large hall, where Flemish and
Italian tapestries formed an opulent harmony with Van Koover portraits.
In the air of this apartment one breathed the ancestral repose that
speaks of princely origin. It was not intended, however, that this
atmosphere should recall the founder of the house who, but four
generations ago, was peddling knick-knacks along the Bowery.
As Miss Cabot was uncomfortably warm and suggested a cooler air he led
her to the farther end of the long hall, beyond the stairs, and halted
at the entrance of a conservatory.
“Delicious!” and she inhaled a long breath of the fresh, moist air.
“Wait for me just a moment, and I will bring you the glass of water,”
and he vanished.
An inviting obscurity pervaded this conservatory, which, like the rest
of the Van Koover mansion, was spacious and impressive. At the farther
end, the gloom was picturesquely broken by rays of moonlight slanting
through the lofty windows. The only living occupants seemed to be one
or two pairs of invisible lovers, whose voices were faintly audible
above the splashing of the little fountain in the centre. This busy
fountain formed a discreet accompaniment to the flirtations in the
surrounding shrubbery. Stepping to the side of the basin, she stood for
a moment looking down into its diminutive depths. The falling water and
the distant music formed a soothing melody, and a welcome restfulness
stole gently upon her senses as she inhaled, with the fragrance of
the tropics, the peace and poetry of a summer night. She stood for a
moment yielding to a gentle enchantment; it seemed a different world,
apart from the great city in which she lived, a world of flowers,
and perfumes, of fountains and perpetual music; of moonlight and of
whispering lovers.
At last, as if waking from a dream, the girl raised her head and looked
toward the windows beyond, where a flood of moonlight illumined deep
masses of exotic foliage, repeating them in fantastic shadows on the
marble floor. Walking slowly from the fountain, she lingered between
the overhanging palms, then stepped into the moonbeams, a radiant
figure with her bare neck and arms and glistening jewels in this full
white light, against the gloom of the conservatory. The diamonds in the
crescent above her forehead flashed as if quivering into life as she
stopped and looked up at the planet.
A figure close beside her, that had formed part of the surrounding
shadow, started back with a suddenness that caused her, also, to
retreat a step and press a hand to her heart. It was more from
nervousness than fear, as she was simply startled. She at once
recovered herself, ashamed at being taken off her guard, but a glance
at the man beside her, whose face was now also in the light, filled
her with a fresh surprise. It was the Oriental beauty; the murderer,
Judd, and the intensity of his expression almost frightened her. His
eyes were fixed upon her own in speechless wonder, and as they moved to
the crescent in her hair, then back again to her face, they showed both
terror and astonishment. Yet it seemed a look of recognition, for he
bent eagerly forward, as if to make sure he were not mistaken.
It was all in an instant. Then, with a step backward and an inclination
of the head, he stammered:
“I beg your pardon. I--I was startled. Pray forgive me.”
He gave an arm to his companion, a pretty girl in pink who, standing
behind him, had missed the details of the little scene, and they walked
away among the plants and out of the conservatory.
Later in the evening, as Miss Cabot stood near the door of the
ball-room, the girl with whom she was speaking introduced a friend,
and she found herself again in the presence of the Connecticut farmer,
the young man of the moonlight. But this time he wore a very different
expression from that of the conservatory. There was a pleasant smile on
the dark and somewhat boyish face as he apologized for the scene among
the plants. “I am sorry if it annoyed you, but I was startled by an
unexpected resemblance.”
She looked into his eyes as he spoke, and understood why the sculptor
should have been enthusiastic over such a face. It was of an unfamiliar
type, and bore a curious resemblance to those she had attributed as
a child to the heroes of her imagination. The eyes were long, dark,
and seemed capable of any quantity of expression, either good or bad.
Miss Cabot was uncertain as to whether they pleased her. At present
they looked somewhat anxiously into her own with a touch of misgiving.
Nevertheless, she felt that he was telling her only a portion of the
truth.
[Illustration: “I beg your pardon, I--I was startled”]
“If it is my misfortune to startle unsuspecting guests when I come upon
them without notice, it is for me to apologize. No,” then continuing
hastily, as he began a protestation: “You needn’t explain! Do not
trouble yourself to tell me that only the most disturbing types of
beauty cause you just that kind of a shock.”
“But why not, if it is the truth? Besides, as you stepped out into
the moonlight you were a blinding apparition, all in white, against
the darkness behind. I have no doubt the moon herself was a little
startled.”
“You certainly were less happy in concealing your agitation than
the--other victim.”
Although his manner was deferential and gave indications of a positive
but discreetly repressed admiration, she felt ill at ease with him. It
was impossible to forget his repulsive title, and turning partly away
she looked over the room, and answered:
“Since you are completely recovered and my apology is accepted, I
suppose there is nothing more to be done.”
As the words were uttered the opening strains of a waltz came floating
across the hall, and he begged that she give him a dance in token of
absolution. It was easier to grant it than to refuse, and in another
moment they were gliding over the floor. As they moved away she
experienced a new sensation. This partner, while adapting himself to
her own movements, carried her with a gentle force that relieved her
of all volition. While, in effect, borne up and along by the music,
she was governed by a pressure that was hardly perceptible; yet, at a
critical instant, when a reckless dancer came plunging toward them,
she felt herself swung lightly from his path, to relapse at once into
a tranquil security and float peacefully away. This floating with the
music was so easy, so very drowsy and relaxing, that her consciousness
almost drifted with the rhythm of the waltz. Once, as her eyes were
uplifted to the gorgeous frieze, the white-winged Cupids that a moment
before were lolling idly against the blue and gold background seemed
now to be keeping time with the music, swaying and dancing in their
irresponsible nakedness.
Miss Cabot was surprised when the music ceased and at once regretted
having danced such a length of time with a stranger of unsavory
reputation. As they left the ball-room and entered the ancestral hall
she was flushed and out of breath, endeavoring with one hand to replace
a lock of hair that had fallen about her neck.
“It’s a shame,” he muttered.
“What? That we danced so long?”
“Oh, no! That it should ever end!”
They looked about for a resting-place, but all were occupied. Girls
in pink, in white, in pale blue, in delicate yellow, in every color
that was becoming to their individual beauty, or to its absence, were
clustered about the great hall, filling every seat. Around them, like
bees in a flower-garden, hovered men in black.
“There is our chance,” he said, pointing to the stairs. Upon the first
landing, but three steps from the floor, there was a semicircular
recess along whose wall ran a cushioned seat. At the entrance, upon a
pedestal of Sienna marble, sat a Cupid with a finger upon his lips; a
bit of ancient sculpture from a Roman temple. Behind him, within, an
inviting gloom suggested repose and silence. As they stepped upon the
tiger-skin that nearly covered the landing, Miss Cabot was accosted
by a man whose thoughtful face brightened up at the meeting. When he
glanced at her companion there was a similar welcome, and they called
each other John and Amos, and appeared to be on intimate terms. After
a short conversation he left them and descended into the hall. She
was puzzled at the friendship of these two men, and wondered what
there could possibly be in common between a promising clergyman of
exceptional purity of character and this dissolute, hot-headed Judd. As
they seated themselves in the alcove, she said, in a tone of surprise:
“So you and John Harding are friends!”
He smiled. “Yes; and I lament your astonishment.”
She blushed at her stupid betrayal of the thought, while he made no
effort to conceal his amusement.
“It may be an unkind thing to say of him, but we have been good friends
for several years.”
Laying her fan in her lap, she devoted both hands to the wandering
lock. “Is that what drove him to the church?”
“No. For that I am not responsible, thank Heaven!”
“Why thank Heaven? Is there any harm in being a clergyman?”
“It depends on the man. In this case it certainly seems a waste of good
material.”
Now, it happened that Molly Cabot’s religious convictions were deeply
rooted, and she felt a thrill of indignation at this slur upon a sacred
calling. Of course, it was not surprising that a spoiled youth with
a murderous temper should prove an atheist and a scoffer, but she
was irritated, and instinctively took the field as the champion of a
righteous cause.
“Then you consider it a waste of good material for an honest man to
serve the church?”
Her energy surprised him, but he answered, pleasantly: “I do not say
that. No one is too good for any honest work. I only say that a man of
John Harding’s originality and courage puts himself in a false position
by so doing.”
“I do not see how,” and her eyes were fixed upon his own in open
hostility. He still smiled serenely and met her glance with provoking
calmness.
“Well, at present he is young and full of enthusiasm, believing
everything, and more besides; but he is only twenty-seven now and
will do a heap of thinking before he is forty. The pathetic part of
it is that he binds himself to a creed, and the man who can think for
thirteen years on any subject without modifying his faith ought to be
in a museum.”
“Not if it is the true faith.”
“If it is the true faith, there is danger in thinking, as he may think
away from it; so why waste a brain like Harding’s?”
In spite of a certain deference and gentleness of tone with which he
uttered these positive sentiments there was evident enjoyment in the
shock they created. While he was speaking she noticed in the centre of
his forehead a faint scar about the size of a thimble end. It seemed an
evanescent mark, only visible when he turned his face at certain angles
with the light, and suggested the thought that if all young men of such
opinions were marked in a similar manner it might serve as a wholesome
warning to unbelievers.
She looked down at her fan a moment, then answered, very quietly:
“So all clergymen over forty are either hypocrites or fools. It must
be very satisfying to entertain a thorough contempt for so large a
profession.”
“Oh, don’t say contempt. Rather an excess of sympathy for the
unfortunate.”
At that moment Horace Bennett, in ascending the stairs, stopped for an
instant upon the landing and stood facing them. His eyes rested upon
herself and Mr. Judd, then she saw him glance at the marble Cupid who,
with his finger to his lips, seemed acting as a sentinel for whatever
lovers were within. Then he pulled the ends of his miserable little
mustache, and with a half-suppressed smile muttered something to his
companion, and they passed up the stairs. The hot blood flew to her
cheeks as she recalled what he had said earlier in the evening of this
man beside her: “We were sure to find him tucked away on the stairs
or out on the porch with a girl. So we called him the Bellehugger of
Spoonmore.”
Never in her life had she felt so degraded, so cheapened in her own
esteem. Hot, cold, with burning cheeks, and tears of mortification in
her eyes she rose from her seat, pressing a handkerchief against her
lips, and stepped swiftly out upon the landing and down into the hall.
Mr. Judd followed and inquired anxiously if she were ill; could he do
anything? His solicitude, which was genuine, caused her to realize
how extraordinary her behavior must appear to him. The close air in
the alcove, she answered coldly, must have affected her. It was only a
little dizziness.
To her great relief a young man came hurrying up, and exclaimed:
“I have been looking everywhere for you, Miss Cabot! The cotillion is
on!”
A formal nod to Mr. Judd, and she moved away with an unuttered prayer
that their paths in future might be far apart. Her wish was granted, at
least for that night, for she saw him no more at the Van Koovers’.
When she reached home and entered her own chamber, the moonlight was
streaming into the room, and before turning up the lights she had the
curiosity to stand near the window with a hand-glass and study her own
reflection. Only the usual face was there, and as usual, the nose was
too short, the chin too long, and all the other defects were present;
but even in the moonlight they seemed hardly sufficient to frighten a
strong young man.
III
A first interview with the Hon. J. W. Cabot, senior member of the
firm of Cabot, Hollingsworth & Perry, generally resulted in a belief
that this distinguished lawyer was a severe, unsympathetic man whose
dignity, under ordinary pressure, was not likely to abate. An abundant
crop of short gray hair covered a square, well-shaped head; a head that
seemed hard and strong. His forehead, his jaw, and his shoulders were
also square, and they also seemed hard and strong.
His manner was cold, his voice firm and even, and he was never ruffled.
The cool gray eyes rested calmly upon you as if screening, out of
consideration for your own fallacious knowledge, the profundity of
wisdom that reposed behind them. His memory seemed infallible. The
extent and accuracy of his legal knowledge was a perpetual surprise,
even to his partners. For simplifying complex entanglements his
clearness and rapidity amounted to a genius. His fees were colossal. In
short, he seemed just the man who would never write such a note as this:
TOWHEAD:
I SHALL bring an old friend to dinner to-night.
Don’t give us rubber olives or shad of last year’s vintage. He is not
a bric-à-brac shop.
JIMSEY.
This document was sent to his daughter, who since her mother’s death,
three years ago, had managed the household. When a child of five
she overheard a friend address him frequently as Jim, whereupon she
adjusted a final syllable to render it less formal, and ever after
continued to use it.
It was an afternoon in March that this note arrived, nearly four months
after the ball at the Van Koovers’, and when, an hour or two later,
her father presented his old friend, Mr. Samuel Fettiplace, she was
struck by his enormous frame and by the extraordinary color of his
face. This color, a blazing, resplendent red, not only occupied his
nose and cheeks, but extended, in quieter tones, over his forehead and
neck, even to the bald spot upon the top of his head. It had every
appearance of being that expensive decoration that can only be procured
by a prolonged and conscientious indulgence in the choicest Burgundies.
His large, round, light-blue eyes were all the bluer from their
crimson setting. A more honest pair she had never seen. These, with
his silver hair and benevolent forehead, gave the impression of a
pleasantly intemperate bishop. Molly Cabot well knew that her father,
and especially her mother, could never have achieved a warm and lasting
friendship for one whose habits were honestly represented by such
compromising colors.
With old-fashioned courtesy he gave her his arm into the dining-room,
and as they seated themselves at table he said: “You look like your
mother, Miss Molly, and I am glad of it; the same forehead and eyes,
and the same kind expression. I was afraid when I saw you last you were
going to look like your father. He isn’t so bad looking, considering
the life he has led, but it would be a calamitous thing for a
well-meaning girl to resemble any lawyer.”
She laughed: “But papa is not as bad as he looks, you know.”
“Yes, he is; I have known him longer than you have. But there seem to
be honors in dishonor. During these years that I have been trotting
about the globe he has been climbing higher and higher, until now his
legs are dangling from the topmost round. Why, I understand that none
but the solidest billionaires and the fattest monopolies presume to
retain him.”
“I am afraid someone took you for a hay-seed, Sam, and has been
stuffing you.”
“No, they have not!” exclaimed the daughter. “Everybody says he is the
best lawyer in New York. He has refused to be a judge several times!”
“Oh, come, Molly! Don’t make a fool of your old father!”
“Go ahead, Miss Molly,” cried Mr. Fettiplace. “Don’t mind him! I know
you are right. But I suppose he pays the customary penalty for his
greatness; slaves day and night, both summer and winter, eh?”
“Yes, he does, and if you have any influence with him, Mr. Fettiplace,
I wish you would bring it to bear.”
“I will. He shall do just as you decide.”
“Now, Molly,” said Mr. Cabot, “be just. Have I not promised to take a
three months’ vacation this summer?”
“Where do you spend the summer?” asked Mr. Fettiplace.
“I don’t know yet. We gave up our place at the shore two years ago. The
salt air does not agree with me any too well; and neither Molly nor I
care for it particularly.”
There was a pause, and the guest felt that the wife’s death might have
saddened the pleasant memories in the house by the sea. As if struck
with an idea, he laid down his fork and exclaimed:
“Why not come to Daleford? There is a house all furnished and ready for
you! My daughter and her husband are going abroad, and you could have
it until November if you wished.”
“Where is that, Sam?”
“Well,” said Mr. Fettiplace, closing his eyes in a profound
calculation, “I am weak at figures, but on the map it is north of
Hartford and about a quarter of an inch below the Massachusetts border.”
Mr. Cabot laughed. “I remember you were always weak at figures. What
is it, a fashionable resort?”
“Not at all. If that is what you are after, don’t think of it.”
“But it is not what we are after,” said Molly. “We want a quiet place
to rest and read in.”
“With just enough walking and driving,” put in the father, “to induce
us to eat and sleep a little more than is necessary.”
“Then Daleford is your place,” and the huge guest, with his head to one
side, rolled his light-blue eyes toward Molly.
“Do tell us about it,” she demanded.
“Well, in the first place Daleford itself is a forgotten little
village, where nothing was ever known to happen. Of course births,
marriages, and deaths have occurred there, but even those things have
always been more uneventful than anywhere else. Nothing can take place
without the whole village knowing it, and knowing it at once: yet the
inhabitants are always asleep. No one is ever in sight. If you should
lock yourself in your own room, pull down the curtains and sneeze, say
your prayers or change a garment at an unaccustomed hour, all Daleford
would be commenting on it before you could unlock the door and get
downstairs again.”
“That sounds inviting,” said Mr. Cabot. “There is nothing like privacy.”
“I only tell you this so there shall be no deception. But all that
does not really concern you, as our house is a mile from the village.”
Then he went on to describe its real advantages: the pure air, the
hills, the beautiful scenery, the restful country life, and when he
had finished his hearers were much interested and thought seriously of
going to see it.
“I notice, Sam, that you make no mention of the malaria, rheumatism, or
organized bands of mosquitoes, drunk with your own blood, who haul you
from your bed at dead of night. Or do you take it for granted we should
be disappointed without those things?”
“No, sir. I take it for granted that every New Yorker brings those
things with him,” and again a large china-blue eye was obscured by a
laborious wink as its mate beamed triumphantly upon the daughter.
There were further questions regarding the house, the means of getting
there, and finally Molly asked if there were any neighbors.
“Only one. The others are half a mile away.”
“And who is that one?” she asked.
“That one is Judd, and he is an ideal neighbor.”
“Is he a farmer?”
“Yes, in a way. He raises horses and pups and costly cattle.” Then,
turning to Mr. Cabot. “It is the young man I brought into your office
this morning, Jim.”
“Well, he is too beautiful for the country! If I could spend a summer
near a face like that I shouldn’t care what the scenery was.”
“Is his name Amos Judd?” asked Molly.
“Why, yes. Do you know him?”
“I think I met him early this winter. His reputation is not the best in
the world, is it?”
Mr. Fettiplace seemed embarrassed. He took a sip of wine before
answering.
“Perhaps not. There have been stories about him, but,” and he continued
with more than his habitual earnestness, “I have a higher opinion of
him and would trust him farther than any young man I know!”
She felt, nevertheless, that Mr. Judd’s reputation might not be a
proper subject for a young lady to discuss, and she remained silent.
But her father was not a young lady, and he had heard nothing of the
improprieties of the young man’s career. “What is his particular line
of sin?” he inquired.
“He has none. At present he is all right; but at college, and that was
five years ago, I am afraid he took a livelier interest in petticoats
than in the advertised course of study.”
“Of course he did,” said Mr. Cabot. “That beauty was given him for the
delectation of other mortals. To conceal it behind a book would be
opposing the will of his Creator.”
“Poor Amos,” said Mr. Fettiplace with a smile, as he slowly shook his
head. “His beauty is his curse. He regards it as a blight, is ashamed
of it, and would give a good deal to look like other people. Everybody
wonders who he is and where he came from. As for the women, they simply
cannot keep their eyes away from him.”
“If I were a woman,” said Mr. Cabot, in a slow, judicial manner, “I
should throw my arms about his neck and insist upon remaining there.”
Mr. Fettiplace chuckled, not only at the solemnity of his friend’s
face during the delivery of the speech, but at the contemptuous silence
with which this and similar utterances were received by the daughter.
There had always been a gentler and more lovable side to James Cabot,
and he was glad to see that success and honors had not destroyed the
mental friskiness and love of nonsense that had been an irresistible
charm in former years. He was also glad to witness the affection and
perfect understanding between father and daughter. It was evident that
from long experience she was always able to sift the wheat from the
chaff, and was never deceived or unnecessarily shocked by anything he
might choose to say.
“Well, he will be here soon,” said Mr. Fettiplace, “but as you are only
a man, you may have to content yourself with sitting in his lap.”
“Is Mr. Judd coming here this evening?” inquired Molly, in a tone that
betrayed an absence of pleasure at the news.
Her father looked over in mild surprise. “Yes, did I forget to tell
you? I asked him to dine, but he had another engagement. He is to drop
in later. And, by the way, Sam, where did the young man get that face?
No line of Connecticut farmers bequeathed such an inheritance.”
“No, they did not. Judd’s little mystery has never been cleared up.
I can only repeat the common knowledge of Daleford, that the boy was
brought to this country when he was about six years old, and that a
few handfuls of diamonds and rubies came with him. The value of this
treasure has been exaggerated, probably, but with all allowances made
it must have amounted to more than a million dollars.”
“Why!” exclaimed Molly. “It’s quite like a fairy tale!”
“Yes, and the mystery is still agoing. Josiah Judd, in whose hands he
was placed, happened to be the only person who knew the boy’s history,
and he died without telling it. Who the child was or why he was sent
here no one knows and no one seems likely to discover. Josiah died
about twelve years ago, and ever since that time stray clusters of
emeralds, pearls, and diamonds have been turning up in unexpected
places about the house. Some are hidden away in secretary drawers,
others folded in bits of paper behind books. They have tumbled from
the pockets of Josiah’s old clothes, and a few years ago his widow
discovered in one of his ancient slippers an envelope containing
something that felt like seeds. On the outside was written ‘Amos’s
things.’ She tore it open and found a dozen or more magnificent rubies,
rubies such as one never sees in this country. They were sold for over
two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Gracious!” exclaimed Molly, “what possessed him to leave them in such
places? Was he crazy?”
“On the contrary, he was too wise. Not wishing to dispose of them in
a lump, he did it gradually, and concealed them for greater safety in
different places, so that no one thief could steal them all. Whenever
he sold them he invested the proceeds in solid securities. No one knows
to what extent the old farmhouse is still a jewel casket. It is more
than likely that cracks and corners to-day are hiding their precious
stones.”
“How mysterious and exciting!” exclaimed Molly. “It seems too romantic
for practical New England.”
“That is just the trouble with it,” said her father. He leaned back in
his chair and continued, with a smile, “I suspect our guest has been
reading his ‘Monte Cristo’ lately, which may account for a pardonable
exaggeration in a historian who means to be honest. Who told you all
this, Sam? The Judds’ family cat?”
Mr. Fettiplace drew his hand slowly across his forehead and closed
his blue eyes, as if hesitating for a reply. “There is so much that
is hard to believe connected with Amos that one ought to prepare his
audience before talking about him. I will tell you one little thing
that happened to myself, an occurrence not dependent upon other
people’s credulity. One day last autumn, late in the afternoon, I was
walking along an untravelled road through the woods, when I met two
little children who were playing horse. The front one, the horse, wore
a garment that looked like a white silk overcoat without sleeves.
Otherwise the children were roughly clad, with battered straw hats and
bare feet. The overcoat had a curious, Oriental cut, and there was
a good deal of style to it; so much, in fact, and of such a foreign
flavor, that I stopped to get a better look at it. The wearer, a boy
of eight or ten, I recognized as the son of an unprosperous farmer who
lived in a dilapidated old house not far away. When I asked him where
he got his jacket he said he wore it at the children’s tableaux: that
he was the prince who awoke the sleeping beauty in the town hall last
night. Then I remembered there had been a performance to raise money
for the library.
“While talking with him I noticed there were four rows of little
pearl-shaped buttons around the neck and down the front. They formed
part of an elaborate design, beautifully embroidered in gold and silver
thread, old and somewhat tarnished, but in excellent preservation. I
asked him what those ornaments were, and he answered they were beads.
‘But who owns the jacket?’ I asked: ‘Does it belong to you?’ No, it
belonged to Mrs. Judd, who had lent it for the performance. ‘Then why
don’t you return it to Mrs. Judd?’ Oh, they were going to return it
to-morrow morning. I offered to take it, as I was going that way, and
the jacket was handed over.
“The more I examined the article, the more interested I became, and
finally I sat down on a rock and made a study of it. I found the
garment was of white silk and completely covered with a most elaborate
stitching of gold and silver thread. I am no expert in precious stones,
but I knew those beads were either pearls or tremendously clever
imitations, and when I remembered there was a good old-fashioned
mystery connected with Amos’s arrival in these parts, I began to feel
that the beads stood a fair chance of being more than they pretended. I
counted a hundred and twenty of them.
“When I took the garment to Mrs. Judd and told her what I thought, she
didn’t seem at all surprised; simply told me it had been lying in a
bureau-drawer ever since Amos came, about twenty years ago. She is
over eighty and her memory has gone rapidly the last few years, but she
closed her eyes, stroked her hair, and said she remembered now that
her husband had told her this jacket was worth a good many dollars.
And so they always kept it locked away in an upstairs drawer, but she
had forgotten all about that when she offered it to the Faxons for
their performance. Down the front of the jacket were large splashes of
a dark reddish-brown color which she said had always been there, and
she remembered thinking, as she first laid the coat away, that Amos
had been in some mischief with currant jelly. Amos was away just then,
but when he returned we took all the beads off, and a few days later I
showed a dozen of them to a New York jeweller who said they were not
only real pearls, but for size and quality he had seldom seen their
equal.”
“They must have been tremendously valuable,” said Molly.
“They averaged twelve hundred dollars apiece.”
“Gracious!” she exclaimed. “And there were a hundred and twenty of
them?”
“Yes; they brought a little more than a hundred and forty thousand
dollars.”
“It all harmonizes with Judd’s appearance,” said Mr. Cabot; “I should
not expect him to subsist on every-day American dividends. But it’s a
good jacket, even for fairy land.”
“Yes, it certainly is, and yet there was the usual touch of economy
in it,” Mr. Fettiplace continued. “When we came to remove the pearls,
we found a little gold loop or ring in the setting behind each one of
them. Those loops passed through a sort of circular button-hole in
the garment, and a gold wire, running along beneath the silk, held
the jewels in place, so that by drawing out the wire they were all
detached.”
“Well, where was the economy in that?”
“By being adjusted and removed so easily they probably served, when
occasion required, as necklace, belt, bracelets, earrings, diadems, or
the Lord knows what.”
“Of course,” assented Mr. Cabot. “A frugal device that might be of
service to other farmers. And you began, Sam, by describing Daleford as
an uneventful place. It seems to me that Bagdad is nothing to it.”
Mr. Fettiplace sipped his coffee without replying. After a short
silence, however, with his eyes upon the coffee which he stirred in an
absent-minded way, he continued:
“There are one or two other things connected with Judd which are much
more difficult to explain. Daleford is full of mysterious tales of
supernatural happenings in which he is the hero of prophecies and
extraordinary fulfilments; always incredible, but told in honest faith
by practical, hard-headed people. Any native will give them to you
by the yard, but the hero, under no conditions, ever alludes to them
himself.”
“Which probably proves,” said Mr. Cabot, “that the hero is the only one
to be relied on. It is such fun to believe in the incredible! That is
the charm of miracles, that they are impossible.”
The rosy guest turned to the daughter with a smile, saying: “And there
is nothing like a hard-headed old lawyer to drag you back to earth.”
“What were these tales, Mr. Fettiplace? What did they refer to?” she
asked.
But Mr. Fettiplace evidently felt that he had said enough, possibly
because a portion of his audience was not of encouraging material,
for he only answered in a general way that the stories related to
impossible experiences, and were probably only village gossip.
After dinner they sat around the fire in the next room, the two men
with their cigars and Molly at work over a bit of tapestry representing
the Maid of Orleans on a fat, white horse. This horse, according to
her father, must have belonged to a Liverpool circus, and was loaned
to Joanna for tapestry only. When Mr. Judd appeared Molly felt an
augmented interest in this hero of the white jacket, but it was against
both conscience and judgment and in spite of a pious resolve to
consider him simply as a libertine with a murderous temper. That her
father and Mr. Fettiplace had no such abhorrence was evident from their
cordial greeting.
The conversation became general, although the burden of it was borne
by Mr. Fettiplace, who seemed to possess upon every subject either
some interesting facts or a novel theory. Once, when he was telling
them something so amusing that it seemed safe to count upon a
strict attention from all his hearers, she looked over at Mr. Judd
and found his eyes fixed earnestly upon her face. It was a look so
serious, of such infinite melancholy that, in surprise, her own glance
involuntarily lingered for a second. He at once turned his eyes in
another direction, and she felt angry with herself for having given
him even so slight a testimonial of her interest. Although a trivial
episode, it served to increase the existing hostility and to strengthen
an heroic resolve. This resolve was to impress upon him, kindly but
clearly, the impossibility of a serious respect on her part for a
person of such unenviable repute. Later, when the two older men went up
into the library to settle some dispute concerning a date, he came over
and seated himself in a chair nearer her own, but also facing the fire.
“Your ears must have tingled this evening, Mr. Judd.”
“Ah, has Mr. Fettiplace been giving me away?”
“On the contrary; he is a stanch friend of yours.”
“Indeed he is, but it might require an exceedingly skilful friend to
throw a favorable light on such a subject.”
“How delightfully modest! I assure you he gave you an excellent
character.”
“Did you think it a wilful deception, or that he was simply mistaken?”
She turned and saw upon his face an amused smile, half triumphant yet
good-humored. She lowered her eyes to the bronze ornament on the table
that was slowly revolving between her fingers. “Am I so incapable of
believing good of others?”
“Certainly not! But when I saw you last I suffered from an unpleasant
belief that neither the Devil nor myself were objects of your
adoration. So I took the liberty of putting one or two things
together, and decided that the faithful Bennett might have honored me
by a mention.”
“Why suspect Mr. Bennett of such a thing?”
“Well, partly because he is a vindictive and unscrupulous liar, and
partly because he is the only enemy I saw there.”
This was said gently, in his usual low voice, with perfect calmness,
and it was said amiably, as if sympathizing with an unfortunate friend.
“You seem able to meet him on his own ground.”
“Oh, no! There is all the difference in the world.”
She looked toward him interrogatively, but with an expression that
plainly indicated a difference of opinion. He continued in the same
tone, with no sign of animosity: “The difference is this, that he tells
others what he never tells me. I tell others his mind is filthy and
his spirit is mean; that he is without honor and that he is a liar,
but I also tell _him_.”
“You have told him that?”
“Often: sometimes to himself alone, sometimes in the presence of
others.”
She could not restrain a smile. “It must be a pleasant thing to tell a
man!”
“A man? Oh, that would be a different matter!”
There was a barbaric simplicity in all this that she could not help
respecting, particularly as she felt he was telling the truth: and she
sympathized with him heartily in this opinion of Horace Bennett. While
openly unforgiving and vindictive, he appeared to regard his enemy with
the half-serious contempt of a gentle but experienced philosopher. But
she remembered her resolution.
“Mr. Fettiplace has been telling us about that white jacket. What an
interesting story!”
“Yes, everything he tells is interesting. He has a rare faculty in that
direction.”
“But in this case he had an unusual subject. It is like a fairy story.
I suppose you wore it some time or other?”
“I suppose so.”
“But you must remember.”
“Vaguely. I was only seven years old when I came to this country and I
never wore it here.”
“Have you even forgotten how you spilled the currant jelly down the
front?”
“Currant jelly?” he repeated, and looked inquiringly toward her. “I
have not heard that theory.”
“You were the culprit and ought to know. But strawberry is just as bad,
I suppose.”
After a slight hesitation he answered, “Those are blood-stains.”
Turning toward him for further information, she could not help thinking
how much more he was in harmony with a tale of pearls and mystery and
human blood than with jam or currant jelly. As he made no answer but
sat gazing absently at the fire, she expressed a hope that his youthful
nose had not collided with the stairs or with the fist of some larger
boy.
“No, not that exactly,” he replied, with his eyes still upon the fire.
“It is a long story and would not interest you.” Then looking up, he
continued, with more animation, “I am glad there is a possibility of
your coming to Daleford. It is an ideal place to be quiet in.”
“So Mr. Fettiplace tells us, but you are mistaken about the history of
the jacket. It _would_ interest me, and I should like extremely to hear
it; unless of course you prefer not to tell it.”
“If you wish to hear it that is reason enough for the telling,
but--isn’t it rather cruel to force a man to talk only about himself?”
“No; not in this case. It gives an opportunity to prove, by the
perfection of your boyhood, that you are less vile than you believe
Horace Bennett to have painted you.”
“That would be impossible. No human record could wipe out an effect
once laid in by such a hand. Besides, there is nothing in the jacket to
repair a damaged reputation.”
“The fact of telling the story will count in your favor.”
“In that case I will make an effort.” He rested an elbow on the arm of
his chair, slowly stroking the back of his head as if uncertain where
to begin. “It is really a foolish thing to do,” he said at last, “but
if you are relentless I suppose there is no escape. In the first place,
to begin at the very beginning, there was a little court with arches
all around it, with grass in the centre and a fountain at each corner.
On the marble steps, at one end, we were all sitting, a dozen or more
children, watching a man with a bear and two monkeys. These monkeys
had sham fights. One was dressed like an English soldier with a red
jacket, and he always got the worst of it. It was great fun and we all
laughed.”
“Where was this?”
“In India. At the very beginning of the show, when the English monkey
for a moment was on top, a servant rushed into the court and dragged me
away. It was a barbarous deed, and I was ugly; as disagreeable probably
as Horace Bennett could have wished. So I only lose ground, you see, by
telling this story.”
“Never mind. Unless you tell it I shall believe the worst.”
“Well, looking back as I was dragged along, the last thing I saw was
the red monkey being chased and beaten by the white one, and they
scrambled right up the bear’s back. In the chamber where we went that
white jacket was brought out and I made another row, for I knew it
meant a long and tiresome performance in which I had to keep still and
behave myself.”
“A performance on a stage?”
“No; in a large room, with lots of people standing about. As our
procession started for the big hall, which was several rooms away on
another side of the house, I noticed that my uncle and one or two
others kept closer to me than usual. There was a tremendous haste and
confusion, and everybody seemed excited.”
In telling his story Mr. Judd spoke in a low voice, pronouncing his
words clearly and with a certain precision. His only gesture consisted
in occasionally drawing a hand slowly up the back of his head, as if
finding solace in rubbing the short thick hair in the wrong direction.
Although his voice and manner suggested an indolent repose, she noticed
that the brown hands, with their long fingers, were hard and muscular,
and were the hands of a nervous temperament.
“When we entered the large hall there were lots of people, mostly
soldiers, and in uniforms I had not seen before. The principal person
seemed to be a short, thick-set man with a round face and big eyes,
who stood in the centre of the room, and his wide sash and odd-looking
turban with gold scales interested me tremendously. We all stood there
a few minutes and there was a good deal of talk about something, when
all of a sudden this man with the handsome turban seized me under the
arms with both hands, lifted me up, and handed me to a big chap behind
him.
“Then came a free fight, a general commotion, with shouting and rushing
about, and sword-blades in the air. A friend tried to pull me away, but
the big man who held me laid his head open with a blow. A second later
the big man himself received a cut from my uncle at the base of his
neck, where it joins the shoulder, that made him stagger and turn half
about: then he tumbled to the floor and held me all the tighter as he
fell. As we landed I came on top, but he rolled over and lay across me
with his head on my stomach. He was so heavy that he held me down and
the blood poured from his neck over my white clothes.”
Molly had stopped working. With her hands in her lap and her eyes fixed
eagerly on his face, she uttered an exclamation of horror. He said,
with a smile:
“Not a cheerful story, is it?”
“It is awful! But what happened then?”
“Well, as I struggled to get from under I saw my uncle turn upon the
first man, the leader, but he was too late. Someone gave him a thrust,
and he staggered and came down beside us. I remember he lay so near
that I reached out and touched his cheek with my finger. I spoke to
him, but he never answered.”
There was a silence, she watching him, waiting for the rest of the
story, while he gazed silently into the fire.
“And what happened next?”
“Oh, excuse me! That is about all. During the hubbub and slaughter my
people hauled me from beneath the big chap and I was hurried away. I
remember, as we ran through the chambers near the little court, I heard
my friends still laughing at the monkeys.”
He seemed to consider the story finished. “May I fool with that fire?”
he asked.
“Certainly, but what was all the fighting about?”
As the fire was encouraged into a fresher life he answered: “I never
knew distinctly. That night a few others and myself went down to the
river, through the gardens, were rowed to a little steamer and taken
aboard. We sailed down a long river, and afterward a big steamer
brought three of us to America. And then to Daleford.”
“Why on earth to Daleford?”
“Because it was desirable to land me in some amusing metropolis, and I
suppose the choice lay between Paris and Daleford. Daleford, of course,
won.”
“I beg your pardon,” she hastened to say. “My curiosity seems to be
running away with me.”
“Oh, please do not apologize. There is no secret about Daleford. I only
answered in that way as I suddenly realized how refreshing it must be
to hear a stranger tell pathetic stories about himself. It is I who
apologize. They brought me to Daleford through Mr. Judd’s brother, who
was a good friend and was with us at that row.”
He stood before the fire with the poker in his hand, and looked
down with a smile as he continued: “I believe you have never been to
Daleford, but if you were a field-mouse that could sleep all winter,
and didn’t care to be disturbed in summer, you would find it an ideal
spot. If you were a field-mouse of average social instincts you would
never pull through.”
“And yet Mr. Fettiplace advises us to go there.”
“Oh, that’s for a summer only, and is quite different.”
From Daleford they went to other subjects, but to her his own career
proved of far greater interest, and the usual topics seemed commonplace
and uneventful by comparison. Delicately and with subtle tact, she made
one or two efforts to get further information regarding his childhood
and the fabulous jewels, but her endeavors were vain. Of himself he
talked no more. In a sense, however, she was rewarded by a somewhat
surprising discovery in relation to his mental furniture. When the
conversation turned incidentally upon literature she found him in the
enjoyment of an ignorance so vast and so comprehensive that it caused
her, at first, to doubt the sincerity of his own self-conviction. Of
her favorite books he had not read one. To him the standard novelists
were but names. Of their works he knew nothing. This ignorance he
confessed cheerfully and without shame.
“But what do you do with yourself?” she demanded. “Do you never read
anything?”
“Oh, yes; I have not forgotten my letters. For modern facts I read the
papers, and for the other side of life I take poetry. But the modern
novel is too severe a punishment. It is neither poetry nor wisdom.”
Until the two other men came down from the library she had no idea of
the lateness of the hour. Mr. Fettiplace laid a hand on the young man’s
shoulder and, with a roseate smile, explained the situation.
“This fellow is from the country, Miss Molly, and you must excuse him
for expecting, when invited out to dinner, that he is to remain to
breakfast.”
A moment or two later, as the three men were standing before the fire,
she was astonished by a bit of unexpected wisdom. He was regarding with
apparent interest a little etching that hung near the mantel, when Mr.
Cabot explained that it was a very old one he had purchased in Germany,
and represented the battle of Hennersdorf. Mr. Judd thought it must be
the battle of Mollwitz, and gave as reasons for his belief the position
of the Prussians in relation to a certain hill and the retreat of the
Austrian cavalry at that stage of the fight. Mr. Cabot, obviously
surprised at these details, replied, jokingly, that he was not in a
position to contradict a soldier who was present at the battle.
This afforded great amusement to the rubicund guest, who exclaimed:
“You might as well back right down, Jim! Amos is simply a walking
cyclopædia of military facts; and not a condensed one either! He can
give you more reliable details of that battle than Frederick himself,
and of every other battle that has ever been fought, from Rameses to
U. S. Grant. He remembers everything; why the victors were victorious
and how the defeated might have won. I believe he sleeps and eats with
the great conquerors. You ought to see his library. It is a gallery
of slaughter, containing nothing but records of carnage--and poetry.
Nothing interests him like blood and verses. Just think,” he continued,
turning to Molly, “just think of wasting your life in the nineteenth
century when you feel that you possess a magnificent genius for
wholesale murder that can never have a show!”
There was more bantering, especially between the older men, a promise
to visit Daleford, and the two guests departed.
IV
In April the Cabots took their trip to Daleford and found it even more
inviting than Mr. Fettiplace had promised. The spacious house among
the elms, with its quaint old flower-garden, the air, the hills, the
restful beauty of the country, were temptations not to be resisted, and
within another month they were comfortably adjusted and felt at home.
The house, which had formerly belonged to Mr. Morton Judd, stood
several hundred feet from the road at the end of an avenue of
wide-spreading maples. This avenue was the continuation of another
and a similar avenue extending to the house of Josiah Judd, directly
opposite, and the same distance from the highway. As you stood at
either end it was an unbroken arch from one residence to the other.
When Mr. Morton Judd was married, some fifty years ago, his father
had erected this abode for him, but the young man soon after went to
India, where as a merchant and a financier he achieved success, and
where both he and his wife now lay at rest. Although covering as much
ground, the house was less imposing than the more venerable mansion at
the other end of the avenue.
The journey beneath the maples proved such a pleasant one and was so
easily made as to invite a certain familiarity of intercourse that the
Cabots saw no good reason to discourage. Mrs. Judd, a strong-framed
woman with a heavy chin, whose failing memory seemed her only weakness,
was now about eighty years of age, and generally sat by a sunny window
in the big dining-room, where she rocked and knitted from morning
till night, paying little attention to what went on about her. If
Amos had been her own son she could not have loved him more, and this
affection was returned in full with an unceasing thoughtfulness and
care. Both Molly and her father were gratified at finding in this young
man a neighbor whose society it seemed safe to encourage. He proved
a sensible, unpretending person, fond of fun and pleasure, but with
plenty of convictions; these convictions, however, while a source of
amusement to Mr. Cabot, were not always accepted by the daughter. They
were often startling departures from his education and environment, and
showed little respect for conventionalities. He never attended church,
but owned a pew in each of the five temples at Daleford, and to each of
these societies he was a constant and liberal contributor. For three of
them he had given parsonages that were ornaments to the village, and as
the sectarian spirit in that locality was alive and hot these generous
gifts had produced alternating outbursts of thankfulness and rage, all
of which apparently caused neither surprise nor annoyance to the young
philosopher. When Molly Cabot told him, after learning this, that it
would indicate a more serious Christian spirit if he paid for but a
single pew and sat in it, he answered:
“But that spirit is just the evil I try to escape, for your good
Christian is a hot sectarian. It is the one thing in his religion he
will fight and die for, and it seems to me the one thing he ought to
be ashamed of. If any one sect is right and the others wrong it is all
a hideous joke on the majority, and a proper respect for the Creator
prevents my believing in any such favoritism.”
Occasionally the memory of his offensive title obtruded itself as a
bar to that confidence which is the foundation of friendship, but as
she knew him better it became more difficult to believe that he could
ever have been, in its coarser sense, what that title signified. As
regarded herself, there was never on his part the faintest suggestion
of anything that could be interpreted as love-making, or even as the
mildest attempt at a flirtation. She found him under all conditions
simple and unassuming, and, she was forced to admit, with no visible
tokens of that personal vanity with which she had so lavishly endowed
him. His serious business in life was the management of the Judd
farm, and although the care and development of his animals was more
of a recreation than a rigid necessity he wasted little money in
unsuccessful experiments. Mr. Cabot soon discovered that he was far
more practical and business-like than his leisurely manners seemed to
indicate. The fondness for animals that seemed one of his strongest
characteristics was more an innate affection than a breeder’s fancy.
Every animal on his place, from the thoroughbred horses to the last
litter of pups, he regarded more as personal friends than as objects of
commercial value.
When Mr. Cabot and Molly made their first visit to the farm, they
noticed in the corner of a field a number of dejected horses huddled
solemnly together. Most of them were well beyond middle age and bore
the clearest indications of a future that was devoid of promise. They
gazed at the visitors with listless eyes, and as a congregation seemed
burdened with most of the physical imperfections of extreme antiquity.
“What on earth are those?” asked Mr. Cabot. “Revolutionary relics? They
are too fat for invalids.”
“A few friends of my youth.”
“I should think from the number you have here that you never disposed
of your old friends,” said Mr. Cabot.
“Only when life is a burden.”
“Well, I am glad to see them,” said Molly, as she patted one or two of
the noses that were thrust toward her. “It does you credit. I think it
is horrid to sell a horse that has used himself up in your service.”
As the father and daughter walked homeward along the avenue of maples,
Mr. Cabot spoke of the pleasure the young man derived from his animals,
and the good sense he displayed in the management of his farm.
“Yes,” said Molly, “and he seems too boyish and full of fun for
anything very weird or uncanny. But Mr. Fettiplace certainly believed
in something of that kind, didn’t he?”
“Of course, or he wouldn’t be Fettiplace. That sort of thing is always
interesting, and the world is full of people who can believe anything
if they once put their minds on it. Who is that in our yard?”
“Deacon White, I think. He has come to train up some plants for me.”
A moment later she took her father’s arm and asked, with affected
humility: “Jimsey, will you do something?”
“No, for it’s sure to be foolish.”
“Well, you are right, but you can do it so much better than I. Deacon
White has probably known Mr. Judd ever since he was a little boy, and
he would be glad of an opportunity to tell what he knows and give us
all the town talk besides. I do wish you would just start him off.”
“Start him off! On what? Judd’s private history? On the delicate
matters he doesn’t wish advertised?”
“No, no! Of course not, papa! How unpleasant you are! I only want him
to throw some light on the mysterious things Mr. Fettiplace alluded to.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind. If you really have a thirst for that
sort of knowledge, get a copy of Hans Andersen. He has a better style
than Deacon White.”
A few moments later, when Molly and the Deacon were alone in the old
garden, her desire for information was gratified to an unhoped-for
extent, and the information was of a more detailed and astonishing
character than she would have presumed to ask for. The Deacon, a
little, round-shouldered, narrow-chested man of seventy, with a
sun-dried face, an enormous nose, and a long receding chin with a white
beard beneath, possessed a pair of wide-awake eyes that seemed many
years younger than himself.
“I never have anything to do with roses without thinkin’ of Amos. Did
you ever notice his?”
“Yes; they are splendid ones.”
“Ain’t they! Well, one mornin’, when he was a little boy, I was helpin’
him set out roses along the side of the house where the big trellis is,
and he said he wanted red ones, not yellow ones. I said: ‘These are red
ones. They are cut from the same slip as the others, and they’ve got to
be red whether they want to or not.’ Pretty soon Josiah came out, and
Amos said to him that he could see ’em next spring and they would all
be yellow. And what took me all aback was that Josiah believed it, and
tried to persuade him that he might like yellow ones for a change. And
I tell you,” said the Deacon, as he fixed his little young eyes on her
face to watch his effect, “I just stood with my mouth open one mornin’,
a year after, when I saw those roses, that oughter been red, just come
out into a yeller. Of course it was a mistake in the bushes, but how
did he know?”
“It might have been a coincidence.”
“Yes, it might have been a coincidence. But when a boy’s life is made
up of just those things you begin to suspect after a while that perhaps
they are too everlastingly reliable for coincidences. You can’t always
bet on coincidences, but you can bet every time on Amos. My daughter
Phœbe kept school down in the village for a spell when Amos was about
ten years old. There was another boy, Billy Hines, who never missed
a lesson. Phœbe knew he was a dull boy and that he always tried to
give larnin’ the whole road whenever he saw it comin’, and it kinder
surprised her to have him stand at the head of his class all the time
and make better recitations than smarter boys who worked hard. But
he always knew everything and never missed a question. He and Amos
were great friends, more because Amos felt sorry for him, I guess,
than anything else. Billy used to stand up and shine every day, when
she knew mighty well he was the slowest chap in the whole school and
hadn’t studied his lessons neither. Well, one day Amos got hove about
twenty feet by a colt he was tryin’ to ride and he stayed in bed a few
weeks. Durin’ that time Billy Hines couldn’t answer a question. Not a
question. He and arithmetic were strangers. Also geography, history,
and everything else that he’d been intimate with. He jest stopped
shinin’, like a candle with a stopper on it. The amount of it was she
found that Amos had always told him ahead the questions he was goin’
to be asked, and Billy learned the answers just before he stood up to
recite.”
“Why, how did Amos--how did Mr. Judd know what questions would be
asked?”
“I guess ’twas just a series of coincidences that happened to last all
winter.”
Molly laughed. “How unforgiving you are, Mr. White! But did Amos Judd
explain it?”
“He didn’t. He was too young then to do it to anybody’s satisfaction,
and now that he’s older he won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Well, he’s kind of sensitive about it. Never talks of those things,
and don’t like to have other folks.”
Molly stood looking over toward the Judd house, wondering how much
of the Deacon’s tale was truth, and how much was village gossip
exaggerated by repetition.
“Did you ever hear about Josiah’s death?”
Molly shook her head.
“’Twas to him that Amos was fetched from India. One mornin’ Josiah
and I were standin’ in the doorway of his barn talkin’. The old barn
used to be closer to the house, but Amos tore it down after he built
that big new one. Josiah and I stood in the doorway talkin’ about a
new yoke of oxen; nothin’ excitin’, for there wasn’t any cause for it.
We stood in the doorway, both facin’ out, when Josiah, without givin’
any notice, sort of pitched forward and fell face down in the snow. I
turned him over and tried to lift him up, but when I saw his face I was
scared. Just at that particular minute the doctor, with Amos sittin’ in
the sleigh beside him, drove into the avenue and hurried along as if he
knew there was trouble. We carried Josiah into the house, but ’twa’n’t
any use. He was dead before we got him there. It was heart disease. At
the funeral I said to the doctor it was lucky he happened along just
then, even if he couldn’t save him, and I found there was no happen
about it; that Amos had run to his house just as he was starting off
somewheres else, and told him Josiah was dyin’ and to get there as fast
as he could.”
“That’s very strange,” Molly said, in a low voice. She had listened to
this story with a feeling of awe, for she believed the Deacon to be a
truthful man, and this was an experience of his own. “This mysterious
faculty,” she said, “whatever it was, did he realize it fully himself?”
“I guess he did!” and the Deacon chuckled as he went on with his work.
“And he used to play tricks with it. I tell you he was a handful.”
“Did you say he lost it as he grew up?”
The Deacon turned about and answered, in a serious tone: “No. But he
wants folks to think so. All the same, there’s something between Amos
and the Almighty that the rest of us ain’t into.”
One Monday morning, toward the last of June, Molly left Daleford for
a two weeks’ visit at the seashore. Her absence caused a void that
extended from the Cabot household over to the big white mansion at the
further end of the maples. This emptiness and desolation drove the
young man to frequent visits upon Mr. Cabot, who, in his turn, found
a pleasant relief in the companionship of his neighbor, and he had no
suspicion of the solace this visitor derived from sitting upon the
piazza so lately honored by the absent girl. The eminent lawyer was not
aware that he himself, apart from all personal merit, was the object
of an ardent affection from his relationship to his own daughter. For
the first twenty-four hours the two disconsolates kept in their own
preserves to a reasonable extent, but on Tuesday they took a fishing
trip, followed in the evening by a long talk on the Cabot piazza.
During this conversation the lawyer realized more fully than ever the
courageous ignorance of his neighbor in all matters that had failed to
interest him. On the other hand, he was impressed by the young man’s
clear, comprehensive, and detailed knowledge upon certain unfamiliar
subjects. In spite of his college education and a very considerable
knowledge of the world he was, mentally, something of a spoiled child;
yet from his good sense, originality, and moral courage he was always
interesting.
Wednesday, the third day, brought a northeast gale that swept the hills
and valleys of Daleford with a drenching rain. Trees, bushes, flowers,
and blades of grass dripping with water, bent and quivered before the
wind. Mr. Cabot spent the morning among his books and papers, writing
letters and doing some work which the pleasant weather had caused him
to defer. For such labors this day seemed especially designed. In the
afternoon, about two o’clock, he stood looking out upon the storm from
his library window, which was at the corner of the house and commanded
the long avenue toward the road. The tempest seemed to rage more
viciously than ever. Bounding across the country in sheets of blinding
rain, it beat savagely against the glass, then poured in unceasing
torrents down the window-panes. The ground was soaked and spongy with
tempestuous little puddles in every hollow of the surface. In the
distance, under the tossing maples, he espied a figure coming along
the driveway in a waterproof and rubber boots. He recognized Amos,
his head to one side to keep his hat on, gently trotting before the
gale, as the mighty force against his back rendered a certain degree
of speed perfunctory. Mr. Cabot had begun to weary of solitude, and
saw with satisfaction that Amos crossed the road and continued along
the avenue. Beneath his waterproof was something large and bulging, of
which he seemed very careful. With a smiling salutation he splashed
by the window toward the side door, laid off his outer coat and wiped
his ponderous boots in the hall, then came into the library bearing an
enormous bunch of magnificent yellow roses. Mr. Cabot recognized them
as coming from a bush in which its owner took the greatest pride, and
in a moment their fragrance filled the room.
“What beauties!” he exclaimed. “But are you sure they are for me?”
“If she decides to give them to you, sir.”
“She? Who? Bridget or Maggie?”
“Neither. They belong to the lady who is now absent; whose soul is the
Flower of Truth, and whose beauty is the Glory of the Morning.” Then he
added, with a gesture of humility, “That is, of course, if she will
deign to accept them.”
“But, my well-meaning young friend, were you gifted with less poetry
and more experience you would know that these roses will be faded and
decaying memories long before the recipient returns. And you a farmer!”
Amos looked at the clock. “You seem to have precious little confidence
in my flowers, sir. They are good for three hours, I think.”
“Three hours! Yes, but to-day is Wednesday and it is many times three
hours before next Monday afternoon.”
A look of such complete surprise came into Amos’s face that Mr. Cabot
smiled as he asked, “Didn’t you know her visit was to last a fortnight?”
The young man made no answer to this, but looked first at his
questioner and then at his roses with an air that struck Mr. Cabot
at the moment as one of embarrassment. As he recalled it afterward,
however, he gave it a different significance. With his eyes still on
the flowers Amos, in a lower voice, said, “Don’t you know that she is
coming to-day?”
“No. Do you?”
The idea of a secret correspondence between these two was not a
pleasant surprise; and the fact that he had been successfully kept in
ignorance of an event of such importance irritated him more than he
cared to show. He asked, somewhat dryly: “Have you heard from her?”
“No, sir, not a word,” and as their eyes met Mr. Cabot felt it was a
truthful answer.
“Then why do you think she is coming?”
Amos looked at the clock and then at his watch. “Has no one gone to the
station for her?”
“No one,” replied Mr. Cabot, as he turned away and seated himself at
his desk. “Why should they?”
Then, in a tone which struck its hearer as being somewhat more
melancholy than the situation demanded, the young man replied: “I will
explain all this to-morrow, or whenever you wish, Mr. Cabot. It is a
long story, but if she does come to-day she will be at the station in
about fifty minutes. You know what sort of a vehicle the stage is. May
I drive over for her?”
“Certainly, if you wish.”
The young man lingered a moment as if there was something more he
wished to add, but left the room without saying it. A minute later he
was running as fast as the gale would let him along the avenue toward
his own house, and in a very short time Mr. Cabot saw a pair of horses
with a covered buggy, its leather apron well up in front, come dashing
down the avenue from the opposite house. Amid fountains of mud the
little horses wheeled into the road, trotted swiftly toward the village
and out of sight.
An hour and a half later the same horses, bespattered and dripping,
drew up at the door. Amos got out first, and holding the reins with one
hand, assisted Molly with the other. From the expression on the two
faces it was evident their cheerfulness was more than a match for the
fiercest weather. Mr. Cabot might perhaps have been ashamed to confess
it, but his was a state of mind in which this excess of felicity
annoyed him. He felt a touch of resentment that another, however
youthful and attractive, should have been taken into her confidence,
while he was not even notified of her arrival. But she received a
hearty welcome, and her impulsive, joyful embrace almost restored him
to a normal condition.
A few minutes later they were sitting in the library, she upon his lap
recounting the events that caused her unexpected return. Ned Elliott
was quite ill when she got there, and last night the doctor pronounced
it typhoid fever; that of course upset the whole house, and she,
knowing her room was needed, decided during the night to come home
this morning. Such was the substance of the narrative, but told in
many words, with every detail that occurred to her, and with frequent
ramifications; for the busy lawyer had always made a point of taking a
very serious interest in whatever his only child saw fit to tell him.
And this had resulted in an intimacy and a reliance upon each other
which was very dear to both. As Molly was telling her story Maggie came
in from the kitchen and handed her father a telegram, saying Joe had
just brought it from the post-office. Mr. Cabot felt for his glasses
and then remembered they were over on his desk. So Molly tore it open
and read the message aloud.
HON. JAMES CABOT, DALEFORD, CONN.
_I leave for home this afternoon by the one-forty train._
MARY CABOT.
“Why, papa, it is my telegram! How slow it has been!”
“When did you send it?”
“I gave it to Sam Elliott about nine o’clock this morning, and it
wouldn’t be like him to forget it.”
“No, and probably he did not forget it. It only waited at the Bingham
station a few hours to get its breath before starting on a six-mile
walk.”
But he was glad to know she had sent the message. Suddenly she wheeled
about on his knee and inserted her fingers between his collar and his
neck, an old trick of her childhood and still employed when the closest
attention was required. “But how did you know I was coming?”
“I did not.”
“But you sent for me.”
“No, Amos went for you of his own accord.”
“Well, how did he know I was coming?”
Mr. Cabot raised his eyebrows. “I have no idea, unless you sent him
word.”
“Of course I didn’t send him word. What an idea! Why don’t you tell me
how you knew?” and the honest eyes were fixed upon his own in stern
disapproval. He smiled and said it was evidently a mysterious case;
that she must cross-examine the prophet. He then told her of the roses
and of his interview with Amos. She was mystified, and also a little
excited as she recalled the stories of Deacon White, but knowing her
father would only laugh at them, contented herself with exacting the
promise of an immediate explanation from Mr. Judd.
V
Early in the evening the young man appeared. He found Mr. Cabot and
Molly sitting before a cheerful fire, an agreeable contrast to the
howling elements without. She thanked him for the roses, expressing her
admiration for their uncommon beauty.
With a grave salutation he answered, “I told them, one morning, when
they were little buds, that if they surpassed all previous roses there
was a chance of being accepted by the Dispenser of Sunshine who dwells
across the way; and this is the result of their efforts.”
“The results are superb, and I am grateful.”
“There is no question of their beauty,” said Mr. Cabot, “and they
appear to possess a knowledge of coming events that must be of value at
times.”
“It was not from the roses I got my information, sir. But I will tell
you about that now, if you wish.”
“Well, take a cigar and clear up the mystery.”
It seemed a winter’s evening, as the three sat before the fire, the
older man in the centre, the younger people on either side, facing
each other. Mr. Cabot crossed his legs, and laying his magazine face
downward upon his lap, said, “I confess I shall be glad to have the
puzzle solved, as it is a little deep for me except on the theory that
you are skilful liars. Molly I know to be unpractised in that art,
but as for you, Amos, I can only guess what you may conceal under a
truthful exterior.”
Amos smiled. “It is something to look honest, and I am glad you can say
even that.” Then, after a pause, he leaned back in his chair and, in a
voice at first a little constrained, thus began:
“As long ago as I can remember I used to imagine things that were to
happen, all sorts of scenes and events that might possibly occur, as
most children do, I suppose. But these scenes, or imaginings, were of
two kinds: those that required a little effort of my own, and another
kind that came with no effort whatever. These last were the most usual,
and were sometimes of use as they always came true. That is, they never
failed to occur just as I had seen them. While a child this did not
surprise me, as I supposed all the rest of the world were just like
myself.”
At this point Amos looked over toward Molly and added, with a faint
smile, “I know just what your father is thinking. He is regretting that
an otherwise healthy young man should develop such lamentable symptoms.”
“Not at all,” said Mr. Cabot. “It is very interesting. Go on.”
She felt annoyed by her father’s calmness. Here was the most
extraordinary, the most marvellous thing she had ever encountered,
and yet he behaved as if it were a commonplace experience of every-day
life. And he must know that Amos was telling the truth! But Amos
himself showed no signs of annoyance.
“As I grew older and discovered gradually that none of my friends had
this faculty, and that people looked upon it as something uncanny and
supernatural, I learned to keep it to myself. I became almost ashamed
of the peculiarity and tried by disuse to outgrow it, but such a power
is too useful a thing to ignore altogether, and there are times when
the temptation is hard to resist. That was the case this afternoon.
I expected a friend who was to telegraph me if unable to come, and
at half-past two no message had arrived: but being familiar with the
customs of the Daleford office I knew there might be a dozen telegrams
and I get none the wiser. So, not wishing to drive twelve miles for
nothing in such a storm, I yielded to the old temptation and put myself
ahead--in spirit of course--and saw the train as it arrived. You can
imagine my surprise when the first person to get off was Miss Molly
Cabot.”
Her eyes were glowing with excitement. Repressing an exclamation of
wonder, she turned toward her father and was astonished, and gently
indignant, to find him in the placid enjoyment of his cigar, showing no
surprise. Then she asked of Amos, almost in a whisper, for her throat
seemed very dry, “What time was it when you saw this?”
“About half-past two.”
“And the train got in at four.”
“Yes, about four.”
“You saw what occurred on the platform as if you were there in person?”
Mr. Cabot inquired.
“Yes, sir. The conductor helped her out and she started to run into
the station to get out of the rain.”
“Yes, yes!” from Molly.
“But the wind twisted you about and blew you against him. And you both
stuck there for a second.”
She laughed nervously: “Yes, that is just what happened!”
“But I am surprised, Amos,” put in Mr. Cabot, “that you should have
had so little sympathy for a tempest-tossed lady as to fail to observe
there was no carriage.”
“I took it for granted you had sent for her.”
“But you saw there was none at the station.”
“There might have been several and I not see them.”
“Then your vision was limited to a certain spot?”
“Yes, sir, in a way, for I could only see as if I were there in
person, and I did not move around to the other side of the station.”
“Didn’t you take notice as you approached?”
Amos drew a hand up the back of his head and hesitated before
answering. “I closed my eyes at home with a wish to be at the station
as the train came in, and I found myself there without approaching it
from any particular direction.”
“And if you had looked down the road,” Mr. Cabot continued, after a
pause, “you would have seen yourself approaching in a buggy?”
“Yes, probably.”
“And from the buggy you might almost have seen what you have just
described.” This was said so calmly and pleasantly that Molly,
for an instant, did not catch its full meaning; then her eyes, in
disappointment, turned to Amos. She thought there was a flush on the
dark face, and something resembling anger as the eyes turned toward
her father. But Mr. Cabot was watching the smoke as it curled from his
lips. After a very short pause Amos said, quietly, “It had not occurred
to me that my statement could place me in such an unfortunate position.”
“Not at all unfortunate,” and Mr. Cabot raised a hand in protest. “I
know you too well, Amos, to doubt your sincerity. The worst I can
possibly believe is that you yourself are misled: that you are perhaps
attaching a false significance to a series of events that might be
explained in another way.”
Amos arose and stood facing them with his back against the mantel.
“You are much too clever for me, Mr. Cabot. I hardly thought you could
accept this explanation, but I have told you nothing but the truth.”
“My dear boy, do not think for a moment that I doubt your honesty.
Older men than you, and harder-headed ones, have digested more
incredible things. In telling your story you ask me to believe what
I consider impossible. There is no well-authenticated case on record
of such a faculty. It would interfere with the workings of nature.
Future events could not arrange themselves with any confidence in your
vicinity, and all history that is to come, and even the elements, would
be compelled to adjust themselves according to your predictions.”
“But, papa, you yourself had positive evidence that he knew of my
coming two hours before I came. How do you explain that?”
“I do not pretend to explain it, and I will not infuriate Amos by
calling it a good guess, or a startling coincidence.”
Amos smiled. “Oh, call it what you please, Mr. Cabot. But it seems to
me that the fact of these things invariably coming true ought to count
for something, even with the legal mind.”
“You say there has never been a single case in which your prophecy has
failed?”
“Not one.”
“Suppose, just for illustration, that you should look ahead and see
yourself in church next Sunday standing on your head in the aisle, and
suppose you had a serious unwillingness to perform the act. Would you
still go to church and do it?”
“I should go to church and do it.”
“Out of respect for the prophecy?”
“No, because I could not prevent it.”
“Have you often resisted?”
“Not very often, but enough to learn the lesson.”
“And you have always fulfilled the prophecy?”
“Always.”
There was a short silence during which Molly kept her eyes on her work,
while Amos stood silently beside the fire as if there was nothing more
to be said. Finally Mr. Cabot knocked the ashes from his cigar and
asked, with his pleasantest smile, “Do you think if one of these scenes
involved the actions of another person than yourself, that person would
also carry it out?”
“I think so.”
“That if you told me, for instance, of something I should do to-morrow
at twelve o’clock, I should do it?”
“I think so.”
“Well, what am I going to do to-morrow at noon, as the clock strikes
twelve?”
[Illustration: It seemed a long five minutes]
“Give me five minutes,” and with closed eyes and head slightly
inclined, the young man remained leaning against the mantel without
changing his position. It seemed a long five minutes. Outside, the
tempest beat viciously against the windows, then with mocking shrieks
whirled away into the night. To Molly’s excited fancy the echoing
chimney was alive with the mutterings of unearthly voices. Although in
her father’s judgment she placed a perfect trust, there still remained
a lingering faith in this supernatural power, whatever it was; but
she knew it to be a faith her reason might not support. As for Amos,
he was certainly an interesting figure as he stood before them, and
nothing could be easier at such a moment than for an imaginative girl
to invest him with mystic attributes. Although outwardly American so
far as raiment, the cut of his hair, and his own efforts could produce
that impression, he remained, nevertheless, distinctly Oriental. The
dark skin, the long, black, clearly marked eyebrows, the singular
beauty of his features, almost feminine in their refinement, betrayed
a race whose origin and traditions were far removed from his present
surroundings. She was struck by the little scar upon his forehead,
which seemed, of a sudden, to glow and be alive, as if catching some
reflection from the firelight. While her eyes were upon it, the fire
blazed up in a dying effort, and went out; but the little scar remained
a luminous spot with a faint light of its own. She drew her hand across
her brow to brush away the illusion, and as she again looked toward him
he opened his eyes and raised his head. Then he said to her father,
slowly, as if from a desire to make no mistake:
“To-morrow you will be standing in front of the Unitarian Church,
looking up at the clock on the steeple as it strikes twelve. Then you
will walk along by the Common until you are opposite Caleb Farnum’s,
cross the street, and knock at his door. Mrs. Farnum will open it. She
will show you into the parlor, the room on the right, where you will
sit down in a rocking-chair and wait. I left you there, but can tell
you the rest if you choose to give the time.”
Molly glanced at her father and was surprised by his expression.
Bending forward, his eyes fixed upon Amos with a look of the deepest
interest, he made no effort to conceal his astonishment. He leaned back
in the chair, however, and resuming his old attitude, said, quietly:
“That is precisely what I intended to do to-morrow, and at twelve
o’clock, as I knew he would be at home for his dinner. Is it possible
that a wholesome, out-of-doors young chap like you can be something of
a mind-reader and not know it?”
“No, sir. I have no such talent.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure. It happens that you already intended to do the thing
mentioned, but that was merely a coincidence.”
For a moment or two there was a silence, during which Mr. Cabot seemed
more interested in the appearance of his cigar than in the previous
conversation. At last he said:
“I understand you to say these scenes, or prophecies, or whatever you
call them, have never failed of coming true. Now, if I wilfully refrain
from calling on Mr. Farnum to-morrow it will have a tendency to prove,
will it not, that your system is fallible?”
“I suppose so.”
“And if you can catch it in several such errors you might in time lose
confidence in it?”
“Very likely, but I think it will never happen. At least, not in such a
way.”
“Just leave that to me,” and Mr. Cabot rose from his seat and stood
beside him in front of the fire. “The only mystery, in my opinion, is
a vivid imagination that sometimes gets the better of your facts; or
rather combines with your facts and gets the better of yourself. These
visions, however real, are such as come not only to hosts of children,
but to many older people who are highstrung and imaginative. As for the
prophetic faculty, don’t let that worry you. It is a bump that has
not sprouted yet on your head, or on any other. Daniel and Elijah are
the only experts of permanent standing in that line, and even their
reputations are not what they used to be.”
Amos smiled and said something about not pretending to compete with
professionals, and the conversation turned to other matters. After
his departure, as they went upstairs, Molly lingered in her father’s
chamber a moment and asked if he really thought Mr. Judd had seen from
his buggy the little incident at the station which he thought had
appeared to him in his vision.
“It seems safe to suppose so,” he answered. “And he could easily be
misled by a little sequence of facts, fancies, and coincidences that
happened to form a harmonious whole.”
“But in other matters he seems so sensible, and he certainly is not
easily deceived.”
“Yes, I know, but those are often the very people who become the
readiest victims. Now Amos, with all his practical common-sense, I
know to be unusually romantic and imaginative. He loves the mystic
and the fabulous. The other day while we were fishing together--thank
you, Maggie does love a fresh place for my slippers every night--the
other day I discovered, from several things he said, that he was an
out-and-out fatalist. But I think we can weaken his faith in all
that. He is too young and healthy and has too free a mind to remain a
permanent dupe.”
VI
The next morning was clear and bright. Mr. Cabot, absorbed in his work,
spent nearly the whole forenoon among his papers, and when he saw Molly
in her little cart drive up to the door with a seamstress from the
village, he knew the day was getting on. Seeing him still at his desk
as she entered, she bent over him and put a hand before his eyes. “Oh,
crazy man! You have no idea what a day it is, and to waste it over an
ink-pot! Why, it is half-past eleven, and I believe you have been here
ever since I left. Stop that work this minute and go out of doors.”
A cool cheek was laid against his face and the pen removed from his
fingers. “Now mind.”
“Well, you are right. Let us both take a walk.”
“I wish I could, but I _must_ start Mrs. Turner on her sewing. Please
go yourself. It is a heavenly day.”
As he stepped off the piazza a few minutes later, she called out from
her chamber window, “Which way are you going, papa?”
“To the village, and I will get the mail.”
“Be sure and not go to Mr. Farnum’s.”
“I promise,” and with a smile he walked away. Her enthusiasm over the
quality of the day he found was not misplaced. The pure, fresh air
brought a new life. Gigantic snowy clouds, like the floating mountains
of fairy land, moved majestically across the heavens, and the distant
hills stood clear and sharp against the dazzling blue. The road was
muddy, but that was a detail to a lover of nature, and Mr. Cabot,
as he strode rapidly toward the village, experienced an elasticity
and exhilaration that recalled his younger days. He felt more like
dancing or climbing trees than plodding sedately along a turnpike.
With a quick, youthful step he ascended the gentle incline that led to
the Common, and if a stranger had been called upon to guess at the
gentleman’s age as he walked jauntily into the village with head erect,
swinging his cane, he would more likely have said thirty years than
sixty. And if the stranger had watched him for another three minutes
he would have modified his guess, and not only have given him credit
for his full age, but might have suspected either an excessive fatigue
or a mild intemperance. For Mr. Cabot, during his short walk through
Daleford Village, experienced a series of sensations so novel and so
crushing that he never, in his inner self, recovered completely from
the shock.
Instead of keeping along the sidewalk to the right and going to the
post-office according to his custom, he crossed the muddy road and
took the gravel walk that skirted the Common. It seemed a natural
course, and he failed to realize, until he had done it, that he was
going out of his way. Now he must cross the road again when opposite
the store. When opposite the store, however, instead of crossing over
he kept along as he had started. Then he stopped, as if to turn, but
his hesitation was for a second only. Again he went ahead, along the
same path, by the side of the Common. It was then that Mr. Cabot felt
a mild but unpleasant thrill creep upward along his spine and through
his hair. This was caused by a startling suspicion that his movements
were not in obedience to his own will. A moment later it became a
conviction. This consciousness brought the cold sweat to his brow, but
he was too strong a man, too clear-headed and determined, to lose his
bearings without a struggle or without a definite reason. With all
the force of his nature he stopped once more to decide it, then and
there: and again he started forward. An indefinable, all-pervading
force, gentle but immeasurably stronger than himself, was exerting an
intangible pressure, and never in his recollection had he felt so
powerless, so weak, so completely at the mercy of something that was no
part of himself; yet, while amazed and impressed beyond his own belief,
he suffered no obscurity of intellect. The first surprise over, he was
more puzzled than terrified, more irritated than resigned.
For nearly a hundred yards he walked on, impelled by he knew not what;
then, with deliberate resolution, he stopped, clutched the wooden
railing at his side, and held it with an iron grip. As he did so, the
clock in the belfry of the Unitarian Church across the road began
striking twelve. He raised his eyes, and, recalling the prophecy of
Amos, he bit his lip, and his head reeled as in a dream. “To-morrow,
as the clock strikes twelve, you will be standing in front of the
Unitarian Church, looking up at it.” Each stroke of the bell--and no
bell ever sounded so loud--vibrated through every nerve of his being.
It was harsh, exultant, almost threatening, and his brain in a numb,
dull way seemed to quiver beneath the blows. Yet, up there, about the
white belfry, pigeons strutted along the moulding, cooing, quarrelsome,
and important, like any other pigeons. And the sunlight was even
brighter than usual; the sky bluer and more dazzling. The tall spire,
from the moving clouds behind it, seemed like a huge ship, sailing
forward and upward as if he and it were floating to a different world.
Still holding fast to the fence, he drew the other hand sharply across
his eyes to rally his wavering senses. The big elms towered serenely
above him, their leaves rustling like a countless chorus in the summer
breeze. Opposite, the row of old-fashioned New England houses stood
calmly in their places, self-possessed, with no signs of agitation. The
world, to their knowledge, had undergone no sudden changes within the
last five minutes. It must have been a delusion: a little collapse of
his nerves, perhaps. So many things can affect the brain: any doctor
could easily explain it. He would rest a minute, then return.
As he made this resolve his left hand, like a treacherous servant,
quietly relaxed its hold and he started off, not toward his home, but
forward, continuing his journey. He now realized that the force which
impelled him, although gentle and seemingly not hostile in purpose, was
so much stronger than himself that resistance was useless. During the
next three minutes, as he walked mechanically along the sidewalk by
the Common, his brain was nervously active in an effort to arrive at
some solution of this erratic business; some sensible solution that was
based either on science or on common-sense. But that solace was denied
him. The more he thought the less he knew. No previous experience of
his own, and no authenticated experience of anyone else, at least of
which he had ever heard, could he summon to assist him. When opposite
the house of Silas Farnum he turned and left the sidewalk, and noticed,
with an irresponsible interest as he crossed the road, that with no
care of his own he avoided the puddles and selected for his feet
the drier places. This was another surprise, for he took no thought
of his steps; and the discovery added to the overwhelming sense of
helplessness that was taking possession of him. With no volition of his
own he also avoided the wet grass between the road and the gravel walk.
He next found himself in front of Silas Farnum’s gate and his hand
reached forth to open it. It was another mild surprise when this hand,
like a conscious thing, tried the wrong side of the little gate, then
felt about for the latch. The legs over which he had ceased to have
direction, carried him along the narrow brick walk, and one of them
lifted him upon the granite doorstep.
Once more he resolved, calmly and with a serious determination, that
this humiliating comedy should go no farther. He would turn about
and go home without entering the house. It would be well for Amos to
know that an old lawyer of sixty was composed of different material
from the impressionable enthusiast of twenty-seven. While making this
resolve the soles of his shoes were drawing themselves across the iron
scraper; then he saw his hand rise slowly toward the old-fashioned
knocker and, with three taps, announce his presence. A huge fly dozing
on the knocker flew off and lit again upon the panel of the door. As
it readjusted its wings and drew a pair of front legs over the top
of its head Mr. Cabot wondered, if at the creation of the world, it
was fore-ordained that this insect should occupy that identical spot
at a specified moment of a certain day, and execute this trivial
performance. If so, what a rôle humanity was playing! The door opened
and Mrs. Farnum, with a smiling face, stood before him.
“How do you do, Mr. Cabot? Won’t you step in?”
As he opened his lips to decline, he entered the little hallway, was
shown into the parlor and sat in a horse-hair rocking-chair, in which
he waited for Mrs. Farnum to call her husband. When the husband came
Mr. Cabot stated his business and found that he was once more dependent
upon his own volition. He could rise, walk to the window, say what he
wished, and sit down again when he desired.
Upon reaching home he went directly to his chamber, and was glad to
enter it without meeting his daughter. His reflection in the mirror
surprised him, as he expected to find a face thirty years older than
when it started for the village. But there were no outward traces
of the recent struggle. It was the same face, calm, firm, and as
self-reliant as ever. This was reassuring and did much toward a return
of confidence. He threw himself upon the bed, and as he lay there he
heard through the open window the voices of Molly and Amos in the
old-fashioned garden. They seemed very jolly and happy, and Molly’s
laughter came like music to his ears; but her companion, although
amusing and full of fun, seemed to do none of the laughing; and then it
came upon him that in all his intercourse with Amos he had never heard
him laugh. Ever ready to smile, and often irresistible in his high
spirits, yet he never laughed aloud. And the deep melancholy of his
face when in repose--was that a result of fulfilling prophecies? Were
there solemn secrets behind that boyish face?
The perfume of the flowers stole in through the closed blinds, and he
could hear the buzzing of a bee outside the window, mingling with
the voices in the garden. These voices became lower, the subject of
conversation having changed--perhaps to something more serious--and Mr.
Cabot took a nap.
VII
“Did you go to Silas Farnum’s?” was Molly’s first question, and her
father confessed having done precisely as Amos had predicted; but
while giving a truthful account of his experience, he told the story
in a half-jesting manner, attributing his compulsory visit to some
hypnotic influence, and to a temporary irresponsibility of his own.
His daughter, however, was not deceived. Her belief in a supernatural
agency renewed its strength.
As for her father, he had never been more at sea in the solution of a
problem. In his own mind the only explanation was by the dominance of
another mind over his own, by a force presumably mesmeric. The fact
that Amos himself was also a victim rendered that theory difficult to
accept, unless both were dupes of some third person. If at the time of
his visit to Silas Farnum he had been ill, or weak, or in a nervous
condition, or had it occurred at night when the imagination might get
the better of one’s judgment, there would have been the possibility of
an explanation on physical grounds. But that he, James Cabot, of good
health and strength, should, in the sunlight of a summer noon, be the
powerless victim of such an influence, was a theory so mortifying and
preposterous as to upset his usual processes of reason.
It was not until the next afternoon that an opportunity was given for
a word with Amos. Out on the grass, beneath a huge elm at the easterly
corner of the house, Mr. Cabot, in a bamboo chair, was reclining with
his paper, when he noticed his young friend cantering briskly along
the road on a chestnut horse. Amos saw him, turned his animal toward
the low stone wall that separated the Cabots’ field from the highway,
cleared it with an easy jump and came cantering over the grass.
“Is that old Betty? I didn’t know she was a jumper.”
“Oh, yes. She has a record.” Dismounting, he faced her about and, with
a tap on the flank, told her to go home. She returned, however, and
showed a desire to rub noses with him. “Well, have your way, old lady,”
and leaving her to a feast of clover he threw himself on the ground at
Mr. Cabot’s feet.
“You are a kind man to your animals, Amos, although you may be somewhat
offensive as a prophet.”
“So you went, after all?”
“Went where?”
“To see Silas Farnum.”
“Did I say that?”
Amos looked up with a smile that could have a dozen meanings. His wily
companion, from a sense of professional caution, wished to feel his way
before committing himself.
“You think I went, after all?”
“Yes, sir, I know you did, from my own experience.”
“Which is that the events inevitably occur as foreseen?”
“Always.”
“Well, I will make a clean breast of it and tell you just what
happened.”
“I know it already, Mr. Cabot, as well as if you had told me.”
“Do you know of my resolve not to do it? Of my ineffectual resistance
and the sensations I experienced?”
“I think so. I have been through it all myself.”
For a minute or two neither spoke. Amos, resting upon an elbow, his
cheek against the palm of one hand, was, with the other, deceiving a
very small caterpillar into useless marches from one end of a blade of
grass to the other. Mr. Cabot, in a more serious tone, continued: “Can
you tell me, Amos, on your honor, that as far as you know there was no
attempt on your part, or on the part of any other person, to influence
me upon that occasion?”
Amos tossed aside the blade of grass and sat up. “I give you my word,
sir, that so far as I know there is nothing in it of that nature. I am
just as helpless as you when it comes to any attempt at resistance.”
“Then how do you account for it?”
Amos had plucked a longer blade of grass, and was winding it about his
fingers. “My explanation may seem childish to you, but I have no better
one to offer. It is simply that certain events are destined to occur at
appointed times, and that my knowing it in advance is not allowed to
interfere with the natural order of things.”
“The evidence may seem to point that way, judging from my own
experience, but can you believe that the whole human race are carrying
out such a cut-and-dried scheme? According to that theory we are
merely mechanical dummies, irresponsible and helpless, like cogs in a
wheel.”
“No, sir, we are at liberty to do just as we please. It was your own
idea going to Silas Farnum’s. That you happened to be told of it in
advance created an artificial condition, otherwise you would have gone
there in peace and happiness. In other words, it was ordained that you
should desire to do that thing, and you were to do as you desired.”
The lawyer remained silent a moment, his face giving no indication
either of belief or denial.
“Have you never been able to prevent or even modify the fulfilment of
an act after having seen it in advance?”
“No, sir; never.”
“Then these scenes as presented to you are invariably correct, without
the slightest change?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Cabot looked down at his friend with a feeling that was not without
a touch of awe. Of the young man’s honesty he had not the slightest
doubt, and his own recent experience seemed but one more proof of
the correctness of his facts. He looked with a curious interest upon
this mysterious yet simple Oriental squatting idly on the grass, his
straw hat tilted back on his head, the dark face bent forward, as with
careful fingers he gathered a bunch of clover.
“If this faculty never fails you your knowledge of future events is
simply without limit. You can tell about the weather, the crops, the
stock market, the result of wars, marriages, births, and deaths, and
who the next president is to be.”
“Yes, sir,” he answered quietly, without looking up.
Mr. Cabot straightened up in his chair and rubbed his chin. His
credulity had reached its limit, yet, if he could judge by the
evidence already presented, the young man was adhering strictly to the
truth. There followed a silence during which Betty, who in nibbling
about had approached within a few feet of them, held out her head, and
took the clover from Amos. Mr. Cabot brought a pencil and piece of
paper from his pockets. “I would like to try one more experiment, with
your permission. Will you write on that paper what I am to do at--well,
say ten o’clock to-night?”
Amos took the paper and closed his eyes, but in a moment looked up and
said, “You are in the dark and I can see nothing.”
“Then you have no knowledge of what goes on in the dark?”
“No, sir; only of things that I can see. If there is any light at all
I can see as if I were there in person, but no better. To-night at ten
o’clock you are in your own chamber, and it is absolutely black.”
“Then change the hour to six o’clock.”
As Mr. Cabot, a moment later, turned a sidelong glance toward his
friend, sitting with closed eyes before him, he thought the little mark
upon his forehead had never been so distinct. He regarded it with a
mild surprise as it seemed almost aglow; but the sky was becoming rosy
in the west, and there might be a reflection from the setting sun. Amos
wrote something on a slip of paper, folded it up and returned it to Mr.
Cabot, who carefully tucked it away in a pocket saying, “I shall not
read it until six-thirty. I will tell you to-morrow if you are correct.”
“Oh, that is correct, sir! You need have no anxiety on that point.”
As he spoke there passed slowly along the road a cart containing
two men, and behind the cart, securely fastened, walked a heavy,
vicious-looking bull.
“That is an ugly brute,” he said.
“So I was just thinking. Does he belong in the town?”
“Yes; it is Barnard’s bull. Yesterday he got loose and so mutilated
a horse that it had to be shot; and within an hour he tried his best
to kill old Barnard himself, which was a good undertaking and showed
public spirit. He is sure to have a victim sooner or later, and it
certainly ought to be old Barnard if anybody.”
“Who is Barnard?”
“He is the oyster-eyed, malignant old liar and skinflint who lives in
that red house about a mile below here.”
“You seem to like him.”
“I hate him.”
“What has he done to you?”
“Nothing; but he bullies his wife, starves his cattle, and cheats
his neighbors. Even as a small boy I knew enough to dislike him, and
whenever he went by the house I used to stone him.”
“What a pleasant little neighbor you must have been!”
Amos tried to smile, but his anger was evidently too serious a matter
to be treated with disrespect. Mr. Cabot, after regarding for a moment
the wrathful eyes that still followed the bull, continued:
“You are more than half barbarian, my war-like farmer. Must you do
physical damage to everyone you dislike?”
“No, sir; but as a rule I should like to. As for loving your
enemies--count me out. I love my friends. The man who pretends to love
his enemies is either a hypocrite or a poor hater.”
The older man smiled at the earnestness with which this sentence was
uttered. “I am afraid, Mr. Amos Judd, you are not a Christian. Take my
advice and join a bible-class before the devil gets his other hand upon
you.”
After a few words on other matters, Amos called his mare, and departed.
As the hour of six drew near, Mr. Cabot made a point of realizing that
he was a free agent and could do whatever he wished, and he resolved
that no guess, based on a probability, should prove correct. To assure
himself that there was no compulsion or outside influence of any
nature, he started first for the barn to execute a fantastic resolve,
then as an additional proof that he was absolutely his own master,
suddenly changed his mind, turned about, and went upstairs.
Going along a back passage with no definite intention, he paused at a
half-open door, looked in, and entered. The blinds were closed, but
between the slats came bars of light from the western sun, illumining
the little room, an unused chamber, now serving as a storehouse for
such trunks and sundry relics as had failed to reach the attic. Mr.
Cabot noticed a rocking-horse in one corner and his eyes sparkled
with a new idea. After closing the door he dragged the steed from its
resting-place, planted it in the middle of the floor, and looked at his
watch. It lacked four minutes of six. As he prepared to mount he saw
the legs of a rag-baby projecting over a shelf, and pulling her down,
could not restrain a smile as he held her in his arms. A large, round,
flat, and very pale but dirty face was emphasized by fiery cheeks,
whose color, from a want of harmony with the coarse material of her
visage, had only lingered in erratic blotches. With this lady in his
arms he mounted the horse, and, while gently rocking with both feet
on the ground, he again took out his watch and found he was just on
the minute of six o’clock. But he kept his seat for a moment longer,
judging the situation too good to be trifled with, and too unusual for
any ordinary guess. Carelessly he rocked a little faster, when a front
foot of his overladen steed slipped from its rocker and Mr. Cabot
nearly lost his balance. The damage, however, he easily repaired; the
rag-baby was replaced upon her shelf, and when he left the little room
and returned to his own chamber there was an expression upon his face
that seemed indicative of an amiable triumph. Some minutes later, with
a similar expression, he took from his pocket the slip of paper on
which Amos had written, read it once with some haste, then a second
time and more carefully.
_The Hon. James Cabot, one of the most respected residents of
Daleford, attempted at six o’clock to elope with an obscure maiden of
the village. But his horse, an animal with one glass eye and no tail,
broke down before they had fairly started and went lame in his off
front foot._
[Illustration: Gently rocking with both feet on the ground]
For several minutes he stood looking down at the paper between his
fingers, occasionally drawing a hand across his forehead. Then he
refolded the paper and placing it in his pocket, took his hat and went
out into the orchard, to think, and to be alone.
On questioning Amos he found no more light was to be expected from that
quarter, as the young man had already expounded his only theory, which
was that these visions were but optional warnings of the inevitable:
that all was fore-ordained: that there could be no variations in the
course of Fate. His mind was not philosophical; his processes of reason
were simple and direct, and he listened with profound interest to Mr.
Cabot’s deeper and more scientific attempts at reaching a consistent
explanation. Little progress, however, was made in this direction,
and the lawyer admitted that the evidence, so far, contradicted in no
detail his friend’s belief. He also found that Amos, although deeply
concerned in the subject when once opened, rarely introduced it himself
or referred to it in any way; and that he never employed his power
except in the rarest emergencies.
Moreover, the lawyer understood how such a faculty, although of value
in certain cases, would, in the great majority, be worse than useless,
while it could not fail of an overpowering influence on the being
who employed it. He respected the strength of purpose that enabled
the young man to keep it in the background, and he felt that he had
discovered at least one reason for the restless pleasures of his youth.
Now, happily, he was securing a calmer and a healthier diversion
from a life in the open air. As his neighbor became the object of a
deeper study it was evident the conflicting qualities that seemed to
give such varying colors to his character were the result of these
extraordinary conditions. His occasional recklessness and indifference
were now easily explained. His disregard for religious observances was
in perfect harmony with an insight into the workings of a stupendous
fate, immeasurably above the burning of candles and the laws of
ecclesiastical etiquette. His love of exercise, of sunshine, of every
form of pleasure and excitement, were but the means of escape from the
pursuing dread of an awful knowledge. And the lavish generosity that
often startled his friends and bewildered Daleford was a trivial matter
to one who, if he cared to peruse in advance the bulletins of the stock
exchange, could double his fortune in a day.
Off and on through July and a part of August an unwonted animation
prevailed at the Cabots’, extending at times along the maples to the
other house. Certain visitors of Molly’s were the cause of this gayety,
and in their entertainment she found Amos a helpful friend. His horses,
his fields, his groves, his fruits, his flowers, and himself, were
all at her disposal, absolutely and at any time. A few friends of his
own coming at the same period proved a welcome reinforcement, and
the leaves of the old maples rustled with a new surprise at the life
and laughter, the movement, the color, and the music that enlivened
their restful shades. And also at night, during the warm evenings when
farmers were abed, the air was awake with melodies which floated off in
the summer air, dying away among the voices of the frogs and turtles
along the borders of the meadow.
One warm afternoon in August, when there were visitors at neither
house, Amos and Molly climbed over a wall into a pasture, for a
shorter cut toward home. The pasture was extensive, and their course
lay diagonally across a long hill, beyond whose brow they could
see nothing. A crimson sunshade and white dress were in dazzling
contrast to the dull greens of the pasture, whose prevailing colors
were from rocks and withered grass. Patches of wild bushes where the
huckleberries were in overwhelming majority necessitated either wide
detours or careful navigating among thorns and briars. Her companion
seemed indifferent to the painful fact that knickerbockers are no
protection against these enemies. But pricks in the leg at the present
moment were too trivial for notice. He was speaking with unusual
earnestness, keeping close at her side, and now and then looking
anxiously into her face. It may have been the heat and the exercise
that drove the color to her cheeks, and there were also signs of
annoyance as if she desired to escape him; but the ground was uneven,
and the stones and bushes rendered haste impossible. She also appeared
tired, and when they stopped at intervals always turned away her face,
until finally, when half across the field, she sank upon a rock. “I
really must rest. I am dreadfully warm.”
He stood beside her, facing in the same direction, both looking over
the peaceful valley from which an occasional cow-bell was the only
sound.
“It is really a little unfair that my old record should come between
us. I was only twenty then, with no end of money and no parents or
guardian to look after me. Mr. Judd would let me do whatever I wished,
and of course I sailed ahead and did everything. Instead of having an
allowance like other fellows I just asked for what I wanted, and always
got it. And that is death to a boy.”
He pulled a twig from a bush and began to bite the end of it. If at
that instant he had glanced down at the face beside him, he might
have detected an expression that was not unjustly severe. There was a
distinct ray of sympathy in the eyes that were fixed thoughtfully upon
the valley.
“And then all the girls met me more than half-way, as if they, too, had
conspired against me.”
This was said in a half-resentful, half-plaintive tone, and so
delightfully free from any boastfulness that Molly, to conceal
something very near a smile, bent her head and picked nettles from her
skirt.
“Of course I liked a good time, there is no denying that, and I struck
the wrong gang at college. I suppose I was weak--everlastingly and
disgustingly weak; but really you might make allowances, and anyway--”
He stopped abruptly and turned about. Looking up she saw an expression
in his eyes, as they gazed at something behind her, that caused her
to spring to her feet and also turn about. As she did so the color
left her face and her knees gave way beneath her. Instinctively she
clutched his arm. Within twenty yards of them stood Barnard’s bull, and
in his broad black head and cruel horns, in the distended nostrils and
bloodshot eye, she read the fury of an unreasoning brute; and with it
her own death and mutilation. Helpless they stood in the open pasture
with no tree or refuge near. Amos cast a swift glance to the right,
to the left, and behind them. The bull lowered his head just a very
little, and as he stepped slowly forward she could hear his breath in
impatient puffs. Her brain began to swim and she closed her eyes, but a
sharp word and a rough shake brought her back with a start.
“Do just as I tell you. Turn and walk slowly off to the wall at the
right. Then climb over. Don’t run till I say so. Give me your parasol.”
He twisted her about and gave her a push.
“Don’t look around.”
Gasping, faint, and so weak from terror that she could hardly direct
her steps, she did as she was told. In her dazed mind there was no
conception of time or distance, but, a moment after, hearing a snort
from the bull and the quick pounding of his feet, she stopped and
turned. She expected to see Amos on the creature’s horns, but Amos
was running in the other direction, so far safe, although scarcely his
own length ahead. In an instant she saw to her horror that, although a
nimble runner, he was losing distance with every spring of the bull.
But with a presence of mind that did much toward renewing her own
courage, he kept looking over his shoulder, and when further running
was hopeless, he jumped swiftly to one side, the side up the hill, and
the ponderous brute plunged on for several feet before he could come to
a stop. Amos looked at once in her direction, and when he saw her he
shook his hand and cried, in an angry voice:
“Run! Run! Your life depends on it!”
There was no time to say more, for the bull had wheeled and was again
coming toward him. Molly turned and ran as she never ran before, and
never before did so many thoughts flash through her mind. Above all
came the torturing regret that she could be of no possible service to
the man who, at that moment perhaps, was giving up his life for hers.
Leaping rocks, stumbling over hillocks, tearing through bushes, she
finally reached the wall, scrambled up and over as best she could,
then, with a throbbing heart and pallid face, looked back into the
field.
They were farther up the hill, and Amos had evidently just jumped
aside, for again the bull and he were facing each other. The animal was
advancing slowly toward him, head down, with an angry lashing of the
tail and occasional snorts that drove the blood from the spectator’s
heart. As Amos retreated slowly, his face to the animal, she saw him
look swiftly in her direction, then back at the bull. Faster and faster
the animal came toward him, and when finally he bounded forward on
a run Amos turned and ran for his life. He was now making for this
side of the pasture, but she saw with the keenest anguish that all
his elasticity had departed, that he was losing ground much faster
than at first. That he should show signs of exhaustion caused her no
surprise, for the ground was rough, low briars and bushes concealing
rocks of treacherous shapes and varying sizes, and the race was harder
for the man than for the bull. The distance between them was being
lessened with a rapidity that might end the struggle without a second’s
warning, and the horns were now within a yard of his heels. Again he
jumped to one side, but this time it brought a cry of agony from beyond
the wall. His foot slipped, and instead of landing a yard or more
from the creature’s path, he measured his length upon the ground. The
bull lowered his head and plunged savagely upon him. The horns grazed
the prostrate body, and the heavy brute, by his own impetus, dashed
a dozen yards beyond. Amos raised first his head and shoulders, then
climbed to his feet, slowly, like one bewildered or in pain. He stood
cautiously upon his legs as if uncertain of their allegiance, but he
still clutched the crimson sunshade. The bull, with fiery nostrils
and bloodshot eyes, once more came on, and Amos started for the wall.
It was evident to the one spectator that his strength was gone. With
every jump of the thing behind him he was losing ground, and the
awful end was near, and coming swiftly. She sank against the wall and
clutched it, for the sky and pasture were beginning to revolve before
her straining eyes. But Amos, instead of coming straight for the wall,
bore down the hill. With the hot breath close upon his heels, he opened
the crimson sunshade, jumped aside, and thrust it upon the pursuing
horns: then without looking back he made a bee-line for the wall. It
was skilfully done, and for one precious moment the seeming victor was
delayed by goring the infuriating color; but only for a moment. He saw
his enemy escaping and bounded in pursuit. This time, however, he
missed him by a dozen feet and saw him vault the barrier into safety.
The wall he accepted as a conclusion, but he stood close against it,
looking over in sullen anger, frothing, hot-eyed, and out of breath.
Then he witnessed a scene, to him of little interest, but which
signified much to another person. He saw the girl, anxious, pale,
with disordered hair, eagerly approach the exhausted runner; then,
nervously pressing a hand to her cheek, she bent forward and asked a
question. The young man, who was leaning against a tree and seemed
to have trouble with his breathing, suddenly, with a joyful face,
stretched forth his hands, and with even more eagerness than her own,
asked in his turn a question, whereupon the color rushed to her face.
Looking down, then up at him, then down again, she smiled and muttered
something, and he, without waiting for further words, seized her in
his arms, and with one hand holding her chin, kissed her mouth and
cheeks, not once but many times. But she pushed away from him, flushed
and possibly angry. However, it could not have been a deep-seated or
lasting anger, for she created no disturbance when he took one of
her hands in both of his and made a little speech. It appeared an
interesting discourse, although she looked down and off, and all about,
at everything except at him, smiling and changing color all the while.
He seemed foolishly happy, and when a moment later he wished to assist
in rearranging her hair, he was not depressed because the offer was
declined with contempt.
Then the young man took a few steps toward the wall, and stood facing
the huge head whose bloodshot eyes were still upon him. As he lifted
his hand there was a hitch in the motion, and a spasm of pain drew down
a corner of his mouth, but the girl behind him could not see this.
He raised his cap and saluted his adversary.
[Illustration: “I thank you, Bull, for chasing me into Molly Cabot’s heart”]
“I thank you, Bull, for chasing me into Molly Cabot’s heart.”
Then he turned, and hand in hand, the two people disappeared among the
pines.
VIII
According to habit, Mr. Cabot composed himself by the library table
that evening for an hour’s reading before going to bed, but the book
was soon lifted from his grasp and Molly seated herself in his lap.
Although fingers were inserted between his collar and neck as a warning
that the closest attention was expected, there followed a short silence
before any words were uttered. Then she told him all: of being face to
face with Barnard’s bull; of the narrow escape; of how Amos remained
alone in the open field, and lastly, she gave the substance of what the
rescuer had said to her, and that she had promised to be his wife. But
on condition that her father should consent.
He received the news gravely; confessed he was not so very much
surprised, although he had hoped it would come a little later. And she
was very happy to find he made no objection to Amos as a son-in-law,
and to hear him praise his character and pronounce him an honest, manly
fellow. His behavior with the bull was heroic, but did not she think
the reward he demanded was exorbitant? Was it not a little greedy
to ask as a price for his services the entire value of the rescued
property? It certainly was not customary to snatch away the object
before placing it in the owner’s hands. “But he risked his life to save
yours, and for that he shall have anything I own.”
The following morning, as she stepped upon the piazza, the doctor’s
buggy came down the opposite avenue and turned toward the village.
Could old Mrs. Judd be ill? or was it one of the servants?
An hour later, as there were still no signs of her bull-fighter
she began to feel a slight annoyance. Perhaps after sleeping upon
the events of yesterday his enthusiasm had cooled. Perhaps his
exceptionally wide experience in this field had taught him that the
most delicate way out of such dilemmas was to give the girl the
initiative, and perhaps, now that he was sure she loved him, all the
fun had departed. Perhaps, in short, he was now realizing that he had
committed himself. Although none of these suspicions took a serious
hold there was a biting of the nether lip and a slight flush upon the
cheeks as she re-entered the house: and in order that he might not
suspect, when he did come, that his delay had caused the slightest
feeling, or that anyone had watched for him, she returned to her room.
A few moments later a note was brought in which was received with
indifference, but which, after Maggie’s departure she opened with
nervous fingers.
MY GIRL: That bull, God bless him! smashed two of my ribs, the doctor
says, but I know better. They were broken by an outward force, a
sudden expansion of the heart, and I felt them going when you came
into a pair of arms.
Please come over, or I shall fly away, as I feel the sprouting of
wings, and there is a cracking among the other ribs.
AMOS.
She went, and although their conversation that morning touched upon
ribs and anatomy, it would, if taken as a whole, have been of little
value to a scientist. It was distinctly personal. The one sentiment
which appeared to have an irresistible fascination for the bull-fighter
and his fiancée colored all remarks, and the fact that the dialogue
would have caused them the most intense mortification if made public,
tended in no degree to lessen their enjoyment. To a middle-aged person
who had never been in love it would have been unendurable.
Later in the day she intercepted the doctor and learned as much as
possible of the patient’s condition. Two ribs were badly broken, he
said; had been pressed inward to a serious extent, but so far there
were no indications of internal injuries. Of this, however, he could
not at present be absolutely sure, but he thought there was no great
cause for alarm. The patient, of course, must keep quiet for a week or
two.
Fortunately for Amos there proved to be no injury save the damaged
ribs, but three long weeks elapsed before he was allowed to go up and
down stairs and move about the house.
The last day of August proved a day of discoveries.
It was bright and warm, yet invigorating, the perfection of terrestrial
weather, and Mr. Cabot and Molly, early in the afternoon, were sitting
upon the piazza discussing the date of their departure, Amos occupying
his favorite place upon the floor in front of them, his back against a
column. When she informed her father that additional trunks or boxes
of some kind would be needed, Amos said that such articles were going
to waste in the Judd residence, and if she would but step across the
way and select a few, it would be a lasting benefit to an overcrowded
attic. This offer was accepted and they started off. After climbing the
final stairs, which were steep and narrow, Molly seated herself upon an
old-fashioned settle, the back of which could be lowered and used as
an ironing table. “How I do love this smell of an attic! Is it the sap
from the hot pine? And isn’t there sage in the air, or summer savory?”
“Both. With a few old love-letters and a touch of dried apples.”
“Whatever it is, I love it. The days of my childhood come galloping
back,” and with upturned face she closed her eyes and drew a longer
breath. He bent silently over and touched her lips.
“What a breach of hospitality!”
“When a visitor insults a host by sleeping in his presence, it
is etiquette to awaken her. And when lips with those particular
undulations look one pleasantly in the eye and say ‘Amos, kiss us,’
what do you expect to happen?”
“From you I expect the worst, the most improper thing.”
“And you will always get it, O spirit of old-fashioned Roses!”
In opening a window he disturbed an enormous fly, whose buzzing filled
every corner of the roof. “To me,” he said, “this atmosphere recalls
long marches and battles, with splendid victories and awful defeats.”
“I don’t see why. To me it seems delightfully restful.”
From an ancient horse-hair trunk he brought forth a box, and seating
himself at her feet, emptied its contents upon the floor.
“This is why,” and he arranged in parallel lines the little leaden
soldiers, diminutive cannons, some with wheels and some without, and a
quantity of dominos, two by two. “These are troops, and if you care to
know how I passed the rainy days of boyhood this will show you.”
“But, what are the dominos?”
“They are the enemy. These lead soldiers are mine, and they are all
veterans, and all brave. This is myself,” and he held up a bent and
battered relic on a three-legged horse.
“And who are you in these fights, Goosey?”
“Napoleon, generally; often Cæsar and Frederick, and sometimes George
Washington and General Lee.”
“But you have no head. Isn’t that a drawback for a commander?”
“Not with troops like these. I lost that head at Quebec, as Montcalm.”
She looked down upon him with a wish that she also might have been one
of those absurd little soldiers and shared his victories.
“The cracks between the floor-boards,” he continued, “are railroads,
rivers, canals, stone walls, or mountain ranges, according to the
campaign.”
“They must have been a nuisance, though. Could not a soldier disappear
and not return?”
“I should say he could! Why, those ravines are gorged with heroes, and
that recalls the most humiliating event of my career. I was leading the
charge of the Light Brigade, six of these cavalrymen, each representing
a hundred men. I of course was in front, and it was a supreme moment.
As we dashed across the open field--the cracks, mind you, didn’t count
this time--I, the leader, suddenly disappeared, head downward, feet up,
in an open field! Of course the charge could not stop, and the others
rushed on to a magnificent death.”
With a sigh he gathered the motley company together again, and laid
them away in their box. She got up and moved about. “I should like to
live in an attic. It is mysterious and poetic, and so crammed with
history. Each of these things has its little story for somebody,” and
she stopped before a curious feminine garment in India silk, of a
long-ago fashion.
Pointing to a quaint old cap with ear-laps, she exclaimed, “What a
funny rig that is! Put it on.” And she took it from its peg and placed
it upon his head, then laughed and led him to a broken mirror that was
hanging from a rafter. “Unless you wear it in New York next winter, I
shall never marry you!”
“Then I promise, but at present it is a trifle warm.”
As he removed it a letter slipped from the lining and fell to the
floor. She picked it up and turned it over in her fingers. “Why, it
has never been opened! It is directed to Mr. Josiah Judd.”
Amos examined it, studied the date, then looked at the old cap. “He
wore this at the time of his death, when he had just come from the
post-office, and the Daleford postmark says December fifth, the very
day before. That is very curious.” And he stood looking down at the
letter, deep in thought.
“Why don’t you open it? You are the one who should do it, I suppose.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Where is it from?”
“India. From Mr. Morton Judd, his brother, the one who sent me here.”
“Oh, yes! I remember. Is Mr. Morton Judd alive?”
“No, he died ten years ago.”
“Well, please open it, for it may be interesting. Come over near the
light.”
As they stood by the open window, leaning against the sill, he tore
open the envelope and began reading aloud, she looking idly out upon
some haymakers in a neighboring field. Their voices came faintly to
her ears, and they made a pleasant picture in the afternoon sunlight
with the village spires, the tall elms, and the purple hills for a
background. She wondered if India was at all like New England.
DEAR JOSIAH: The case ought to reach you about a fortnight after
this letter, and if you will write to Mr. Wharton, or better still,
visit him, he will see that there is no trouble at the Custom House.
Give my love to Sarah, but don’t show her the shawl and the silks
before her birthday, in January. What you say about the boy Amos
does not surprise me, and I was only waiting for you to make your
own discoveries. He gave clear indications when a very small child
of this same faculty in which his mother and the rest of his family
had great faith. In the box you will receive I send a book giving an
account of the Rajah Sirdar Sing, his ancestor, a hero of prophetic
powers who died ninety-eight years ago, so this boy, according to
tradition, should inherit the same supernatural faculties. Be careful
that he does not see this book before coming of age, as it might
put dangerous ideas into his head, and if he should suspect what he
really is great mischief might ensue. I am glad he is turning out
such a sensible boy. But if he should ever come over here and make
himself known it would cause a great disturbance, and might result
fatally to himself. Am sorry to hear about Phil Bates’s wife. She was
a fool to marry him. Your affectionate brother,
MORTON JUDD.
Amos stood looking down at the letter and remained silent. She laid
a hand upon his arm and said, “What does it mean, Amos, about not
letting you know who you are? Who are you?”
He looked up with a smile. “I don’t know; I can only guess.”
“Well, what do you guess?”
“I guess that I am the rajah of that province.”
“Really? Why, you don’t mean it! And have you always known it?”
“I don’t know it now, but I have always suspected it.”
“You funny old thing! Why, this is awfully exciting! And you never told
me!”
“Why should I? Your father would only have hastened my departure if
I had tried to pass myself off as a fairy prince; and you would have
laughed in my face.”
“No. I am not so sure. But that was long ago, and to-day I should
believe anything you told me.”
“Well, I believe you would,” and there, at the open window, he put his
arm about her waist and did that unnecessary thing true lovers seem
unable to resist. She jumped away to turn with an anxious face and look
cautiously through the window. But the distant haymakers gave no signs
of having received a shock.
“Could they have seen?” she demanded.
He looked over upon the sunlit field. “No, poor things, they missed it!”
But Molly moved away and seated herself upon a venerable little
horse-hair trunk whose bald spots were numerous and of considerable
extent. Brass-headed nails, now black with age, studded all its edges
and formed at each end the initials of Josiah Judd.
“Tell me, little Amos, what happened to you as a child, that you should
consider yourself a fairy prince.”
The trunk was short for two, but Amos, by a little pushing and
crowding, managed to sit beside her.
“Well, in the first place, I was always too wise and too amiable for an
ordinary mor--”
“No, no! Be serious.”
“Well, almost everything I remember seems to point in that direction.
For instance, there was a separate seat for me on swell occasions; a
sort of throne, I should say, and all the other people stood up. In the
big hall I told you about where the fight took place, I used to sit in
an ivory chair with gold ornaments on it, cocked up on a platform apart
from other people. And that afternoon I was walking across the hall
toward it when the fierce-looking chap with the beard caught me up and
passed me along.”
“Gracious! This is very exciting! Go on.”
“I could give you this sort of stuff by the yard if the conditions were
favorable. The conditions now are unfavorable.”
Their eyes met, but experience had taught her caution. “Go on. There
are no rajahs in America, and you will do as I tell you.”
“That is very true, but we are too far apart.”
“And all the while you are crowding me off this trunk!”
“Yes, but at the same time I am holding you on. Do you see that old
rocking-chair over there with one arm that is beckoning to us?”
There followed a brief, illogical discussion, then finally a gentle
force was used by the stronger party, and a moment later the old chair
groaned beneath a heavier burden than it had borne for thirty years.
After persistent urging the reminiscences were continued. “They always
helped me first at table, no matter how old the other guests were, or
how many or how swell. The bowing and saluting was much more elaborate
toward me than toward anyone else, and in processions they always
stuck me in front. Shortly after my father died there was a grand
ceremony in a sort of courtyard with awnings over us, and I remember
what an everlasting affair it was, and how my uncle and an old general
stood behind my chair, while all the swells and panjandrums came up
and saluted me, then passed along. I should say there might have been
a million. I know I went to sleep and my uncle kept tapping me on the
shoulder to keep me awake.”
“You poor little thing! But you must really have been something
tremendously important, mustn’t you?”
“It seems so.”
“Well, go on.”
“After that there were some big reviews, and I sat on a white pony with
officers in a semicircle behind me, while the troops marched by, and
the generals and colonels all saluted. That was great fun. And I shall
never forget my saddle of crimson leather with the gold trimmings.”
“How romantic! Why, it seems impossible!”
“Do you remember the head-dress in my mother’s miniature?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I find that sort of thing is only worn by royalty.”
There was a pause, during which the old chair rocked gently to and fro,
but noisily, as if in protest against its double burden, while the
voices from the neighboring field came drifting in the window and with
them the occasional tinkling of a cow-bell.
“And to think of your being here in Connecticut, a farmer!”
“Thank heaven I am!” and there followed one of those foolish but
apparently enjoyable scenes which no dignified historian is expected
to describe. Stepping away from the rocking-chair Molly turned with a
frown upon its remaining occupant as she pressed an escaping lock into
position. Through the open window the setting sun sent a bar of light
across the attic that illumined her hair with a golden touch.
“We must find that book,” she exclaimed, with an impatient gesture. “It
will tell us the very things we wish to know. Come, get up, and hunt!”
Slowly rocking, with his head resting against the chair, he regarded
her with admiring eyes, but showed no signs of haste. “There is but one
book I care to study, and that is a poem in pink, about five feet six
in length, with gilt edges at the top.”
She smiled sadly. “No, not a poem, but very ordinary prose, and you
will get precious little wisdom from studying it.”
“On the contrary, every page is a revelation. Why, the binding alone
is a poem! Merely to hold it in one’s lap and look at the cover is a
gentle intoxication.”
Wavering between a smile and a frown, she answered:
“I wonder if all rajahs are such transparent flatterers. But come! Find
the book! It must be downstairs in the library.”
“No, it is not down there. I know every book among them.”
“Where can it be, then? tucked away in some trunk or drawer?”
“Probably.”
“Could it be in that?” and she pointed to an old cherry-wood desk just
behind him. He turned and regarded it.
“As likely there as anywhere. It is the desk he used until he died.”
Molly opened the slanting top and found an array of pigeonholes filled
with old papers. There were some very small drawers, all of which she
opened, but they contained no book, so she closed the top and opened
the long upper drawer. It was almost empty, the only contents being a
few envelopes of seeds, some tools, scattered cards, and a couple of
marbles that ran about as the drawer was opened.
“I rather think you know this place,” and she lifted up a bladeless
jackknife. “Only a boy could treat a knife in such a way.”
“Yes, I remember all those things. That wooden pistol has killed lots
of Indians.”
The second drawer held among other things a camel’s-hair shawl, a
bed-cover, a pair of woman’s slippers, a huge shell-comb elaborately
carved, some black mits, and a package of letters; almost everything
except a book. The third drawer and the fourth were equally
disappointing. The lowest drawer was deeper and heavier, and it stuck.
Amos sprang to help her, and together they pulled it open, then sat
down upon the floor in front of it. The character of its contents was
much like the others, but Molly delved thoroughly among its treasures
and she received her reward. As her hand was exploring a farther corner
she looked up into his face with a look of excitement.
“Here is a book! It must be the one!” and a little volume was drawn
forth.
“‘The Heroes of India!’ aren’t we in luck!”
It was a handsome little book, with a blue morocco cover and gilt
edges, published in Calcutta. Turning over the leaves with eager
fingers she came to a bookmark opposite a portrait, a steel engraving,
showing the head and shoulders of a bejewelled prince.
“Why, it might be you! It is exactly like you! Look!” and she held it
before him.
“So it is, but perhaps they all are. Let’s hear about him if you are
sure he is our man.”
“Oh, I am sure of it! He is the image of you and the others are not;”
and she began to read.
[Illustration: “He is the image of you”]
“Of all the royal families in India, none claim an existence more
remote than that of the Maharaja Sirdar Oumra Sing. According to
accepted history and tradition, this princely house not only dates
back to the earliest centuries of Eastern history, but owes its origin
to the immortal Vishn’u himself. It is a romantic story, in fact the
survival of an ancient fable, poetic and supernatural, but, curiously
enough, seems to be substantiated by the extraordinary attributes of a
recent ruler. The Rajah Sirdar Sing, whose portrait heads this
article, was perhaps the most popular hero of Northern India, and
unless we eject the evidence of all his contemporaries, was possessed
of powers that brought him the most startling victories both in peace
and war, and over adversaries that were considered invincible. His
kingdom, during his reign of thirty years, was nearly doubled in
territory and enormously increased in wealth. In his own country
to-day there are none who question his prophetic powers: men of
science and of letters, historians, high priests, lawyers, soldiers,
all firmly believe in his immortal gifts. To us Europeans, however,
these tales are more difficult of acceptance.
“In the very centre of Sirdar Sing’s forehead the reader may have
observed a faint spot scarcely half an inch in diameter, and this
appeared, we are told, like a scar or a burn, of a lighter color than
the skin and, except under certain conditions, was barely noticeable.
But the tradition runs that when exercising his prophetic faculty this
little spot increased in brilliancy and almost glowed, as if of
flame.”
“And so does yours!” and she regarded him with a look of awe.
“Go ahead,” he said, looking down at the book. “Let us hear the rest.”
“The legend is this:
“When Vishn’u in his Kr’ishn’a-Avatâra, or eighth incarnation, was
hard-pressed in his war against the Kurus, he received great
assistance from Arjuna, a Pân’d’u prince who, after a four days’
battle, and at great risk to himself, delivered to his immortal ally
the sacred city of Dwârakâ. For this service and in token of his
undying gratitude, Vishn’u laid his finger upon the forehead of Arjuna
and endowed him with a knowledge of future events, also promising that
once in a hundred years a descendant should possess this priceless
gift. Although we may not accept this romantic tale, there is no doubt
whatever that Sirdar Sing, the original of our portrait, was guided by
a knowledge of the future, either earthly or divine, which neither
scientists nor historians have yet explained. The next in order to
inherit this extraordinary faculty, if there is truth in the legend,
will be the son of the present rajah, whose nuptials have just been
celebrated with such lavish and magnificent festivities.”
She paused for a moment, then with trembling fingers turned back to
the title-page. The book was printed twenty-eight years ago, the year
before Amos was born.
For a long time they sat on the floor talking; she asking many
questions and he answering, until the listening objects in the
attic began to lose their outline and become a part of the gloom.
The sunlight along the rafters dwindled to a narrow strip, then
disappeared; and the voices of the haymakers were long since gone when
Amos and Molly finally climbed to their feet and descended the stairs.
IX
September brought other guests, and with their arrival Amos Judd and
Molly Cabot found the easy, irresponsible routine of their happy summer
again disturbed. To his own fierce regret Amos could invent no decent
pretext for escaping a visit he had promised early in the summer, and
a more unwilling victim never resigned himself to a week of pleasure.
To the girl he was to leave behind him, he bewailed the unreasonable
cruelty of his friends. “This leaving you, Soul of my Soul, is worse
than death. I shall not eat while I am gone, and nights I shall sit up
and curse.”
But at the end of a week he returned, promptly on the minute. His
moments of depression, however, seemed rather to increase than
diminish, and, although carefully repressed, were visible to a pair of
watchful eyes. Upon his face when in repose there had always been a
melancholy look, which now seemed deepening as from an inward sorrow,
too strong to conquer. This was betrayed occasionally by a careless
speech, but to her questioning he always returned a cheerful answer.
In spite of these heroic efforts to maintain a joyful front, Molly was
not deceived, and it was evident, even to Mr. Cabot, that the young man
was either ill in body or the victim of a mental disturbance that might
be disastrous in its results. Of this he was destined to have a closer
knowledge than his daughter. It came about one Sunday morning, when the
two men had climbed a neighboring hill for a view which Mr. Cabot had
postponed from week to week since early June. This was his last Sunday
in Daleford and his final opportunity.
The view was well worth the climb. The day itself, such a day as comes
oftenest in September, when the clear air is tempered to the exact
degree for human comfort by the rays of a summer sun, was one in which
the most indifferent view could shine without an effort. Below them,
at the foot of the hill, lay the village of Daleford with its single
street. Except the white spires of the churches, little of it could be
seen, however, beneath the four rows of overhanging elms. Off to their
left, a mile or two away, the broad Connecticut, through its valley of
elms, flowed serenely to the sea; and beyond, the changing hills took
on every color from the deepest purple to a golden yellow. A green
valley on their right wandered off among the woods and hills, and in
it the stately avenue of maples they both knew so well. A silence so
absolute and so far-reaching rested upon the scene that, after a word
or two of praise, the two men, from a common impulse, remained without
speaking. As thus they sat under the gentle influence of a spell which
neither cared to break, the notes of an organ came floating upward
from the trees below them, and mingled with the voices of a choir. Mr.
Cabot’s thoughts turned at once to the friend at his side, whom he felt
must experience a yet deeper impression from these familiar scenes of
his childhood. Turning to express this thought, he was so struck by the
look upon Amos’s face, an expression of such despairing melancholy,
that he stopped in the middle of his sentence. While well aware that
these tragic eyes were always most pathetic objects in repose, he had
never seen upon a human face a clearer token of a hopeless grief.
“What is it, my boy?” he asked, laying a hand upon the knee beside him.
“Tell me. I may be able to help you.”
There was a slight hesitation and a long breath before the answer came.
“I am ashamed to tell you, Mr. Cabot. I value your good opinion so very
much that it comes hard to let you know what a weak and cowardly thing
I have been, and am.”
“Cowardly--that I do not believe. You may be weak; all of us are that;
in fact, it seems to be the distinguishing attribute of the human
family. But out with it, whatever it is. You can trust me.”
“Oh, I know that, sir! If you were only less of a man and more like
myself, it would be easier to do it. But I will tell you the whole
story. By the fourth of November I shall not be alive, and I have known
it for a year.”
Mr. Cabot turned in surprise. “Why do you think that?”
But Amos went on without heeding the question.
“I knew it when I asked Molly to be my wife; and all the time that she
has gone on loving me more and more, I have known it, and done all
I could to make things worse. And now, as the time approaches and I
realize that in a few weeks she will be a broken-hearted woman--for
I have learned what her affection is and how much I am to her--now I
begin to see what I have done. God knows it is hard enough to die and
leave her, but to die only to have played a practical joke on the girl
for whom I would joyfully give a thousand lives if I had them, is too
much.”
He arose, and standing before her father, made a slight gesture as of
surrender and resignation. The older man looked away toward the distant
river, but said nothing.
“Listen, sir, and try to believe me.” Mr. Cabot raised his glance
to the dark face and saw truth and an open heart in the eyes fixed
solemnly upon his own; and he recognized a being transformed by a
passion immeasurably stronger than himself.
“When I found she loved me I could think of nothing else. Why should I
not be happy for the short time I had to live? Her love was more to me
than any earthly thing, than any possible hereafter. Better one summer
with her than to live forever and not have known her. Oh! I thought
of her side of it, often and often; many a night I have done nothing
else, but I could no more give her up than I could lift this hill.”
He paused, drew a long breath, as if at the hopelessness of words to
convey his meaning, then added, very calmly:
“Now I am soberer, as the end approaches, and I love her more than
ever: but I will do whatever you say; anything that will make her
happier. No sacrifice can be too great, and I promise you I will make
it. I have often wished the bull had killed me that day, then I should
have her love and respect forever; and yours too, perhaps.”
“You have both now, Amos. But tell me why you think you are to die by
November fourth?”
Amos resumed his seat upon the rock and answered: “Because I have seen
myself lying dead on that day.”
“I have sometimes wondered,” said Mr. Cabot, “if that temptation would
not prove too strong for you.”
“No, sir, it was not too strong for me under ordinary circumstances,
but it happened when I was not myself, when I came out of that fever
last October, and as I lay in bed, weak and half-conscious, I felt sure
my day had come. I thought the doctor was not telling me the truth, so,
by looking ahead for myself, I learned more than I cared to know, and
saw myself lying on a sofa in a strange room, a place I had never been
into; a public building, I should think.”
“But why do you think it is to be the fourth of November, and this
year?”
“Because I looked about and saw near a window a little day calendar,
and that was the date it bore. Then on a table lay a daily paper of
the day before, and two magazines of the same month, all of this year.”
“But is it not possible the room is unoccupied and that these things
have been lying there indefinitely?”
Amos shook his head. “No, sir, it is a room that is lived in. There are
other papers lying about: books, and a letter on the desk waiting to be
mailed. And in the fireplace the embers are still glowing.”
Mr. Cabot looked with the profoundest sympathy toward his friend, who
was scaling bits of moss from the rock beside him; then he turned
again to the view and its tranquil beauty seemed a mockery. In the
village below them he could see the congregation pouring out from a
little white church like ants from a loaf of sugar. Mr. Cabot was not a
religious man, and at present there was nothing in his heart that could
be mistaken for resignation. His spirit was in revolt, his pugnacity
aroused, and with this quality he was freely endowed. Rising to his
feet he stood for a moment in silence, with folded arms, frowning upon
the distant hills.
“Amos,” he said, finally, “in spite of bygone defeats I am inclined
to resist this prophecy of yours. You were not absolutely master of
your own mind at the time, and under such conditions nothing would be
easier than to confuse your own imagining with a vision of another
character. At least it is not impossible, and if by good luck you
did happen to confound one with the other we are having our panic
for nothing. Moreover, even if this vision is correct, it need not
necessarily signify an undeviating fulfilment in every detail. It may
indicate the result to be expected in the natural order of events; that
is, if things are allowed to take their course without obstruction or
intervening influences. But it is difficult for me to believe this
faculty is to continue infallible through all your mental and physical
developments and fluctuations of faith, and never, under any possible
conditions, vary a hair’s-breadth from the truth. It is a law of nature
that a disused faculty shall weaken and lose its power, and for years
you have done your best to repress and forget it.”
“Yes, sir, but whenever employed it has been correct.”
“That may be, and its day of failure still remain a probability. In
this present case the prophecy, aside from its uncertain origin, is one
whose fulfilment is more easy to avert than some of the others. You say
the room in which you saw yourself is one you are unfamiliar with, and
consequently is not in Daleford.”
“Oh, no! There is nothing like it in this vicinity.”
“Well, suppose you were to remain in Daleford during the critical
period with two men, nominally visitors at your house, to watch you
day and night and see that you do not escape? Or, better still, let me
send you to an institution in which I am a director, where you will
be confined as a dangerous patient, and where escape, even if you
attempted it, would be as hopeless as from a prison.”
Amos doubted the success of any attempt at foiling fate, or, in other
words, giving the lie to a revelation once received, but he was willing
to do whatever his friend desired. As they walked home they discussed
the plan in detail and decided to act upon it; also to take every
precaution that Molly should be kept in ignorance.
The first week in October the house at the north end of the avenue
was empty and the Cabots were in New York. As the end of the month
approached a little tale was invented to explain the cessation for
a time of Amos’s visits, and early one afternoon the two men got
into a cab and were driven to the outskirts of the city. They
entered the grounds of a well-known institution, were received by the
superintendent and one or two other officials, then, at the request of
the elder visitor, were shown over the entire building and into every
room of any size or importance. When this inspection was over Mr. Cabot
took his companion aside and asked if he had seen the room they sought.
Amos shook his head and replied that no such room could be within the
grounds. A few minutes later the young man was shown to a chamber where
his trunk had preceded him. The two friends were alone for a moment,
and as they separated Amos gave the hand in his own a final pressure,
saying: “Don’t think I am weakening, Mr. Cabot, but I cannot help
feeling that I have seen Molly for the last time. And if you and I
never meet again, you may be sure my last thoughts were with you both.”
In a cheerful tone the lawyer answered: “I shall listen to no such
sentiments. If your prophecy is correct you are to be lying in a room
outside these grounds on November fourth. No such prophecy can be
carried out. And if the prophecy is incorrect we shall meet for several
years yet. So good-by, my boy. I shall be here the third.”
During ten days Amos was to remain under the strictest watch, to be
guarded by two men at night and by two others in the day-time, and to
be permitted under no conditions to leave that wing of the building. By
the subordinate in charge and by the four guardians he was believed to
be the victim of a suicidal mania. As the fourth of November approached
Mr. Cabot’s thoughts were less upon his business than with his
imprisoned friend. He remembered with what inexorable force he himself
had been held to the fulfilment of a prediction. He had felt the hand
of an unswerving fate; and he had not forgotten.
But the fourth of November came and went with no serious results,
and when the five succeeding days had safely passed he experienced a
relief which he was very careful to conceal. With friendly hypocrisy
he assumed a perfect confidence in the result of their course, and he
was glad to see that Amos himself began to realize that anything like a
literal fulfilment of his vision was now improbable.
One week later, the last day of durance, the prisoner and Mr. Cabot
had an interview with Dr. Chapin in the latter’s private office. Dr.
Chapin, the physician in charge, an expert of distinction in mental
disorders, was a man about sixty years of age, short, slight, and pale,
with small eyes, a very large nose, and a narrow, clean-shaven face.
His physical peculiarities were emphasized by a complete indifference
as to the shape or quality of his raiment; his coat was a consummate
misfit, and his trousers were baggy at the knees. Even the spectacles,
which also fitted badly, were never parallel with his eyes and
constantly required an upward shove along his nose. But a professional
intercourse with this gentleman led to a conviction that his mental
outfit bore no relation to his apparel. Mr. Cabot had known him for
years, and Amos felt at once that he was in the presence of a man of
unusual insight. Dr. Chapin spoke calmly and without pretension, but as
one careful of his speech and who knew his facts.
“That you should have made that visit against your will,” he said to
Mr. Cabot in answering a question, “is not difficult to explain as Mr.
Judd unconsciously brought to bear upon your movements a force to which
he himself has repeatedly yielded. If he happens to remember, I think
he will find that his thoughts were with you at that time,” and he
smiled pleasantly on Amos.
“Yes, sir, but only as a matter of interest in the novel experience I
knew Mr. Cabot was going through.”
“Certainly, but if you had forgotten the visit and if you believed at
that moment that he was to go in another direction, Mr. Cabot would
have followed the other thought with equal obedience. This unconscious
control of one intelligence over another is well established and
within certain limits can be explained, but in these affairs science
is compelled to accept a barrier beyond which we can only speculate.
In this case the unusual and the most interesting feature is the
unvarying accuracy of your visions. You have inherited something from
your Eastern ancestors to which a hypothesis can be adjusted, but
which is in fact beyond a scientific explanation. I should not be at
all surprised to find somewhere in the city the room in which you saw
yourself lying; and it is more than probable that, if unrestrained, you
would have discovered it and fulfilled your prophecy, unconsciously
obedient to that irresistible force. A blow, a fall, a stroke of
apoplexy or heart disease; the sudden yielding of your weakest part
under a nervous pressure, could easily bring about the completion of
your picture. Some of the authenticated reports of corresponding cases
are almost incredible. But before you are forty, Mr. Judd, you will
find in these visions a gradual diminution of accuracy and also, as in
this case, that their fulfilment is by no means imperative.”
For Amos there was immense relief in hearing this, especially from such
a source, and he left the building with a lighter heart than he had
known for months. Now that the danger was over, he wished the wedding
to take place at once, but Molly would consent to no undignified
haste. He found, however, an unexpected and influential ally in her
grandmother Jouvenal, just arrived from her home in Maryland for a
month’s visit, and who insisted upon the wedding taking place while
she was with them. Mrs. Jouvenal was a slender person of sprightly
manners, whose long life had been sweetly tempered by an exaggerated
estimate of the importance of her own family; but in other matters she
was reasonable and clear-headed, endowed with quick perceptions, a
ready wit, and one of those youthful spirits that never grow old. She
was interested in all that went on about her, was never bored and never
dull. It was of course a little disappointing that a girl with such an
ancestry as Molly’s, on her mother’s side, should give herself to an
unknown Judd from an obscure New England village; but her fondness for
Amos soon consoled her for the mésalliance. Molly had a strong desire
to acquaint her grandmother with the ancestral facts of the case, but
Amos refused to give his consent. Those discoveries in the attic he
insisted they must keep to themselves, at least while he was alive.
“When I am transplanted I shall be beyond the reach of terrestrial
snobs, and you can do as you please.”
The first week in December Mrs. Jouvenal was to visit her son in
Boston. “And really, my child,” she said to Molly, “it is the last
wedding in the family I shall be alive to see, and with such an exotic
specimen as you have selected, I shall not be sure of a Christian
ceremony unless I see it myself.”
As her father remained neutral Molly finally yielded, and there was a
wedding the first Wednesday in December.
X
“Do I look tired and dragged out?” asked the bride of an hour as they
drove to the train.
“You look a little tired, a little flushed, a little ashamed, and
tremendously interesting. But you may hold my hand.”
“I _am_ ashamed,” and she pushed the upturned hand from her lap and
looked out the window.
“But, Light of my Soul, you give us away by those imbecile blushes.
You might just as well thrust your head out of the carriage and cry,
‘Behold the bride and groom!’”
She smiled and leaned back, but still looked out. “That’s the horrid
feature of a honeymoon. Everybody knows it and everybody looks at you.
Is it too late to go back and undo it?”
“What a bloodcurdling thought!”
“And it shouldn’t rain on our wedding-day, little Amos.”
“Of course it rains. These are the tears of countless lovers who lived
before the days of Molly Cabot.”
But they left the rain behind them, and farther South, away down in
Carolina, they found plenty of sunshine, with green grass and flowers
and piny woods.
One of their first diversions on reaching this southern country was to
go out with a driver and a pair of horses, but the harvest of pleasure
was insufficient. “The conversation of a honeymoon,” observed the
bridegroom, “is too exalted for other ears. If we talk as the spirit
moves us, the coachman, unless in love himself, may collapse from
nausea: so let us be merciful and drive ourselves.”
Thereupon he secured a buggy with an old gray horse, and from this
combination their felicity was much increased. The old horse they
called Browser, because of the only thing he would do without being
urged; and it required but a single drive to develop his good points,
which happened to be the very qualities required. He was dreamy,
inattentive, never hasty, and not easily disgusted. His influence
was distinctly restful, and his capacity for ignoring a foolish
conversation phenomenal. It was decided by his present associates that
these virtues were either hereditary, or had been developed to the
highest perfection by a long and tender experience.
“It’s my opinion,” remarked the groom, “that being so extensively used
as a nuptial horse has resulted in his regarding honeymoon foolishness
as the usual form of conversation. He probably thinks they talk that
way in the courts and on the Stock Exchange.”
But accustomed as Browser was to cloying repetitions, there were
times when his endurance was sorely tried. On one occasion the bride
alighted from the buggy, and going a little ahead, gathered wild
flowers by the roadside; and as she returned, Amos, who was giving
Browser a handful of grass, raised his hat in a ceremonious manner and
advanced toward her with extended hand, exclaiming:
“Why, Miss Cabot! How do you do? I had no idea you were here. My name
is Judd.”
“I beg your pardon,” she replied, drawing stiffly back, “your name is
not Judd, and you don’t know what it is. I can never marry a man who--”
“Wait till you are asked,” he interrupted, then threw both arms about
her, and so they stood for a moment, she making no effort to escape.
Browser blushed and turned away.
In secluded corners of the vast and ramifying hotel piazza they spent
long evenings and watched the moon, the other people, and the distant
ocean, and talked, and talked, and talked. Of this talk no serious pen
could write. The very ink would laugh or turn to sugar and run away in
shame. And when these conversations were finished, two well-dressed and
seemingly intelligent people would arise, and with brazen faces enter
the grand rotunda of the hotel, where other guests would see them enter
the elevator, float heavenward and disappear from human eyes. But the
vexatious color still came and went in Molly’s face, and seemed ever
ready to give the lie to the gentle dignity and composure which rarely
deserted her. Strolling through the gardens of the hotel one afternoon,
they met a stately matron with her two daughters, whom Molly knew, and
as they separated after the usual conversation, Amos jeered at the
bride, saying: “Really, old Girl, it is mortifying the way you blush
upon this trip. I don’t blame the blushes for selecting such a face,
but you only give yourself away. It is merely another manner of saying
‘I know I am guilty, and just see how ashamed I am!’”
“Oh, don’t talk about it! It’s hideous, but I can’t help it. Are all
brides such fools?”
“I don’t know, I never travelled with one before, but I shall leave
you behind if you keep it up. Try and think you have been married for
twenty years. Do you suppose the daisies giggle and the sun winks
at the other planets every time we look out the window? Or that it
is because Molly and Amos are spliced that the carnations blush and
the violets hide their faces? But I will say this for you, Spirit
of Old-fashioned Roses, that all this blushing and unblushing is
tremendously becoming.”
“Thank you; but I must paint or wear a veil, or only come out at night.
There is no other way.”
The days went by, all much alike, in the sunny atmosphere of an
overwhelming content. In the woods they found a distant spot which
laid no claim to publicity, and here upon the pine carpet with the
drowsy rustling of the leaves above, they passed many hours in a serene
indifference to the flight of time. Sometimes they brought a book, not
a page of which was ever read, but no deceit was necessary, as the only
witnesses were occasional birds and squirrels whose ideas of decorum
were primitive and none too strict. One bird, who seemed to wear a
dress-suit with an orange shirt-front, considered his household in
danger and acquired an insolent habit of perching himself upon a bough
within a dozen feet, and doing his best to scare them off. But as they
reappeared day after day and respected his rights his anger gradually
diminished, until at last he varied his vituperations by a peculiar
song, both joyous and triumphant, which amused the interlopers.
“I should like to know what his little feelings really are,” said the
bride, as with a pine-needle she annoyed the sensitive portions of
the head reposing in her lap. The upturned eyes lingered for a moment
upon the patch of blue between the pine-tops, then with a look of mild
surprise turned lazily to her own.
“Do you really mean to confess, Gentle Roses, that you don’t know what
he says?”
As this speech was uttered the instrument of torture was cleverly
inserted between the parted lips. “No; and perhaps I don’t care to.”
“But listen. There! Don’t you get it? He knows we are on a honeymoon
and keeps repeating, in that victorious way:
“_Amos has got her!
Amos has got her!_”
The bride laughed; her face bent over to the one beneath, but the bird
upon the bough was not disgusted. He stood his ground and sang his song
as if Love and Folly were things to be respected.
When the day of departure came they turned their backs with sorrow upon
a resting-place whose cosey corners they knew so well and whose groves
no grateful lovers could forget. These tender memories were a soothing
recompense for descending to an earthly life. As the train moved away
she whispered, “Good-by, honeymoon!”
“Don’t say that!” exclaimed Amos. “Let us hold on to it forever. I
shall die a lover and I expect the same of you.”
The promise to Grandmother Jouvenal was not forgotten, and when they
left the train at a little station in Maryland a carriage was awaiting
them. As they entered the avenue and came in sight of the old house,
Molly regarded her companion with eager eyes to be sure that he was
properly impressed.
“It’s fine!” he exclaimed. “An ideal mansion of the period. And you say
it is over two hundred years old?”
“Yes, the main house is, but just wait till you see the inside! It’s
crammed full of colonial furniture and family portraits.”
“What on earth is the circular part at the end of that wing? Is it a
circus or only a gymnasium for your grandmother?”
Molly laughed. “That’s the library. Grandpa’s father was an astronomer
and started to build an observatory, but died when it was half-way up;
so grandpa, who was not an astronomer, finished it as a library. But it
makes a beautiful room.”
From her grandmother they received a cordial welcome. It was dark when
they arrived, and as Mrs. Jouvenal had accepted for them an invitation
to a dance that evening at the house of a neighbor, whose daughters
were old playmates of Molly’s, there was little time for seeing the
house. But Molly did not like to wait and proposed a hasty tour,
wishing to show Amos at once the old portraits and furniture and the
treasures of family silver. To this her grandmother objected. “Do wait
till to-morrow, child. Your Amos can sleep without it, and besides
the rooms are not in order yet. Remember I only came back myself this
morning, after a two months’ absence.”
And so that pleasure was delayed. They arrived early at the ball, and
as she joined him at the head of the stairs he glanced at the jewels in
her hair and asked, after a moment’s hesitation, if she would do him a
little favor.
“Of course I will. Only name it, dusky Rajah,” and looking up at him
with admiring eyes she smiled as she remembered for the hundredth time
how seriously he was annoyed by any compliment upon his appearance.
“Are you very much attached to that crescent in your hair?”
“If I were it should make no difference. You don’t like it, and that’s
enough,” and she raised her hand to remove the ornament. But he
interrupted the motion. “Don’t take it off now, for you have nothing
to replace it; but that is the smallest part of the request. The real
favor is that you shall not ask me why I do it.”
“That is asking a good deal, but I consent. And now tell me, how do I
look? There is a wretched light in there.”
“You look like what you are, the joy of to-day and the rainbow of a
happy morrow.”
“No, be serious. Is my hair in every direction?”
He regarded her gravely and with care. “Your hair is just right, and
for general effect you are far and away the prettiest, the daintiest,
the most highbred-looking girl within a thousand miles of this or of
any other spot; and if we were alone and unobserved, I should gather
you in as--” Voices close at hand caused them to turn and descend the
stairs with the solemnity of an ancient couple who find dignity a
restful substitute for the frivolities of youth. Once in the ball-room,
with the wild Hungarian music at their heels, there was little repose
for two such dancers. When the first notes of the waltz that Molly
loved above all others, came floating through the hall, Amos cut in
before a youth who was hastening toward the bride and swung her out
across the floor. As they glided away with the music that was stirring
in her heart old memories of what seemed a previous existence, she
heard at her ear “Do you remember when first we waltzed? How you did
snub me! But life began that night.”
Instead of returning at eleven o’clock, they returned at two in the
morning. By Amos’s request it had been arranged that no servant should
sit up for them, but when they entered the hall and found it dark Molly
expressed surprise that not a single light should have been left
burning. They easily found the matches, however, and lighted a candle.
Amos had just learned from the coachman that a letter ready at six in
the morning would go by an early train, so Molly showed him a little
desk of her grandmother’s in the dining-room, and then left him to
his writing. Passing through the hall toward the stairs she happened
to look into a sitting-room, and beyond it, through a corridor, saw a
portion of the big library where the moonlight fell upon a marble bust.
She paused, then returning to the door of the dining-room, asked,
“How long shall you be at that letter, little prince?”
“Not five minutes.”
“Then come into the library and see it in the moonlight. You will find
a girl there who is interested in you.”
“All right. That girl will not wait long.”
Although familiar with the old library, Molly was impressed anew by
its stately proportions as she entered from the little corridor. The
spacious room was now flooded by the moonlight that streamed through
the high windows at the farther end and brought out, in ghostly relief,
the white Ionic columns against the encircling wall. Between them, in
varying shapes and sizes, hung the family portraits, and in front of
every column stood a pedestal with its marble bust. At the present
moment the pallid face of Dante caught the moonbeams, and seemed to
follow her with solemn eyes. As she swept with a rustle of silk along
the huge, round, crimson carpet, she remembered how deeply she had been
impressed in former years by the knowledge that it was made in England
expressly for this room. The perfect stillness was broken only by
herself as she moved out into the wide circle of mysterious faces.
At her right, between two of the columns, in a lofty mirror that
filled the space from floor to cornice, marched her own reflection.
She stopped, and regarded it. With her white dress and the moonlight
upon her head and shoulders, it was a striking figure and recalled the
night, a year ago, when she stood at the window of her chamber, and
tried in vain to discover why such a vision should have startled Mr.
Amos Judd. Mr. Amos Judd! How she hated him that night! Hated him! the
dear, lovely, old, perfect Amos! She smiled, and beat time with a foot,
humming a fragment of that bewitching waltz. And the crescent that he
had asked her not to wear again, flashed back at her from the mirror.
She would remove it now, upon the instant, and never more, not even
to-night, should the dear boy be troubled by it. As her fingers touched
the jewels she saw something in the mirror that sent the blood from her
heart, and caused the hand to drop convulsively to her breast. Behind
her, across the room, in the shadow of a pedestal, were glistening two
other things that moved like a pair of human eyes. With an involuntary
cry she wheeled about, and before she could turn again at a sudden
movement behind her, an arm was thrown about her waist, strong fingers
clutched her throat and in her ear came a muttered warning: “Be quiet,
lady, or it’s up with yer!”
But the cry had reached Amos in the distant dining-room, and she heard
his footsteps hurrying across the hall. The fingers tightened at her
throat; she was pushed with violence into the shadow of the nearest
column, and held there. Gasping, strangling, she seized instinctively
with both hands the wrist that was squeezing the life from her body,
but her feeble fingers against such a strength were as nothing.
Pressing close upon her she saw the dim outline of a cap upon the back
of a head, a big neck, and a heavy chin. With bursting throbs the
blood beat through her head and eyes, and she would have sunk to the
floor but for the hands that held her with an iron force.
In this torture of suffocation came a blur, but through it she saw Amos
spring into the room, then stop for a second as if to find his bearings.
“Moll,” he said, in a half-whisper.
There was no answer. Fainting, powerless even to make an effort, she
saw the man before her raise a revolver with his other hand, and take
deliberate aim at the broad, white shirt-front, an easy target in the
surrounding gloom. In an agony of despair she made a frenzied effort,
struck up the weapon as the shot was fired, and sent the bullet high
above its mark, through the waistcoat of a colonial governor.
The next instant the fingers were torn from her throat, and as she sank
half-fainting to her knees, the two men in a savage tussle swayed out
into the room, then back with such force against a pedestal that it
tottered, and with its heavy bust came crashing to the floor.
The struggling figures also fell. The burglar was beneath, and as he
landed, his weapon was knocked from his hand. With a blow and a sudden
twist Amos wrenched away, picked up the pistol, turned upon his swiftly
rising foe, and sent a bullet through his skull. Without a sound the
man sank back again to the floor.
“Are you hurt, Moll?” was the first question as Amos took a step toward
the white, crouching figure. Her bare arm shot out into the moonlight
and a finger pointed across the library. “There’s another! look out!”
The second man, in his stocking feet like his comrade, had crept from
his hiding place, and as she pointed he swung up his pistol and pulled
the trigger. But Amos was quicker. Shots in rapid succession echoed
through the house, two, three, perhaps half a dozen, she never knew;
but she saw to her joy, that Amos at the end of it all was still
standing, while the burglar, with a smothered malediction, tumbled
heavily into an easy chair behind him, slid out of it to his knees, and
pitched forward on his face. There was a convulsive twitching of the
legs, and all was still again. Beneath him lay a bag into which, a few
moments before, had been stuffed the ancestral silver.
As she climbed painfully to her feet, grasping with tremulous fingers
a chair at her side, she saw Amos turn about, and with wavering steps,
approach the column between the windows where, in the full light of the
moon, hung a little calendar, and on it
_Nov.
4_
He uttered no sound, but his head drooped and he staggered back.
Reeling against a low divan he fell his length upon it, and lay with
upturned face, motionless as the two men upon the floor.
[Illustration: “The end has come, my Moll”]
Molly hastened to his side and bent over him with an anxious question.
In the full rays of the moon her head and neck with the white dress
were almost luminous against the dim recesses of the room behind; and
his eyes rested with a dazed, half-frightened look on the diamond
crescent, then fell to her face, and up again to the jewels in her
hair. With an effort he laid a hand upon her shoulder and answered,
with a feeble smile, “The end has come, my Moll.”
“No, no. Don’t say that! I’ll send for the doctor and have him here at
once!”
But the hand restrained her. “It’s of no use. The ball went here,
through the chest.”
“But, darling, your life may depend upon it! You don’t know.”
“Yes--I do know. My own death, with you bending over me in the
moonlight--in this room--I saw before we ever met. The same vision
again--when you stood before me in the conservatory, was what--startled
me--that night, a year ago.”
He spoke with difficulty, in a failing tone. There followed broken
words; from the face against his own tears fell upon his cheek, and she
murmured, “Take me with you, Amos.”
“No--not that;” then slowly, in a voice growing fainter with each word,
“but there is no Heaven without you, Spirit--of Old-fashioned--Roses.”
A gentle pressure from the fingers that held her own, and in the
moonlight lay a peaceful face where a smile still lingered on the lips.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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