by
INGRAHAM LOVELL
4 9
MARGARITA'S SOUL
THEY CROONED TOGETHER THERE, THE WOMAN, THE CHILD AND THE BIRDS
SOUL
THE ROMANTIC RECOLLECTIONS
OF A MAN OF FIFTY
BY
INGRAHAM LOVELL
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. SCOTT WILLIAMS
AND WHISTLER BUTTERFLY DECORATIONS
NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
M CM I X
I ^O^
Copyright, 1909
By THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANY
Copyright, iqoq
BY JOHN LANS COMPANY
PUBLISHERS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK
CONTENTS
PART I
IN WHICH You SEE A SECRET SPRING
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Fate Walks Broadway ------n
II. Fate Goes A-fishing ------17
III. As the Twigs Were Bent ------ 28
IV. Fate Reels In -------- 37
PART II
IN WHICH THE SPRING FLOWS IN A LITTLE STREAM
V. Roger Finds the Island ------ 47
VI. Fate Casts Her Die ------- 59
VII. I Ride Knight Errant 66
VIII. The Mists of Eden 74.
PART III
IN WHICH THE STREAM JOINS WITH OTHERS
AND PLUNGES DOWN A CLIFF
IX. Margarita Meets the Enemy and He is Hers - - 81
X. Fate Spreads an Island Feast ----- 87
XL Our Parson Proves Capable ----- 94
XII. I Leave Eden 105
PART IV
IN WHICH THE STREAM WINDS THROUGH A
SULLEN MARSH AND BECOMES A BROOK
XIII. Straws that Showed the Wind - - - - in
XIV. The Island Cottage 118
XV. Fate Plays Me in the Shallows - 130
XVI. Margarita Comes to Town ----- 14.1
[5]
2136716
CONTENTS
PART V
IN WHICH THE BROOK BECOMES A RIVER AND
FLOWS BY GREAT CITIES
CHAPTER PAGE
XVII. Our Pearl Bathes in Seine Water - 149
XVIII. My Pearl of Too Great Price - - - - 157
XIX. Fate Lands Me on the Rocks - - - - 164
PART VI
IN WHICH You ARE SHOWN THE RIVER'S VERY
SOURCES, FAR UNDERGROUND
XX. A Garden Glimpse of Eden - - - - 181
XXI. Hester Prynne's Secret - - - - - 186
XXII. Fate Laughs and Baits Her Hook - - - 196
PART VII
IN WHICH THE RIVER LEAPS A SUDDEN CLIFF
AND BECOMES A CATARACT
XXIII. Fate Spreads Her Net 213
XXIV. Our Second Summer in Eden - - - - 221
XXV. The Island Tomb 231
XXVI. A Handful of Memories ----- 235
PART VIII
IN WHICH THE RIVER RUSHES INTO PERILOUS
RAPIDS
XXVII. We Bring Our Pearl to Market - - - 247
XXVIII. Arabian Nights in England - 257
XXIX. Fate Grips Her Landing Net - 273
PART IX
IN WHICH THE RIVER FINDS THE SEA
XXX. A Terror in the Snow - 279
XXXI. Fate Empties Her Creel 289
XXXII. The Sunset End 294
[6]
ILLUSTRATIONS
They Crooned Together There, the Woman, the Child
and the Birds ------- Frontispiece
PAGE
Scooped Hundreds Perhaps Thousands Out of a Chest
to Flee at Dawn --------43
The Tall, Gaunt, Silent Woman . . . Striding Through
the Pastures --------- 49
I Seem to See ... a Beautiful Woman in a Blue Dress
Sitting Under a Fruit Tree - - - - - -105
Persons Born in That Month of That Year Will Never
Be Otherwise Than Far Out of the Ordinary - - 132
Margarita Stopped and Stared at It Several Minutes - 144
For Hours and Hours I Walked, Muttering and Cursing - 163
Her Weekly Check, Plus a Draft for a Hundred Pounds - 174
She Spins Her Hemp and Weaves Osiers into Baskets
and Changes Them for Goats' Hams - - - - 204
The Gloomy, Faded Glories of the Musty Palace - - 208
Ah, Faithful Caliban, What Hours of Terrible Tuition
Made Thy Task Clear to Thee! ----- 233
He Sketched Her in Charcoal, Dressed (He Would Have
It) in Black --------- 240
[7]
ILLUSTRATIONS
It Was After the Garden Love-Scene That She Won
Her Recalls --------- 250
They Are Still as Death, Tranced in Those Liquid Bell-
Tones ---------- 270
I Leaned Over the Bank and Cried That I Was There,
But She Never Stopped It Was Terrible - - 281
It Is a Favourite Claim of Ours Who Are Bidden to That
Home That It Is an Enchanted Isle - 296
[8]
PART ONE
IN WHICH YOU SEE A SECRET SPRING
O I have seen a fair mermaid,
That sang beside a lonely sea,
And now her long black hair she'll braid,
And be my own good wife to me.
O woe's the day you saw the maid,
And woe's the song she sang the sea,
In hell her long black hair she'll braid,
For ne'er a soul at all has she!
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
MARGARITA'S SOUL
CHAPTER I
FATE WALKS BROADWAY
ROGER BRADLEY was walking up Broadway. This
fact calls sharply for comment, for he had not done it in
years; the thoroughfare was intolerable to him. But one
of its impingements upon a less blatant avenue had caught
him napping and he found himself entangled in a mesh of
theatre dribblings, pool-room loungers, wine-touts and
homeward bent women of the middle, shopping class.
Being there, he scorned to avail himself of the regularly
recurring cross streets, but strode along, his straight, trim
bulk, his keen, judicial profile a profile that spoke strong
of the best traditions of American blood marking him for
what he was among a crowd not to be matched, in its way,
upon the Western Continent.
At the second slanting of the great, tawdry lane he bent
with it and encountered suddenly a little knot of flustered
women just descended from the elevated way that doubled
the din and blare of the shrieking city. They were bundle-
filled, voluble, dressed by any standards save those of their
native- city, far beyond their probable means and undoubted
station. As they stopped unexpectedly and hesitated,
damming the flood of hurrying citizens, Roger halted of
necessity and stepped backward, but in avoiding them he
bumped heavily against the person behind him. A startled
gasp, something soft against his shoulder, the sharp edge of a
MARGARITA'S SOUL
projecting hat, told him that this person was a woman, and
stepping sidewise into the shelter of a neighbouring news-stall,
he raised his hat with a courtesy alien to the place and hour.
" I beg your pardon, madam," he said, " I trust I have not
hurt you?"
"No," said the woman, who wore a heavy grey veil, and
as that is literally all she said and as her method of saying
it was as convincing as it was simple, one would suppose the
incident closed and look to see Roger complete his journey
to his club without further adventure.
Do I wish he had? God knows. It was undoubtedly
the turning-point in his life and he was forty. Had he gone
on to the club where I was waiting for him; had we dined,
played out our rubber, dropped in at the occasional chamber
concert that was our usual and almost our only dissipation
in those days, I should not now be ransacking old letters
and diaries from which to make this book, nor would Marga-
rita's picture her loveliest, as Juliet lean toward me from
the wall. She is smiling; not as one smiles in photographs,
but as a flesh-and-blood woman droops over the man she
loves and smiles her heart into his lips, reaching over his
shoulder. Everything slips behind but you two, herself
and you, when you look at it. Sarony, who took it, told me
he had never posed such a subject, and I believe him.
Well, well, it's done now. It was twenty years ago that
Roger bumped into his fate in that eddy of Broadway and
I was as powerless as you are now to disentangle him and
keep him for myself, which, selfishly enough, of course, I
wanted terribly to do. You see, he was all I had, Roger,
and I was hoping we would play the game out together.
But not to have known Margarita? Never to have
watched that bending droop of her neck, that extraordinary
colouring of her skin a real Henner skin! I remember
Maurice Grau's telling me that he had always thought
Henner colour blind till he saw Margarita's neck in her name-
part in Faust.
[12]
FATE WALKS BROADWAY
The things that girl used to tell me, before she had any
soul, of course, and in the days when I was the third man
to whom she had ever spoken more than ten words in her
life, were almost enough to pay for all the pain she taught
me. Such talks! I can close my eyes and actually smell
the sea- weed and the damp sand and hear the inrush of the
big combers. She used to sit in the lee of the rocks, all
huddled in that heavy, supple army-blue officer's cloak of
hers with its tarnished silver clasps, and talk as Miranda
must have talked to Ferdinand's old bachelor friend, who
probably appreciated the chance too well, the poor old dog!
I had reached, I think, when I left off my plain unvar-
nished tale and took to maundering, that precise point in it
which exhibits Roger in the act of replacing his hat upon
his even then slightly greyish head and striding on. It
seems to me that he would not have checked in his stride
if the woman had replied after the usual tautological fashion
of her sex (we blame them for it, not thinking how wholly
in nature it is that they should be so, like the repeated notes
of birds, the persistence of the raindrops, the continual
flicker of the sun through the always fluttering leaves,)
with some such phrase as, "No, indeed, not in the least,
I assure you!" or "Not at all, really don't mention it!"
or even, "No, indeed," with ashy bow or a composed one,
as the case might be. But this woman uttered merely the
syllable, "No," with no modification nor variation, no
inclination of the head, no movement forward or back.
Her utterance was grave, moreover, and precise; her tone
noticeably full and deep. Roger, pausing a moment in the
shelter of the news-stall, spoke again at the spur of some
unexplainable impulse.
"I was afraid I had stepped directly on your foot it
felt so, " he said.
Again she answered simply, "No," and that was his second
chance. Now in the face of these facts it is folly to contend that
the woman " accosted " him, as his cousin, who was one of the
MARGARITA'S SOUL
Boston Thayers, put it to me. She did nothing of the kind;
she replied twice, to his distinct questions, in the coldest
of monosyllables and he could not even have told if she
looked at him, her veil was so thick. Let that be definitely
understood, once and for all. The chances were even in
favour of her being violently pitted from the small-pox, since
even twenty years ago, when the city was less cosmopolitan
(and from my point of view more interesting) the women
of New York of the class that travels unaccompanied and
on foot at dusk were not accustomed to go heavily veiled
if they had any fair excuse for the contrary course.
Nevertheless to that veiled woman did Roger address
himself unnecessarily, mark you for the third time.
Why did he? He had his chance; two chances in fact.
But this is folly, for of course he had no chance at all. Fate
stood by that news-stall, with the blear-eyed, frousy woman
that tended it looking vacantly on; Fate, veiled, too, and not
even monosyllabic in his behalf. I should have known this,
I think, even if I had not lived those curious, long eight
months in Algeria and slept those dreamless nights under the
Algerian stars that got into my blood and call me back now
and then ; imperiously and never in vain, though I feel older
than the stars, and Alif and the rest are dead or exhibiting
themselves at the great American memorial fairs that began
to flourish about the time this tale begins. No, there was
no help: it was written.
"I am glad I did not hurt you," he said, really moving
forward now and again raising his hat, "these crowds are
dangerous for women at this hour."
He took two steps and stopped suddenly, for a hand
slipped under his arm. (You should have seen his cousin's
face, the Boston one, when in that relentless way known
only to women and eminent artists in cross-examination
she got this fact out of me.)
"Will you tell me the quickest way to Broadway?" said
the woman to whom he had just spoken.
[14]
FATE WALKS BROADWAY
"To Broadway?" he echoed stupidly, standing stock
still, conscious of the grasp upon his arm, a curious sense
of the importance of this apparently cheap experience
surging over him, even while he resented its banality.
"This is Broadway. What do you want of it?"
"I want to show myself on it," said the woman, a young
woman, from the voice.
Roger stepped back against the news-stall, dragging her
with him, since her hand did not leave his arm.
" To show yourself on it ? " he repeated sternly, " and why
do you want to do that?" .
"To get myself some friends. I have none," said she
serenely.
Now you must not think Roger a fool, for he was not.
You see, you never heard the voice that spoke to him. If
you had, and had possessed any experience or knowledge of
the world, you would have realised that the owner of that
voice possessed neither or else was a very great and con-
vincing actress. Mere print cannot excuse him, perhaps,
but I give you my word he was as a matter of fact excusable,
since he was a bachelor. Most men are very susceptible
to the human voice, especially to the female human voice,
and it has always been a matter of the deepest wonder to me
that the men who do not hear a lovely one once in the year
are most under the dominion of their females. I mean,
of course, the Americans. It is one of the greatest proofs
of the power of these Idles Americaines that they wield it
in spite of the rustiness of this, their chief national weapon.
The bell notes, the grave, full richness of this veiled
woman's voice touched Roger deeply and with a brusque
motion he drew out from his pocket a banknote and pressed
it into the hand under his arm.
"Take this and go home," he said severely. "If you will
promise me to call at an address I will give you, I will
guarantee you a decent means of livelihood. Will you
promise me?"
[15]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
She reached down without a word into a bag that hung en
chatelaine at her waist and drew out something in her turn.
"I have a great many of those," she said placidly, "and
more at home. See them!"
And under his face she thrust a double handful of stamped
paper all green.
"Each one of these is called twenty dollars," she informed
him, "and some of them are called fifty dollars. They are
in the bottom of the bag. I do not think that I need any
more."
Roger stared at her.
"Put that away directly," he said, "and lift your veil
so that I can see who you are. There is something wrong
here."
They stood in the lee of the flaring stall, a pair so obvious
in their relation to each other, one would say, as to require
no comment beyond the cynical indifference of the red-eyed
woman who tended it. No doubt she had long ceased to
.count the well-dressed, athletic men who drew indifferently
clothed young women into the shelter of her stand. And
yet no one of his Puritan ancestors could have been further
in spirit from her dreary inferences than this Roger. Nor
do I believe him to be so exceptional in this as to cause
remark. We are not all birds of prey, dear ladies, believe
me. Indeed, since you have undertaken the responsi-
bilities of the literary dissecting-room so thoroughly and
increasingly; since you have, as one might say, at last freed
your minds to us in the amazing frankness of your mul-
titudinous and unsparing pages, I am greatly tempted to
wonder if you are not essentially less decent than we. One
would never have ventured to suspect it, had you not
opened the door. . . .
The woman threw back her veil so that it framed her face
like a cloud and Roger looked straight into her eyes. And
so the curtain rolled up, the orchestra ceased its irrelevant
pipings and the play was begun.
[16]
CHAPTER II
FATE GOES A-FISHING
ROGER told me afterward that he literally could not say
if it were five seconds or five minutes that he looked into the
girl's eyes. He has since leaned to the opinion that it was
nearer five minutes, because even the news-woman stared
at him and the passing street boys had already begun to
collect. Some subconscious realisation of this finally
enabled him to drag his eyes away, very much as one drags
himself awake when he must, and to realise the picture he
presented a dazed man confronting an extraordinarily
lovely girl with her fist full of banknotes on a Broadway
kerbstone. An interested cabby caught his eye, wagged his
whip masterfully, wheeled up to them and with an apparently
complete, grasp of the situation whirled them off through a
side street with never so much as a "Where to, sir?"
And so he found himself alone with an unknown beauty
in a hansom cab, for all the world like a mysterious hero of
melodrama, and Roger hated melodrama and was never
mysterious in all his life, to say nothing of disliking mystery
in anyone connected with him. He says he was extremely
angry at this juncture and I believe him.
"What is your name?" he asked shortly. "Have you
no parents or friends to protect you from the consequences
of this crazy performance? Where do you live?"
"My name is Margarita," she replied directly and pleas-
antly, " I never had but one parent and he died a few days
ago. I live by the sea."
An ugly thrill shot down his spine. No healthy person
likes to be alone with a mad woman, and under a brilliant
['71
MARGARITA'S SOUL
fleeting light he studied her curiously only to receive the
certain conviction that whatever his companion might be,
she was not mad. Her slate-blue eyes were calm and bright,
her lips rather noticeably firm for all their curves and
the mad woman's mouth bewrayeth her inevitably under
scrutiny. Nor was she drugged into some passing vacancy
of mind: her whole atmosphere breathed a perfectly con-
scious control of her movements, however misguided the
event might prove them. Before this conviction he hesi-
tated slightly.
"You have another name, however," he said gently,
"and what do you mean by the sea? What sea?"
For it occurred to him that although her English was
perfect, she might be an utter stranger to the country,
unthinkably abandoned, with sufficient means to salve her
betrayer's conscience.
"Is there more than one sea, then?" she inquired of him
with interest. "I thought there was only mine. It is a
very large one with high waves and cold," she added as
an after-thought.
Roger gasped. "You did not tell me your other name,"
he said.
"Josephine," she replied readily, pronouncing the name
in the French manner.
"But you have another still?"
"Yes. Dolores," she said, with an evidently accustomed
Spanish accent.
"And the last name?" he persisted in despair, noting
with some busy corner of his mind that they were drifting
down Fifth Avenue.
"That is all there are," she assured him, "surely three
different names are sufficient for one person ? I do not use
the last two only Margarita."
Roger squared his shoulders, took the banknotes from
her unresisting hand and gravely folded them into her bag
before he spoke again.
[18]
FATE GOES A-FISHING
"Listen to me, Miss Margarita," he said slowly and with
exaggerated articulation, as one speaks to a child, "what
was your father's name ? What did the people in the town
you live in call him?"
"I told you we lived by the sea did you forget?" she
answered, a shade reprovingly. "There is no town at all.
And there are no people. We live alone."
"But your servants must have called him something?"
he persisted.
"Hester called my father 'sir' and the boy cannot talk,
of course," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because he is dumb. His name is Caliban," she added
hastily, "and he has no other, only that one."
"What is Hester's name?" Roger demanded doggedly.
"Hester Prynne," said Margarita Josephine Dolores,
"and I have had nothing to eat since the man with the shin-
ing buttons gave me meat between bread a great many hours
ago. I wish I might see another such man. He might
be willing to give me more. Will you look out and tell me
if you see one?"
"For heaven's sake," Roger cried, "you are hungry!
You should have said so before why didn't you?"
He called out a name to the cabman who took them
quickly to a place now called "the old one," because the
new one is filled with people who endeavour consistently
to look newer than they are, I suppose. The wine is newer
certainly, and the manners. At this place, then, in a quaint
old corner, they found themselves, and Roger bespoke a
meal calculated to please a young woman far more exigent
than this lonely dweller by the sea was likely to be. The
clearest of soups, the driest of sherry in a tiny glass, some-
thing called by the respectful and understanding waiter
"sdle frite," which was at any rate, quite as good as if it had
been that, a hot and savoury poulet roti and Roger, who
had been too busy to take luncheon, looked about him,
[19]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
contentedly well fed, rested his eyes with the clean, coarse
linen, the red wine in its straw basket that had come with
the poulet, the quiet, worn fittings of the little old-world
place, and realised with a shock of surprise that his com-
panion had not spoken a word since the meal began.
This was obviously not because she was famished, though
she had the healthy hunger of the creature not yet done with
growing, but because, simply, she felt no necessity for speech.
She was evidently thinking, for her eyes had the fixed
absorption of a child's who dreams over his bread and milk,
but conversation she had none. He studied her, amused
partly, partly lost in her beauty, for indeed she was beautiful.
She had a pure olive skin, running white into the neck oh,
the back of Margarita's neck! That tender nape with its
soft, nearly blonde locks that curled short about it below
the heavy waves of what she called her "real hair." That
was chestnut, dark brown at night. Nature had given her
long dark lashes with perfect verisimilitude, but had at
the last moment capriciously decided against man's peace
and hidden behind them, set deep behind them under
flexible Italian brows, those curious slate-blue eyes that
fixed her face in your mind inalterably. You could not
forget her. I know, because I have been trying for twenty
years.
"You are not, I take it, accustomed to dining out, Miss
Margarita?" said Roger, amused, contented, ignorant of
the cause of his sudden sense of absolute bien etre, or attrib-
uting it, man like, to his good dinner.
"Oh, yes," she answered, "I dine out very often. I like
it better."
He bit his lip with quick displeasure; she was merely
eccentric, then, not naive. For like every other man
Roger detested eccentric women. It has always been a
marvel to me that women of distinct brain capacity so
almost universally fail to realise that we like you better
fashionable, even, than eccentric. You do not understand
[20]
FATE GOES A-FISHING
why, dear ladies: you think it must be that we prefer
fashion to brains, but indeed it is not so. It is because to
be fashionable is for you to be normal, at least, that we
tolerate your sheeplike marches and counter-marches across
the plain of society.
"Where do you dine when you dine out?" he inquired
coldly, to trap her at last into some explanation.
"On the rocks," she answered serenely, "or under the
trees. Sometimes on the sand close to the water. I like
it better than in the house."
Roger experienced a ridiculous sense of relief.
"Do you dine alone?" he asked and she answered
quietly,
" Of course. My father always ate by himself, and Hester,
too. Caliban will never let anyone see him eat: I have
often tried, but he hides himself."
The waiter brought them at this point an ivory-white
salad of endive set with ruby points of beet, drenched in
pure olive-oil, and of this soothing luxury Margarita con-
sumed two large plates in dreamy silence.
"I like this food," she remarked at last, "I like it better
than Hester's."
Roger grew literally warm with satisfaction. He was
still smiling when she spooned out a great mouthful of the
delicate ice before her and under his amazed eyes set her
teeth in it.
The horror of that humiliating scene woke him, years
afterward, through more than one clammy midnight. In
one second the peaceful dining-room was a chattering,
howling reign of terror. For Margarita, with a choking
cry of rage and anguish, threw the ice with terrible preci-
sion into the bland face of the waiter who had brought it;
threw her glass of water with an equal accuracy into the
wide-open eyes of the head waiter, who appeared instantly;
threw Roger's wine-glass full into his own horrified face
as he rose to catch her death-dealing hand, and lifting with
[21]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
the magnificent single-armed sweep of a Greek war-goddess
her chair from behind her, stood facing them, glaring silently,
a slate-eyed Pallas gloriously at bay!
The red wine poured down Roger's face like blood; the
force of the blow nearly stunned him, but by a supreme
effort he bit furiously at his tongue and the pain steadied
him. As he swept the table over with a crash and wrenched
the chair from her hand (and he took his strength for it)
he became aware that the angry excitement behind his back,
the threatening babel, had subsided to long-drawn sighs
of pity, and realised with a sort of disgusted relief that the
blow he had himself suffered from this panting, writhing
maenad had somehow changed the situation and that he
was an object of horrified sympathy. Mercifully, the room
was scantily filled, for it was early, and his curt explanation
was accepted in respectful silence.
"Mademoiselle is is not responsible for her act, I beg
you to believe," he said grimly, white with humiliation and
pain. "I beg you will accept ..."
The two waiters pocketed a week's earnings in voluble
deprecation, the proprietor shrugged his excitement away
into an admirable regret, the diners wrenched their eyes
from Margarita's face and affected to see nothing as Roger
buttoned her cheapish vague-coloured jacket around her
and ordered her sternly to straighten her hat. Her fingers
literally trembled with rage, her soft, round breasts, strangely
distinct in outline to his fingers as he strained the tight
jacket over them, rose and fell stormily; in a troubled
flash of memory he seemed to be handling some throbbing,
shot bird. His own clumsiness and strange, heady elation
he attributed to the shock of the wine in his face.
In an incredibly short time the table was upright, the
debris removed, the room, except for the indefinable, electric
sense of recent tragedy that hovers over such scenes, much
as it had been. Roger had carried, fortunately for him,
a light overcoat on his arm, and this would hide his white,
[aa]
FATE GOES A-FISHING
stained triangle of vest with a little management. Grasping
Margarita by the arm he led her out of the room, and for
the first time questioned her.
"Are you mad?" he muttered. "What do you mean
by such a performance?"
"That man," she answered, her voice vibrating like a
swept violoncello, "is a devil. Did you not see what he
gave me ? It was not food at all, but freezing snow. Snow
should not be in a glass, but on the ground. It is plain
that he wishes to kill me."
Her resonant voice filled every corner of the room; it was
impossible for anyone in it to miss the situation, and with a
sudden inspiration Roger spoke with a special distinctness
to the proprietor, noticing that the dozen persons at the
tables were obviously French, and using that language.
"Mademoiselle is but recently come out of the convent,"
said he. "She has lived always in the provinces and has
never had the honour of tasting such admirable forms of
dessert as Monsieur offers his patrons."
The proprietor bowed; an extraordinary mixture of ex-
pressions played over his countenance.
"That sees itself, Monsieur," he replied. "The affair is
already forgotten. I have summoned a closed carriage for
Monsieur."
And thus it was that Roger found himself for the second
time in a carriage with Margarita Josephine Dolores, but
with a great difference in his attitude toward that young
person. It is a fact possibly curious but certainly unde-
niable, that when one receives a wine-glass full in the face
at the hands of an acquaintance, however recent, this ac-
quaintance is placed immediately upon terms of a certain
intimacy with one; the ice, at least, is broken. An uncon-
scious conviction of this coloured Roger's tone and shone in
his eyes.
"You must never do such a thing as that, Margarita,"
he said, "that was a terrible thing to do."
[23]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"It was a terrible thing that he did to me," replied Mar-
garita composedly.
"Nonsense," said Roger, "perfect nonsense! The man
meant you no harm. He brought you only what I had
ordered for you."
" You ! You told him to try to kill me ? " cried this un-
believable Margarita, and turning in her seat with the
swiftness of a panther she slapped him, a stinging , biting
blow, flat across his cheek. A tornado of answering rage
whirled him out of himself and seizing her wrists, he bent
^hem behind her back.
If I seem to be unwarrantably acquainted with Roger's
emotions at this crisis, it is only because I understand them
from experience, not because he analysed them at length
for me. I too have been in conflict, real physical conflict,
with Margarita. I too have felt that old unpitying frenzy,
that unreasonable delight in vanquishing her furious
strength. Something in Roger I know how suddenly,
how amazingly strained and snapped; the old bonds of
civilisation (which with the Anglo-Saxon has always been
feminisation) burst and dropped away, and the lust of physi-
cal ascendency caught him and swept the pretty legends of
moral control and chivalrous forbearing into the dust bins
and kitchen middens of nature's great domestic economy.
What was it in Margarita that drew that old, primitive
passion, that ancient world-stuff out of its decorous grave,
all planted with orchids and maiden-hair, that woke it with
a rough shout in us and offered us at the same time its
natural gratification a fierce fight and a certain victory?
God knows and knows better, perhaps, than the Devil that
Roger's ancestors would have been quick to credit with the
exclusive knowledge.
Civilisation and her mysterious daughter whom we call
nowadays Culture have tried to teach us that golf and lawn
tennis and, for the lustiest, fencing, or the control of a spirited
horse, must best translate in your house-broken citizen of
[24]
FATE GOES A-FISHING
forty the heat that surged up in Roger then ; but to most of us
it becomes once or twice apparent in our sidewalk career,
our delicate journey from mahogany sideboards to ma-
hogany beds, that this teaching is idiotic to the last degree,
however strictly the police have enforced it; and we know
that only the man that forged with clenched teeth after
Atalanta, tenderly hungry for all her uncaptured whiteness,
brutally driving the pace till her heart burst in her side if
need be, tasted the supremest ecstasy of the fighting that
lifts us that one tantalising step above the savage the fight
for joy. I am convinced that it is after some one of those
red glimpses that a certain proportion of us every year of the
world's life throws his chest weights out of window,
settles his tailor's bill, and is off for Africa or Greenland with
a hatchet and a cartridge belt. We become thus inscrutable
to our maiden aunts and it may be to ourselves, a little,
when we discover that it was not quite exactly the struggle
for food and shelter, the fight against the cliffs and elements
and animals that we went out into the wilderness to seek.
But we are in any event less unreasonable than those belated
and blindfolded ones among us who translate the implacable
desire too literally and lose its meaning utterly in the
garbled text of the midnight city streets.
Roger literally fell upon this vixenish, beautiful creature
with the perfectly definite intention of shaking her until her
teeth chattered in her head, but he did not achieve this
result, for the reason that Margarita fought like a demon;
fought, her hands being pinioned, with her supple back,
her strong shoulders and her rigid knees. It was like
struggling with a malicious little girl of six and a stubborn
boy of sixteen rolled into one. She did not cry nor chatter
but set her teeth and directed all her superb energy to the
actual business in hand. His idea of grasping both her wrists
with one hand was out of the question; for two or three
delicious, angry moments he essayed this, enraged, amused,
breathing hard, while she strained and bent with all her
MARGARITA'S SOUL
magnificent youth against him, and the years and the rust
of the years fell off from him in the heartsome contest, with
victory certain but not easy, her submission sure but not
yet! Some subterranean spring welled up in him, some
trickle from the everlasting caves that will only be com-
pletely levelled over when humanity, decadent, crumbles
into them and returns to the primal clay, and he knew that
for these few gleaming seconds, snatched from the rest of
the greyish hours and weeks, he had been made and destined.
You will, of course, perceive that all this is what I felt
when my little turn came; Roger never talked this sort of
thing in his life. But unless I am vastly mistaken, he lived
it, in those galloping quick-breathed minutes, before he
pinioned Margarita, her hands behind her back, with one
arm, and held her fast about the knees with the other.
Crushed against him, dead weight, she lay, her unconquered
eyes sea black now, flat against his, her heart labouring
heavily, under his relentless, banding arm.
"Will you be good, you absurd little wildcat? Will
you?" he demanded, his voice shaking with laughter and
truimph. (And you need not be too ready, O exponent of
tolerant hearthstone chivalry, to smile at the triumph!
V 1, whom Margarita detested, practically refused to sing
Siegfried to her Brunhilde, because, he said, she made him
ridiculous with her virginal strugglings and got him out of
breath besides ! And he could lift and carry Lilli Lehmann.)
"Will you?" Roger repeated, not loosening his hold of
her, for he felt her muscles tense as wire under the soft
flesh.
"No, I will not," said Margarita. "I hate you. I will
die before I will obey you."
And at this foolish and melodramatic remark, Roger
Bradley, descendant of all the Puritans (Whistler used to
say that he was by Plymouth Rock out of Mayflower alas,
dear Jimmie!), a respected bachelor, of exemplary habits
and no entanglements, deliberately, and with a happy,
[26]
FATE GOES A-FISHING
heartfelt oath, kissed Margarita, at length and somewhat
brutally, I fear, in a hired four-wheeler at the junction of
Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. And of his sensa-
tions at this point I cannot speak, because I never had them.
I never kissed Margarita but once and then very quickly,
because I was convinced that upon my subsequent speed
depended my ever seeing her alive again. And she did
not struggle at all, because, as a matter of fact, it was per-
fectly immaterial to her whether I kissed her or not. But
that was not the case with Roger's kiss.
[27]
CHAPTER III
AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT
THE day that Roger and I first met is as clear in my mind
as if, in the current phrase, it were but yesterday. I was
a slender little lad of ten and he a great, strapping fifteen-
year-old. I was trundling my hoop about the part of the
schoolyard usually given over to the little fellows, as blue
as indigo, homesick for my mammy-O, and secretly ashamed
of the French schoolboy cape I had worn at Vevay, which
all my mates derided, but she in her woman's thrift had
thought too good to throw aside. No doubt she was right,
but oh, what you make us suffer, you gentle widow mothers!
You would give us the hearts out of your fervent bodies
for footballs, you will nurse at our sick beds without rest
and deny yourself the comforts of existence, if need be, to
start us fairly in the world with a gentle training and schools
of the best, but you cannot comprehend that we would far
rather go without a meal in private than be the mock of
our schoolmates in public. I would have lived on bread and
water for a week could I have buried that French cloak at
the end of it.
The very sport in which I was engaged was not in use
among the other boys of my age, but inconsistently enough,
though I was eager to conform as far as the cloak was
concerned, wild horses could not have dragged me from my
wooden hoop, and I trundled it sulkily up and down the
flagged paths.
To me, an odd figure enough to young American eyes,
advanced and spoke Monsieur Duval, in whose regard I was
the most homelike and natural figure in the landscape, I
[28]
AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT
have no doubt. It was with a real kindness that he called
out some cheery nothing, some "Ah! Ah! (a va bien vous
vous armisez, n'est-ce pas?" or such like, and with an equal
and unconscious amiability that I replied in like manner.
The language was perfectly familiar to me, especially in its
present routine connection, and I took off my cap instinc-
tively, as I should have done at Vevay, and probably said
something about my being joliment bien armise, which was
purely perfunctory of course, because I wasn't. He passed
by and I trundled my hoop along, but only during the space
of time required for his complete exit from the scene, for
at the precise ending of that time I was violently set upon
by three or four boys, dragged, protesting and frightened,
to a private retreat, and there informed that my nauseating
familiarity with the French language and consequent
"showing off" therein must cease incontinently, and that
the event of my refusing this ultimatum would be a perilous
and not easily forgotten one for a little sneak like me.
Now our school at Vevay had been entirely under the
influence, in its secret and really important life, of a circle
of English boys, cruelly banished from their natural edu-
cational facilities, who made up for this banishment by a
careful and systematic insistence on as much as possible
of their native school atmosphere, and we little ones were
bred up in this very strictly. The word "sneak" was too
much for me, and I flew at the offender, which was, I sup-
pose, what he wanted.
It would have gone hard indeed with me had not a tall,
broad-shouldered boy, glorious in a jersey enriched with the
initials of the school, swung suddenly upon us and twitched
me out of the bandit crew by my coat collar.
"What's all this? What are you up to?" he asked
briskly.
He had a baseball bat with him I regarded baseball
at that time as a sort of cricket gone mad and a round
visored cap on his thick fair hair. His chin was deeply
[29]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
cleft, his eyes grey-blue, his skin very fair. To me he was
an upper-form demi-god and I, seeing nothing odd in his
actions, for he was what I called the cock of the school,
voiced my trembling plea.
"If you please, sir," I began, whereat he blushed and my
captors burst into derisive shouts and capered around us,
and thoroughly embarrassed and frightened, I began to
snivel into my elbow.
"We don't talk that way over here," he admonished me
shortly, "go ahead without any sirs, can't you?"
Well, it all came out finally and he settled it very easily,
though not, I am sure, in the way he had at first intended to.
I saw his fingers tighten around the bat, I saw him warily
measuring his chances against four twelve-year-olds, and
realised suddenly that this was not Albion the long desired
of some of us at Vevay, but free America, and that this was
not really the head boy nor had he any rights in particular
beyond any knight's who chooses to ride a-rescuing. Never-
theless I was and am sure he could have punished them all
and that without the bat. Suddenly, however, a reflective
look came across his face, he stroked the cleft in his chin
thoughtfully a trick he never lost and said in a quiet,
convincing tone:
"You always were an awful fool, Judson," this to the
bully. "If you had the sense of a cat you wouldn't haze
this little fellow for what he can't help, but instead you'd
use him. Why, if 7 had him in my French class, I'd make
him do most of the reciting and keep old Duval busy he'd
never see through it. Think it over. Come on, shaver!"
This he said to me and I trotted off his slave his fag,
I hoped, but vainly, as it proved.
I tell this at length because it illustrates Roger's character
so perfectly. Not that he couldn't fight, but he preferred not
if a little practical arbitration could be made to do the work
of battle. And yet he was rather tactless in a social sense:
this was his professional attitude, you understand.
[30]
AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT
"You're the little French boy," he said, as I followed him.
"What's your name, anyhow? I'm Roger Bradley."
As if I didn't know!
"If you pi I mean, mine is Winfred Jerrolds," I said
shyly.
"You're not really French, are you?"
It was the first time I had ever been proud of my American
blood. I told him about my American mother and my
English father, his tragic death and her return to her own
country after twelve years of absence; of the acquisition
of my wonderful French, which was only the work of two
years, of my violin lessons, strictly concealed from the
other boys, of my old Swiss nurse, now our cook, of my
French poodle, and a score of other secrets never breathed
before.
He was deeply interested, inquired the brave details of
my father's death, shook hands heartily, and expressed his
intention of inviting me to his home some time during the
vacation. We parted the best of friends and shall be, I
trust, till we part for good and all.
I did not visit him, however, that vacation. Some slight
injury, received during a game of his favourite baseball,
affected his eyes, and for six months he could not use them
at all, so he did not return to school until the next autumn.
W T hen we met again it was on a different basis, for I had made
good use of my time and had mounted rapidly in my classes.
Whether it was because I kept the habit of vacation study
(the entire lazy freedom of American school children during
the long vacation was very shocking to my mother) or
whether my habit of application and concentration, the fact
that I had really been taught to study, not merely turned
loose with a book in my hands, gave me an advantage over
my mates, I do not know, but when Roger came back he
found me only three classes below him and graduated from
the little boys' playground forever.
That summer he took me home with him and I gazed
MARGARITA'S SOUL
with deep respect upon the portraits of his ancestors, fading
against the dark wainscots of the respectable Boston man-
sion; played my violin obediently for his mother, who pre-
sented me with a volume of Emerson's essays; hung upon
the lips of his soldier-uncle, one-armed since Gettysburg,
who in his turn listened gravely to my tales of my father;
and sedulously avoided his cousin Sarah, who, even then,
a fresh-faced girl of eighteen, had begun to feel those
responsibilities toward the human race which have since
so consistently distinguished her, and pursued me with
hideous bits of paper bearing a mocking resemblance to
blank cheques, which she called "pledges," by means of
which she urged me to begin in the days of my ycuth the
practice of total abstinence, with the result that she has be-
come hopelessly involved in my mind with that revolting
practice. They were Unitarians, a doctrine then fashionable
in those regions, oddly enough, and greatly to the puzzle-
ment of my dear mother, who could not understand how
dissent could ever be so, and who was firmly convinced that
''your Bradleys" as she called them, were addicted to rant-
ing prayers on all occasions. In vain I described to her old
Madam Bradley with a scrap of frosty lace on her white
hair, a terrifying ear trumpet and the manners of a countess;
in vain I assured her that Uncle Winthrop would no more
be guilty of a ranting prayer than my father would have
been: she shook her head gently and urged me to recall
my confirmation vows!
My dear mother! To write of her even so slightly is to
see her in her neat black dress with its web-like bands of
lawn at neck and wrists, directing old Jeanne, bonne-a-tout-
faire now in our small establishment, watering our window
geraniums from a quaint, long-nosed copper pot, drilling
Mr. Boffin, the poodle, in his manners, and, when the early
dinner was out of the way, sitting in all simplicity with Jeanne
at work upon my shirts the only example of really demo-
cratic institutions that I ever saw in this irascible democracy.
AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT
I should like to have seen Madam Bradley sewing with the
cook and innocently gossiping over the old days!
Well, well, even to have invented so inhumanly possible
an ideal as democracy is a great feat and a wonderful ex-
hibition of the powers of our minds on this planet, I suppose.
And I am not sure that it is a greater proof of sincerity to
practice it while denying it in theory, as they do in the old
countries, than to reverse the process in the new ones.
Americans are such incurable idealists! And if Plato is
right and the idea is the really important part of the matter,
then the idea of seventy or is it eighty, now? millions
of equal lords of creation is really more to the point than the
fact that they don't exist. But why, oh why, must equality
produce such bad manners? They must have been very
bad to make such an impression upon a little lad of ten.
And who can explain its extraordinary effect upon the voice ?
Why does it kill all modulation, all tone-color, all delicate
shades of thought and passion equally, and resolve that
great gift, which I sometimes think the greatest difference
between me and my dog, into a toneless, mumble-chopped
grunting ?
That was the glory of Margarita's voice: if she but in-
formed you that she would like more bread, your ear
relished that series of unimportant syllables precisely as the
tongue relishes a satisfying dish; with her, pleading, com-
manding, refusing, admiring, were four perfectly different
tonal processes; a blind man, an Eskimo or a South Sea
Islander would have understood that voice perfectly. And
even now, merely a shadow of what it once was, it is a lesson
to all about her.
When Roger was seventeen and I but twelve he lost two
years out of his school-life, and this brought us closer to-
gether ultimately, as will be seen. In some more than
usually violent game of his favourite baseball at this time he
managed to fall so heavily on his chest as slightly to bruise
the lung, and a teasing cough that resulted from this ter-
[33]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
rifled his mother, over whom, like so many of her pure-
blooded countrywomen, the White Scourge hung threaten-
ingly, never very far away. Good luck sent them just then
an invitation from a distant cousin, skipper of a large
schooner that plied in Southern waters, and she thankfully
sent Roger off for a long cruise with him. It was a fine
experience, and oh, how bitterly I longed to share it, as the
skipper cousin urged me to do! But I was the only son of
my mother and she a widow, and so I swallowed my grief
and contented myself with writing. It had long been a
great grief to me that I must follow him so far behind at
college he had of course decided me on his own uni-
versity and one of my contentments at this period was the
hope of winning ahead a year and leaving only two between
us. This would enable me to enter Yale when he was but
half way in his course, which as a matter of fact, I accom-
plished, to my mother's great pride. She liked Roger, but
always found him a little heavy and slow, and secretly
cherished my greater facility and more rapid mental develop-
ment with a fond and wholly female short-sightedness.
Our correspondence was very characteristic at this time:
I have specimens of both sides of it. My letters are long
and detailed, almost school-diaries. Roger's are few, short
and immensely impressive. He had a straightforward,
utterly unimaginative style that strikes the heart like Defoe's.
He gave the strongest sense of great events always happen-
ing, of high seas, bright, strange coasts, racy, vital talk
and all in few, short words.
"We have been rolling hard for three days now," he says
in one letter, "and the ship's dog died of colic, which is
about the worst sign there is, they say. It may be we shall
be wrecked. I wish you were here, Jerry, you would enjoy
it. They have stopped trying to coddle me now and I live
rough, like the rest. The food is not so very good, but we
all eat hard. I hardly ever cough at all now. The captain
says I am as handy as the next man."
[34]
AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT
The oldest of four, he had been looked up to and respected
from the nursery. A powerful influence at school, a prince
regent at home, wealthy in his own right, he stood in some
danger of being spoiled, I suppose. But the bluff skipper
cousin, representative of that strange New England Wander-
lust, so little exploited in the anemic fiction that so ridicu-
lously caricatures New England life, stamped Roger at this
most impressionable age with the clean, downright sim-
plicity, the manly humility so signally characteristic of men
who must always be ready to perish in the elements; the
ability to hold his tongue and wait. Few families really
rooted in that Old England that made the New but can
count in some generation their skipper cousin; in these the
whitecaps, the tall masts, the spices and hot nights, the
scarlet tropics and the dusky, startled natives tip with flame
the quiet chronicles of the sisters left at home; and gorgeous
peacock fans, rosy, enamelled shells, strings of sandalwood
beads, riotous, bloomy embroideries and supple folds of
exotic muslin weave their scents and suggestions through
the sober-coloured stuff of everyday. Indeed, New
England as I have known her, both as a child in her chief
and representative city, and as a man in her farthest, least-
spoiled hamlets has always seemed to me far more com-
plicated and mysterious, far more vital and suggestive than
her too-exclusively-spinsterly chroniclers can comprehend.
I look to see the country turn back to New England, not
only with historic pride, but with a rich appreciation of its
artistic mother-land not mistaking her for its bleak and
apprehensive maiden aunt!
I am far from her now, that old breeding ground of great,
incisive sons, that nest of passions so strong that only a grip
of granite like her sea line could master them (do you
fancy, O languorous, faded South, do you bellow, O strident,
bustling West, that because she neither sighed them nor
trumpeted them, she had no passions? Allez, allez!) but
I can close my eyes at any moment and smell the challenge
[35]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
of her Atlantic winds here on the Mediterranean or feel the
heady languor of her miraculous "Indian Summer" there
in a London drizzle. It is strange that I, who have said
many unhandsome things of her country as a whole, should
thus rush into apologia for my mother's birthplace. And
yet to think of never having known Margarita!
But of course I should have met her. She would have
come to me walking lightly out of the dim Algerian evening
or bumped into me some morning in Piccadilly or peered
curiously through my leaded pane at Oxford, whither I should
undoubtedly have returned, one day, to muse away my mid-
dle age. I idled for a happy year there, twenty-odd years ago,
while Roger was grinding away at the fantastic matter he
called the Law, and liked it well. But fate had not decreed
me for a conventional Englishman, which I should doubtless
have been, for as a boy I was malleable to a degree, but had
reserved me instead for the ends of the earth and Mar-
garita.
[36]
CHAPTER IV
FATE REELS IN
THERE is nothing more certain than that the bare facts
of life are misleading in the extreme. This is doubtless
nature's reason for concealing the human skeleton; it is
undeniably necessary, but not many of us take it into daily
consideration, and nobody but a few negligible anthro-
pologists would dream of bringing it forward as proof of
anything in particular. And yet people who are fond of
describing themselves as practical persistently fold their
hands over their abdomens, shrug their shoulders and
reiterate monotonously: "But, my dear fellow, there are
the facts! It is only necessary to consider the facts of the
case!" .or, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid the bare facts are
against you!" I suppose that is why they are so often called
bare, because so little of the important, informing or attrac-
tive is draped around them.
Consider for instance, the bare facts of Roger's adventure.
Here is a man who, meeting a perfectly unknown and
singularly beautiful young woman in a questionable locality
at dusk, enters into conversation with her, takes her to a
French restaurant for dinner, then finds himself embroiled
in a disgraceful altercation in which wine-glasses are thrown
and chairs waved, and finally escapes with her in a closed
carriage, which soon becomes the scene of a violent struggle
culminating in a ferocious kiss! The case is really too clear;
it is almost too conventional for an art student of any ini-
tiative and originality. Anyone possessed of the slightest
acquaintance with fiction or the daily papers could tell you
[37]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
instantly that here were a dissipated clubman and a too-
unfortunately-stereotyped creature who not only required
no description but were best, in the interests of morality,
undescribed. And yet Roger was emphatically not dis-
sipated, nor even a clubman, in the sense in which the word
appears to be used in America, and Margarita was not in
the least unfortunate and so far from stereotyped that she
pressed the unusual hard toward the utterly unique.
"Well, well," I hear the practical man, "but this is a
case in one five ten thousand, surely! We all know "
My good man, there is absolutely nothing we all know
except that we shall certainly die, one day, and from this
one bare fact more utterly contradictory inferences have
been drawn than I can afford ink to enumerate. Nothing
could be more certain than this bare fact, and can you show
me anything more productive of human uncertainty? I
trow not. What do you know of the private life of the man
in the next house ? Have you a friend who cannot tell you
from one to three melodramatic tales, lying quite within
his experience, at which you will gasp, "Why, it's as exciting
as a novel!" The best novels never get into print and the
most blood-curdling, goose-pimpling dramas are played by
the boxholders. The longer I live the more firmly am I
convinced that the really quiet life is relatively rare.
To Roger, indeed, after his climax in the four-wheeler,
it seemed impossible that life could ever again be quiet.
If I have not impressed you with the idea that he was a decent
sort of man, I have wasted a whole chapter and demon-
strated the folly of attempting authorship at my age, and you
will be but poorly prepared to learn that when the cabby
knocked at the glass, after heaven knows how many minutes
of interested observation, Roger discovered his identity
again and loathed it. His conduct appeared to him
indescribably beneath contempt, his situation deplorable.
Margarita, sobbing quietly in her corner, seemed unlikely
to raise either his spirits or his estimate of himself.
[38]
FATE REELS IN
Opening the door of the carriage he repeated his directions
to the too-confidential driver and spoke stiffly to his com-
panion.
"I will not attempt to excuse myself to you," he said,
"for it would be pointless. If you can believe me, I will
try my best to help you to your friends. Can you not tell
me the name of one?"
"What is your name?" she asked, her voice only a little
shaken from her sobs, which had ceased as soon as he began
to speak.
"My name is Roger Bradley," he answered promptly.
"Then that is the name of my first friend," said Mar-
garita Josephine Dolores, "but I hope to find others."
Roger's revulsion of feeling was so great, his state of
mind so perturbed and confounded that he crushed them
into a short, husky laugh. Had he been the hero of a novel
he would undoubtedly have launched into a bitter speech,
but he did not.
"Others like me?" he said briefly, and all the bitterness
of the novel-hero was there if Margarita had been able to
read it. But she only smiled, a little uncertainly, it is true,
and replied:
"Yes, I should like them like you only not so strong,"
she added softly, with a shy glance at her wrists.
It has been quite unnecessary for me to consult letters or
diaries to give me a very clear insight into Roger's feelings
at this point, for I myself have experienced them. It was
when I took Margarita out in a rowboat and she began to
rock herself in it.
"Don't do that, Margarita!" I cried. "That is an
idiotic trick."
She continued to rock it.
"Do you hear me, Margarita?" I demanded, tapping
her foot with some irritation, for she really was irritating.
In fact she completely upset the theory that tact and adapt-
ability constitute her sex's chief charm.
[39]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"Of course I hear you. If you kick me, I shall only rock
the harder," she answered composedly and did so.
Shipping the oars carefully I arose, advanced upon Mar-
garita and boxed her ears with determination. I should
have done it in mid-ocean. I doubt if sharks in sight would
have deterred me. As I was boxing her ears beautiful,
strong ones, they were, not tiny, selfish, high-set bits of
porcelain: W r M 1 (who would have been Sir W r
M 1 in England to-day) said of Margarita's ears that they
were set convincingly low and that he looked to her to
demonstrate one of his favourite tests of longevity in the
very act of this boxing. I repeat, I was cruelly bitten in the
wrists, and, snorting with rage, pure, primitive, unchivalrous
rage, I fell upon that shameless little Pagan and shook her
violently, till the teeth rattled in her head. Over we went,
the pair of us, struggling like demons, into the chilly, rational
water, and as Margarita, like so many people who live by
the sea, was utterly ignorant of the art of swimming and like
so many people of her temperament, violently averse to the
sudden shock of cold water, it was a subdued and dripping
young woman that I dragged to the overturned boat and
ultimately towed to shore. I worked hard to get her there
and had no time for remorse, but as I hurried her up the
beach it flooded over me.
"What must you think of me?" I asked her through
chattering teeth. "You will not care to meet any more of
Roger's friends, I fear."
"Oh, yes," she returned sweetly, looking incompre-
hensibly lovely ah, me, that long, smooth line of her hip,
that round, sleek head, shining like bronze in the sun! I
can see it now "Oh, yes, I hope he has many more like
you, Jerry, but not so strong you hurt my arm!"
It is useless to ask me why that should have endeared her
a hundred times over to me, who would have given a year of
my life to kiss her but might not. It did thus endear her,
however, and so I know what hot, foolish hope flooded Roger
[40]
FATE REELS IN
off his footholds of conventions and convictions and floated
him away in a warm, alluring sea, where the tropic palm-
isles of Fata Morgana were the only shores. I, too, caught
a glimpse of those shores; the warmth of that sea was only
the blood pounding through my veins, and I knew it, but
I shut my eyes and let the waves lap at me a moment.
Roger, lucky dog, did not know and did not need to know
what was happening to him, and it was not for a moment,
but forever, as far as he knew, that he slipped into the
current and drifted with it.
It was very characteristic of him that his next words had,
apparently, no bearing whatever on his state of mind.
"We are now," he said, "at the station. If you will tell
me the name of the town from which you came here, I will
see that you get back there. Believe me, it is the only
possible thing to do. You cannot stay here. Now, where
did you come from?"
It took some few minutes to convince Roger that the girl
literally did not know the name of the station at which she
had purchased her ticket to New York. She knew she had
travelled all day, and that was all. She had slipped out
from her home at dawn or before, left the mysterious Hester
Prynne asleep, walked five miles (Hester had said it was five
miles to the railroad) to a little town where a girl had sold
her the clothes she had on for one of her banknotes and
advised her to go to New York if she wished to see the world,
"which was what I did wish," said Margarita.
A young man behind some bars had given her the ticket
and some small money back from another note and a kind
old man with white hair and a tall black hat had sat beside
her after a while, and pressed so hard against her that she
had no room for her knees. She had told him of this incon-
venience, but to no avail. He had put his arm about her
shoulders and asked her why she did not change her plans
and come to Boston. Then she had told him that though
she wanted friends she did not care for such old ones, and
MARGARITA'S SOUL
when he still pressed against her she had asked the man
with the shining buttons who looked at her ticket if he would
not remove the old man, because she did not like to sit so
close to anyone, and she was sure the old man was sitting
closer all the time. Then he of the buttons took her some-
where else and bade her sit beside a woman, grey-haired
also, who would not talk at all, and left her by and by.
After this the buttoned man gave her meat between bread.
Still later a young man with beautiful, large eyes inquired
if he might sit beside her and she agreed gladly. He smelled
very good. He asked where she was going and she said
to find friends. He said she would find many on Broadway
and that easily; she had only to show herself there. He
offered to point out the way there and just as all seemed in
the best possible way the buttoned man came again, frowned
on the good-smelling young man and took his seat. He
talked a good deal to Margarita so much that she could
not very well attend to it. At last he gave her a large grey
veil and commanded her to wrap her head in it, and he would
look after her when they got to New York. But when they
did get to New York she eluded him and asked the way to
Broadway, and then she met Roger. So, as the young man
had said, there were friends on Broadway. But there were
none in the town from which she took the ticket and she
had no idea what its name was. Hester never mentioned it.
She did not believe it had a name.
All this as the cab rested by the kerbstone. It was
perfectly obvious that she was speaking the truth. They
had patronised this particular driver long enough, anyway,
and Roger paid him liberally and led Margarita into the
draggled, dusty station; the new one was not then built.
Seated beside her in a relatively dim corner he tried to
formulate some plan, but the absurd emptiness of the situ-
ation baffled even his practical good sense. How could he
take this girl to a town that neither he nor she knew the name
of? How, on the other hand, could he fling such a pro-
[42]
SCOOPED HUNDREDS PERHAPS THOUSANDS OUT OF A CHEST, TO FLEE
AT DAWN
FATE REELS IN
jectile as Margarita into any respectable hotel? What
would she do or say? True, he might possibly have pre-
sented her as his sister and kept her sternly in view during
every possible moment, but she was not sufficiently well
dressed to be his sister. And his overcoat was buttoned
suspiciously high. Was he to stroll out of the waiting-
room and leave her abandoned, like some undesirable
kitten, in the corner? The idea was ludicrous: she must
be taken care of. Had she thrust herself upon him, enticed
him, challenged him? Assuredly not; moved by some
completely inexplicable influence, utterly alien to himself,
his birth, his training, he had deliberately and persistently
questioned her, prolonged a trifling encounter unjustifiably,
whirled her away, literally; and now that he had found no
suitable place of deposit it was incredible that he should
deliver this extraordinary and self-assumed charge to civil
authority. It would have been almost as well to lead her
back to Broadway, he told himself sternly. The most
exotic foreigner would have found herself in better case,
it occurred to him, for interpreters of one sort or another
can always be found. But Margarita seemed foreign to
this planet, very nearly. What should be said of a person
who lived on a nameless shore, served by Hester Prynne
and Caliban? Who scooped hundreds perhaps thousands
out of a chest, to flee at dawn from a town whose name
she had never heard mentioned, though she had lived
within walking distance of it all her life ?
It was absurd but something must be done. Mar-
garita sat contented and amused, devouring the shabby
bustle all around her with her great deep-set eyes, willing,
apparently, to sit there indefinitely.
"Will you let me examine your bag?" Roger said at
last, and she handed him the coarse, imitation-leather affair.
There was a soiled, cheap handkerchief in it, some four
hundred dollars in banknotes, and a torn envelope with a
town and state written clearly on it.
[43]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
I have tried to write the name of this town, and when I
found that impossible, I tried to invent one to take its place,
but I could not do it. Surely it is nothing to any of you
who may happen to read this poor attempt of mine to pass
my time, nothing, and less than nothing, just what may be
the name of the utterly unimportant little backwater of a
village from which, if you know the way, you may walk
four miles or so to Margarita's home. Undoubtedly many
of you sail by it often, but it is hidden from you by the rise
of the ground, the high rocks and the great, ancient-looking
wall that I helped to pile. These and the reefs protect it
quite sufficiently. And I do not want you there. It would
prove far too interesting a spot to jaded trippers and trotters
and it is amazing how quickly your new countries grow
jaded; more eager for fresh scenes than old Japan herself,
Nippon the rice-blest, the imperishable, whence I send these
words.
Be satisfied, then, to know that in the direction of this
torn envelope Roger held the clew to Margarita's nameless
home. Yes, the young woman had sold her the bag with
the clothing and advised her to put the banknotes in it.
No, she did not know her name. She smelled good like
the young man who advised Broadway.
"Come, Margarita," said Roger gravely, "let us see
when you can start," and she followed him submissively to
the wicket, matched her stride to his on his discovery that
a train which would take them half way was just about to
start, and ran beside him to the steps of the car. He mo-
tioned to her to mount and she did so, turning at the top
of the steps with a face of sudden terror.
"You are not going to leave me, Roger Bradley?" she
cried, "where am I going?"
"Certainly I shall not leave you. You are going home,"
he said quietly, and mounted after her. The guard stared
at them, the bell clanged sadly and the train moved out of
the station. The play, you see, was well along.
[44]
PART TWO
IN WHICH THE SPRING FLOWS IN A LITTLE STREAM
O father, mother, let me be,
Never again shall I have rest.
For as I lay beside the sea,
A woman walked the waves to me,
And stole the heart out of my breast.
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
[45]
CHAPTER V
ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND
IT goes without saying that I have a retentive memory.
Of course I depend very largely upon it for all the small de-
tails that Roger has from time to time vouchsafed me in
regard to his relations with Margarita, or I could not very
well be writing these idle memories, but Roger was always a
poor writer that is to say, so far as comment and ampli-
fication and variety of manner may be supposed to make a
good one. Witness the following letter, which I received in
answer to my plea for details of that strange night journey
from New York to Margarita's town. It left a gap in my
story of which I never happened to receive any account,
and it seemed to me a fairly important gap, though you
will see that this was not Roger's view of it.
DEAR JERRY:
It is rather late in the day to ask me about that trip to
. We hardly spoke for a long time, as I am sure I
have told you before either of us. There was no berth
to be had for her and no drawing-room car on, so we rode
all night in the day coach with a rather mixed lot. I re-
member they snored and it amused her. She wanted to
wake them up and I had to speak sharply to prevent her.
The air got very bad and I took her out on the platform
for a while. I remember there were any amount of stars
and the moon out, too. You know she never talked much.
About one o'clock we got to S and changed cars for a
few minutes' wait. ... I think it was then that she asked
me abruptly what I meant by a "convent." She said it in
French and I saw that she spoke and understood the Ian-
[47]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
guage, but only in a simple, childish sort of way. I told
her it was a big school. "What is that?" she said. . . .
There were a number of Italians on the train, and they were
chattering like magpies, but she paid no attention to
them, and I was sure she did not understand them.
At we got out and I asked her if there would be any
livery stable open at that hour, for it was not more than four
o'clock. She did not know, of course, what a livery stable
was and told me that we must either go in a boat or walk.
So we walked. The sun rose while we were walking. I
think this is all you wanted.
There you have it! Could anything be simpler? "I
remember there were any amount of stars . . . You know
she never talked much." Oh, Roger, Roger! Must you
always have the doing and I the telling ? Even to this day,
though I would cut off this hand for you, I am jealous of you.
"The sun rose while we were walking"! Ah me, to walk
with Margarita through the dawn! She was the very dawn
of life herself, untarnished, unfatigued, unashamed. To me
who have known her, other women are as pictures in a gallery
lovely pictures, many of them, but a little faded and
fingermarked, somehow.
We shall have to take that walk for granted. I know that
it consisted of a quarter-mile of sleeping village, three
quarters of a mile of scattered houses, two miles of widely
separated farms and then two last miles of bayberry, salt
meadow, coarse grass, rocky sand and blue, inrolling seas.
I know how the salty, strengthening air blew Roger's lungs
clean of the frightful murk of the car, how the strange, stunted
windrocked trees gave an odd, unreal air of Japan to that
bleak shore; I can half close my eyes now and lo, Atami
and her thundering, surf-swept beach broadens out before me,
and the breakers as they come pounding in, chase not the
withered, monkeylike old priest who searches endlessly for
something in the seaweed, girding his clean, faded robe above
his bare sticks of legs but Margarita and me. The camphor
[48]
THE TALL, GAUNT, SILENT WOMAN
STRIDING THROUGH THE PASTURES
ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND
trees lose their lacquered green and turn to distant chestnut;
the scarlet lily fades to a dull rose marsh flower; the lines of
the temple are only quaintly-eaved rocks and ledges, and I
am over seas again. I wonder if that is the reason I love this
place so? But there were no geyser baths there and I had
no rheumatism then! Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe
even the sciatic nerve, we will hope.
Well, then, after they had made what Roger with his
usual accuracy in such matters took for nearly five miles,
it occurred to him to ask Margarita how it was that she knew
her way so well, for she went through pastures, broken
walls, here and there a bit of the country road, with the air
of long practice. At first she would not tell him. I can
imagine that slanting school-boy look, that quietly malicious
indrawing of the corners of the mouth: the most enchanting
obstinacy conceivable. They were following at the time a
narrow beaten path, perhaps a cattle track, but that was not
her guide, for often such a path curved and returned aimlessly
on itself or branched off quite widely from the direction she
took. At first, as I say; she was deaf to his question, but
when he repeated it, patiently, I have no doubt, but evidently
determined upon an answer, she yielded, as we all yield to
Roger in the end, and confessed that she had once followed
Hester to the village and back by this road. Hester had
never guessed it, never in fact turned her back when once
started, and it had been easy to keep her in sight. At the
edge of the town Margarita had felt a little shy and appre-
hensive of her fate if discovered, so she had sat by the wood-
side till Hester appeared again and followed her meekly home.
Since then I have been able to gather some idea of Hester's
appearance from various sources, and I own that the situa-
tion has always seemed to me picturesque in the extreme:
the tall, gaunt, silent woman in her severe, dull dress striding
through the pastures, and behind her, stealthily as an Indian
or an Italian avenger the dark, lovely child, now crouching
amongst the bayberry, now defiantly erect, but always grace-
[49]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
f ul as a panther, her hair loose on her slender shoulders.
I cannot forbear to add that in this picture of mine, a great
vivid letter burns on the woman's breast, inseparable from her
name, of course. But this only adds to the sombre power of
the picture. It is a thing for Vedder to paint, in witchlike
browns and greys.
Margarita had never made this journey but once, but she
followed her old trail with the precision of a savage. I my-
self have gone that way once only: and then but half of the
distance, or a little less. It was not in bayberry time, but
through a land smooth and blue- white with snow and with a
terror pulling my heart out that I am sure I could never
endure again. How we flew over the snow! It was all a
ghastly glare, a dancing sun in a torquoise sky . . . No, no,
one does not live through such things twice and I hate even
the memory of it. Even with the boiling geyser rumbling
behind me, filling the baths with comfort and oblivion, I
shiver to my very marrow.
After they had followed a certain marshy band of vivid
green for several pasture-lengths, Margarita shook her head
slightly, retraced her steps and stopped at a point where
three or four great flat stones made a sort of causeway across
the glistening, muddy strip, and Roger, following her as she
jumped lightly over, saw that they stood upon a little rocky
promontory joined only by this strange bit of marsh to the
mainland. The strip was here not a hundred feet wide, and
winding in on either side of this two little inlets crept slug-
gishly along and lost themselves in the marsh. The prom-
ontory was there very barren and it seemed to Roger that the
girl was going to lead him out into the shallow cove that
faced them, but a few more steps showed him that just here
the point of land curved around this cove, which swept far
inland, and broadened out wonderfully into several acres of
meadow-hay dotted with sparse, stunted cedars.
Directly before him lay a wet, shining beach, for the tide was
half gone, and a hundred yards out, the tops of what might al-
[So]
ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND
most have been a built wall of nasty pointed rocks formed a
perfect lagoon across the face of the promontory. At high
tide these would not show, but they were there, always guard-
ing, always bare-toothed, and as far again beyond them a bell-
buoy mounted on a similar ledge seemed to point to the
existence of a double barrier. It was a great lonesome bay
of the Atlantic that he looked at, its arms on either side deso-
late, scrubby and forbidding, with not a hint of life. Sud-
denly, as he stared, wondering, and Margarita stood quiet
beside him, a long, quavering bellow came from behind him.
"It is the cow," said Margarita reassuringly, as he whirled
around, "she is calling Caliban to milk her, I suppose."
Again the impatient, minor bellow rose on the air, and
Roger perceived that what he had carelessly passed over as a
great sand dune was in reality a square cottage built of sand,
apparently, for it was precisely the colour and texture of sand,
sloping off in a succession of outbuildings, just as the cliffs
and dunes slope, windowless, nearly, from that side at least,
and offering only the anxious cow, peering from the furthest
outhouse, as evidence of life. Close up to it on one side, the
right, a great, cliff-like spur of rock shot up and ran like a
wall for fifty feet, then fell away gradually into the sand of the
beach which ran up to meet it; the cottage itself was perched
on the beach edge, and beyond it, on the left side, the strag-
gling grass began. They moved on toward this house, then,
and as they neared it a long, melancholy howl echoed the
cow's lament, a howl with a baying, mellow undertone that
lingered on the morning air. For it was honest morning
now, a September morning, blowing wild-grapes and sea sand
and bayberry into Roger's nostrils. As he stared at the house
a great hound crept around the corner of it, baying monoto-
nously, but as he saw Margarita he left off and ran to her,
arching his brindled head. He was a Danish hound, beauti-
fully brindled and very massive. She fondled him quietly,
smiling as he clumsily threw his great paws about her waist,
and pushed him down.
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"I am very hungry," said Margarita abruptly, "I think
I will have Caliban bring me some warm milk."
She turned her direction slightly and made for the cow
stall, and as he stood by the door Roger saw that whatever the
internal structure of the building might be, it was certainly
covered with rough sand.
"Here is Caliban now," she added, and a loutish looking
fellow, small-eyed, heavy-lipped and shock-haired, appeared
to rise out of the ground before them, dangling a milk pail
on his arm. At sight of Margarita his jaw dropped, he
shivered violently and appeared ready to faint, but as she
called encouragingly to him he mustered courage to ap-
proach and feel of her skirt timidly. He was evidently
feeble-minded as well as dumb, for with a sort of croak he
dropped the bucket and began to dance clumsily up and
down, snapping his fingers the while. Plainly he had thought
her gone for good and this was his thanksgiving.
"Milk the cow, Caliban, I am thirsty," said Margarita im-
patiently, after a moment of this, "and get me some bread.
Make haste with it."
He started on a run for the door furthest from the cow
stall and appeared almost immediately with a large silver
mug and a huge piece torn from a loaf. Squatting beside the
cow he balanced the mug between his knees and deftly
milked it full. She seized it, drained it thirstily and began
munching her bread, holding the mug out to him again to be
filled a second time. She bit great mouthfuls from the loaf,
like a child of four, and Roger watched her, half amused,
half irritated.
"You are not accustomed to the exercise of hospitality,
I see," he said finally, and as she looked at him over the
silver mug inquiringly, he explained.
"I have walked for more than an hour and I am hungry,
too, Miss Margarita," he said. "Won't you offer me any-
thing to eat and drink ? "
She shook her head doubtfully.
[52]
ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND
"I need this bread myself," she said, "and no one drinks
from this cup but me. I should not like it. If Caliban will
get you another . . ."
"Surely he will if you tell him to," Roger suggested
mildly.
"Very well," she returned indifferently, "when he has
finished milking, I will," and she continued her meal, adding,
" I do not think he likes you, for he shows his teeth. He did
that when the doctor came to see my father."
I asked Margarita a year or two after this to describe for
me how she first entertained Roger: I had already a good
idea of his initial hospitality to her in the French restaurant.
Here is her letter.
DEAREST JERRY:
What an odd thing to ask me to tell you my first hos-
pitality to Roger! But I remember it very well. Only it
was not very hospitable, because, of course, I did not know
anything about that sort of thing. One has to learn that,
like finger bowls and asking people if they slept well. You
know I called for some bread and milk and ate them very
greedily, standing by the cow so that I could get more when
I should want it. By the time I had finished, Caliban had
finished milking and then Roger asked me quite politely
if I thought he might have something to eat now. You
know, dear Jerry, I had never been used to eating with peo-
ple. All the people I knew ate their meals separately and
it never occurred to me that I ought to be there when he
ate. And then, I was so sleepy oh, so sleepy! You know
I have always felt sleepy and hungry and angry and things
like that so much more than other people seem to. I have
to sleep and eat when I feel like sleeping and eating. So I
only said, "You had better ask Hester to get you a break-
fast. I must go to sleep now," and flung myself down on
some fresh hay just beside the cow stall, in the sun, and
went to sleep! Was not that a dreadful thing to do? But
I did it. I do not know how long I slept, nor how Roger
looked when I turned my back on him, but when I opened
[53]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
my eyes he was sitting beside me, smoking a cigar and
staring at me. He had been there all the time.
"Did Hester get you a breakfast?" I asked him, stretch-
ing myself like a big baby.
"I have not asked her," he said very quietly, "suppose we
go in now and see about it, if you are rested."
So we went in, but Hester was not in the kitchen, and
when I went up to her room and knocked there was no an-
swer, so I supposed she had gone out for the roots and
herbs she used to hunt so much.
"You will have to get it yourself," I told him, "unless
Caliban will."
"Are you not willing to do that much for me, then?"
he said, and I felt very strange, though I could not explain
why. I think now it was because I began to understand
that I ought to have done something I had not.
"I would get it for you if I could," I said, "but I do not
know how to make a breakfast, nor where Hester keeps
her things. Why do you not ask Caliban ? "
So then he asked Caliban if he could manage some break-
fast for him, but Caliban only stared and walked away.
"Does he understand?" Roger asked me, and I felt that
his voice was not the same as it had been.
"I am sure he does," I said. "Will you not do as this
man asks you, Caliban?" But he only scowled and turned
away.
"You see," I said, "there is nothing to be done until
Hester comes." But Roger shook his head and walked
over to Caliban.
I am sure he knew it was not that I grudged him food,
but that I had no idea at all of how to set about getting it
ready. People always have known that what I say is truth,
though much of what I say seems to surprise them.
"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will try a slightly
different method," and I knew he was very angry. He
lifted Caliban in the air by the collar of his coat and gave
him several sharp blows on each ear and shook him. Then
he threw him away on the floor. Caliban cried like a young
dog and sat upon his knees and covered his face. He meant
[54]
ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND
for Roger to excuse him. I was surprised, for I had always
been a little afraid of Caliban.
"Get up," said Roger, very quietly, "and make me some
coffee and whatever else you have. And see that you obey
me in future."
Caliban hurried about and looked here and there and
made some coffee and broke eggs in a black pan and cut
pieces of bacon. He set a place at the kitchen table and
made some biscuits warm in the oven. Roger ate five eggs
and a great many pieces of bacon and six biscuits. He gave
me some coffee. When he had finished he drew a long
breath and gave Caliban a piece of silver money and Cali-
ban kissed it. Then Roger took another cigar and told
Caliban to fetch a match and then he asked me if I would
like to walk by the sea for a little.
"I ought to find this Hester of yours," he said, "but I
won't just yet. I am too comfortable. Will you come out
with me?"
So I said I would, and that was all my hospitality, dear
Jerry. I had learned better when you came, had I not?
This letter has been so long that I cannot write any more.
Your MARGARITA.
My Margarita! The very words are not like any other
two words. I think no woman's name is so purely sweet to
the ear, so grateful on the tongue. My Margarita! Alas,
alas. . . .
As to that walk by the sea, I have never been able to get any
satisfactory account of it. Any, that is, which could hope
to prove satisfactory to one who did not know Roger. Such
an one might be incredulous, in face of all that had gone
before, when assured that Roger paced back and forth on the
firm sand, filling his lungs in the clean sea air, puffing his
cigar in perfect silence, Margarita at his heels as silent as
he, and the big Danish hound at hers, more silent than
either. But so it was. To me who know them both, noth-
ing could seem more natural. They were healthy, well-
poised animals, well fed, supplied with plenty of fresh air
[55]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
(a prime necessity to them both) and in congenial company.
Neither of them was given to consideration of the past or
prognostication of the future; both of them were content.
Roger has always had that priceless faculty of reserving
mental processes, apparently, until they are necessary.
When they are not, he lays them by, as a sportsman lays by
his gun, and the teasing, relentless imps that poison the rest
of us with futile regrets for the past and vain hopes for the
future avoid him utterly. It is the pure Anglo Saxon corner-
stone of that great, slow wall which I firmly believe is destined
to encircle the world, one day. Your slender, brown peoples
with their throbbing, restless brains and curious, trembling
fingers may and doubtless will build the cathedrals and
paint the frescoes therein and write the songs to be sung
there; but they must hold their land from Roger and his
kind and look to him to guard them safe and unmolested
there. Or so it seems to me.
After an hour or so of this walking Caliban approached
them, and bending humbly before Roger made it clear that
he greatly desired their presence at the cottage. They went
after him, Margarita incurious because she was utterly in-
different, Roger wasting no energy, of course, with no facts
to proceed upon. At the kitchen he endeavoured to lead
them up the narrow stair, and then Margarita asked him if
anything was wrong with Hester and if she had sent him.
He nodded his head violently and led her up the stair. In
a few moments she returned.
"Hester," she said composedly, "is dead."
"Dead?" Roger echoed in consternation, "are you
certain ? "
"Oh, yes," she replied, "she is cold, just like my father.
She is sitting in her chair. Her eyes are open and she is
dead."
Rogers stared thoughtfully ahead of him. He never
doubted her for a moment. It was always impossible to
doubt Margarita.
[56]
ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND
"I wonder if Caliban will make my breakfast, now?"
she added, with a shadow of concern in her voice. "I think
he puts more coffee in the pot: I shall be glad of that."
"For heaven's sake," Roger cried sharply, "are you
human, child? This woman, if I understand you, has
taken care of you from babyhood!"
"Of course," said Margarita, "but I do not like her and
she does not like me. She liked my father."
It may seem strange to you that Roger did not immediately
ascend the stair and confirm Margarita's report, but he did
not. Instead he spoke to Caliban.
"Is the woman dead?" he asked shortly.
The clumsy, slow-witted youth nodded his head and sobbed
noisily, with strange animal-like grunts and gulps.
"Has she been dead long, do you think?" Roger asked.
Caliban raised his hand and checked off the five fingers
slowly. It was understood that he indicated so many hours.
He placed his hand upon his heart, then shook his head from
side to side. Suddenly he shifted his features unbelievably
and Roger gazed horrified upon a very mask of death: there
was no doubt as to what Caliban had seen.
This being so Roger thought a moment and then spoke.
"I am very sleepy, Margarita," he said, "and I don't care
to walk back to the village directly, since it would do no
especial good. I think I will take a little nap on the beach,
if you don't mind, and then I'll go to the village and get
help to to do the various things that must be done. Later
I will have a talk with you. Tell me once again you do
not know of any friends or relatives of your father's or
Hester's?"
She shook her head, carelessly but definitely.
"Does Caliban?"
But this question was beyond the poor lout's intelligence;
he could only blubber and fend off possible chastisement.
"Take another nap, if you can, Margarita," said Roger,
" and I will go to the beach. Call me if you want me."
[57]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
She went off to her warm straw, threw herself on it like a
tired child, and passed quickly into a deep sleep; he tramped
for a moment on the beach, then stretched himself in the lee
of a sun-warmed rock and fell into the dreamless, renewing
rest that he took as his simple due from nature.
I 58]
CHAPTER VI
FATE CASTS HER DIE
WHEN he woke it was full sunset. The lonely reefs were
red with it (O Margarita, well I know that hour! Do you
remember our talks ?) the point of land seemed drowned in
it, and with a sense of something inexcusably forgotten and
put off, Roger hurried to the house that stood strangely
deserted, it seemed, in the dying glow. In just that glow I
have watched it, leaning on my oars, and for a few strange
minutes, the exact time necessary for the sun to drop be-
hind the coast-hills, I have felt myself a small boy again,
crouched in a cane chair before my mother's sewing-table,
unable for very terror to drop my feet to the floor as I gazed
through wide eyes at the House of Usher, that home of sun-
set mystery. Such a strange, Poe-like atmosphere could
that sanded, secret cottage take upon itself.
Roger pushed rapidly up the beach and entered the house
quietly, so quietly that he caught Margarita's last sentences,
which struck him as odd even in his utter ignorance of their
connection. She was evidently scolding Caliban, for his
grunts and shufflings punctuated her pauses.
"It is very saucy and unkind of you, Caliban," she was
saying, "and you need not think you can do as you like be-
cause Hester is dead. I know she can not walk any more.
My father could not walk when he was dead. And you need
not think that Roger Bradley will not ask, because he will.
He knows everything."
Roger thought that the lout had been teasing her with
stupid ghost hints and bade him begone sternly, more vexed
than before as he noticed the dim twilight drawing in and
[59]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
realised how late and inconvenient the hour was for all he
had to do.
"Can you get me a lantern, Margarita?" he said shortly.
"I must get back to the village and try to bring someone
out with me to see about the all the matters that must be
attended to upstairs."
"Upstairs?" she repeated, "what matters?" He blessed
her indifference then, and explained as gently as he could
the necessity for some disposition of her old housekeeper's
body.
"Oh! Hester," she returned, "you cannot do anything
to Hester, Roger Bradley, for she has gone."
"Gone," he echoed stupidly.
"Go and see," said Margarita, pointing to the stairway,
and he took the steps two at a time. The room that she in-
dicated faced the stairs directly. It was furnished plainly
with an ugly wooden bed covered with a bright patchwork
quilt, a pine bureau and two cheap chairs. The walls were
utterly bare and the floor, but for a woven rug near the bed,
of the sort so common in New England. And yet there was
an air of homely occupation in the plain chamber, a bright,
patched cushion in one chair, a basket full of household
mending and such matters, on a small table, a pair of
spectacles and a worn E.'ble beside it. The room had that
unmistakable air of recent occupation, that subtle atmosphere
of use and wont that no art can simulate and yet it was
empty.
Roger came down the stairs again and summoned Caliban.
The fellow lay in a deep sleep, just as he had thrown himself,
on the straw beside the cow stall, a full pail of milk beside
him. It was hard to wake him, for he scowled and snored
and dropped heavily off again after each shaking, but at last
he stood conscious before them and appeared to understand
Roger's sharp questions well enough, though his only
answer was a clumsy twist of his large head and a dismal
negative sort of grunt.
[60]
FATE CASTS HER DIE
Where was Hester's body? Was she really dead? Had
anyone been in the house ? What had he been doing all the
afternoon ? One might as well have asked the great hound
in the doorway. Even to threats of violence he was dumb,
cowering, it is true, but hopelessly and with no attempt to
escape whatever penalty his obstinacy might incur.
Roger fell into a perplexed silence and the lout dropped
back snoring on his straw.
"I do not see why we came back from Broadway," Mar-
garita observed placidly. " I did not want to, you remember,
and now Caliban is too sleepy to get our supper. We shall
have to have more bread and milk. Let us eat it on the
rocks, Roger Bradley, will you?"
And Roger, in spite of the fact that he was forty and a
conspicuously practical person (or was it, perhaps just
because of this fact? I confess I am not quite sure!) actually
left that house of mystery carrying a yellow earthen pitcher
of milk, a crusty loaf of new bread, a great slice of sage
cheese and a blueberry pie, followed by Margarita and the
Danish hound, Margarita prattling of Broadway, the dog
licking her hand, Roger, I have no sort of doubt, intent on
conveying the food in good order to its destination!
They sat on the rocks, warm yet with the September sun,
and ate with a healthy relish, while the first pale stars came
out and the incoming tide lapped the smooth beach. I have
been assured that they never in the conversation that fol-
lowed mentioned the island though it was not then an
island, to be sure that they were sitting upon, nor the ex-
traordinary events which had happened there and had
brought them to it. And I believe it. I also believe, and do
not need to be assured, that they talked little of anything.
They never did. Again and again I have imparted to
Roger some or other of Margarita's amazing conversations
with me and he has listened to them with the grave interest
of a stranger and even questioned me indolently as to my
theory of that stage of her development. I must add that he
[61]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
has never seemed surprised at what she said and has oc-
casionally corrected me in my analyses and prophecies with
an acuteness that has astonished me, for he was never byway
of being analytic, our Roger. When I once remarked to
Clarence King (who was devoted to her) apropos of this
silence of theirs that it was like the quiet intimacy of the ani-
mals, he looked at me deeply for a moment, then added,
"Or the angels, maybe?" which, like most of King's re-
marks, bears thinking of, dear fellow. I never heard him in
my life talk so brilliantly as he did one afternoon stretched
on the sand by Margarita, while she fed him wild straw-
berries from her lap and embroidered the most beautiful
butterfly on the lapel of his old velveteen jacket, and Roger
tried to ride in on the breakers like the South Sea Islanders.
From time to time Clarence would turn one of those lumi-
nous sentences of his and kiss the stained finger tips that fed
him (I never did that in my life) and from time to time
Roger's splendid tanned body would rise between us and the
sun, triumphant on his board or ignominiously flat between
the great combers. But he was as calm as the tide and we
knew that he would beat it in the end and "get the hang of
it" as he promised. She never turned her eyes toward him,
that I could see, but I am convinced that she was perfectly
aware each time he fell. She never talked much to King
and he was always a little jealous of me on that account.
But she was very fond of him and always wrote to him
when he was off on his ramblings. His letters to her were al-
ways in rhyme, the cleverest possible.
There are, of course, whole pages to be written if one
wanted to write them of that night on the rocks. I naturally
don't want to write them. To say that I have not imagined
them would be a stupid lie; I am human. But I have never
been able to bring myself to the point of view of the modern
lady novelist in these matters. Why is it, by the way, that
God has hidden so many things in these latter days from
the prudent and revealed them unto spinsters ?
[62]
FATE CASTS HER DIE
Not that I need to rely on my imagination: Margarita
would have saved me that. Once she got the idea that I was
interested in those early days, she was perfectly willing to
draw upon her extraordinary memory for all the details I
could endure. But of course I could not let her. The dar-
ling imbecile could anything have been so hopelessly
enchanting as Margarita? It is impossible. If you can
picture to yourself a boy but that is misleading, directly,
when I think of her curled close against me on the rocks, her
hand on my arm and all my veins tingling under it. She
was all woman. And yet who but me who knew her can ever
have heard from the lips of any woman such absolute naivete,
such crystal frankness? It was like those dear talks with
some lovely, loved and loving child. But that, again, gives
you no proper idea. For no child's throat sounds such deep,
bell-like tones, such sweet, swooping cadences. And no
child's eyes meet yours with that clear beam, only to soften
and tremble and swim suddenly with such alluring ten-
derness that your heart shakes in you and slips out to drown
contentedly in those slate-blue depths. No, no, there is no
describing Margarita. Perhaps King came nearest to it
when he said that she was Eve before the fall, plus a sense of
humour! But Eve is distinctly Miltonian to us (unfor-
tunately for the poor woman) and Margarita would have
horrified Milton there is no doubt of it.
Well, well, I left them on the moonlit rocks, and there I
had better leave them, I suppose. It is so hard for me to
make you understand that Roger was incapable of anything
low, when I am apparently doing my best to catalogue ac-
tions that can be set only too easily in an extremely
doubtful light. All I can say is, pick out the best fellow
you know, the one you'd rather have to count on, at a
pinch, than another, the one you'd swear to for doing the
straight thing and holding his tongue about it then give
him five feet eleven and a half inches and blue eyes and
you've Roger. This is rather a poor dodge at character
[63]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
drawing: I know a competent author would never throw
himself on your mercy so.
But then, what does it matter ? When the members of a
man's own household, who have known him from boyhood,
fail to understand him and take a satiric pleasure in looking
at what he does from the nastiest possible standpoint (none
the less nasty because it is a logically possible standpoint)
why should I, a confessed amateur, hope to make Roger
clear to you if you are determined to misjudge him ?
I find myself still a little sore on this point: unnecessarily
so, you may be thinking. But you never had to explain it
to the family in Boston, you see and Sarah. I had. I can
see her cold, grey-green eyes to this hour, her white starched
shirt and her sharp steel belt buckle ugh ! It should be ille-
gal, in a Republic where there are so many less sensible laws,
for any woman to be so ostentatiously unattractive. . . .
"Margarita," I said once, very soon after I had met her,
"were you ever caught by the tide on those first rocks?
See how it has crept up and cut them off."
"Oh yes, often," she answered, "the first night Roger
ever came here, for once. Do you not remember, I told you
how he carried the blueberry pie and the milk out there
and we ate them? He was so hungry! It was then that
he looked at me so "
"Blueberry pie," I said hastily, "is very messy, I think,
though undoubtedly good. It makes one's mouth so black."
"I know," she murmured reminiscently, "I told Roger
that his mouth was stained and I laughed at him. And then
he said that mine was worse, because there was some on my
chin why do you scowl so, Jerry? Is that a wrong thing
to tell?"
"No, no," I assured her, "of course not."
"I am glad," she said comfortably, "it is very strange
that I cannot see the difference, myself. How do you see,
Jerry? But I was telling you about the tide, was I not?
When Roger said that about my mouth I tried to get the
[64]
FATE CASTS HER DIE
stain off, but I could not, and then Roger said it was no use
trying any more and he kissed me."
Here Margarita paused and patted my hand, tapping
each ringer nail lightly with her own finger-tips.
"You need not be afraid, Jerry," she added encouragingly,
"I shall not tell any more things about that."
I drew away my hand irritably. " Well, well, what about
the tide?" I said.
Margarita's repulsed fingers lay loosely upcurled on her
knees, which she hunched in front of her, like a boy.
"Oh, it was only what you asked me, dear Jerry," she
answered softly, "while Roger was kissing me that kiss,
the tide did come in!"
CHAPTER VII
I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT
IT is easy to see that I should have made a poor novelist;
it has been hard enough for me to give you any idea of scenes
I did not myself witness, even though I had Roger and
Margarita to help me out and an intimate knowledge of
both of them, and when I try to fancy myself composing a
tissue of fictitious events " all out of my head," as the children
say, my pen drops weakly out of my fingers, in horror at
the very thought.
But now, thank heaven, the pull is over. From now on,
I need tell only what I knew and saw, in the strange, inter-
woven life we three have led. Three only? Nay, Harriet
of the true heart, Harriet of the tender hand, could we have
been three without you? My fingers should wither before
they left your name unwritten.
I remember so well the night the telegram came. I had
been vexed all day. Everything had gone wrong. Roger,
to meet whom I had come back early to town, had neither
turned up nor sent me any message; the day had been sick-
eningly hot, with that mid-September heat that comes to the
Eastern States after the first crisp days and wilts everything
and everybody. I found my rooms atrociously stale and
dusty, and worse than that, perfectly useless, since by some
miracle of carelessness I had left my keys behind me at the
shore and hadn't so much as a clean collar to look forward to.
The club valet assured me that he had received no call for
trunk or bag, but that Roger had assuredly not entered the
house for five days. I went into his rooms, but they told me
nothing, and I, worse luck, should have been lost in his
[66]
I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT
collar, so I glared angrily at the drawers of linen, wired for
my own keys and made for the Turkish bath. There with a
thrill of delight I discovered a complete change of clothing;
I had, before leaving for the summer, jumped hastily into
dinner things, leaving a heap of forgotten garments
behind me and they awaited me now, trim and creased,
russet shoes polished, and a wine-colored tie, a particular
favourite of mine, topping the fresh linen. It seems absurd,
but I recall few moments in my life of such pure, heartfelt
thanksgiving. The very colour of life seemed changed for
me. I wonder if we do well in despising these small thrills
as we do? Surely enough of them sedulously preserved in
grateful memory must equal in intensity those great, theoreti-
cal moments we all regard as our due but so often pass
through life, I am sure, without experiencing.
However that may be, the little gratifications of that even-
ing are graven in my mind, undoubtedly, you will say, be-
cause of the startling climax for which they were preparing
me. The clean tingling of my soapy scrub, the delicious cool-
ness of the plunge, the leisurely, fresh dressing all caressed
my nerves delightfully. In the plunge a pleasant enough
fellow had accosted me and we had splashed together con-
tentedly. I expected to recall his name every moment, for
his face was vaguely familiar, but I could not, and when we
met in the hall and went down the steps together, it still
escaped me. We hesitated a bit on the pavement, and then
before I realised it we were hailing a hansom and bound
for dinner together.
It was a pleasant drive up along the river, for a little breeze
had sprung up and the watered asphalt smelt cool. We were
both comfortably hungry and very placid after our bath and
we chatted in a desultory sort of way, I, amused at my utter
inability to place the fellow, he quite unconscious, of course,
and perfectly certain of me. He asked after Roger, sym-
pathised with our failure to make connections, remarked
to my surprise that he had only been out of town for his
[67]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
Sundays (America had not adopted the "week-end" at
that time) and asked me, I remember, if I knew anything
about a game called basket-ball. It seemed he was anxious
to find someone who did. We drew up at last to our white,
glistening little table looking out over the water, looked
about for possible friends, nodded to the head-waiter and
ordered our dinner. It turned out that neither of us had yet
celebrated the oyster month, and leaving my unknown to
bespeak the blue points, for the more conservative among
us clung to the smaller oyster then, I telephoned the club to
let Roger know where to find me in case he should appear
there.
Over the soup my companion got on to the subject
somehow of evolution, and talked about it very ably in-
deed. It is absurd, but I shall never be able to eat jellied
consomme" as long as I live without connecting it with the
Saurian Period! I remember that those quaint and ap-
parently highly important beasts lasted well into our guinea-
chick and lettuce-hearts, and I can see him now, his eager,
dark face all lighted with enthusiasm while he spread may-
onnaise neatly over the crimson quarters of tomato on his
plate, and made short nervous mouthfuls, in order to talk
the better. Half amused, half interested I listened, trying
to place the fellow, but for the life of me I could not. Was he
a scientist, a lecturer, a magazine writer, a schoolmaster?
We finished with some Port du Salut and Bar-le-duc an
admitted weakness of mine and I had decided to regularly
pump him and find out his name without his guessing my
game, when he began as I supposed, to help me out.
"Heavens!" he said with compunction, "you'll think me
an awful bore, Jerrolds, but I've been more or less practis-
ing on you, haven't I? But you'll remember, perhaps,
this used to be a sort of hobby of mine, and I work it into
shape nowadays for a young men's club I'm running."
I yawned and lit a cigar and we sipped our coffee in silence.
The plates rattled around us, the curafoa in my tiny glass
[68]
I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT
smelled sweet and strong, everything was natural, easy, well
fed and well groomed (as the phrase goes now) about me,
the day and hour were like any other; and yet from that
moment on my life was never to be quite the same, for sur-
prise and change were hurrying toward me, and the man
opposite how curiously ! was to be drawn into the wide net
that fate had sunk for me and must have even then been
preparing to draw smoothly and effectively to the surface.
We think, when we are young, that we live alone. I recall,
as a boy of twenty, certain hot-headed, despairing midnight
walks when the horror of my hopeless, unapproachable, un-
reachable identity surged over me in melancholy waves.
Heavens! I would have plunged into a monastery if I had
believed that any sort of prayer and fasting could bring me
close really close to God; for to any human creature, I
had learned, I could never be close. After that, we grow into
that curious stage of irresponsibility which we deduce from
this loneliness, and distress our patient relatives with windy
explanations of " matters that concern ourselves alone." And
later still, if we have the right kind of women about us, some
faint idea of the twisted net we weave you and I and the
other fellow, all together, whether we will or no comes to
us, and we stare awhile and then . . . shrug our shoulders
or bend our knees or set our jaws, according as we are made.
I like to believe, now, that a dim idea of what was going
to happen was in some mysterious way growing on me be-
fore I got the telegram. I am certain that when the head-
waiter touched my arm and told me I was wanted at the tele-
phone, a curious oppression fell over my hitherto contented
after-dinner spirit which grew into a kind of excitement as I
made my way to the booth. And yet I expected nothing
more than to hear Roger's voice with some reasonable
explanation of his failure to meet me. It was the night
porter, however, reading me a telegram missent to the shore
and returned to the club.
"Shall I read it, sir?"
[69]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"Yes, Richard, let's have it."
He mumbled the name of a place I had never heard of
and went on in the peculiarly expressionless style consecrated
to messages, thus transmitted.
" Please bring bag oj clothes and razors here will meet train
arriving four thirty Tuesday bring sensible parson don't fail.
Roger."
I stared at the receiver stupidly. This was Wednesday.
"That's crazy, Richard," I stammered finally, "bring
what? Read it again."
"It's quite plain, sir, except the town," and again the
strange message reached me.
"Well," I managed to get out, "it's clear he wants clothes,
anyway. Tell Hodgson to pack a complete change for Mr.
Bradley and his razors. And see if you can find the name of
the place from the chief operator and the correct message.
It can't be parson, of course. And look up the next train
for that place, if you can, Richard. I'll be down there
directly."
I puffed hard at my dying cigar and went slowly back to the
veranda, trying to make sense of that telegram.
"No bad news, I hope?" my companion inquired kindly,
for I suppose I looked worried.
"No," I said slowly, "only an idiotic sort of telegram from
Roger. He wants me to meet him at some place or other at
present unknown, and to bring him his razors and a sensible
parson."
My unknown friend burst into a chuckle of laughter.
"Well," he said cheerfully, "you get the razors and I'll
attend to the parson end of it. Any special denomination ? "
I paid for our dinner (he had insisted upon paying the
cab) and gathered up my hat and stick.
"It's absurd," I went on, "perhaps he meant 'person,'
though what's the point in that? Anyhow I must start
directly. There may be a night train. Would you rather
stop here a while ? "
I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT
"No, no, let me see you through," he said good-naturedly,
" I'm interested. Perhaps he's going to fight a duel with the
razors and wants the parson for the other fellow! Perhaps
he's made a bet to shave a parson. Perhaps "
But I was in no mood for joking. The telegram, so unlike
Roger, and yet so unmistakably his, in a way I have often
noted a curious characteristic quality in telegrams worried
me. I wished I had got it in time to make the train
he mentioned. I wished I were in that mysterious town.
Suppose he had depended on me for it? Suppose he
needed me?
We drove down in silence. My man got out with me at the
club and smiled at the Gladstone the porter held out to me.
"There are the razors, anyhow," he said.
Richard had the name of the town for me, too (the town
I prefer not to tell you) and the next train that would make it:
it left in fifteen minutes.
"And it is parson, sir p-a-r-s-o-n: there's no mistake.
Shall I call you a cab, sir ? "
I bit through my cigar with irritation.
"In heaven's name," I cried, "how am I to get a sensible
parson in fifteeen minutes? In the first place, I don't be-
lieve there is such a thing!"
"Hold on, there," said my friend suddenly, "there is,
Jerrolds, for I'm one, and you know it!"
I started at him. Who in the devil was he ? Instinctively
I began an apology.
" I I didn't recall at the moment "
"Between you and me," he cut me short, " I'm just as well
pleased that you didn't, Jerrolds! The sooner we get through
with all this white choker and black coat business, the sooner
we'll amount to something, in my way of thinking. Well,
seriously will I do? Do you know anybody better?
Because I'll go, if you don't."
I grasped his offered hand.
"Heaven bless you," I thought, "whoever you are!" and,
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"All right," I said shortly, "it's very kind of you. We'll
have to hurry, I'm afraid."
We had just time to jump for the last platform. I remem-
ber apostrophising the Gladstone rather strongly as I fell
on its metal clasp, and glancing apologetically at my com-
panion, but he was tactfully deaf, and we found a seat to-
gether, by good luck, and settled down for our hot and tire-
some night.
I couldn't very well ask his name by that time, it would
have been too absurd. I trusted to Roger to get me out
of that difficulty, for he knew Roger, evidently, and me too,
though not very well, I judged. He certainly wasn't in my
college class, for it would have come up, I was sure, in our
talk. Not that we talked much. It was a stuffy, disagreeable
ride, and I was alternately vexed with Roger and worried
about him. In a hopelessly foolish manner I connected the
razors and the parson, too closely for any reasonable inference
in regard to the latter. I knew the connection was ridiculous
but it was persistent, and as I had lost all hope of placing the
man sitting beside me, my mind was altogether in a horrid
muddle. Once he asked me abruptly if Roger were an Epis-
copalian.
"No," I answered, "he his people are Unitarians."
"I'm a Congregationalist, as you know, of course," he
went on, "but if it makes no more difference to Roger than
it will to me, there'll be no trouble."
"Anyone would suppose he was going to christen Roger,"
I thought disgustedly and returned to my troublesome
thoughts, replying absently that it would be all right, of
course.
We changed cars at S and got into a queer little local
train filled with young village roughs, whose noisy horseplay
annoyed me exceedingly. My mysterious parson, however,
was deeply interested in them and related incident after
incident in proof of what could be accomplished with this
offensive part of the rural population by social organisation
[72]
I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT
under competent direction. He even got out an old letter
and proved to me on the back of it, with a stub of a pencil,
what a pitiful outlay in money was sufficient to start a prac-
tical boys' club, including the rent of a second-hand piano,
to be purchased ultimately on the instalment plan. In the
midst of this lecture (it was no less) I fell asleep, uncomfort-
ably and rudely, and it was he who shook me awake at last
and carried the bag out of the close car.
73]
CHAPTER VIII
THE MISTS OF EDEN
THE station lights flared pale in the coming dawn. Be-
hind the barred window of the ticket-office, which con-
tained, as its bright lamp showed, a tumbled cot bed and a
dilapidated arm-chair, a tousled young man sat playing
Patience in his nightshirt on the telegraph table. We
battered on his window, and to our amazement he nodded
casually and entirely without surprise at us, reached into a
corner of his littered room, grasped a pair of oars, and,
pushing up the window, poked them out at us between the
bars.
"Mr. Jerrolds, I guess," he remarked. "Mr. Bradley's
left the boat for you at the foot of the dock, little ways across
the track there. It's kind of a blue boat. You just sight the
two reefs and the bell buoy and when you're just opposite
of the buoy, turn about and make for the shore. There's
a white pole where you land."
"Have you been sitting up " I began, but he cut me
short impatiently.
"No, I have insomnia it's something dreadful the way
I have it," he explained. " I'm always sitting up."
I accepted the oars mechanically.
"And where is Mr. Bradley stopping?" I asked.
"Why, over to Miss Prynne's. He met the afternoon train
yest'day and the deaf an' dumb feller rowed over to-day,
and when you didn't turn up he left the oars. I tell you,
he knows more'n you might think, to look at him."
"Was is Mr. Bradley well?" I asked.
[74]
THE MISTS OF EDEN
"He looked to be well enough yest'day," said the insomniac
indifferently, "big feller, ain't he?"
I shouldered the oars, and followed by my sensible parson
with the bag, made for the untidy wharf through the silent
village. The blue boat was not hard to discover in the pale,
ghostly light; the bay was hardly rippled; it was to be
another hot, sticky day. My companion begged the privilege
of the oars.
"My old game, you know," he added apologetically, and
swept us out on the black, mysterious water with beautiful,
clean strokes. He had soon marked down the buoy and
was regretting that it would be only a matter of twenty min-
utes before we must land.
"Do you know," he added with a boyish sort of smile, "all
this is a real adventure to me, Jerrolds, and I can't help
enjoying it. It can't be serious, you see Roger's well.
Perhaps" and he shot a curious glance at me "perhaps
he's going to be married!"
I laughed a little stiffly. It was difficult to explain to this
sensible parson that Bradleys did not marry in this fashion;
it wasn't quite complimentary to him. Moreover I didn't
know whether he would be sensible enough to understand
what two or three of Roger's friends knew very well that
he was unlikely to marry so long as Sue Paynter remained
above ground. It had been simple enough, that affair: Sue
and Roger had been engaged ten years before the time of
which I am writing, they were within a few months of the
wedding, and Frederick Paynter, her cousin, had come back
from Germany, playing Chopin like a demi-god, and had
whirled her off her feet in a fortnight. She broke off the
engagement in a rather cruel way, it seemed to me by
telephone and Roger hung up the receiver (I myself
heard him answer slowly, "Very well, dear. I see. Good-
bye.") and went to Algiers with me. When we came back
they were married and he was having a great success, play-
ing before Royalty and all that sort of thing.
[75]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
I think it took Sue about a month to find out what any of
her men friends could have told her in six seconds, and after
that she kept him in Europe as much as she could. She kept
up pretty well for three or four years, but at last she came
back with her two delicate babies and satisfied everybody's
sense of propriety by nursing Frederick while he stayed in
America and dining out with him twice a season before he
returned to Europe. It was all very regrettable and Sarah
would discuss it in her tactful way from time to time till, if
I had been Roger, I should have choked her. Sue would
not listen to a separation, even, and insisted that Freder-
ick sent her plenty of money, which Roger invested for her,
and old Madam Bradley had her often with them in Boston.
Roger never discussed it; he didn't need to. But I never knew
him to be out of Boston or New York if the Paynters were
there together, and I remarked that he invariably left word
tvhere he could be reached, day or night, when Frederick
was playing a series of concerts.
All this ran through my mind as we cut through the water
and the sky grew paler by degrees and the stars faded out.
We were opposite the buoy now, dark amongst the dark
waves, and we turned at right angles and made for the shore.
The tide was high and we glided over the inner reef easily.
Soon we could see the eaves of the cottage dimly, a cock
crowed sleepily, the white pole pointed out some rough steps
cut in the rocks ahead.
That sudden sense of excitement grew in me again, a
nervous longing to get hold of Roger, to get away from my
oarsman, for I was worried out of all reason. He, to my
satisfaction, at this moment proposed a separation.
"I haven't had half enough of this," he said suddenly,
"why don't you land, Jerrolds, if you feel you ought to
though I don't see how we can descend on Miss Prynne or
anybody else at this unearthly hour and I'll pull about
for a while ? I don't doubt you'd rather see Roger alone,
anyhow, at first. When you want me, just give me a hail
[76]
THE MISTS OF EDEN
I won't be far. And tell him to have plenty of breakfast,
will you?"
I agreed warmly to this and clambered up the slippery
steps, still possessed by the same muffled excitement. The
beach was hard as a floor under me and I almost ran along
it toward the sanded cottage. The merest glance at it showed
that no one watched there; the windows were dark. I
skirted the rocky wall that protected its back and sides; no
one was stirring in stable or outhouse. On the shore side a
straggling grass stretch ran down to a sheltered, inland bay;
a fair sized vegetable garden, glistening with dew, and a few
fruit trees gave a domestic air to the place, utterly unguessed
from the forbidding sea front. I wandered toward this little
bay and sat in a delightful natural chair of rock to wait for the
sunrise.
I must have lost myself for a few minutes, for when I
opened my eyes everything before them was changed, as
completely as the scene shifters change a stage picture.
The little bay was crowded with rolling seas of white, thick
mist, like an Alpine lake. Billow on billow it rolled in,
faintly luminous here and there, breaking as smoke breaks,
on the beach. As I stared, lost in the beauty of it, two great
gold arrows from the sun behind me cut into the thickest of
it and tore it like a curtain, and in the rent appeared two
human figures, walking as it might be on clouds to earth.
More than mortal tall they loomed in the mist, and no mar-
bles I have ever seen not even that Wonder of Melos
is so immortally lovely as they were. The woman wore
a veil of crimson vine-leaves that wound about her hips and
dropped on one side nearly to her knee, around the man's
neck a great lock of her long hair lay loose and on his head
a rough wreath of the red leaves shone in the arrow of
sunlight. Beside them a monstrous hound appeared sud-
denly: a trailing vine dripped like blood from his great jowl.
I could not have told what she looked like to save my life:
she was what the world means when it says woman beau-
[77]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
tiful, certainly, but no one person. One arm was on his
shoulder, the other hand lay on the animal's head; the
mist covered their feet and they appeared as aerial, as unreal
as figures in some Assumption. But they were not through
with earth, not they: they were humanity triumphant
the very crown and flower of creation. They came up from
the sea with the grave, contented smile of the old gods on
their faces. Nature, working patiently at her Saurians, had
had this in her mind from the beginning, and I believed in
that moment that God had indeed allowed her to perfect
her last work in His image! For perhaps three heart-beats
I saw them there, framed in the luminous mist, and then it
rolled over them, swiftly, silently, and wiped them out, and
I stumbled from the rock-seat and ran back across the beach,
a great lump stiffening my throat and a hard, frightened
jealousy nearly stifling me, to my shame and surprise.
For I had known Roger twenty-five years and yet I
had never had the least idea of the man!
78]
PART THREE
IN WHICH THE STREAM JOINS WITH OTHERS
AND PLUNGES DOWN A CLIFF
He's left his flocks, his fields, his kine,
He's left his folk and friends and all,
He's off to watch the cold sea shine,
To brew for aye the salt sea brine,
The mermaid hath Sir Hugh in thrall.
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
[79]
CHAPTER .IX
MARGARITA MEETS THE ENEMY AND HE IS HERS
1 FLUNG myself down on the beach behind a big rock, so
that I was completely cut off from the cottage, and stared at
the sun rising, though it might as well have been the moon for
all my appreciation of it. So this was it! No wonder he
wanted a parson it was high time, I thought virtuously.
It cut me that he had never hinted this to me; that we, who
had had no secrets from each other for so many years (as I
thought) had really been divided by this, for what I in-
ferred had been a long time. And yet a moment's consider-
ation brought home to me the almost certainty that it couldn't
have been so very long, after all. There had been, especially
in the last year, weeks and even months when Roger and I
had not been separated for eight hours at a stretch. He
chose to work hard in the typical American fashion; I was
obliged to. And I knew his attitude toward the sort of liaison
we both despised. He had laboured enough and disgustedly
enough at dragging a weak-kneed cousin of his (the black
sheep that few large families dispense with) out of a connec-
tion of that kind. And anyhow, I knew that people who wore
when they were together the look I had seen on those two
visions of the mist could never be contented apart!
Well, well, it was a bad quarter of an hour for me, and I
had to get over it as best I could, alone. Women are usually
credited with a practical monopoly of jealousy of their own
sex, but wrongly, I am sure. We learn earlier to conceal it
and, better still, realise the necessity for keeping quiet about
it and getting over it. The clock continues to strike, and
[81]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
one's friends continue to marry, and one continues to present
silver mugs to one's god-children voilb tout\
I suppose the worry and strain of it all, the hot, stuffy,
sleepless night and the sudden shock at the last had tired me,
for as I lay on the beach, sheltered by the rock, with just
enough of the warm sun at my back for comfort, I went off
into a doze and lost myself completely. I may have slept two
hours, and woke with that perfectly definite sensation of some
one's being by and staring at me that disturbs one's deepest
dreams.
Sitting Turk fashion on the sand near me was a beautiful
young woman with great deep set grey eyes and two braids
of long dark hair, one falling over either shoulder. Her skin
was dark, nearly olive, and her mouth was of that deep,
dark red that has always seemed to me so much more allur-
ing than all the coral lips of poetry and convention. She
was oddly attired in a short, faded blue serge skirt and a
dull red jacket of the sort called at that sartorial epoch a
"jersey." Tied around the neck of this was a black silk
handkerchief. Black stockings, generously displayed, and
worn white tennis shoes completed her costume a trying
one, certainly, and, one would have supposed, sufficiently
prejudicial in my eyes, who have always had a confessed
preference for the charm of well-selected clothes, and a cer-
tain critical judgment in that direction, I am told.
But Margarita would have moulded a suit of chain-armour,
I believe, to her personality. It was quite obvious that she
wore no corset, for the tight jersey clung to her round, firm
bust and long, supple waist like a glove. Her shoulders were,
perhaps, a little shade squared, which only added to the boy-
ishness of the enchanting pose of her head, and the loose
handkerchief gave the last touch to the daintily hardy
fisher girl she seemed to have chosen for her masquerade.
For there was nothing of the peasant about her; race showed
in every feature, and the dim, toned colours of her faded
clothes appeared the last touch of realistic art.
[82]
MARGARITA MEETS THE ENEMY
"You must wake, now," she said gravely, "and tell me
if you are Jerry are you?"
"Yes," I said, "I am. And you are ? "
"I am Margarita," she said. "Did you bring some one
who knows how to marry people ? Roger said you would."
"I brought him he's out there," I answered, pointing
to the ocean generally.
She followed my arm with interest in her eyes. "Oh!
Is that where he will do it ? " she asked. " Roger did not tell
me that. Is he swimming?"
"I think not," I answered seriously, "I think he is in a
boat."
"I am glad of that," she remarked, "because I cannot
swim, myself. And I must be with Roger, you know, when we
are being married."
"It is usual," I admitted. I was really only half aware of
the extraordinary character of our conversation. Every one
became primitive in talking with Margarita and fell, more
or less, into her style of discourse.
"Have you been married?" she asked placidly, her grave,
lovely eyes full on mine. She sat quite motionless, her hands
loose in her lap, neither twiddling them aimlessly nor pre-
tending to employ them in the hundred nervous ways com-
mon to her sex.
"No."
"Neither have I. Neither has Roger. But many people
have. It cannot be hard."
"Oh, no! I believe it is the simplest thing in the world,"
I said, eyeing her narrowly. Was she teasing me? I
wondered.
"So Roger says," she agreed with obvious relief. "It is
only talking. I cannot see why Roger could not learn to do
it himself. Can you not do it, either?"
I shook my head. I was trying to believe that she was not
quite sane, but it was impossible. Her mind, I could have
sworn, was as vigourous as my own, though there was a
[83]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
difference, evidently. The precise, beautiful articulation
of her English gave me a new direction. She must be a
foreigner Italian, for choice, in spite of her English eyes.
"Marrying people is a business like any other, Miss I
did not hear your last name?" I ventured.
"I have none," she said. "I mean," correcting herself,
"Roger says that I must have one, of course, but I do not
happen to have heard it," she added calmly.
"Ah, well," I said coldly, "it is a mere detail."
I was seriously vexed with Roger. This young woman
passed belief. I decided that she was an actress of the first
water and resented being imposed upon.
"It is the same with my age how old I am," she con-
tinued. "Roger thinks I am twenty years of age. Do
you? He is going to ask you."
"Really, I can't say," I returned shortly, "I am a poor
judge of women's ages or characters," I added pointedly.
She did not blush nor move. Only her eyes widened
slightly and darkened.
"Roger will ask you," she repeated and I felt, unreason-
ably, as it seemed to me then, that my tone had hurt her, as
one's tone, utterly incomprehensible as the words it utters
may be, will hurt a child.
She sat in silence for a moment, and I, curiously eager for
her next remark and conscious suddenly of that strange, muf-
fled excitement that had oppressed me a few hours before,
watched her closely, gathering handfuls of sand and spilling
them over my knee.
"Did you ever go to Broadway? " she began again.
"I have, yes."
" I did, too," she assured me eagerly. " I think it is beauti-
ful. I should like to live there, should not you? Perhaps,"
hopefully, "you do live there?"
"No," I said, still on my guard and uncomfortable,
" I don't. Are you planning to live there after you are mar-
ried ? " She shook her head regretfully.
[84]
MARGARITA MEETS THE ENEMY
"I am afraid not," she said, and her voice dropped a full
third and coloured with a most absurd and exquisite sombre
quality, as Duse's used to in La Dame aux Camellias.
"Roger would not want to. He will not want me to walk
there very much, either. And that is very strange, because
there is where I first saw him. But there are places I shall
like quite as well, he says, and he will take me there. Will
you come, too ? "
"I am afraid," I replied drily, "that I might be a little
de trap, perhaps. Roger might not care for my society under
those circumstances."
Again she answered my tone rather than my words.
"Roger loves you," she said simply.
"He used to," I returned inexcusably. Oh, yes! utterly
inexcusably.
Again her eyes widened and grew dark, and this time the
corners of her mouth curved down pitifully, and I felt a
strange heaviness at my heart.
"You do not love me, do you, Jerry?" she said, and now
her voice dropped a good fifth and thrilled like the plucked
string of a violoncello, and my nerves vibrated to it and
tingled in my wrists.
"Roger said you would, and I thought you would and
you do not," she said sadly.
I clenched a handful of the moist sand and leaned toward
her, my heart pounding furiously.
"Are you sorry?" I muttered unsteadily, fixing my eyes
on hers.
She met them fully. Like great grey pools they were, her
eyes, honest as mountain springs, clear as rain. They caught
me and held me and drenched me in their innocent, warm
sweetness; there was not one thought in her head, not one
corner in her heart that I was not free to know. Those eyes
had never held a secret since they opened into a world that
had never, to her knowledge, deceived her. They swam in
light, and oh, the depths on depths of love that one could
[85]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
sound there! My last hateful anchor broke clean off and
my heart slipped from the stupid rocks of suspicion and self-
protection and jealousy, and floated away on the bosom of
that sweet, disturbing flood. I forgot Roger, I forgot what
had been myself; in that instant, in the utter surrender of her
innocent eyes, she became for me all at once the vision I had
seen in the mist again, the thing we mean when we say wo-
man but now she was one single special woman, the
vision and the flesh-and-blood reality together.
"Are you sorry?" I said again, and my voice was not my
own.
She smiled at me till I caught my breath. "Not now,
Jerry," she said softly, "because you do love me, now."
The sand fell, a tightly moulded shape, out of my hand, and
I wrenched my eyes away from her. They smarted and
stung, but the pain relieved me and cleared my brain,
and I knew suddenly what I have known ever since and shall
know till I die. There on the beach, before I had so much
as touched her hand, I had fallen senselessly and hopelessly
and everlastingly in love with Margarita.
[86]
CHAPTER X
FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST
I DON'T know how long we sat silent on the beach. Such
silence was never embarrassing to her, because it seemed
perfectly normal and usual, and I was too busy with my
thoughts to feel any sense of restraint. And yet they were
hardly thoughts: my head whirled in a confusion of regret
and desire, and one moment my blood ran warm with the
joy of my discovery, and the next a horrid chill crept over
me as I saw my empty years for if she might not fill them,
no one else should. At last I drew a long breath.
"Are you hungry ? " Margarita asked pleasantly. " When
I am hungry I do that very often. If you will come now,
we will have our breakfast."
She sprang to her feet with the lithe ease of a boy and held
out her hand to me. I took it and we walked thus across the
beach to the cottage, and during that walk, with her firm,
warm hand fast in mine and her clean, elastic step beside
me, I swore to myself that neither she nor Roger should ever
regret what she had done to me, nor know it, if I could keep
the knowledge from them. The last part of this vow was
impossible of fulfillment, finally, but the first, thank God!
has never been broken, or even for a moment strained, and I
like to hope that this may count a little to my credit, in the
ultimate auditing, for she was terribly alluring, this Marga-
rita, and I am no more a stock or a stone than other men, I
fancy.
We walked around to the shore side of the cottage and
there stood Roger on its weather-beaten veranda, his hand
[8 7 ]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
held out to me eagerly, an anxious, an almost wistful look
in his honest blue eyes. He was unusually but not unbecom-
ingly dressed in faded blue serge trousers, too tight for the
dictates of fashion, but quite telling in their revelation of
his magnificent thighs, tucked into very high wading boots
and topped by a grey flannel blouse open at the neck for
comfort, with a twisted dull green handkerchief by way of a
collar. It was really quite picturesque altogether, and
suited him excellently, as all rough-and-ready, notably
masculine attire has always done. Curiously enough, he
combines with this, when in evening clothes, the least re-
semblance to a head-waiter I have ever observed in an Amer-
ican; the price they pay, I suppose, for being quite the best
dressed business and professional men in the world.
I took all this in, of course, in a fraction of the time it
takes to write it, and also the fact that old Roger looked
ten years younger than when I had last seen him. He had
always been a steady, responsible fellow, you see, one of the
men people put things on, and not particularly youthful
for his age: a great help to him as a budding young lawyer.
But now I saw the eyes we used to see on the football field
in New Haven, and even, it seemed to me for a moment, the
little worried yet patient intentness I knew so well at school
when some one of those tiny climaxes (that seemed so terrible
then!) depended on him for a fair solution. They used to say
so clearly, those honest eyes, that he hoped you agreed with
him and that you felt his way was the best way, but that
whether or not you agreed, he would have to do it, all the
same.
He had, as I say, his hand out, and I quickly put mine
into it, somehow or other not losing Margarita's at the same
time. As unconsciously as a child she reached out her other
hand to him and we stood like boys and girls in a ring-game,
Roger and I looking deep into each other's eyes and holding
Margarita tightly.
"Is it all right, Jerry?" he asked me earnestly.
[88]
FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST
" It's all right if you say so, Roger," I answered promptly.
All our friendship was packed into that question and answer,
and I like to think that I never asked any explanations and
that he never thought of giving any till they were more or
less unnecessary, the matter being settled.
"You're not alone, I hope?" he said as we moved, one
each side of Margarita, into the house. I dropped her hand
abruptly. Up to that moment I had completely forgotten my
sensible parson.
"Not unless he's given me up and rowed back to the town,"
I assured him contritely, "and I hope to heaven you know
who he is, for I don't! He's a thoroughly good fellow,
anyhow, and he knows us, and from what I've seen of him
he strikes me as just about the man we want."
"Thank you for that 'we,' Jerry," said Roger soberly,
putting his arm over my shoulder, and I realised suddenly
and completely that I had taken the jump and cleared my
last ditch: Roger's interest in to-day's event, for good or
bad, was mine.
"I'll run and call him," I began, "and mind you mention
his name directly, for it's a bit awkward for me all this
while." Something struck me and I turned back.
"By the way," I tried to say easily, "do you want me to
to begin any explanations?"
He laughed shortly.
"Good old Jerry!" he said affectionately. "No, I'll
manage that when I find out who he is. Hurry him along,
for breakfast is ready."
I dashed off to the landing and hailed the boat, now plainly
visible on the bright, clear moving sea. She flew in like a
swallow, the oarsman coat off and dripping, and evidently
royally content.
"Has Roger got a change for me ?" he called as he reached
the landing. " I won't keep him ten minutes longer, but I'd
like to go over the side here, tremendously."
I, too, had begun to be conscious of a wrinkled, cinder-
[89]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
coated feeling, and Roger, who had followed me at a distance,
turned at my shout and ran back to the cottage, returning
with a white armful of linen and towels just as we had
slipped into the blue, cold water. I shall never forget his
expression of mingled relief, real pleasure and amusement
as he recognised my companion's face, bobbing upon the
surface.
"This is mighty good of you, Elder," he said simply, and
reached down from the slippery stone to shake the dripping
hand held out to him.
Then it came to me in a flash. Tip Elder, of course!
He was supposed to have been christened Tyler, but was
never known by any other name than Tippecanoe, for rea-
sons clearer in those days than these, the old political war
cry in connection with his boating fame having proved too
temptingly obvious to the rest of his class crew. He was in
Roger's class; I remembered how, even then, he had dragged
Roger down to some boys' club of his to give a boxing
lesson once to some of his proteges. He and Russell Dodge
had a notable and historic quarrel once because Tip had
refused to break an engagement in order to take one of
Russell's many feminine incumbrances to a dance. Tip
had steadily refused to accept the obligation, and had en-
dured very patiently a vast amount of hectoring from Russell,
who was then as now a trifle snobbish and unsteady; but
had finally been forced (or so we regarded it, at that hot and
touchy period) to accept what was practically a challenge,
and we were actually on tiptoe for a duel. Feeling ran high
about it, and there might have been a very disagreeable
scandal had not Tip's clear common sense and persuasive
oratory burst out at the last possible minute from this
murky thunder-cloud and effectively swept the whole busi-
ness out of the way.
But none of his prayer meetings, nor the trip to the Holy
Land that he made in one long vacation ever deceived any-
one who knew the fellow into thinking him a prig. He never
[90]
FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST
pretended that his ideals of practical conduct were a bit
higher than those of scores of the men who had none of these
interests of his. So marked was this absence of the goody-
goody in Tip that I, though I recalled his face and vaguely
connected him with something or other in the athletic line,
never remembered these other characteristics of his until,
at Roger's warm greeting, the years rolled back and Tip
Elder, oarsman and philanthropist, took his proper place in
my memory again.
We scrambled up the rough landing steps, rubbed down
quickly and got into the fresh linen Roger had brought us,
talking curt commonplaces, not even embarrassed, in the
glow and vigour of that strengthening dip, and I noticed that
the underwear, though of the best linen, was somehow a
little unfamiliar in its fashion, indescribably antiquated in
cut.
"We'll talk at breakfast," said Roger, as we hurried toward
the cottage. "I know you're hungry."
He pushed open the door, and we entered, gazing curiously
around us. We stood in a large, square room, evidently a
dining- and living-room, washed with a greyish plaster, at
once warm and cool. There was a deep, wide hearth of
faded red brick on one side, and an old oak dresser covered
with a very good service of gold-rimmed white china and
several pieces of handsome Sheffield plate. The few chairs
and settees and the one large table in the centre were all of
that solid yet graceful Georgian style that our ancestors
brought with them; the bare clean floor and the home-made
rugs, taken with this furniture, gave an effect more usual now
in a summer cottage than it was then. On the walls were
eight or ten water-colour sketches framed in rustic wood; a
worn wicker cliaise-langue with patchwork cushions, struck
a curiously exotic note; two spinning-wheels, a large and a
small, flanked the fire and bore every evidence of use, not
astheticism; a silver bowl of unmistakable Queen Anne
date, beautifully chased, filled with fiery nasturtiums, stood
MARGARITA'S SOUL
in strange neighbourliness to a cheap American alarum clock;
a lovely, tarnished oval mirror reflected a hideous floral
calendar, the advertisement of some seedsman. The room
turned in a small ell, and this, which was evidently the
kitchen corner of it, could be completely hidden from the
rest by a quaint screen, very broad and high, of home manu-
facture, the body of which was composed of several calf-
skins beautifully marked and adroitly fitted together.
This last gave a touch of quaint antiquity, a hint of the bold
and primitive that was deliciously satisfying. I thought it
then and still think it a room in ten thousand. It had no
other door nor any window opening on the beach, and this
produced a softened dimness, a richness, so to speak, of
lighting and gloom, a sinking into shadow of the hearth and
spinning-wheels, a lightness of the dresser and the polished
settle near it that struck the eye with the same contented
shock one gets from a mellow Dutch interior the same
impression of previous acquaintance, of a once familiar, only
half forgotten home.
I have since tried to analyse the charm of that room, its
inevitable hold upon every one privileged to enter it (and I
suppose few rooms in America have held a greater number
of really select souls), and I have decided that its spell con-
sisted in its deeply impersonal character; its utter lack of the
characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, the imbecilities, even the
fascinations of other, no matter how attractive dwelling
places. It had the restful aloofness of a studio, with none of
its professional limitations; the domesticity of a home, with
none of its fatiguing clutter; the freedom of an inn, with none
of its stale sense of over-use. And above and through all
this ran the note of almost ascetic cleanliness, a purity
fairly conventual. Like most men, I have a concealed pas-
sion for perfect cleanliness concealed, because to the sex
so ironically intrusted with the duty of domestic lustration
cleanliness appears to mean frightful and devastating up-
heavals resulting in a nauseating odour of soap and furni-
[92]
FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST
ture polish. When you shall have learned, dear ladies, to
keep your domains clean without so furiously getting them
clean, you will have earned, in our eyes, your somewhat
dubious title of housekeepers. Meanwhile, continue, in
heaven's name, to think us the contentedly dirty sex!
From the kitchen ell delicious odours proceeded, and as we
sat down around the shining old table with its fine, much-
darned linen, and its delicate china eked out where neces-
sary by cheap, coarse, village crockery, a heavy-faced fel-
low with dull eyes under a shock of hair served us with what,
upon mature consideration, I believe to have been the finest
breakfast I have ever eaten. A great fresh fish, broiled with
bacon, plenty of those delicious corn-meal muffins (I believe
they are locally and truly known as "gems") mealy potatoes
fried in bacon fat, and a sort of tart jam or marmalade made
of wild plums to top off with, the whole washed down with
strong coffee and rich cream, melted before our keen-edged
appetites like dew before the hungry sun, and we hardly
spoke as we filled ourselves.
Much combined to give a flavour to the meal: the long,
worried night, the short, cool plunge, the excitement of our
adventure, the mystery of this empty house (for neither
Margarita nor any other hostess was present) and in my own
case the wild, heady consciousness of that absurd, incredible
thing that had just happened to me: the confused yet certain
sense that it could never be quite the same with me as
it had been before I met that extraordinary girl in the faded
red jersey. It was too soon to think about it, I was still
stupid from the shock of it, but my blood ran very sweetly
through my veins, the delicious, strong air of the beach was
in my nostrils and the food was fit for the hunger of the gods.
[93]
CHAPTER XI
OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE
Ax last even we could eat no more, and Roger pulled out
an old pipe that I had never seen before, pushed a jar of fra-
grant tobacco toward us, brought us pipes from the chimney-
piece and crossed his legs definitely.
"I suppose, Tip," he said, "you're wondering why you're
here, eh?"
"A little," said Tip comfortably, " but not too much. To
tell you the truth, fellows, I haven't had such a thoroughly
good time for oh, for ten years, I should say! Somehow
I feel as if everything but just this actual moment this
breakfast, this pipe, this queer old room was a sort of dream
and these were the only things that mattered."
"I know," Roger answered quietly, "that's the way one
feels here. The place is bewitched, I think. Well, Tip, I
want to get married, and I'd rather you'd be the one to do
the business than any man I know."
"I rather suspected it," Tip said, "and I'll be mighty
glad to do it for you, Roger. Who is she?"
There was quite a pause here, and Roger puffed slowly and
thoughtfully at the old pipe and looked out of the open door
toward the little bay. By and by he spoke, and the concise
clearness of what he said was most characteristic of him.
"Of course I needn't go into all this at all," he began,
"unless I wanted to. In fact, my original idea was to have
a perfect stranger (as I somehow thought Jerry would bring)
marry us without his being any the wiser. But the minute
I saw you, Tip, I felt that I'd like you to know. But I'd
rather you kept it to yourself."
[94]
OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE
He paused a moment, and Tip nodded gravely.
" Of course you have my word for that," he said.
"The woman I'm going to marry," Roger went on, in his
quiet, practical voice, "was born and brought up on this
little peninsula. She has never left it but once in her life.
Her mother died when she was a baby, her father a few
weeks ago, I should say. She does not know her father's
name, nor, consequently, her own. It is evident from this
house, the furnishings and the books, that he was a gentle-
man and an educated one. For as long as she can remember
they were served and looked after in ever/ way by a woman
called Hester Prynne and this half-witted fellow called Cali-
ban. Of course I have no idea what their real names were.
The woman died very recently and the girl was left alone.
There was a big chest fairly well filled with money under her
father's bed, but not a line or word in it to give any clue.
Either her father or mother must have been Italian, I should
think, both from her name and her general type, but she
knows no Italian whatever only a simple childish sort of
French. She is the only woman I should ever marry if I
lived a hundred years, and I want you to do it to-day. Will
you?"
I drew the long breath I had been holding during this
speech and felt a great relief. It was all so simple, after all!
I hoped Tip wouldn't spoil it, but I was afraid he would.
He wasn't at all what one would call a man of the world:
he had always felt a terrible responsibility for other people's
actions, and this particular action was, to put it mildly, cer-
tainly rather unusual. But I had under-estimated both
Tip's keenness and the effect of Roger's big, quiet person-
ality. For Tip stared hard at his pipe a moment, then at
Roger, then back at the pipe, and said:
" Surely I will, Roger. And be glad to." And there's Tip
Elder for you!
We smoked awhile longer in silence. Finally Tip began
again in a casual sort of way, as if, the main question having
[95]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
been settled, this were a mere detail, but one that he might
as well mention.
" How about the name, Roger ? " he asked. " Won't that be
a little awkward? At home, you know. I suppose you
couldn't wait till you found it out?"
Roger threw his jaw forward a bit and pursed his mouth,
a trick he had when he was bothered but couldn't see any way
out of it.
' ' No, I couldn't, ' ' he said thoughtfully. ' ' In the first place,
to tell you the truth, I don't much believe there's any chance
of finding it out except by pure accident. There's not a scrap
of evidence about the place, and it is undoubtedly intentional.
I've opened every book in her father's room and there are no
collections of old litter in any closet there's no attic and
not a letter or bill in the house. A doctor came here once or
twice, but he never mentioned her father's name in her
hearing, and this Hester told her he came from New York.
Caliban did the marketing and paid cash for everything.
The telegraph operator, who is the only one I've spoken with
in the town, represents the attitude of everybody there,
probably, and he thinks, evidently, that an eccentric recluse
lives here, and that his housekeeper is pretty close-mouthed
and 'unsociable,' as he put it. It's rather strange that they
aren't more curious, but she must have known how to deal
with them, for whatever interest anybody may have felt died
out long ago. They know the man had a daughter and that
she's grown now, but this fellow told me that he'd heard she
went barefoot most of the time, and there was a half rumour
that she was feeble-minded, and that was why they kept so
close. He thinks I'm boarding here, apparently. I suppose
that any curious boys or tramps that might have been
tempted over here were frightened off by the dogs there
used to be a pair of them."
He paused to fill his pipe again and Tip nodded compre-
hendingly.
" I see," he said, " it's an extraordinary situation, isn't it ? "
[96]
OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE
Another pause, and he added with his eyes carefully off
Roger's face:
"This housekeeper, now you don't think it's possible
"No, I don't," Roger interrupted shortly. "Both she and
the father have told Margarita that she resembled her
mother, and that her mother was very good and very beau-
tiful, but that she was not named after her. She died when
the child was born, and Hester was with them then. Be-
sides, her father used to correct her for using expressions of
Hester's and forbade her to hold her knife and fork as Hes-
ter did, and things of that sort. She never ate with them,
either. Margarita says that Hester loved her father but was
always afraid of him."
Caliban had the table cleared now, and Tip and I stared
into our reflections in the beautiful, shining mahogany where
our plates had been. I suppose the same thing was in both
our minds. What a strange marriage for a Bradley! What
an incongruous effect, in steady old Roger's life! When one
considered all the Jacksons and Searses and Cabots he
might have married there was one particular red-cheeked,
big-waisted Cabot girl that old Madam Bradley had long
and openly favoured one could but gasp at the present
situation. A surnameless Miranda, whose only possessions
were a chest of money, a few pieces of old mahogany and a
brindled hound!
"I haven't seen the young lady yet, you know, Roger,"
Tip reminded him gently at last, and Roger, coming out of
his abstraction with a quick smile, stepped to the foot of the
stairs and called, "Margarita! Margarita! Viens,cJierie/"
She came, hesitating from stair to stair as a child does,
and I caught my breath when I saw her as I have always
done whenever she appeared in a new and different dress.
For she had taken off the faded jersey and put on a longer,
more womanly frock of some sort of clear blue print. It
was faded, too, and much washed, evidently, but its dull,
[97]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
soft tone and simple, scant lines only threw out the more
strongly her rich colouring and strong, supple figure. The
body of it crossed on itself simply in front, like an old-time
kerchief, leaving her throat bare to the little hollow at the
base of it; around her waist was a belt of square silver plates
heavily chased, linked together with delicate silver links.
Her long braids were bound around her beautiful round
head, and this fashion of hair-dressing, with its classic
parting, brought out the purity of her features and the coin-
like regularity of them. I saw at once that she was older than
I had thought her on the beach: I had not given her twenty
then.
Roger took her hand and led her into the room.
"This is Margarita," he said simply, but his face told all
he did not say, and I thanked heaven that neither Elder nor
I had been foolish enough to attempt what we should
probably have called reasoning with him.
"Is this the man that will marry us?" she inquired
gravely, taking his offered hand with a lovely, free gesture.
"Roger is going to give me the pleasure of making him
so happy, yes," said Tip, very cordially, I thought, and with
more grace than I had believed him capable of. But she
did not even smile at him, and it was rather startling, be-
cause she had smiled at me, and I hadn't known her long
enough to understand that she had absolutely none of the
perfunctory motions of lips and eyes that we learn so soon
and so unconsciously in this cynical old world. When
Margarita didn't feel moved to smile, she didn't, that was
all, just as she didn't pretend to look grave at the death of
the only woman she had ever known in her life. She had
never learned the game, you see.
" I should like it better if you did it," she said to me, and an
idiotic joy filled every crease of my heart.
"He can't do it, dear," Roger said gently, "only Mr.
Elder can," and the look of appeal he turned on Tip would
have touched a harder heart than that dear fellow's.
[98]
OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE
"You see, old man," he murmured apologetically, "she
says just exactly what she thinks, with no frills she doesn't
understand yet. ..."
And good old Tip smiled back at him and said he under-
stood, if Margarita didn't, and perhaps she would be willing
to make his acquaintance a little and walk out on the beach
with him?
"I want to be your friend, too, Miss Margarita, as well as
Roger's," he ended.
" I will walk with you if Jerry comes too," she said placidly,
and so we all laughed I somewhat unsteadily and Tip
and I took her for a walk.
And right here I must stop and mention a very interesting
thing. Though she saw him often after that, for the intimacy
renewed there after so many years never has waned since,
and he has woven himself strangely and wholesomely into all
our lives, Margarita never cared for Tip. For a long time I
did not see why, and always attributed his extraordinary in-
vulnerability to her charm to her lack of interest in him, but
suddenly one day it came to me (in my bath, I remember;
I squeezed a lot of soap into my eye till I thought I should
go blind) and I realised all at once what a fool I had been.
She did not care for him just because he did not surrender
to her. He was the only man but one that ever had anything
to do with her, so far as I know, who was not, in one degree
or another, in love with her. He admitted her beauty and
charm, he admired her talent, he respected her frankness
but he never was the least little bit in love with her, and
except for J n S 1, who failed to make a great picture
of her, for the same reason, I believe, he is the only man I
know who ever had the opportunity, of whom that can be
said.
And from the moment their eyes met, Margarita saw this
(or felt it, rather, for she had not had sufficient practice in
reading people at that time to be able to see it) and he simply
did not exist for her.
[99]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
For I must admit it : it was her own particular fault, that.
And I must hasten to add that I loved her the more for it.
She was heartless in a situation of that sort. It would be
folly to deny it. It was as much a part of her enchanting
personality, and as little a defect in my indulgent eyes, as
the three tiny moles under her chin (true grains de beaute)
or her utter refusal to affect an interest in people's affairs or to
eat the insides of her rolls and bread-slices. All faults,
doubtless but who would have or love a faultless woman ?
Not I, at any rate, for I loved her and love her and shall
love her till my heart is a handful of dust, and she was far
from faultless, my Margarita.
And yet, characteristically enough, it was to Tip that she
turned in what was without any doubt the great decision of
her life, and Tip that influenced her to it. She knew whom
to go to well enough, and she knew that he was the one per-
son qualified to give her absolutely unprejudiced counsel.
Oh, yes! she knew. Just as the beasts make for the root or
herb or flower that will cure them, she went to him, with an
instinct as true as theirs. And I, God forgive me, was a tiny
bit jealous of him for that! Men are made of curious clay,
my masters, and it's a mad world indeed.
After we came back from our walk, during which she and
I talked, and Tip listened quietly, he moved toward Roger
and I left Margarita fondling the dog and joined him.
"She is a lovely creature, Roger," he said thoughtfully.
" I don't want for a moment to meddle, but on the chance
that you haven't thought of it, may I suggest one thing ? "
"Fire ahead," said Roger. He had changed his clothes,
and appeared in his accustomed business suit; its neat
creases and quiet colour made him again the responsible,
unromantic lawyer I had known, and took away the last
vestige of dramatic oddity from the situation. It all seemed
natural and sober enough.
"Had you thought of taking her to your mother and
marrying her there, Roger?" Tip went on quietly. "Sup-
[100]
OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE
posing she were to adopt her, even you could arrange all
that easily then there would be no awkwardness. As it is,
it might be made a little uncomfortable ... it isn't as if
you were a nobody, you know, old man, and you don't
know her name, you see, and ..."
I will own that this struck me as an extremely practical
plan for a moment, and I looked hopefully at Roger. But
he shook his head.
" I see what you mean, Tip," said he, " but it's impos-
sible. I wish it weren't. I thought of it, of course. But
there are reasons why it won't do. I won't attempt to deny
that this will be a blow to my mother. I know her too well
to consider for a moment the possibility of her helping me in
this way. She she is very proud and and she has her
own ideas. . . . My cousin, too Oh, Lord!" he con-
cluded suddenly, " Jerry '11 tell you it wouldn't work."
Of course it wouldn't. In one flash I saw that dark,
determined house on the Back Bay, Madam Bradley's cold,
bloodless face and Sarah's malicious eyes probing, probing
Margarita's crystal unconsciousness. It seemed to me
suddenly that Roger's mother might not, and that Sarah
certainly would not, forgive this business. I saw his mother
in a series of retrospective flashes, as I had been seeing her
for twenty-five years: each time a little more impersonal, a
little more withdrawn, a little less tolerant. I remembered
the quiet, bitter quarrel with the president of the university
to which he would naturally have gone, and its result of send-
ing him to Yale, the first of his name to desert Harvard,
to the amazement and horror of his kinsfolk. I remembered
the cold resentment that followed his decision to go to work
in New York, based very sensibly, I thought, on the impos-
sibility of submission to his uncle's great firm the head of the
family and the inadvisability of working in Boston under
his disfavour. I remembered the banishment of his younger
sister on her displeasing marriage (the old lady actually
read her out of the family with bell and book) and the poor
[101]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
woman's subsequent social death and bitter decline of
health and spirit. I remembered the sad death of his second
sister, and the stony philosophy of her impenetrable mother.
I remembered the eldest daughter, a brilliant beauty, whose
career might have brushed the skirts of actual royalty,
and whose mysterious renouncement of every triumph and
joy possible to woman (one would suppose) and sudden
conversion and retirement to a Roman Catholic order con-
vulsed Boston for a long nine days and broke Madam Brad-
ley's heart so that she never smiled again and never, it
was whispered, forgave the God who had allowed such a
shipwreck. That she loved Roger, I must believe; that
she was proud of him and looked upon him with a sort of
stern, fanatical loyalty as the head of her family, I knew. But
I could not see her adopting, or even tolerating, Margarita
with the unknown name. No, it wouldn't do. And I told
Tip so very decidedly.
"But if you wanted to take her to my mother, Roger,"
I ventured, seeing, in fancy, the dear woman cooing over
Roger's mysterious, romantic beauty (she adored him and
would, moreover, have adopted a chambermaid if I had
begged her to), " it could be arranged, I know. . . ."
"Thank you, Jerry," he interrupted shortly, "but it must
be now. I can't have anything happen. Any slip "
I saw his hands clench, and I knew why. Whether Tip knew,
I couldn't tell ; he never indicated it, then or ever after, good
fellow. But he wasn't a fool. " Melez-vous de c'qui vous
regarde!" as we used to say at Vevay, and Tip minded his
business well.
"That's all right," he said quickly, "I only thought I'd
mention it. How about the license in this state ? "
They talked a little in low tones, and I looked at Margarita
and thought of the odd chances of life, and how we are hur-
ried past this and that and stranded on the other, and skim
the rapids sometimes, to be wrecked later in clear shallows,
perhaps.
[102]
OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE
"If you are ready, then?" said Tip, and we all moved
across the beach and found ourselves standing on a great,
smooth rock that would be cut off in a full high tide, with
Caliban, clean and quiet and pathetically attentive, behind us,
and with him a curiously familiar stranger, very neatly
dressed, with tired eyes. As we grouped ourselves there
and Tip pulled a tiny book from his pocket I recollected
this stranger's face it was the telegraph operator! Roger,
who forgot nothing, had brought him over for the other
witness.
"Dearly beloved," said Tip in a clear, deep voice, and I
woke with a start and realised that old Roger was being
married. Margarita, in her graceful, faded blue gown,
gazed curiously at him, one hand in Roger's; the noon sun
streamed down on us from a cloudless, turquoise sky; the
little waves ran up the points of rocks, broke, and fell away
musically.
To appreciate those quaint sentences of the marriage
sen-ice, you must hear them out under the heavens, alone,
with no bridesmaids, no voice that breathed o'er Eden, no
flowers but the great handful of flaming nasturtiums Roger
had put in her hands (no maiden lilies grew on that rock!)
and a quiet man dressed just as other men are dressed, with
only the consciousness of his calling to separate him from
the rest of us. They held their own, those quaint old phrases,
I assure you ! But it was then I learned to respect them.
Nevertheless, Roger Jiad forgotten something.
"Where's the ring?" the telegraph operator motioned to
me with his lips. His tired eyes expressed a mild interest.
I saw Roger's lips purse; for a moment his eyes left Mar-
garita's face and I knew that he had just remembered it.
I looked down vaguely, and my eyes fell upon the worn,
thin band on my little finger my mother's mother's wedding-
ring. In one of those lightning flashes of memory I saw
myself, a lad again, starting for college, and my mother
putting it on my finger.
[103]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"She was the best woman, I believe, that ever lived, Jerry
I took it when she died. I want you to wear it, and per-
haps you will think oh, my darling! I know it is hard to
be a good man, but will you try ? "
My dear, dear mother! I think I tried I hope so.
I slipped it from my finger I had taken it off sometimes,
but never for so good a reason and pressed it into Roger's
hand. He accepted it as unconsciously as if it had come
from heaven and it was my ring that married Margarita.
104]
I SEEM TO SEE ... A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN A BLUE
DRESS SITTING UNDER A FRUIT TREE
CHAPTER XII
I LEAVE EDEN
CLEAR as I am on a thousand little points that concern my
first meeting with Margarita, my mind is a perfect blank
when I try to recall the events of the next half hour. We
must, of course, have left the rock, for I have a dim recol-
lection of drinking healths in that dear old room and signing
our names to something. But on what order we left it, of
what we spoke, if we spoke at all, and how we at last found
ourselves alone, I do not know. And yet it seems to me that
some one was it I ? discussed remedies for insomnia with
some one else, and that some third person assured us that
nothing but a complete change of scene could be of any
lasting benefit. And my reason assures me that Tip and I
and the telegraph operator must have been these three, for
I seem to see, as if through a dim haze, a beautiful woman
in a blue dress sitting under a fruit tree, with a dog's head in
her lap, a flaming handful of nasturtiums in her belt, and a
man lying at her feet, with his hand in hers and his eyes
fixed on her face. This could hardly have been Roger, one
would think, for Roger was not a demonstrative man,
and certainly not likely to have been so under these circum-
stances . . . and yet, if not Roger, who could it have been ?
After that I remember well enough. Caliban was to row
the telegrapher back, as he had brought him over, and as
the haggard little fellow advanced to say his good-byes,
Margarita and Roger appeared from somewhere to receive
them. He shook her hand cordially and tried honestly not
to stare too admiringly at her.
[105]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"This has been a great pleasure, Mrs. Bradley, a real
pleasure to me," he said, "aside from the romance and and
so forth, you understand. It isn't often I can get off like
this in the daytime, and I shouldn't wonder if the air and
the water and all made me sleep a little to-night! I little
thought when Mr. Bradley asked for an hour of my time to-
day that I should be going to the wedding of the Miss Prynne
I had heard so much about."
Tip and I glanced irrepressibly at each other, wondering
if this suggestion would commend itself to Roger. But he,
I think, had paid no attention to the words, and his smile was
merely kindly and polite. So the sleepless one rowed away,
the richer by a box of good cigars, and Tip and I were left
to plan our own departure.
For mine, at any rate, Roger seemed in no hurry. When
Tip assured him that he must, without fail, catch the next
possible train, he got a schedule and arranged for a short
drive across country to a tiny station that profited by the
summer residence of a railroad magnate, and could con-
nect him with an otherwise impossible express; but me
he urged to stop on in terms so unmistakably sincere that I
saw he really wanted a few more hours of my company, at
least; and as I found that a milk-train stopped at the village
at ten that night, and had learned from experience that
much might be accomplished with a banknote and a cigar
and an obliging brakeman, I was glad enough to stay on, and
with a curious feeling of return to the actual world I pushed
out across the beach with Roger and Margarita, who
dropped on the sand with the great dog at their feet. I
joined them quietly and we sat, hardly speaking, for at least
three long, golden hours. They drew me, a naturally rather
talkative person, into one of their deep peaceful silences, and
just because there was so much to say, we wisely left it un-
said, and rested like the animals (or the angels, maybe?)
in a rich content.
It was then that I understood the vital principle of the
[106]
I LEAVE EDEN
Friends' Meeting House, and realised how much of the heat
and vulgarity of life the best Quaker tradition buries under
the cool, deep waves of its invaluable Silence. To such ar-
tists in life the lack of speech is not repression far from it.
Myself, I have never lived more generously than in that
wonderful afternoon, and the few hours that came afterward
were mere by-play.
Later Caliban brought us a picnic supper on the beach and
then Roger wrote some letters, gave me many instructions
for his partner, listed the matters to be put off for a week
and those to be sent to him for personal attention (precious
few, these!) and agreed to my suggestion that when he re-
turned to town my mother should meet them and take
Margarita in charge for the purchases that must be
made before the year of travel he intended to take with his
wife lucky fellow, whose lap Fate had filled with all
her gifts!
He was to let me know when he would come and I was
to forward his mother's answer to the letter he had written
her; most of their intercourse of late had been of this sort,
for his uncle's recent death had opened again the vexed
question of Boston residence and his inability to comply
with her unreasonable demands had strained anew relations
never very close, humanly considered. The unfortunate
early years of family restraint, the lack of all those weak and
tender intimacies, not uncommon in New England families,
had borne their legitimate fruit, and my mother's gentle
passionate heart froze at the mere thought of Madam
Bradley's icy reserve, while to me, I own, she was never more
than an unpleasant abstraction.
And then the time came and Caliban pulled the boat
across and I pressed Margarita's hand and stood up to go.
Roger took both my hands and wrung them.
" I couldn't speak about the ring, Jerry," he said, quickly
and very low, " it's no use trying. But you understand ? "
"That's all right, Roger," I muttered hastily, "it's the
[107]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
best use I'm likely to make of it. Good-bye, old fellow.
God bless you, Roger," and I stumbled into the boat.
Caliban pulled hard at the oars and we slid away. I looked
at them once. For a full minute dear fellow he stared
wistfully after me (oh, Roger, you'll never forget, never, I
know! Twenty-five years are over and gone to-night, and
the close, unrivalled companionship of them, and I am alone
from now on but you'll not forget!) and then they turned
to each other and I was no more than a speck on the even-
ing water. "Put your back into it, man; get along, can't
you?" I growled to Caliban. We shot ahead and left
them to each other, alone under the heavy, yellow moon
and the close, secret stars.
108]
PART FOUR
IN WHICH THE STREAM WINDS THROUGH A
SULLEN MARSH AND BECOMES A BROOK
Alas for this unlucky womb!
Alas the breasts that suckled thee!
I would ha' laid thee in thy tomb
Or e'er that witch had wived with thee I
Alas my son that grew so strong!
Alas those hands I stretched to th' bow!
Or e'er thou heardst that wanton's song,
I'd shot thee long ago and long,
Through the black heart that's shamed me so!
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
109]
CHAPTER XIII
STRAWS THAT SHOWED THE WIND
[To ROGER FROM ms COUSIN SARAH]
BOSTON, Sept. 7th, 188
MY DEAR ROGER:
Your mother, I am sorry to say, is not physically able
to answer your surprising and most disturbing letter, and
has laid upon me the unpleasant task of doing so. It is,
as you somewhat brusquely say, unnecessary to discuss at
any length what you have done, since it is irrevocable. We
can but feel, however, that a thing so hastily entered upon
can be productive of no good (if, indeed, the matter has
been as sudden as you- lead us to suppose).
To a woman of your mother's deep family pride this
alliance with a nameless girl from the streets, practically,
if I am to read your letter aright, can be nothing short of
humiliating. She instructs me to tell you that she can
take no cognisance of any such connection with any justice
to the family interests, and that although you will always be
welcome here, she cannot undertake to extend the welcome
further with any sincerity of heart.
I sent, following your suggestions, for Winfred Jerrolds,
but I cannot say that his evidently unwilling admissions
made the affair any the more palatable how could they?
Some of the inferences I was forced to draw I cannot bring
myself to discuss, even with your mother. Winfred's French
bringing up and the influence of a weakly affectionate
mother have singularly warped his moral perception. It is
impossible for us not to feel that had you followed Aunt
Miriam's advice and established yourself in Boston, these
dreadful results would have been avoided. I try to believe
[in]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
that with the altered standards of the city you have chosen
your very fibre has so weakened that you cannot grasp the
extent of the mistake you have made.
Wmfred Jerrolds may, as you say, have been your best
friend, in one sense, but I fear that sense is a very narrow
one. He has certainly succeeded beyond anything he could
have hoped in his connection with our family. I always
thought his attentions to Uncle Winthrop unnatural in so
young a boy, but he was always politic. I am informed
by Uncle Searsy's partner that nothing can be done about
it; you will be pleased, probably.
You will realise, I hope, that living as I do with Aunt
Miriam, I cannot with propriety take any course counter
to hers in the matter of your marriage. It may be that she
will be more reconciled with time I hope so, for it must be a
terrible thought for you that she might die with such feelings
as she now has for her only son!
Your affectionate cousin,
SARAH THAYER BRADLEY.
[FROM MY MOTHER]
STRATFORD, CONN.,
Sept. 7th, 188
MY DARLING BOY:
This is a hasty note to tell you that I am afraid I cannot come
to you and help dear Roger's bride (how interesting and beau-
tiful she must be !) for I must stay and nurse poor old Jeanne,
who has had a bad fall putting up the new curtains and nearly
fractured her hip. She is in a great deal of pain and cannot
bear anyone but me about her. I should enjoy helping
Roger's wife with her trousseau how did he happen to go
to the island she lives on? Is she one of the Devonshire
Prynnes? Your father knew a Colonel Prynne cavalry,
I think. How you will miss Roger for it will be different,
now, Winfred it must be, you know. Oh, my dear boy,
if only I could help your wife ! If only I could see you with
children of your own! Don't wait too long. Your father
and I had but four years together, but I would live my
[112]
STRAWS THAT SHOWED THE WIND
whole life over again with no change, for those four. I must
go to Jeanne, now.
Your loving MOTHER.
[FROM ROGER'S SISTER]
NEWTON, MASS.,
Sept. xoth, 188
DEAR JERRY:
I hope you and Roger will not think me unkind, but
Walter will not hear of my looking up Roger's wife, as you
ask me. You see Mother has just begun to to be nice to
him, and we can't afford to lose her good-will, Winfred
we simply can't. I think Roger has a perfect right to marry
whom he chooses and I don't believe a word of the horrid
things Sarah says. They are not true, are they? But of
course they're not. But why did Roger do it so suddenly?
Why not let us meet her first? What will people think?
She will hate me, I suppose, but Roger knows what we have
suffered from Mother and I hope he will understand.
Walter's eyes have been very bad, lately, and Mother is
going to get Cousin Wolcott Sears to send him on some con-
fidential business to Germany, the voyage will do him so
much good! Do explain to Roger he will understand.
And ask him to write to me, if he will.
Yours always,
ALICE BRADLEY-CARTER.
[FROM ROGER'S UNCLE]
3 COMMONWEALTH AVE.,
BOSTON, MASS., Sept. i2th, 188
MY DEAR ROGER:
Your mother has communicated to me the facts of your
marriage, and while I cannot pretend that I feel the haste
and apparent mystery surrounding it are entirely satisfac-
tory to your aunt and myself, I have hastened to point out
to your mother that a man of your age and known charac-
ter is beyond question competent to use his judgment in such
MARGARITA'S SOUL
a matter and that I cannot believe you so unworthy of the
family traditions as she feels you to have shown yourself.
In any case, I disapprove heartily of any public break or
scandal, and in the event of her failing to reverse her deci-
sion, which I believe to be too severe and unjustifiable in
view of your consistently clean record in all your family
relations, I am writing to offer you, in your aunt's name as
well as my own, the hospitality of our house as long as you
and Mrs. Bradley care to avail yourselves of it.
With every hope that this distressing situation may be
quietly and privately adjusted, and regards to Mrs. Bradley
from your aunt and myself, believe me,
Yours faithfully,
WOLCOTT SEARS.
[FROM TIP ELDER]
UNIVERSITY CLUB,
NEW YORK, Sept. i3th, 188
DEAR JERRY:
I can't resist sending you a line to tell you of my encounter
with Russell Dodge, just now. You might drop Roger a
hint of it if you like, not going into details, of course. I
hope it will be for the best. I was so hot at the fellow's
impertinence I let myself get caught into a lie, I'm afraid,
but like Tom Sawyer's aunt, I can't help feeling "it was
a good lie!"
He was dining here with a set of pretty well-known New
York men and I had my back to his table. Suddenly I
heard Roger's name and a great deal of laughing and in a
moment I found myself overhearing (unavoidably) a dis-
gusting and scandalous piece of gossip. In some strange
way a garbled account of his marriage has come in from
Boston, and Dodge, with that infernally suggestive way
of his, was cackling about Roger's "jumping over the broom-
stick" with a "handsome gypsy" and letting his relatives
believe the thing was serious in order to tease his stiff-necked
family.
I tell you, it made me hot! I jumped up and looked that
STRAWS THAT SHOWED THE WIND
fellow Dodge as straight in the eye as anyone can look him,
and said, "I beg your pardon for this interruption, Dodge,
but you happen to be making more of a fool of yourself than
usual. As regards the lady you are speaking of, I married
her myself at her father's country place, last week, with
Winfred Jerrolds as best man."
He mumbled something or other, but I forced him to
apologise plainly, and they all heard him. Then he said
that he had understood that no one in Boston even knew what
her name was, and I said almost (I hope !) before I thought,
"she was a Miss Prynne."
Then I left for the writing-room. My only excuse is that
Roger himself did not correct that fellow from the station
when he called her that, and, honestly, I couldn't turn on
my heel and leave that last remark open. I'm ready to
eat dirt, if need be, but for a fire-eating parson I still think
I did pretty well ! To think of my running against Dodge
again after all these years you remember our famous duel ?
What a strange day we had out there! Let me know
how Roger feels about it. It's sure to be in the papers now,
I suppose. The name, I mean I've quashed the other
part, of course.
Yours faithfully,
TYLER FESSENDEN ELDER.
[FROM SUE PAYNTER]
3 WASHINGTON SQUARE,
Sept. i4th, 188
JERRY DEAR:
It occurred to me in the middle of the night that you
might be excused for thinking me cold and uninterested
in your request apropos of Roger's wife, and I can't bear
you to think so for a moment. Shall I be quite frank (and
how foolish to be anything else with you, dear Win!) and
admit that I was just a little hurt that Roger had not told
me? It was stupid of me, I know, and I hereby forgive
him before he asks me, par exemple! I do it thus quickly,
I am afraid, because of an unusually nasty letter from Sarah.
MARGARITA'S SOUL
How can a woman be so good and yet so horrid ? If Roger
has been unwise, all the more reason for us to stand by him!
But apparently he has not, and you are under the same
spell that bewitched him don't attempt to deny it. Madam
Bradley threatens us all with excommunication, it seems, but
n'importe she has been kind to me, in her alabaster way,
but it is incredible that I should desert Roger after his
unspeakable goodness to me.
I will meet you whenever and wherever you say and give
the new Mrs. Roger the benefit of whatever good taste
Providence has blessed me with I am a past mistress of
the art of a hasty trousseau, I assure you! And I pray she
may wear hers more happily than I did mine.
Be sure to let me know the moment I am wanted. Let
Roger know how glad I am if he asks. What friends
you two are! I wonder if you know what you are losing?
Probably not men don't foresee, I suppose.
Your friend always,
SUE PAYNTER.
[FROM MY ATTORNEYS]
SEARS, BRADLEY AND SEARS
Attorneys and Counsellors-at-Law
Cable Address, Vellashta
2 COURT STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
Sept. 1 2th, 1 88
WINFRED JERROLDS, ESQ.,
University Club,
New York, N. Y.
DEAR SIR:
We are instructed by the heirs and next-of-kin of the
late Mr. Winthrop Bradley and by Mr. Sears Bradley, as his
administrator appointed by the Probate Court, to advise
you that the will of Mr. Winthrop Bradley, of the existence
of which we have so long felt confident, has finally been
discovered in an unexpected way and that you are the prin-
cipal legatee thereunder.
[116]
STRAWS THAT SHOWED THE WIND
We are further instructed to advise you that its genu-
ineness is unquestioned. We are already taking steps to
probate the will here and in North Carolina.
You will see by the will, of which we enclose you copy,
that Mr. Winthrop Bradley bequeathed to you $100,000
in bonds of the Co., which bear 4^ per cent, interest,
and in addition his lands in and Counties,
North Carolina, which aggregate about 12,000 acres, and
of which a part has been farmed on shares for a number of
years past, bringing in an annual income varying between
$75 and $250 above the taxes on the whole tract.
We shall be pleased to receive any instructions you de-
sire to give us in the premises. We remain,
Yours very respectfully,
SEARS, BRADLEY AND SEARS.
[ROGER'S TELEGRAM TO ME]
News of will forwarded in packet from office. More glad
than can say, deserve it all. Cold wave here and shall
take noon express Thursday. Sail Saturday. R. B.
CHAPTER XIV
THE ISLAND COTTAGE
I HAVE hitherto said nothing about the Bank, for the best
of reasons I hate it. I hated it, I think, from the day when
a letter from one of my father's friends introduced me to it,
until the day when the letter from the legal firm of which
Roger's uncle had been the brilliant head released me
from it. I do not think, however, that many people knew
this. I did my work as well as I could, accepted my period-
ical advances in salary with a becoming gratitude, saved a
little each year, and quieted my eruptions of furious disgust
with the recollection of my mother's unhindered disposal
of her little legacy since the day I left the university.
If anyone had told me that on a day in early autumn I
should suddenly come into a thousand pounds a year and free-
dom, I should have caught my breath at the very idea, and here
was the thing, a fact accomplished, and here was I, not only
quite self-contained, but sober beyond my wont, and ready
to take the Bank and all its stodgy horror upon my shoulders,
if with it I might have had one thing one woman! The
world was before me, where to choose, all the far corners
and reaches for which I had inherited the hunger with the
blood that ran in my veins and if I might only have been
the first to find one lonely, insignificant point on the Atlantic
coast, my heart would have journeyed there, content, and
ceased (or so I thought) its wanderings. Truly our joys are
tempered for us, and no shorn lamb was ever more care-
fully protected from the winds of heaven than we from too
much joy. It is an actual fact that I regarded my resigna-
tion from the drudgery of twelve years, the disposal of my
[118]
THE ISLAND COTTAGE
rooms and furniture, the heartening preliminaries with the
lawyers, and my booking at the steamship company's offices,
with less interest than the successful transportation of
Margarita's wedding gift.
It was with a real thrill of pleasure that I drew out my
small savings a little over a thousand pounds and with
the breathless assistance of Sue Paynter and a famous
actress of her acquaintance selected the most perfect single
pearl to be purchased for that money. One of the heads of
the great firm whose name has been long associated with
American wealth and luxury himself lent a discerning hand
to the selection, and for the first time I tasted the snobbish
joy of sitting at ease in a dainty private room while respectful
officials brought the splendours of the Orient to my lordly
knees, and lesser buyers hung unattended over the common
counters. Except in the purchase of my first gift for my
mother a tiny diamond sword-hilt, in memory of my
father I have never experienced so much pleasure.
It hung, a great blob of veined, milky whiteness, from a
strong but tiny golden chain a gift for a Rajah, not a
bank-official! I had never expended so much, or half so
much, upon a single purchase, and the pale, native thrift of
Old and New England together glowed and thrilled scarlet
in me, and the lucent, moonlike sphere flushed into a ruby
before my dazzled eyes: I knew then how an eager chief
will toss away a province for an emerald if he may lay the
jewel upon the neck of all the world for him!
I had the clasp engraved with her name itself a pearl
and slipped the delicate case in my pocket. The great come-
dienne, whom I have always thought the sweetest of women
but one talked a moment aside at the smiling request of
the master jeweller and then whispered laughingly to Sue with
the most artfully artless glance at me. Sue, who was a little
drawn and white from her enemy neuralgia, murmured to
me in French that I had the honour to render desolate Miss
L n R 1, the reigning stage beauty, who was greatly
MARGARITA'S SOUL
desirous of precisely that pearl and whose too vacillating ad-
mirer would doubtless enjoy his bad little quarter hour &
cause de moi. I do not deny that this put a point to my
satisfaction. I was, in fact, idiotically gratified God
and man that is born of woman alone know why.
I hurried to the dingy station as a boy hurries to the train
that will take him home to the holidays, and the tedious
hours were miraculously light, the face of the telegraph
operator like the face of my best friend, the rough, damp
passage in the blue boat a pleasant incident. Caliban had
a friendly, stupid grin for me and rowed his best; the very
oars knew how I wanted to get to her!
They stood with a lantern on the landing-steps, in the
rough, picturesque clothes I had first seen them in, and we
hurried through a thickening drizzle to the warm, light
cottage, ridiculously hand-in-hand, the lantern bobbing
between us.
Roger had revived his old school accomplishments and
had ready a panful of delicious little sausages in a bath of
tomatoes and onions and Worcestershire that sent me back to
Vevay in the fraction of a second, and we dipped fragments
of the crusty French loaf I had brought in the sauce, in the
old Vevay fashion, and drank to their voyage in the last
Burgundy from the little wine bin. If anything were needed
to place Margarita's father in our estimations, that Burgundy
would have done it! After the sweet course of jellied pan-
cakes that Roger had taught Caliban, we fell upon the
cigars I had brought, and when Margarita, an apt pupil, had
sugared my demi-tasse to my liking, I reached into my pocket
and drew out the Russia leather case. My fingers trembled
like a boy's as I took out the pearl and clasped it around her
beautiful neck, above the soft black handkerchief.
" If this is not your first wedding present, Mrs. Bradley,
I shall be furiously angry," I said with mock severity, to
keep down the lump in my throat, for I was absurdly
excited.
[120]
THE ISLAND COTTAGE
"Jerry, you extravagant old donkey, what do you mean
by this?" Roger cried huskily, "I never heard of such a
thing!" While Margarita, for the first time in our acquaint-
ance a daughter of Eve, ran up to her mirror. She would
have been as pleased, I think, with a necklace of iridescent
seashells wherein she differed widely from Miss L n
R 1, as Roger and I agreed.
We talked, of course, of Uncle Winthrop and the old days, of
his loving interest in me, the slender little chap with the dead
soldier-father, who had taken long walks up and down nar-
row old Winter Street with him, and mailed his letters, and
fenced with his sword, and listened by the hour to his tales
of rainy bivouac and last redoubt, of precious drops of brandy
to a dying comrade and brave loans of army blankets in the
cold dawn. We wondered at the extraordinary chance which
had kept the old portfolio, with its worn leather edges
that I remembered so well, hidden during the two years that
had elapsed since his death, and what secretive instinct had
led him to put his last will and testament there. We mar-
velled at the sagacity which had led him to drop hints as to
the existence of such a document so effectively that the
family had felt themselves bound to hold the property intact
for three years, to give every possible chance of finding it, and
had spent many useless dollars in the search for the old
servants who were believed (and rightly, as the event proved)
to have witnessed it. Our friendship had been more than
ordinary in its strength and real sympathy; one of those at-
tractions that laugh at disparity of years and absence of any
tie of kinship, and, indeed, up to his death I had been far
closer to him than Roger ever was. Dear old Uncle Win!
He knew what he would do for me and what it would mean
to me, well enough: as a young fellow, he had been tied to
his Bank!
I spoke tentatively of Sue Paynter, and Roger flushed and
struck the table in his disgusted excitement.
"Good heavens, Jerry I never once thought "
[121]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
Poor Sue! There was nothing more to say.
"The first thing I want you to do for me, Jerry," said
Roger, "is to go through the cottage thoroughly and see if
you discover any trace of who lived here. I've done it,
of course, but I'd like to have some one else do it, too. Go
all by yourself, and I won't give you any hint of my idea,
and then we'll compare notes."
Nothing, just then, could have interested me more, and I
started systematically for the cellar steps, lantern in hand.
The first thing that struck me was the trim neatness of
this part of the house, too often and especially in country
districts neglected. The steps were firm and clean and
nearly dustless, the cement floor dry and apparently freshly
swept, the walls and ceiling well whitened with lime. Bins
of vegetables, a barrel of summer apples, a cask of vinegar
on two trestles with a pail thriftily set for the drippings, a
wire cupboard with plates of food set there for the cellar
coolness, and in one corner a little dairy compartment,
built over a spring covered by a wooden trap-door, completed
the furnishings of the floor. For the rest, the place was a
fairly well-stocked tool-house; a scythe and a grindstone,
snow-shovel and ladders were arranged compactly; a
watering-pot and rake stood fresh from use by the door.
A low cow-stall came next and beyond this a fowl roost,
both these last noticeably clean and sweet, and this in a day
when the microbe and the germ were not such prominent
factors in our civilisation as they are at present.
I retraced my steps and went through the living-
room to the room beyond it, over the shed and dairy.
It was a fair-sized study, unmistakably a man's.
The end wall held the fireplace, with a large map of
the world hung over it. The ocean side of the cottage
was windowless and lined with well-used books on pine
shelves. These overflowed on the wall which held the
entrance door, and where they stopped a sort of trophy of
arms was arranged on the wall. An army revolver, a great
[122]
THE ISLAND COTTAGE
Western six-shooter, a fine little hunting-piece, a grim
Ghoorka knife and an assegai, which I recognised from simi-
lar treasures on the barrack wall of an English friend of
mine an infantry major one or two bayonets, a curious
Japanese sword and a curved dagger whose workmanship
was quite unknown to me, completed this decoration, which
was the only one on the walls. In the centre of the floor
stood a large table-desk of well-polished cherry with a heavy
glass ink-well, pin-tray, letter-rack, etc., and a fair, clean
square of blotting-paper. But none of the customary litter
of such a desk was upon it; all was swept and garnished,
orderly and bare. The drawers were empty, the ink-well
pure, the very pens new. There was not the faintest hint of
what work had gone on at that desk.
I crossed the room and took down a book here and there
at random from the shelves. From one or two, evidently
old ones, the fly leaves had been neatly cut out; others had
no mark of any kind. It came over me with a staggering
certainty that here was no careless, makeshift impulse;
a methodical, definite annihilation had been intended and
accomplished. An extraordinary man had arranged this.
What was the secret he had concealed so perfectly, and what
had been his motive ? What his necessity ? Three or four
comfortable chairs and a light wicker table completed the
furniture of the room, which held for me the strange
fascination of the living-room, that deep, impersonal sense
of culture, that rigorous suppression of whim and irrelevant
detail. The man (not so long dead, probably) who stood
behind that room had stamped it indelibly, inevitably with
the very character he had tried to eliminate from it. One
wanted to have known him: one felt instinctively what a
firm grip, what a level eye he had.
The books were almost as little tell-tale as the rest. A
fine set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; histories of all
sorts, but only the best in every case; a little standard poetry;
the great English novelists Dickens much worn, Meredith's
MARGARITA'S SOUL
early works, the unquenchable Charles Reade, who has
nursed so many fretful convalescents back to the harness;
two or three fine editions of Shakespeare, one, a half-dozen
small green volumes, worn loose from their bindings; Dar-
win, Huxley, and a dozen blazers of that wonderful trail,
much underlined and cross-indexed, and a really remarkable
collection of the great scientific travellers and explorers, that
occupied much space; and a fair collection of French fiction
and archaeological research and German scientific and
historical work completed my first rough impression of this
library. I have gone over it very carefully since, and amused
myself with noting its omissions quite as significant in
such cases as the actual contents. No classics but the usual
school and college text-books; no recent fiction; almost no
American literature except the most reliable of the historians;
none of the essayists or belle-lettrists, except Carlyle, Macau-
lay, and such like heavy artillery; nothing whatever of a
religious nature but a small, worn Bible thick with dust,
on the top shelf among the school-books. And there was
not in the whole library one page or line or word to indicate
that its owner was conversant with or interested in Italian
or Italy.
O builder of that sand-hued cottage, owner of that manly
room of books, how many hours have I devoted to patient
study of you! How many nights have I hunted you down,
searched you out, compelled you to reveal yourself to me
and how strangely have I succeeded! It has been a labour
of love, and I have sometimes felt I know your mind almost
as my own.
In the outside further corner of the room a narrow, steep
flight of steps led to the second story and lent a queer little
foreign air to the whole. Ascending, I found myself in a
small room with one door its only entrance and one win-
dow. For a moment I had a curious sense of the English
barracks and seemed to be in the major's sleeping-room
again. A low cot-bed with a narrow rug beside, a pine
THE ISLAND COTTAGE
washing-stand and a chest of drawers, a straight chair and
small bed-table with a reflecting candle and match box
upon it, and a flat tin bath furnished this room, which
was, like all the others, speckless. A small shaving-
mirror was attached at convenient height near the window;
razor and strop hung beside it. All this I took in
at a glance, without turning, but when I did turn and con-
fronted the entrance wall, I caught my breath. For there
on the space directly opposite the bed hung what, for a
moment, I took to be a portrait of Margarita.
I moved closer and saw that it was a wonderfully perfect
etching of a head by Henner a first impression, beyond a
doubt. It was a girl's head, half life size, almost in profile,
white against the dark rain of her hair, which covered her
shoulders and bust and blackened all the rest of the picture.
The haunting melancholy, the youth, the purity of that
face have become so associated with Margarita and her
home and that part of my life that I can never separate them,
though it has been more than once pointed out to me, and
fairly, I dare say, that the picture does not resemble her so
much as I think, that her type of beauty is larger, less con-
ventional, infinitely richer, and that, aside from the really
unusually suggestive accident of her likeness, it is only
a general effect.
Well, well, it may be. But I dare to believe that I under-
stand, perhaps better than anybody, why it hung facing
that bare cot-bed, and what it meant to the man who slept
so many years of his life there, dreaming of the woman for
whose sake he hung it. He knew what it recalled to him even
as I know what it means to me, and to both of us it was
more than any portrait. For we are fearfully and wonder-
fully made so that no reality shall ever content us, and those
sudden sunsets and bars of music and the meaning glance
of pictured eyes are to teach us this. . . .
The picture (etched by Waltner) was framed in a broad
band of dull gold, and under it, on a rery slender, delicately
[125]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
carved teak-wood stand whose inlaid top just held it, was
a silver bowl full of orange and yellow and flaming nastur-
tiums. They were quite fresh and must have been put
there that morning, for the dew was still on the pale
leaves.
It was inexpressibly touching, this altar-like, vivid touch
in the austere room, and I stood, drowned in a wave of pity
and passionate regret for what I could not quite tell
before it, overwhelmed by the close, compelling pressure of
these mysterious dead loves : all over now and gone ? Ah,
who knows? Who can know? Not Darwin nor Huxley,
be sure!
I went down the stairs, crossed the study and living-
room, and after a comprehensive glance over the little kitchen
ell with its simple batterie de cuisine went up the main stair-
case, and entered the room over the study. Here again
was a surprise, for this room was completely furnished in
delicate, light bird's-eye maple, fit for a marquise, all dainty
lemon-tinted curves. The exquisite bed was framed for a
canopy, but lacked it; the coral satin recesses of the dressing-
table had faded almost colourless; the chintz of the slender
chairs had lost its pattern. An oval cheval glass reflected
the floor on whose long unpolished surface sprawled two
magnificent white bear skins. But with these furnishings
the elegance ended, for nowhere in the cottage were to be found
such curious, mocking contrasts. The walls, which should
have displayed wanton Watteau cherubs, were bare, clean
grey; instead of a satin coverlet a patchwork quilt covered
the fluted bed; no scented glass and ivory and silver-
stoppered armoury of beauty crowded the dressing-table, only
a plain brush and comb such as one might see in some
servant's quarters; the beautiful grained wardrobe's doors,
carelessly ajar, spilled no foam and froth of lace and ribbon
and silk stocking: only a beggarly handful of clean, well-
worn print gowns hung from the shining pegs. A battered
tin bath and water-can stood beneath the window, and on a
[126]
THE ISLAND COTTAGE
graceful cushioned prie-dieu instead of a missal lay of all
things a mouse trap.
I have never in my life stood in a room so contradictory,
so utterly unrelated to its supposed intention. Occupied it
certainly was: towels and soap and sponge, and night-
gown neatly folded on the patchwork quilt, showed that.
But of all teasing suggestion of femininity, all the whimsical,
rosy privacy of a girl's bedchamber, all the dainty nonsense
and pretty purity, half artless, half artful, with which
romance has invested this retreat and poetry and song have
serenaded it, Margarita's apartment was entirely void. Even
its spotlessness was not remarkable in a house so noticeable
everywhere for this quality, and as for personality, a nun's
cell has more. I think that its utter scentlessness added to the
peculiar impression; there was not a suggestion of this femi-
nine allurement; not even the homely lavender or the
reminiscent dried roses hinted at the most matter-of-fact
housewife's concession to her sex.
And yet it had its own charm, this strange room, a peculiar
French quality, provided, perhaps, by the mingling of yel-
low furniture and soft grey wall spaces; and a quaint atmos-
phere of something once alive and breathing and daintily
fleshly, cooled and faded and chastened by inexorable
time. . . .
I slept that night in the room with the etching (the silver
bowl was filled with marigolds) and all night I heard the.
roar of the surf and the hiss of the breaking waves through
my busy dreams.
I woke into a clear storm-swept morning, just after the
dawn, very suddenly, and with no apparent reason for the
waking. That is to say, I thought I woke, but knew in-
stantly that it must be a very pleasant and odd species of
dream, for there in the quiet light, at the foot of my bed
quite on it, in fact sat Margarita. She smiled placidly,
classic in her long white nightgown, and I smiled placidly
back as one does in dreams, and prayed not to wake.
[127]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"You speak when you sleep do you not, Jerry?" she
said calmly, "because you called my name, but your eyes
were closed."
Then a cold sweat broke out on my forehead and I clenched
my hands under the blankets, for I knew I was awake.
" Margarita ! " I gasped, " what is it ? Why are you here ? "
"Because I wanted to talk to you, Jerry," she answered
pleasantly. " Roger is asleep. Do you like this little room?
It is my father's."
Her hair hung in two braids; one rosy bare foot showed
under her nightgown, as she sat, her hands clasped about
her knees, like a boy. The upper button of the gown was
loose and I saw my milky, gleaming pearl around her neck ;
it was no whiter than her even teeth.
"Get down," I said sternly, "get off the bed immediately
and go back to your room. You ought not to have come
here!"
"But I do not want to get down, Jerry the floor is cold.
Roger is asleep and he cannot talk to me. It is like being
alone, when anyone is asleep. Do you not want to talk to
me, Jerry?"
"Yes, I want to talk to you, well enough," I answered in
a sort of stupor, "but but you must go. Please go,
Margarita!"
In her abominable perspicacity she answered what I
meant, not what I said.
"No," said she, shaking her head adorably, "I shall not
go. Why do you pull the blanket up to your chin so ? Are
you cold, too?"
My head was whirling and my breath came uneven
through my lips, but I fixed my eyes on the wall over her
head, and this time there was, for the best of reasons, no
ambiguity in my voice.
"I beg and implore you, Margarita, to get down at once,"
I said, as steadily as I could. " It is not at all proper for you
to be here, and I do not wish it. If you want to talk to me, I
[128]
THE ISLAND COTTAGE
will dress immediately and go out for a walk with you, but
not unless you go instantly. Do you understand me ? "
She sighed plaintively and unclasped her hands from her
knees.
"Yes, I understand you, Jerry," she said, dropping
her voice that haunting third, "but I would rather "
"Are you going?" I cried.
"Y-yes, I am going," she murmured, and with what I
knew were backward imploring glances and argumentative
pouts she slipped down, hesitatingly, hopefully, as a child
retreats, and pattered across to the door.
When I lowered my eyes the room was empty but where
she had sat the blanket was yet warm!
[129]
CHAPTER XV
FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS
TO-DAY I dived into one of my boxes for some warmer
underclothing and stumbled upon a pair of rubber-soled
shoes for deck wear. They brought the great boat before me
in a flash and then the wharves and then the little group that
had gathered at the long pier on that Saturday morning so
long ago Wolcott Sears and his wife, Sue, white as a ghost,
Tip Elder and I, with Roger and Margarita leaning over the
rail. She had on a long, tight-fitting travelling coat of slate
grey and a quaint, soft little felt hat with a greyish-white
gull that sprawled over the top of it. She looked taller than
I had ever seen her, and her hair, drawn up high on her
head, made her face more like a cameo than ever, for she
was pale from the excitement and fatigue of shopping. On
her hand, as she waved it with that lovely, free curve of all
her gestures, shone the great star sapphire Roger had bought
her, set heavily about with brilliants, a wonderful thing:
all cloudy and grey, like her eyes, and then all densely blue,
like her eyes, and now stormy and dark, like her eyes, and
always, and most of all, like her eyes, with that fiery blue
point lurking in the heart of it.
It was her birth stone an odd bit of sentimental super-
stition for Roger to have cherished and his own as well, for
they were both born in September. Her father had told her
of this on one of the few occasions when he seemed to have
talked with her at any length, and like all his remarks it
had made a great impression upon her. Anything more
violently at odds with the theory of planetary influence it
[130]
FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS
would be hard to find, for two people more fundamentally
unlike each other than Roger and his wife, I never met.
And yet . . . and yet (for I am not so sure as to what is
"absurd now that my half -century milestone is well be-
hind, and those months in Egypt taught me that much of
the inexplicable is terribly true) shall I leave out of this
rambling tale the moment of attention due the old horoscopist
of Paris? I think not.
He was withered and heavily spectacled and absent-
minded to a degree I have never seen equalled. Shall I
ever forget the day he made a soapy mixture in a great tin
pan in his little garret in the Rue Serpente, produced a long,
clean clay pipe, delivered to me a neat if extraordinary
little lecture on the experiment he was about to make and
the inferences I must draw from it if it succeeded and then,
with his prismatic bubbles all unblown, gravely sat down
in the pan! He gazed stupefied at me when I pointed out his
error.
"// ne manquerait que fa!" he snapped at length, and as
he had no other suit of clothes, he went resignedly to bed
and discoursed there most learnedly. He was seventy-five
then and his great treatise was but one-third done: the
concierge told me long after his death that his last living
act was to burn it, with the tears streaming down his old
face, poor old fellow! And yet he was one of the happiest
people I have ever known. The concierge was terribly afraid
of him, because he had once in his dry, detached way pre-
sented that official with a complete chart of his life, tem-
perament and just deserts, neatly done in coloured inks and
mounted on cardboard. It was so devilishly accurate that
the concierge trembled whenever he passed it, which was
frequently, as his wife had it framed and hung it in their
bedroom.
To old Papa Morel, then, I propounded the problem of
accounting for Margarita's birth-month having been Roger's,
and even within the same week. Pressed for the year of her
MARGARITA'S SOUL
birth, I made her twenty-two, at which the old man scowled
and muttered and traced with his cracked yellow nail de-
vious courses through his great map of the heavens. To
tease him I enumerated a few of her qualities and habits,
all to be thoroughly accounted for in my estimation, by her
strange environment and bringing up; but far from exasper-
ating him further, as I had supposed it would, this recital
appeared to please him mightily. Shaking his finger re-
provingly, he advised me no longer to mock myself of him,
for unknown to myself I had exposed my own deceit: was
I so utterly unversed in the heavenly politics as not to know
that this person described herself fully as having been born
four years previous to the date I had given him, in the year
of the eclipse, which was moreover a comet-year and one in
which Uranus usurped the throne of reigning planets, and
breaking all bounds, shadowed that fateful season? That
Aquarius, drawn by him, had imposed himself, too, and
affected the very Moon in her courses? Indeed she would
be an unbelievable person, that one! But assuredly she
was born in the year 186 . And when we finally found
the year of Margarita's birth, it was precisely the year stated
by Papa Morel ! He told me, moreover, that she would be a
great artist, at which I laughed, for her future life was
fairly well mapped out for her, I fancied, knowing Roger
as I did. He told me that she would be in grave danger of
death within three years, and then, turning to a horoscope
of my own which he had insisted upon drawing, he ran his
yellow finger down to a point and raising his mild, fanatic
eyes to mine, remarked that at precisely that time it was
written that I should save life! At which I smiled politely
and said that I hoped I should save Margarita's and he
replied politely that as to that he did not know.
" You will remark," he added, " that persons born in that
month of that year will never be otherwise than far out of the
ordinary. No. And mostly artists: dramatic, musical
how should I know ? You will remark, also, that they will
PERSONS BORN IN THAT MONTH OF
THAT YEAR WILL NEVER BE
OTHERWISE THAN FAR OUT
OF THE ORDINARY
FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS
indubitably possess great influence over the lives of others
and why not, with Uranus in that House as he is, opposing
the Moon? Ah, yes, her life is not yet lived, that one! "
But on the Saturday that found us waving from the pier
I had not met the good old Morel, and I was not thinking
of the planets at all. It had just come over me with dread-
ful distinctness that from now on my life could never, never
be the same. When I had first parted from Roger and
Margarita, the poetic strangeness of their surroundings, the
shock of all the discoveries I had just made, the relief of find-
ing our friendship secured on a new footing, nay, the very
darkness of the mild evening through which I was rowed
away from them after that exciting day, all combined to blunt
my sense of loneliness, to invest it with a gentle, dreamy
pathos that made philosophy not too hard. It was like
leaving Ferdinand and Miranda on their Isle of Dreams,
with my blessing. But here were no Ferdinand and Miranda ;
only a handsome, well-dressed bride and her handsome,
well-dressed husband-lover, sailing off for a brilliantly happy
honeymoon and leaving me behind! The excitement was
gone, the past was over, the future seemed dreadfully dull.
My English blood, the blood of the small land-owner, with
occasional military generations, forbade my plunging into
the routine of business, in the traditional American fashion,
even had the need of it been more pressing. It may as well
be admitted here and now that I was not ambitious; I
never (fortunately!) felt the need of glory or high places and
my simple fortune was to me wealth and to spare Mar-
garita's pearl was the greatest extravagance of my life. Up
to this point I had never seriously realised that all the little,
comfortable details of that little, comfortable bachelor life
of ours were over and done, the rooms into which we had
fitted so snugly, rented, perhaps, at that moment, the table
at the club no longer ours by every precedent, the vacations
no more to be planned together and enjoyed together.
The ship drew out into the harbour and I leaned hard
[133]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
on my stick and wondered drearily how long I was likely to
live. Oh, I admit the shamefulness of my unmanly state!
I might have been drying the orphan's tear or making Morris
chairs or purifying local politics, but I wasn't.
Tip Elder walked over to me and put his hand on my
shoulder.
"Well, that baby's face is washed!" he said cheerily, "as
my mother puts it. And I hope it's going to turn out all
right. But I don't believe you or I would be in Roger's
shoes for a good deal, would we ? "
I turned on him fiercely.
"Speak for yourself, Elder!" I cried. "I'd give most of
this life that I know about and all of the next that you
don't, to be for a little while in Roger's shoes! Understand
that!"
And brushing by him and utterly neglecting Sue and the
Wolcott Searses, I jumped into a waiting cab and hurried
away from that departing vessel, with two-thirds of what I
loved in the world on her deck.
I took one last look at our old rooms, bare and clean, now,
for my things were sold and Roger's stored; I gave all my
clothes to the house valet, to his intense gratitude, and when,
with a nervous blow of my favourite cane a gift from
Roger in an effort to beat the pile of cloth on the floor into
symmetrical shape, the stick broke in the middle, I came as
near to an hysterical laugh as I ever came in my life.
"Take all the other sticks, Hodgson," I said huskily,
" and the racquets, if you want them. And give the rod to
the night porter Richard fishes, I know. And take the
undenvear, too yes, all of it!"
"And the trunk, sir? Where would you wish '
"O Lord, take the trunk!" I burst out, for the familiar
labels, ay, the very dints in the brass lock, carried only sour
memories to me, now.
"But, sir, you've only what you stand in!" the man cried,
convinced, I am certain, that I contemplated suicide. " I've
[i34]
FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS
got the day to get through, Hodgson," I reassured him, "and
the shops will be of great assistance!"
I left him gloating over his windfall, and plunged into
haberdashery.
Fortunately for my nervous loathing of all my old pos-
sessions, I had celebrated Uncle Win's legacy by a prompt
visit to my tailor, and the results of this visit went far to
stock the new leather trunk that I recklessly purchased for
the shocking price such commodities command in America.
At the end of a successfully costly day I registered myself,
the trunk, with its brilliant identification label, a new silver-
topped blackthorn, and the best bull terrier I could get in
New York, at the new monster hotel I had never before
entered, with a strange feeling of an identity as new as my
overcoat. This terrier, by the way, marked my definite
division from Roger more than anything else could have done.
I have always been fond of animals, dogs especially, and as a
little fellow was never without some ignominiously bred cur
at my heels; but Roger never cared for them, and little by
little I had dropped the attempt to keep one, since he ob-
jected to exercising them in town, did not care to bother with
them in the country, and absolutely refused to endure the
encumbrance of one while travelling. Not that he was ever
cruel or careless: when thrown into necessary relations with
animals he was far more just and thoughtful of them than
many a sentimental animal lover of my acquaintance!
Strangely enough, I have never seen a dog or cat that would
not go to him in preference to almost anyone else one of
nature's ironies.
With Kitchener (not of Khartoum, then!) curled at the
foot of my bed in a brand new collar, I went to sleep, woke
early, and took the first train to Stratford to say good-bye to
my mother and receive her congratulations on my legacy.
Everything was unchanged in the neat little house: only
old Jeanne in her bed in a wonderful nightcap marked the
visit as different from any other. Years had ceased to leave
MARGARITA'S SOUL
any mark on my mother since her hair had turned grey, and
I might have been a collegian again as I kissed her.
What extraordinary creatures women are! She knew
inside of ten minutes, I am sure, as well as Sarah Bradley had
known, how matters stood with me, and whenever I spoke
of Margarita an inscrutable look was in her eye and she
stroked my arm in a delicate, mute sympathy. Nor did she
refer to my children any more or her hopes that I would
ranger myself and settle down. If she sighed a little at the
news of my projected -wander jahr, she did not beg me to set
any term for it, and cheerfully congratulated herself upon my
known faithfulness in the matter of correspondence. The
tact of the woman!
She herself cooked our simple dinner to Jeanne's voluble
accompaniment of regret: the chicken from her own brood,
the salad from her garden, the delicious pastry that her own
hands had put into the oven. After dinner, during which
we drank Jeanne's health and took her a glass of the wine I
always brought with me for the stocking of her unpreten-
tious cellar (the neighbours had never been able to regard
this addition to my mother's table without suspicion and
regret) my father's favourite brand of cigars was produced
and I dutifully smoked one. I had not inherited his taste
in this instance, but for years I had respectfully made this
filial sacrifice and my mother would have been seriously hurt
had I foregone it.
We talked of anything but what was in our minds: the
wonderful late planting of peas; the beauties of Kitchener,
who was formally introduced to Jeanne and listened with
perfect good breeding to a long account (in French) of the
departed family poodle; the kindness of the old parish
priest to Jeanne; the war-scare in the East (my mother
religiously took in the London Times and watched Russia
with unceasing vigilance) the shocking price of meat. Later
she brought out my old violin and I played all her favourites
while she accompanied me on the little cottage piano my
[136]
FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS
father had bought for her when they began life together.
If a tear dropped now and then on the yellow keys, neither
of us took it too seriously, and it was a pleasant, soothing
evening on the whole. My nerves relaxed unconsciously,
and Jeanne's wild applause as one after another of her par-
ticular tunes rang out (Parlons-nous de lui, Grandmtre,
Sous les Tilleuls and Je sais bien, mon amour] gave me an
absurd thrill of musicianly vanity.
I slept in my own little room with the prim black walnut
bedroom suit, the prize-books in a row on the corner shelf,
the worn rug made from the minister's calf that I shot by
mistake, and my father's sword, with its faded tassel, over
my bed. By some odd chance all my dreams that night were
of those boyish days, and it was with sincere surprise that
I stared on waking at my long moustache, in the toilet mirror
we were not so universally clean shaven twenty years ago.
My steamer sailed at noon from Boston, and to my
intense delight there was no one on board that I knew. Un-
attended and unwept Kitchener and I marched up the gang
plank, and I pointed out to him the conveniences and ec-
centricities of his surroundings with the contented confidence
known only to the intimate friend of a good dog. For
Kitchener and I were already intimate: the cynical philos-
ophy, the sentimental maundering, the firm resolutions I
had poured out in his well-clipped ear had brought us very
close together, and had he chosen to betray my confidences
he could have made a great fool of me, I can tell you.
I can see him now good old Kitch! With a great black
patch over one roving blue eye and an inky paw, a trim,
taut body and a masterful tail, he travelled more miles than
fall to the lot of most bull dogs and got quite as much good
out of them as most of his fellow travellers. He would have
chased an elephant if I had told him to and carried bones to
a cat if I had ordered it done. He is buried next to Mr.
Boffin the poodle, in quiet Stratford, and for many years
his grave was tended for Harriet never forgot.
[137]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
Though I had made no formal decision as to where I
would go, somewhere in the back of my brain it had been
made for me. That astonishing young Anglo-Indian had
not at that time reminded us that "when you 'ear the East
a callin', why, you don't 'eed nothing else" (I quote from
memory and far from libraries) but it was true, for all that,
and I knew the skies that waited for me the low, kindling
stars, the warm, intimate wind, the very feel of the earth
under my feet.
And yet I did not go there, after all. We were bound for
England, and as I travelled up the Devon country and drank
in the pure, homelike landscape and strolled by those in-
comparable (if occasionally malarial) cottages, my father's
and grandfather's blood stirred in me, and half consciously,
to tell the truth, I found myself on the way to Oxford. By
some miracle of chance my old lodgings were free, and before
I quite realised what I was doing, I was making myself com-
fortable in them.
I should have hated to be obliged to explain to my incredu-
lous American friends what I "did" in those long months,
when every week I planned to be off for the South and every
week found me still lingering by the emerald close, the grey
tower, the quiet, formal place of this backwater of the world.
In their sense, of course, I " did" nothing at all. I watched
the youth around me (any one of them I might have been,
had my father lived) I renewed the quiet, cordial friend-
ships, which, if they never rooted very deep, never, on the
other hand, desiccated and blew away; I wrote many letters,
and more than this, I formulated once for all, though I did
not know it then, such theory of life as I have found necessary
ever since. What it may have been does not so much
matter: if I have failed to illustrate it in my life, if I have,
even, failed to make it reasonably clear in this rough sketch
of the most vital interests of my life, it cannot have been
very valuable.
Among my correspondents at this time neither Roger nor
FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS
his wife was numbered. This was not strange, for he was a
poor letter-writer, except for business purposes or in a real
necessity, and she had never been taught so much as to
write her own name! But I heard from them indirectly, and
as Roger, it turned out, supposed me to have gone on a long
hunting trip through the Rockies, neither of us was alarmed
by the three months' silence.
A strange, dozing peace had settled over me; though I
thought of them often, it was as one thinks of persons and
scenes infinitely removed, with which he has no logical con-
nection, only a veiled, softened interest. Margarita seemed,
against the background of the moist, pearly English autumn,
like some gorgeous and unbelievable tropical bird, shooting,
all orange and indigo, across a grey cloud. It was impossible
that I, a quiet chess-player sitting opposite his friend, the
impractical student of Eastern Religions, could have to do
with such a vivid anomaly as she must always be. It was
unlikely that the silent, moody man strolling for hours
through mist-filled English lanes, pipe in mouth, dog at heels
should ever run athwart that lovely troubler of man's mind,
that babyish woman, that all-too-well-ripened child.
My Christmas holidays were quietly passed with the
Oriental Professor in his tiny Surrey cottage, where he and
his dear old sister, a quaint little vignette of a woman,
forgot the world among her pansy beds. She was not visible
at that time, however, owing to a teasing influenza which
kept her in bed, and our hostess was her trained nurse, a
quiet, capable little American, with a firm hand-grip and
kind brown eyes, already set in fine, watchful wrinkles.
She rarely spoke, except in the obvious commonplaces of
courtesy, and our days were wonderfully still. The Professor
taught me Persian, in a desultory way, and chess most
rigorously, for he was hard put to it for an opponent even
partly worthy of his prodigious skill. He was a member of
all the most select societies of learning in the world, an
Egyptologist of such standing that his pronouncements
[139]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
in that field were practically final, a man called before kings
to determine the worth of their national treasures and
curiosities and his greatest pride was that he had beaten
the hitherto unmatched mechanical chess-player in public
contest and had been invited to settle absolutely the nicest
problems in a chess magazine!
I dwell with a curious fondness upon this placid interval
in my life. I supposed myself honestly settled, grown old,
grateful for the rest and oblivion my father's old university
gave me so generously. When I thought of the feverish,
break-neck journey I had planned, of the hot and doubtful
reliefs and distractions I had promised myself that day when
the lawyers' letter had dropped half read on my knees and I
had sniffed my freedom first, I wondered. But, truly, it is
all written, and the hour had not yet struck, that was all!
[140]
CHAPTER XVI
MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN
WASHINGTON SQUARE,
Oct. 16, 188
JERRY DEAR:
First about the will how splendid it was! Nothing
could have pleased Roger more, I am sure he told me
with that queer, little whimsical grimace of his that it
cleared his conscience to feel he was leaving you something!
What a personality he has, and how, in his quiet unassuming
way, he impresses it on us!
I hear that Sarah made a great fuss about the will, but
was advised by Mr. Sears to stop and stopped! With
Madame B. I am of course anathema I have not heard
from her since. The bank, bien entendu, is of the past,
and you, I hear, are in the far West. How you will revel
in the freedom and how good it must have been to kick
off the ball and chain! If anyone can be trusted not to
abuse leisure, it is you, dear Jerry you won't appear so
culpable, as a poor American always does, somehow, under
such circumstances. Even I feel unjustifiably idle now,
so I have taken up some of Mr. Elder's fads what a fine,
manly sort of fellow he is ! and may be seen, moi qui vous
parle, teaching sight-reading to a boy's glee-club!
But of course you are impatiently waiting for me to turn
to Margarita and leave this silly chatter about my egotistic
self. Eh bien, she is marvellous. For half an hour I hated
her, but I couldn't hold out any longer. I have never even
imagined such a person. What a pose that would be if
any actress were clever enough to avail herself of the un-
MARGARITA'S SOUL
paralleled opportunities it would give her! Of course I
thought it was a pose, at first I simply couldn't believe in
her. But equally of course no woman could deceive another
woman very long at that, and she is one to conquer both
sexes. When she put her hand in mine and asked if I
was going to buy her some dresses on Broadway, I had to
kiss her.
I got very little, just enough for absolute necessity, and
gave her a letter to my woman in Paris and another to one
I could only afford occasionally, and told her to obey them
and take what they gave her. She understood and prom-
ised not to buy what happened to strike her this was nec-
essary, for she begged piteously for a rose pink satin street
dress and a yellow velvet opera cloak to wear on the boat!
We had a terrible struggle over a corset she screamed
when the corsetitre and I got her into one and slapped the
poor woman in the face. It took all my diplomacy to cover
the affair and I doubt if I could have done it, really, if Mar-
garita herself had not suddenly begun to cry like a frightened
baby and begged pardon so sincerely that the woman was
melted and ended by offering her sister as a maid! The
girl had the best of references, and as she must have some-
one and Elise has travelled extensively and seems very
tactful, she is now (I trust) adjusting the elastic girdle
her sister finally induced Margarita to wear.
I took her to my Sixth Avenue shoe place, and she was
so ravished with a pair of pale blue satin mules I got her
that she actually leaned down and kissed the clerk who was
kneeling before her! Fortunately we were in a private
room and he was the cleverest possible young Irishman,
who winked gravely at me and took it as naturally as possi-
ble he thought she was not responsible, you see, and
assured me that he had an aunt in the old country who was
just that way !
What a beautiful voice she has have you ever heard it
drop a perfect minor third? But what a strange, strange
wife for Roger, of all men! I suppose she is the first thor-
oughly unconventional person he was ever closely connected
with in one way you would seem more natural with her
I suppose because you are more adaptable than Roger.
MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN
With him, everybody must adapt. Will she ! Votta Vaftairet
I should say that the young woman would be likely to
have great influence over other people's lives, herself. If
she and Roger ever clash ! Ah, well, advienne que pourra,
it's done.
I gave her for a wedding present that lovely little old
daguerreotype of Roger at three years old. It was in an
old leather frame, you know, and I had it taken out and
put into a little band of steel pearls and hung on a small
dark red velvet standard. No one could fail to know him
from it I think it is the most wonderful child portrait
I ever saw. He seems to have always had that straight,
steady look. There is a tiny curl of yellow baby hair in the
back, which amused her very much. That is the only one of
him at that age, you know his mother gave it to me when
we were engaged, and I always kept it.
I am forgetting to tell you about our visit to the Convent,
and you must hear it. I love the old place and often go
up there to see Mary, when things grow a little too un-
bearable. She is wonderful so placid and bright, so
somehow just like herself, when you expect something differ-
ent! Why did she do it, I wonder? I was one of her best
friends, and I never knew. Her great executive ability is
having its reward, they tell me, and she is likely to be
Mother Superior some day.
I had told her about Margarita and she was deeply in-
terested in her, though the terrible state of the child's soul
naturally alarmed her. When I told her that her sister-
in-law had never been in a church, nor seen one, unless she
had noticed those we passed in New York, she crossed her-
self hastily and such a look of real, heartfelt pain passed
over her face!
Well, I got my charge safely up there, and everything
interested her tremendously from the very beginning. It
was the intermission demi-heure of the morning and the girls
were all munching their gouter and playing about on the
grass. I explained to her why they all wore the same black
uniform, and why the honour girls, "les tres-biens" wore
the broad blue sashes under their arms, and why the Sis-
ters kept on their white headdresses in the house, and why
MARGARITA'S SOUL
the girls all made their little reverence when Mother Bradley
came out to meet us. She kissed Margarita so sweetly and
held her in her arms a moment I don't think Roger quite
realised how his attitude hurts her: it is the only almost un-
just thing I ever knew him to do. In the halls there is a
great statue of Christ blessing the children, and Margarita
stopped and stared at it several minutes, while we watched
her. She seemed so rapt that Mary took my hand excitedly
and whispered to me not to disturb her for the world, but
wait for what she would say. After a while she turned to me.
"Why has that woman a beard, Sue?" she asked cheer-
fully. Imagine my feelings! I did not dare look at Mary.
We went all through the school-rooms and she was most
curious about the globes and blackboards and pianos. We
stopped at the door of a tiny music room, and I smiled, as
I always do, at the pretty little picture. The young girl
with her Gretchen braids of yellow hair, straight-backed
in front of the piano, the nervous, grey-haired little music
master watchfully posted behind her, beating time, and
in the corner the calm-faced Sister, pink-cheeked under her
spreading cap, knitting, with constantly moving lips. The
music rooms are so wee that the group seemed like a grace-
fully posed genre picture. Before we knew what she was
about, Margarita had slipped in behind the music master
and brought both hands down with a crash on the keys,
so that the Chopin Prelude ended abruptly in an hysterical
wail and the young lady half fell off the stool only half,
for Margarita pushed her the rest of the way, I regret to
say. Fortunately Mary was able to get us out of it, but I
fear there was no more Prelude that day! Why will women
play Chopin, by the way ? I never heard one who could
Aus der Ohe is masculine enough, heaven knows, but even
that amount of talent doesn't seem to accomplish it. Do
you remember Frederick's diatribes on the subject? He
used to say that Congress should forbid Chopin to women,
on pain of life imprisonment.
But you must hear the end of the visit. We went into
Mary's room perfectly bare, you know, with a great cruci-
fix on the wall and below it, part of the woodwork, a little
cup for holy water. As soon as she entered the room
MARGARITA STOPPED AND STARED AT IT SEVERAL MINUTES
MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN
Margarita paused, and gave a sort of gasp her hand, which
I held tight in mine, grew cold as ice. She moved over
slowly to the crucifix, with her eyes glued to it she seemed
utterly unconscious of us, or where she was; she stood di-
rectly under the crucifix, with Mary and me on either side
of her shaking with excitement, and then she put out her
hand in a wavering, unsteady way, like a blind person,
dipped her fingers in the empty bowl and began to cross her-
self! She touched her forehead quickly, then moved her
hand slowly down her chest, fumbled toward one side, then
drew a long breath and stared at us, winking like a baby.
"I wish I had some food, Sue," she said, and actually
yawned and stretched her arms, like a plow-boy, in our
faces. "I think this room makes me hungry. Are you
not hungry, Mary?"
Now, Jerry, what do you make of that ? She cannot have
seen a crucifix, can she ? Nor anyone crossing themselves ?
She acted like a woman walking in her sleep. If I lived
in Boston and were interested in that sort of thing I could
swear that she had been a nun in her last incarnation!
Mary is, of course, much wrought up, and is going to set
the whole convent praying for her, I believe. I told Roger
about it, but you know what he is it sounded rather sUly
as soon as I had it begun. He pointed out that there were
plenty of chances for her to have seen the Sisters crossing
themselves before crucifixes, and other sensible explana-
tions. But really and truly, Jerry, I was with her every
minute, and she did what she had not seen done.
What do you think of it ?
Yours always,
SUE PAYNTER.
PART FIVE
IN WHICH THE BROOK BECOMES A RIVER AND
FLOWS BY GREAT CITIES
Now sit thee down, my bride, and spin,
And fold thy hair more wifely yet,
The church hath purged our love from sin,
Now art thou joined to homely kin,
The salten sea thou must forget.
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
[ '471
CHAPTER XVII
OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER
BLEEKS, LITTLE ARCHES, SURREY,
January 2d, 188
MY DEAR MR. JERROLDS:
You will be surprised, doubtless, to hear from an old
woman who is perfectly unknown to you in all probability,
but if your mother is still living she will remember Agatha
Upgrove and the cups of tea and dishes of innocent scandal
she shared with her, when you were rolling in a perambulator.
I write to you instead of to her in order to find out if she is
living, in fact, and to renew at sixty-two the friendship of
twenty-six! You may well wonder at such a sudden impulse
after thirty years, almost, of silence, and if you will pardon
a garrulous old woman's epistolary ramblings, I will tell you,
for you are at the bottom of it.
My grandniece was summoned hastily to Paris a month
ago, to act as bridesmaid to a young school friend, and as no
one else could well be spared at that time to go with the child,
I offered myself. I am an experienced traveller and even
at my age think far less of a trip across the Channel than
most of my relatives do of one to India, with which, by the
way, I am also familiar. It was when my husband's (and
your father's) regiment was ordered to India that your
mother and I met. You came very near being born there, did
you know it ? But the regiment was recalled, and we came
back delighted, for neither of us liked it. Major Upgrove
died of dysentery a year later, and my widowhood and
your father's absence in Africa at that time drew your mother
and me very close together. One wonders that swh inti-
macies should ever fade, but I have seen it too often to regard
it as anything but natural, alas! It was my son, Captain
MARGARITA'S SOUL
Arthur Upgrove of the th Hussars, who taught you to walk
I can see you now, with the lappets of your worked muslin
cap flying in the wind, and such a serious expression!
But to return to my trip to Paris. I established my niece
comfortably with her friends, and then betook myself to my
own devices till such time as she should need me again. I
had not been in Paris for eight years (one settles down so
amazingly hi provincial England!) and I derived great
pleasure from the old scenes of my honeymoon, that sad
pleasure which is all that is left to women of my age, who
have not their grandchildren to renew their youth in !
The Major and I had always been particularly attached
to the Gardens of the Luxembourg, and there I went and sat
musing many hours on end. One morning as I sat watching
the children and their bonnes, my ear was caught by a shrill
scream and I turned and saw a very handsome young woman,
beautifully dressed, dragging a cup and ball away from an
angry little French boy. I supposed, of course, that she was
his mother or his aunt, and only regretted that she should be
so rough and undignified in her manner to him, but when his
nurse rushed up and angrily questioned the young woman,
who fought her off, still clinging to the toy, I realised that
something was wrong, and went over to them. Hardly had I
got there when a neat-looking lady's maid ran up, chid the
young woman severely, and apologised in a rapid flood of
French, that I could not follow, to the nurse. Then it was
clear (or so I thought) that the poor creature was not respon-
sible and I tried to soothe her, in a quiet way, till her atten-
dant should leave the bonne.
To make a long story short, imagine my surprise when I
found that she was not insane at all, only strangely unde-
veloped. Her maid explained this to me while the curious
young thing (a bride, too!) actually made friends with the
child and begged the cup and ball away successfully!
She took quite a fancy to me and we talked together in
English, as soon as I found out that she was an American.
What an extraordinary nation! It quite makes one giddy
to think of them. Fancy a child that had never been taught
of the God who made her nor the Saviour who died for her,
in a civilised Christian country! And yet she was naturally
OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER
very sweet, I found, though high- tempered. She spoke beau-
tiful French (they tell me Americans often do) but she
seemed to know very little about her native country and had
never seen a red Indian nor a buffalo. The Major always
regretted so deeply that he had never hunted in North
America.
During our conversation, which I should hardly dare to
repeat, it was so very odd, she told me that she was very glad
to have found another friend, for now she had three, besides
her husband.
"And who are the other two, my dear?" I asked her.
"One is Sue, that is a woman," she answered, "and the
other is Jerry, that is a man."
"Jerry? Jerry?" I repeated, for it sounded strangely
familiar.
" Yes. Do you know him, too ? " she asked eagerly.
"I am afraid not," I said, "but it so happens that I once
knew a baby boy whom his mother called Jerry many years
ago, in England."
"My Jerry gave me this pearl," she said, and she showed
me a beautiful pearl which she wore.
"I do not think it likely that the Jerry I knew would be
able to afford such presents," I said rather stiffly. You must
know, Mr. Jerrolds, that we are still old-fashioned in our
ideas in England, and fail to realise the quick growth of
your amazing American fortunes!
She persisted, however, and to quiet her I told her that
"my Jerry's" right name was Winfred Jerrolds. When she
assured me that it was "her Jerry" and described your ap-
pearance (exactly your father's, except that he required a
pince-nez), I began to believe in the strange coincidence, and
readily agreed to go home with her. She lived in a charm-
ing appartement (I have forgotten the street, but they were au
cinquieme, and there was a queer little hydraulic lift, which
I refused to use, preferring my own feet) and she did the
honours of it very prettily, upon the whole, like a child that
is just learning, looking to her maid constantly for approval.
This, frankly, did not seem right to me, Mr. Jerrolds. I
may be old-fashioned, but I cannot think that a woman should
learn etiquette from her maid, and I must have showed my
MARGARITA'S SOUL
feeling in my face, for the girl, a capable one, I must say,
blushed and said that in her opinion Madame required a
governess, a chaperon, as it were, and that she believed Mon-
sieur had it in his mind also. I could not help exclaiming
that I knew of the very person, and most officiously, I know,
I wrote down the address of a second cousin of mine, once
removed, then in Paris by the merest chance.
She is-ja Miss Jencks, Mr. Jerrolds, and of unexception-
able family: her great-uncle a bishop, her father a retired
army officer. She has been governess to the family of the
Governor-General of Canada, thus, as you see, enabling her
to know just what would be required in American society
(the maid told me that Mr. Bradley was most aristocratic
and quite wealthy) and has always associated with the best
people. She is plain, but refined, and unusually well edu-
cated, being in Paris now for special art study. She would
be moderate in her charges, I am sure, and would take a
real interest in young Mrs. Bradley, for she deeply enjoys
forming character and manners and has always been con-
sidered most success]id at it.
I wrote down the address of her pension and left it with
the maid, telling her, so that Mr. Bradley would not think
me too forward, that I was an old friend of your mother.
Do, if you write to him, say a good word for Miss Jencks,
for I am sure he will never regret engaging her.
Before I left, Mrs. Bradley sang for me, accompanying
herself on the piano. Her voice is unusually fine, though
she does not sing at all in the English way, but more like a
professional opera singer. It was rather startling to me.
Barbara Jencks could teach her a little more restraint, I
think, to great advantage. But there is no doubt of the
beauty of the organ. She is taking lessons of a famous teacher,
and the maid says she had made the most wonderful progress
in a short time. She is a very loving little creature (I call
her little, though she is half a head taller than I!) but though
she is so childish, I fancy she has a -very strong will and a
character of her own. She would have a great influence over
anyone that was much with her, I think.
I am sending this letter in care of your mother's old bank-
ers. I hope so much that I may hear that she is alive and
OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER
well! I was never better myself. I enclose with this long
letter a picture of my son. Like your mother, I have but
one, and he is everything to me, as I daresay hers is.
I trust that you will not come to England without
letting me see you at Bleeks, and remain, my dear Mr.
Jerrolds, Your mother's old friend,
AGATHA UPGROVE.
[FROM ROGER'S DIARY]
PARIS, Feb. 17, '8-
Weather fine and clear for a week. M. well and very
happy. Her voice certainly comes on surprisingly. Mme.
M i very enthusiastic. Miss J. has persuaded her to learn
to write. She makes great progress.
Feb. 24.
To-night we actually gave a little dinner. Friends of Miss
J.'s: a sort of practice affair. M. behaved very well, but
drank her neighbour's (Miss J.'s cousin's) wine and would
not apologise. Miss J. a little inclined to be over-severe, I
think. It will be very pleasant to entertain, later, certainly.
Spent the morning at the Bibliotheque Nalionale, reading
up Code Napoleon. What a man! I never thought
enough emphasis laid on that side of him.
Mar. 3.
Bad weather over for the present. Called at the Legation.
M. very quiet and good and looking exquisite in dark blue
silk from Sue's crack dressmaker. Enormously admired and
very happy. Quite well. Took a few notes to-day on the
Code. A great lawyer, that man.
Mar. 6.
Wonderful weather, fine and warm. Chestnuts soon start-
ing. Went to Versailles for the day. M. played cup and
ball with R n, the sculptor, who wants to model her.
He gave us a petit souper and M. behaved perfectly. Miss
[153]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
J. certainly an investment. She cannot drag M. into a
cathedral, however. M. insists they make her feel queer
and then hungry. Says her hands get cold. Have told Miss
J. cannot have any meddling with religion just yet. (N.
B. not at all!) Strange not hearing from Jerry.
Mar. 10.
M. spoke of old home to-day for first time. Remarked on
absence of ocean and hoped dog was well. Dog's name ap-
pears to be Rosy, which is absurd, as it's not that kind of
dog. Obstinate as usual. Miss J. objects to kissing as a
disciplinary measure. M. balks at Kings of England in
order, and gets no dessert. Odd thing to have happen to
your wife! She grows sweeter every day. Am getting quite
deep into notes on the Code. Really enough for a book.
Mar. 15.
Weather still holds. Met Stokes and Remsen of my class
to-day and went out to St. Cloud with them. Say I look
five years younger. Didn't realise I needed the rest, to tell
the truth. Suppose we do work too steadily, over there.
But I never felt any ill effects from it. Have cabled Jerry at
University Club. Remsen swears he saw him in London
last week. Doesn't seem possible, or would have known.
M. sang to-day at musicale for Mme. M i. Great
success and looked very beautiful. She gets a high colour
singing. Hate Frenchmen as much as I ever did. They're
more monkey than man. Magnificent new tenor-barytone
just discovered can't recall the name. Wants to sing with
M., who was much taken with him. Worked up a few of
my notes: Stokes thought well of them.
Mar. 16.
Barytone called while I was out with Miss J. yesterday
on business. M. told me that he loved her and admits that he
kissed her. Went around to his rooms and gave him a good
licking this afternoon: warm work, for he is a big fellow.
[154]
OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER
M. cannot see anything out of the way in what she did:
told me she wished she'd married Jerry, I was so cruel.
Miss J. talked to her like a Dutch uncle. Can't have the
child treated too harshly for all the Governor- Generals
Canada ever had, and told her so. We all got pretty hot, but
nothing would budge M. till Elise happened to confide in her
that I was a man in a thousand. This for some reason
struck her forcibly and she acted like an angel. Women are
certainly strange. Nothing more done on the Code.
FLORENCE, Mar. 26.
Have been a week here. M. enjoys it very much. She
and Miss J. studying Italian day and night: M. takes to it
like a duck to water. Got a grammar myself and began. M.
practises faithfully. Some pleasant old ladies I knew in New
Haven called on us to-day and M.'s behaviour could not have
been better, I thought, though Miss J. objects to her crossing
her ankles. She writes very well now. It is better than a
play to hear her and Miss J. arguing over points of etiquette.
J. explained the theory of the chaperon, but M. pinned her
down to admitting that it did not apply to married women.
Then why to her ? M. demanded imperiously. J. shuffled
a little, then explained that M. was an exceptional married
woman. M. inquired if that meant that she was the only
married woman that could not be trusted alone with a man.
J. replied "Unfortunately, no, Mrs. Bradley!" M. scored,
in my opinion.
April 2.
Long cable to-day about Wilkes case. Cannot possibly
attend to it from here. Cabled to make every effort to post-
pone it. Bound to get in a mess, if they don't. R
should have been disbarred long ago. M. spoke again of
the beach at home to-day. The second time since we were
married. Sometimes I think she has no heart, in the ordi-
nary sense, and then again her sweetness and kindness would
[i55]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
win over a statue. She cannot, of course, be judged by
ordinary standards.
April 6.
Heard from Jerry to-day. Has been in England all the
time, the rascal, playing chess and learning Persian! Has
promised to run over to Paris and we are going back there.
M. wants to go on with her music lessons. Have never
known her so steady at anything. Expected to stay here in-
definitely, but must be very patient with her now. Is
wonderfully well. Wouldn't mind getting back to work,
myself, but she can't very well sail now, I suppose.
PARIS, April n.
Perfect weather. Paris very gay. As a holiday, all very
well: as a business, what a life! Mme. M i advises
stop lessons now for a while. M. very disappointed, but
yields finally very gracefully. How changed Jerry will
find her! He agrees to stay a fortnight at least, which de-
lights M. And me, too. We must have one of our old
walking-trips, perhaps try an ascension. Have got at the
Code again.
April 15.
Weather still holds. Jerry expected to-morrow. M. has
taken to reading. She and J. read aloud David Copperfield,
turn about. What good work it is, after all! Hester taught
her to read unknown to her father, who seems to have for-
bidden it. It was her only disobedience, it seems. I wonder
what that woman's real name was? She learned to read
from the Psalms, but never read much. The Wilkes case
going badly, I'm afraid: no postponement. They will be
able to appeal, however.
156]
CHAPTER XVIII
MY PEARL OF TOO GREAT PRICE
KITCHENER and I were very philosophic as we crossed the
Channel that fine day in April. We had got thoroughly
fitted to each other, now, the rough edges smoothed down,
all idiosyncrasies allowed for; we knew when to press hard,
so to speak, and when to go light, and the result was a good,
seasoned intimacy that lasted twelve long years.
I have always been a good sailor, a slight headache in an
unusually nasty roll being my only concession to Neptune,
and Kitch and I viewed with cynical tolerance the depress-
ing antics of our less fortunate fellow-travellers. As we
neared the French coast I realised gradually how good it
would be to see Roger again, and found time to regret a
little of my solitary lingering through the damp English
winter, which seemed more oppressive in retrospect than
it had been in reality.
For Margarita I had only the kindest feelings and the
friendliest hopes that she would develop into a good wife
for Roger. To marry such a bewitching knot of possibilities
was of course more or less a risk, but on the other hand, if
any man could succeed in such an undertaking, surely
that man was our placid, patient Roger! I had learned
patience myself during the winter, by dint of chess and
philosophy, and somehow, as the little Channel boat pitched
under me and the shifty April clouds rolled along the sky
over me, life, as it stretched out for me and Kitchener, was
not too gloomy: was even flavoured with a certain easy
freedom that rather tickled my middle-aged epicurean palate
[157]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
for the middle thirties were, even twenty years ago,
reasonably middle-aged.
Nevertheless it was impossible not to remember that my
feelings had not always been thus ordered, and when, a .few
hours later, the guard let me out of the carriage, and I saw
only Roger on the platform, I realised that I had braced
myself a little for a meeting that did not take place.
"It's good to see you again, Jerry," he said heartily,
" mighty good!" And with his hand gripping mine, I had a
moment of whimsical wonder that any woman born should
have been able to threaten such a friendship for (or by!) the
twinkling of an eye.
We talked of our plans, mine, such as they were, being
only too ready to merge into his, which included a stiff
climb through the Swiss Alps; of my Oxford sojourn; of
Margarita's music and his readiness to get back to America
as soon as she should feel equal to it. It amused me a little
to discover how simply Roger accepted his role of indulgent
American husband: those men are born to it, I believe
there seems no crisis, no period of instruction, even. I never
pretended to half his real strength of character, but I could
not have imagined myself stopping in circumstances more or
less distasteful to me until my wife's whim should release us!
I had spoken to no woman for many months, you must re-
member, but my landlady and the Professor's trained nurse,
and unflattering though it may sound to the much-desired
sex, I had not been conscious of any special lack, after the first
few weeks.
To this day I have never known the name of the street
nor the number of that Paris appartement. We were deep in
our plans for mountaineering, and except that I noted the
wheezy little lift of Mrs..Upgrove's letter, I remember liter-
ally nothing about that excursion but the familiar odour
of the Paris asphalt, the snapping and cracking of the
Gallic horsewhip, and the smoke of my own cigarette which
blew into my eyes as I threw it away on entering the house.
MY PEARL OF TOO GREAT PRICE
The late afternoon sun poured into the gay little drawing-
room, all buff and dull rose, in the charming French style,
and full of sweet spring flowers in bowls and square jars of
Majolica ware. The height of the appartement made it
delightfully airy and bright, and through the western win-
dows I glimpsed the feathery tips of the delicate new green
of the trees. A small grand piano stood near an open win-
dow and a gorgeous length of Chinese embroidery on the
opposite wall was reflected in a tall, narrow mirror that
doubled the apparent size of the room and gave a pleasant
depth and richness to all the airy clearness of the spring that
seemed to fairly incarnate itself in the spot and the hour. I
have never liked Oriental embroideries since that day, and
the clogging scent of hyacinth is a thing I would take some
trouble to avoid; those sad little spires of violet, pink and
white spell only sorrow to one man, at least: sorrow and
memories of pitiful and unmanly weakness.
For standing by the piano, one hand with its cloudy,
flashing sapphire white among the pale stiff spikes, her deer-
like head dark against the fantastic rose and orange of the
embroidered dragons, was Margarita, a lovely smile curv-
ing her lips and the warm light in her deep slate-coloured eyes
burning down, down into my very vitals. In that one rich,
welcome smile all my calm English months melted like wax
in a furnace, and Oxford was a drab dream and Surrey a
stupid sick-bay! As I faced her, the old wound burst and
widened, with that torturing sweet shock that I had relegated
sagely to poets and youthful heats, and I knew that I loved
her hopelessly, with a love that put out my love for Roger
and my mother as the sun puts out the small and steady stars.
I had left a bewitching, unlikely elf; I found a magnificent
woman. She seemed to my gloating eyes to have grown
tall, though that might have been the effect of her loosely
flowing, long-trained gown, which was as if she had put on
a garment of shot green and blue silk and then another
over it of rich, yellowish lace. The neck was cut in a sort of
[159]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
square, such as one sees in the pictures of Venetian ladies
in the cinque cento, and at the base of her full throat lay
an antique necklace of aqua marines. Heavens! How
perfect she was! As she moved over in her grand free
stride and took my hands in both of hers, vitality and glow-
ing strength seemed to pour along her veins into mine; she
seemed almost extravagantly alive, and I a pallid, stupid
dabbler on the shore of things. Her figure was much fuller;
her arm, where the loose lace sleeve fell back from it, was
plump and round, and this and the increased softness of
her throat and chin added a year or two yes, three or four
to what I had hitherto believed to be her age. She was
a fit mate for Roger now; no longer a captured child-
witch.
I bent over her hands, to cover my emotion, and cere-
moniously kissed the backs of them; there was a creamy
dimple below each finger now. As I lifted my head and
heard Roger's chuckle of delight at my amazement at her,
I saw for the first time that we three were not alone in the
room, and found myself bowing to a neat, chill British
spinster, big and white of tooth, big and flat of waist, big
and bony of knuckle. She wore sensible, square-toed
boots and the fashion of her clothing suggested a conscien-
tious tailor who had momentarily lost sight of her sex.
She bore a pince-nez upon her flat chest, the necessity for
which was obvious, but her short-sighted blue eyes were
kind and the grasp of her knuckly hand was human. She
was a thorough-going lady if she was a trifle grotesque, and
my respectful friendship for Barbara Jencks, late of the
household of the Governor- General of Canada, has never
waned.
" You find Mrs. Bradley somewhat changed, I dare say,"
she remarked, by way of breaking a rather strained silence,
for Roger, never talkative, was hunting among a pile of guide-
books and Margarita was staring dreamily into the sunset,
now a miracle of golden rose.
[160]
MY PEARL OF TOO GREAT PRICE
"Somewhat, indeed," I responded politely, my mind
darting back to that girl in the red jersey who had sat cross-
legged like a Turk on the sand, and told me that I loved her.
What would the Governor-General have thought of that
girl?
Again a pause, and now Miss Jencks addressed Margarita,
affectionately, but firmly oh, very firmly!
" What do you find so absorbing out of the window, my
dear?"
Margarita started like a forgetful child, blushed a little,
murmured impatiently in French and then smiled delight-
fully at me.
"But this is Jerry, Miss Jencks, Roger 'sand my Jerry,"
she said beseechingly. " You do not mean that I must be
polite to Jerry?"
" Most assuredly," returned Miss Jencks. " When a gen-
tleman, even though he be an old friend, makes a journey
to see one after a long absence, he expects and deserves to
be entertained!"
Roger caught my eye, made his old whimsical grimace, and
rooted deeper into the guide-books. Margarita sighed gently,
seated herself in a high carved chair and inquired, with her
lips, adorably after my health and my journey, but laughed
naughtily with her eyes, an accomplishment so foreign to my
knowledge of her as to reduce me to utter banality; which
suited Miss Jencks perfectly, however, so that she resigned
the conversational rudder to her pupil and concerned herself
with knitting a hideous grey comforter (for the Seaman's
Home, I learned later), giving the occupation a character
worthy the most comme-il-jaut clubman.
A neat, black uniformed bonne brought in tea, in the
English fashion, and Margarita served us most charmingly
under the eagle eye of Miss Jencks, eating, herself, like a
hungry school-girl, and stealing Roger's cakes impudently
when the some-time directress of the Governor-General's
household affected a welJ-bred deafness to her request for
[161]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
more. After tea Miss Jencks departed with her knitting
and we three were comfortably silent; Margarita dreamy,
I all in a maze at her, Roger relishing my wonder. The
hyacinths smelled strong in the growing dusk, the Chinese
dragons burned against the wall : colour and odour were alike
a frame for her beauty and her richness. I can never wholly
separate that hour in my memory from the visions of a fever
and the burning heat of worse than the African Desert.
Later we sat about the candle-shaded dinner table, a meal
where English service faded in the greater glory of French
cooking, and I rebelled with Roger at Miss Jencks's curtail-
ment of her charge's appetite.
"Surely, Miss Jencks, this escarole is harmless," Roger
protested, with a smile at Margarita's empty plate, but when
that lady repeated, nodding wisely:
"I assure you, Mr. Bradley, she is better without it,"
he succumbed meekly, even slavishly, I thought, and shook
his head at Margarita's pleading eyes.
In the centre of the table was a graceful silver dish, filled
with fruit, and as the attendant bonne left the room, Mar-
garita, with a little cooing throaty cry, reached over to it,
seized with incredible swiftness two great handfuls of the
fruit, and leaping from her seat retreated with her booty to the
salon. For a second she stood in the doorway, two yellow
bananas hugged to her breast among the rich lace, an orange
in her elbow, her teeth plunged into a great black Hamburg
grape, her eyes two dark blue mutinies.
Roger burst into a Homeric laugh and even Miss Jencks
smiled apologetically.
"I suppose we must let her have the fruit," she conceded,
"an old friend like Mr. Jerrolds will make allowance "
"We expect the child in June," said Roger simply, and
then something seemed literally to give way in my brain and
I clutched the table-cloth as a sharp hard pain darted
through my temples. Strange, unbelievable though it may
seem, I had never thought of such a thing as this!
[162]
FOR HOURS AND HOURS I WALKF.D, MUTTERING AND CURSING
MY PEARL OF TOO GREAT PRICE
My face must have excused my brusque departure, my
utter inability to eat or drink another mouthful. I muttered
something about a rough voyage and my land-legs (I, who
never knew the meaning of mal-de-mer!) and I know my
forehead must have been drawn, for Miss Jencks pressed
sal volatile upon me solicitously. Roger, manlike, let me
get off immediately and alone, as I begged, and once at the
bottom of the interminable stairs, I flung myself into a wan-
dering fiacre, and drove through the merry, lighted Paris
boulevards, a helpless prey to passions black and bitter
to a wicked, seething jealousy such as I had never dreamed
possible to a decent man.
That was the deep throat, the large and lovely arm!
That was the dreamy, full-fed calm, the woman ruminant!
God! how the thought tortured and tore at me! I, who had
thought myself cured and a philosopher a kindly philoso-
pher! My first fit of love for her had carried its exalta-
tion with it, but in this grinding, physical rage there was only
shame and madness.
I caught, somehow, a train for Calais, I stumbled onto a
boat there in a driving rain, and walked the deck in it all
night. I travelled blindly to Oxford and tramped through
soggy, steaming lanes, through sheets of drizzle, through icy
runnels and marshy grass. For hours and hours I walked,
muttering and cursing, my teeth chattering in my head, my
brain on fire, my feet slushing in my soaking boots. I did
not know clearly where I was, I did not know why I was walk-
ing nor where, but walk I must, like the convicts on the tread-
mill. Something laughed horribly in the air just behind
me and said like a parrot, over and over again:
"We expect the child in June! We expect the child in
June! We expect the child "
I hit out with my blackthorn stick. "Damn you and your
child!" I cried wildly, and fell face forward in a marshy
puddle.
163]
CHAPTER XIX
FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS
LONG periods of time passed; days perhaps, perhaps
years. Some one, I know, turned with difficulty on his side,
so that the puddle did not choke his mouth and nostrils.
Some one, by and by, felt something warm and wet and rough
against his icy cheek and was grateful for the feeling. Some
one was reading to me from a book which described the sen-
sations of a man lifted up and carried in a broken balloon
that could only ride a foot from the ground, bumping and
jarring horribly, and I was that man, in some strange way,
and at the same time I was the illustrations that accom-
panied the tale. I read the story myself finally, aloud and
very shrilly, as that unfortunate man bumped along. After
days of this cold journey, the man fell out of the balloon into
a warm lake and was delighted with the change, for his very
soul was chilled until he realised, at first dimly, that the
water was growing hotter every minute and that the intention
was to torture him to death! I was that man, moreover, and
I kicked and screamed wildly, though every motion in the
boiling water was agony. Just at the point when my breath
was failing and my heart slowed, they turned off the water
in the lake from a tap, and as it slowly receded, I was safe
again, and knew I could fall asleep.
Long I slept, and dreamed inexpressibly, and then I would
feel the insidious lapping of the warm lake, rejoice a moment
in the comforting heat, then realise with horror that the tem-
perature was rising slowly but surely, and the inferno would
begin all over again. Every joint and muscle was red-hot,
each burning breath cut me like a knife.
[164]
FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS
I could not count how many times this happened, but
I prayed loudly for the man to die (he had been confirmed,
so he had a legal right to pray) and after a long time I
began to have hopes that he would, for he discovered a way
of drawing his face down under the boiling water and ceasing
to breathe. Whenever he did this, a cold, smarting rain
drove through the water on his face and forced him to breathe,
but he managed to sink deeper and deeper, till at last he felt
the throb of the great world on its axle going round, and
saw the stars below him, and knew he was nearly free.
"More oxygen!" said a tiny, dry voice far off in infinite
space, "more oxygen!"
I grew light and rose to the surface; the stars went out.
"More oxygen!" said the voice again, louder now and
close to me. I fought to sink back again but it was useless;
I burst up to the surface and breathed the sweet, icy air
against my will.
"Now the mustard again, over the heart," said the voice,
"and try the brandy."
Something ran like fire through my veins, I opened
my eyes, stared into a black, bearded face and said dis-
tinctly:
"You nearly lost that man. He heard the thing going
round."
Then I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
I was very weak and tired when I woke, but quite com-
posed. That feeling of gentleness and conscious pathos
that floods the weak and empty and lately racked body was
mine, and I looked pensively at the white, blue-veined hand
that lay so lax on the counterpane. What a siege it had been
for the poor devil that owned that hand! For I realised
that I had been very, very ill indeed.
As I studied the hand it was lifted gently from the counter-
pane by another and clasped lightly but firmly at the wrist.
The arm above this hand was clad in striped blue and white
gingham; a full white apron fell just at the limit of my side-
[165]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
wise vision. I was far too weak to raise my eyes, but it oc-
curred to me that this must be my landlady, for I recognised
the footboard of my bed. And yet it was not at all like my
room. The armchair was gone, the books were gone, the
student lamp was gone, although it was my sitting-room.
Then why was the bed there? I frowned impatiently and
then the white apron lowered itself, a white collar appeared,
and above it a face which was perfectly familiar to me,
though I could not attach any name to it.
" What can I do for you, Mr. Jerrolds ? a drink, perhaps ? "
said a clear, competent voice, and I knew at once who she
was the Professor's sister's trained nurse. For one dread-
ful moment I feared I was the Professor's sister it seemed
to me it must be so, that there was no other course open to
me, for that was the person Miss Buxton nursed ! Then,
as she repeated my name quietly, it was as if a veil had been
drawn, and I understood everything. My bed had been
moved into the study ; her bed was in my room. Doubtless
the Professor had sent for her.
I felt thirsty, and hungry, too, a fact known to her, ap-
parently, for in a moment she brought me a bowl of delicious
broth, which she fed me very neatly by the spoonful. It
made another man of me, that broth, and I watched her
record it on a formidable chart, devoted to my important
affairs, with great interest.
"Have I been ill long?" I asked, and my voice sounded
hollow and rather high to my critical sense.
"Two weeks, Mr. Jerrolds," she said promptly, "quite
long enough, wasn't it? It has been most interesting: a very
pretty case, indeed."
"What was it?"
"Inflammatory rheumatism," she said, with a gratifying
absence of doubt or delay (such a relief to a sick person!)
" and a great deal of fever, very high. You ran a remarkable
temperature, Mr. Jerrolds."
I received this information with the peculiar complacence
[166]
FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS
of the invalid. It seemed to me to denote marked ability
and powers beyond the common, that fever!
"How did I get here?"
She sat in a low chair by the bed and regarded me pleas-
antly out of the kind, wise, brown eyes.
" I will tell you all about it," she said, " because I am sure
you will be easier, but after I am through I want you to try
to compose yourself and go off to sleep, because this will
be enough talking for now, and I want you to be fresh for
the doctor. Do you understand ? "
I dropped my eyelids in token of agreement and she went
on.
"You remember that you complained of feeling unwell
in Paris at Mr. Bradley's house. You probably had quite a
temperature then, though you might not have known it.
You came directly back to Oxford, but for forty-eight hours
no one knew where you were, for the people here supposed
you there. Finally, when Mr. Bradley telegraphed, they
grew anxious here, and while they were wondering what
to do, your dog ran in, acting so strangely that they suspected
something and followed him. He led them directly to you
and they found you unconscious in a marshy old lane about
six miles out from the town. They brought you here in a
horse blanket, the Professor sent for me, and we have been
taking care of you ever since. Mr. Bradley has been here
twice, but you were too ill to see anybody; he saw that every-
thing possible was being done. I shall write him directly
that you are on the uphill road now, and that care and pa-
tience are all you need.
"Now, take this medicine, Mr. Jerrolds, and repay me
for this long story by going directly to sleep."
I took it, lay for a moment in a dreamy wonder, and
drifted off. As she had said, the uphill journey had begun.
That afternoon I saw the doctor, a grizzled, kindly man,
and it was he who told me what I had already somehow
divined that I owed my life to Harriet Buxton.
[167]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
" I never saw such nursing," he said frankly; " the woman
has a real genius. It was nip and tuck with you, Mr. Jer-
rolds, and she simply set her teeth and wouldn't give up!
One can't wonder the American nurses get such prices
they're worth it. Now it's hold hard and cultivate your
patience, and get back that two or three stone we lost dur.
ing the siege, and then good-bye to me! "
But oh, how long it was ! Day after day, and night after
night, and day after day again I counted the pieces of furni-
ture in the bare, dull room and read faces into the hideous
wall-paper and stared into the empty window. The little
night-light punctuated the dark; the feeble sunlight strug-
gled through the rain. The few kindly friends who called
upon me I could not see; their sympathetic commonplaces
were unendurable to my weakened nerves. Had it not been
for the return, now and then, of the pains I had suffered in
my delirium, mercifully less and less violent, which made
the periods of their absence hours of comparative pleasure,
I think I should have grown into a hopeless nervous invalid
from sheer ennui. I had never been ill that I remember
since the days of my childish maladies, and I fretted as only
such an one can and must fret under the irksome novelty of
pain, weakness and irritation.
How Harriet Buxton bore with my whims and fads and
downright rudeness, I cannot tell. When in a fit of contri-
tion I asked her this, she smiled and said that men were
generally irritable.
"But I should go mad if I were obliged to humour the
caprices of such a bear as I!"
"But you are not a nurse!" she answered quietly.
After ten days of steady convalescence, when I was propped
up a little upon my pillows and could feed myself very
handily from an ever-increasingly varied menu, I asked sud-
denly if she had heard from Roger lately.
"Yes," she said promptly, "only yesterday. I was wait-
ing till you asked. Before I give you the letter I must tell
[168]
FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS
you that they are no longer in Paris: they have gone back to
America."
"America?" I echoed vaguely, with a half-shocked con-
sciousness that I did not care very much one way or the other
where they were.
"Yes, Mr. Bradley came in the day before they sailed,
but you were far too ill to see him. At the same time I saw
no reason why you should not pull through, and told him so.
Mrs. Bradley suddenly expressed a wish to go to her old home,
and though for some reasons they did not like to let her begin
a sea voyage, for other reasons they wanted to gratify her.
She grew quite determined and they decided to allow it.
You know she expects her baby in June."
"Yes I know," I said quietly. I remembered the man
who had tramped the wet lanes, but to-day he seemed to me
a wicked fool, justly punished for his folly. For I knew,
though no one had told me, that I should never be the same
after this sickness. The very fibres of my soul had been
twisted and burned in that white-hot furnace of my delirium,
and though Nature might forgive me, she could never forget.
Every winter she would take her toll, every damp season
she would audit my account, after every exposure or fatigue
she would lightly tap some shrinking nerve and whisper
"Remember!" A passion whose strength I had never sus-
pected had brought me to this bed, and in this bed that same
passion had struggled and shrivelled and died. It was with
no mock philosophy that I thought of Margarita. No, the
fool knew his folly now. But it was a folly of which I had no
need, I verily believe, to feel ashamed. It was not that I
was the sort of monk we are told the Devil would be, when
he was sick, although my physical weakness may have lain
God knows! at the root of it, once. No, I had changed.
Those who have gone through some such change (and I
wonder, sometimes, how many of the passive, unremarkable
people I pass on the street, in the fields, in hotels, have gone
through such) know how well I knew the truth of this matter
[169]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
and how little likely I was to deceive myself. I loved her,
yes, and shall love her while consciousness remains with me,
but it would never again be bitter in my mouth and black
in my heart.
"Let me see the letter, please, Miss Buxton," I asked,
and she brought it, cutting it for me with her neat accuracy
of motion and conservation of energy. I spread the single
sheet open and began, but I never read more than one
line of that letter.
For it began,
Dear old Jerry:
Ever since Kitchener found you, I have changed
"Kitch! Kitch!" I cried, overcome with shame and pen-
itence. "Oh, Miss Buxton, do you does anybody "
"He is just outside," she said, "I will have him sent up at
once. I thought you would want him soon, Mr. Jerrolds.
And don't worry he has never been neglected."
I clutched the sheet in my impatience. Very soon there
was a scurrying through the hall, a little gasping snuffle, a
small, sharp bark. Then he was on the bed before I saw
his good brindled head, almost, and in my arms. I pressed
my face against his dear, quivering coat, I surrendered my
cheek to his warm, rough tongue, I translated each happy
convulsive wriggle.
"Dear old Kitch good fellow!" I muttered, none too
steadily, for I was not strong yet, and he seemed suddenly
the only friend on whom I could unreservedly count. Roger
had wished to stay with me, I knew, but of course he must
go with his wife, and I am glad that I never grudged his
absence a moment. For this cause shall a man leave his
life-long friend and cleave only to her, and there is no other
way. But nothing, nothing could separate Kitch and me!
Miss Buxton left us alone together and we discussed the
situation gravely and thoroughly and assured each other
that it was only a matter of patience, now, and then, away
together !
[170]
FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS
My spirits rose from the day he came in, and in another
week I had advanced to a deep cushioned chair in the win-
dow for an hour a day. But it was not a very interesting
window, commanding as it did my neighbour's eight-foot
garden wall crowned with inhospitable broken glass, and
though I appreciate the marvel of the spring as much, I
suppose, as most of us, I could never occupy myself very
long with natural beauties exclusively, and the trees and the
grass could not satisfy my craving for human interest. Now
that I was ready for them, all my friends were off for their
Easter holiday, and I would not keep the Professor from
his spring gardening, though he offered manfully. I have
never cared for games, with the single exception of his
beloved chess, and my eyes soon tired of reading.
And so at last, in default of something more to my mind, I
turned to my nurse and determined to make that silent
woman talk. At first it was difficult, for I tried to discover
her feelings, her attitude, her history. As to the first two of
these I met only failure and the last was pathetically simple.
An orphan she was, a bread-winner, an observer. I say it
was pathetic, but not that she was. Things are changing
rapidly with women, I can see that plainly, but twenty years
ago a man still felt, ridiculously perhaps, that a kindly,
competent woman, however successful in her chosen profes-
sion, must needs be, in the very nature of the case, even more
kindly and more competent with a child on her lap and an
arm about her waist. If in the new doctrine of the Brother-
hood of Man it is admitted that we owe each our debt to
humanity and posterity, I, for one, have never been able to
understand why women should not pay that debt in the coin-
age most obviously provided them for the purpose. The
Brotherhood of Man is a great idea, but surely without the
Motherhood of Woman it would grow a little shadowy and
impractical. (I speak as a fool!)
And so, I repeat, there was something a little pathetic to
me in Harriet Buxton's life, though nothing in the least pathe-
MARGARITA'S SOUL
tic in her personality or her actions. Do not turn on me too
fiercely, dear ladies, and demand of me with your well-
known remorseless logic, what would have become of me if
Harriet Buxton had not been beside me in my delirium,
with nothing but a clinical thermometer on her knee, and a
white apron around her waist. Do not, I beg you, for I
shall shock all your strict habits of mind by taking refuge in
blind, illogical instinct and reiterating my firm conviction
that though I perish, truth is so, and that Nature had a
better use for Harriet's lap and waist. She had! (as you
used to say in the old emotional era) she had!! She had!!!
Well, in despair of eliciting anything romantic from her,
I languidly inquired as to her travels. They were not ex-
tensive: this was her first "trip abroad." It had been
rather a failure, in a way, for although she had been en-
gaged with the understanding that her passage was to be paid
both ways, her patient on recovery had decided to spend the
summer abroad, and had made it very evident that she did
not consider herself any longer responsible for her nurse
under these circumstances!
"You should have taken legal advice," I expostulated,
" the woman was dishonest. It was shocking, Miss Buxton
surely you could have done something?"
" Perhaps," she admitted, " but I had no friends here and
it was hard enough to get my salary, anyway. I could have
gone with Mrs. Bradley if I had been free. As it was, I sent
them another American nurse I knew of in London, who was
glad to go back."
"Why didn't you send her to me and go yourself?" I
questioned curiously, " if you want to go so much?"
She looked at me in sincere surprise.
" Why, I had already accepted your case, Mr. Jerrolds,"
she said.
Alas, Harriet! Why, why were you not teaching your
simple code of honour to some sturdy, kilted Harry ?
There seemed to be nothing more to be got from Miss
[172]
FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS
Buxton, and we began to discuss the best winter climate for
me, for I understood perfectly that for more years than the
doctor cared to impress upon me just now I must avoid
damp and chill. We discussed Nassau, Bermuda, Florida,
and I mentioned North Carolina. Then Harriet Buxton
opened her lips and spoke, and in a few amazed moments
it became clear to me that I was in the presence of a
fanatic.
For she had been in North Carolina, and this State that
for me had spelled only a remarkably curative air and a de-
plorably illiterate population represented the hope of this
woman's life, the ambition of her days and nights, the
Macedonia that cried continually in her ears, " Come over
and help us!"
For a year she had lived there in the western mountains,
giving her duty's worth of hours to a wealthy patient, bar-
gaining for so much free time to devote to that strange,
pathetic race of pure-blooded mountaineers, tall, serious,
shy Anglo-Saxons, our veritable elder brothers, ignorant ap-
pallingly, superstitious incredibly, grateful and generous
to a degree. As she talked, rapidly now, with flushing
cheeks and kindling eyes, she brought vividly before me
these pale and patient people, welcoming her with eager
hands, hanging on her wonderful skill, listening like chidden
children to her horrified insistence upon long-forgotten
decencies and sanitary measures never guessed. As my
questions grew her confidence grew with them, and at last
she went quickly to her room to return with a thick, black
book, which she thrust into my hands.
"It's my diary," she explained. "If you are really in-
terested you may read it. Oh Mr. Jerrolds, to think of the
money that goes to Africa and India and slums full of Syrians
and Russian Jews, when these Americans our real kin,
you know! are putting an axe under the bed, with the blade
up, to check a haemorrhage ! If they were Zulus, " she added,
flashing, " some one might do something for them."
[173]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
I could not keep myself from staring at her: with that
flush, those kindling brown eyes and that heaving bosom,
my nurse was near to being a handsome woman! And all
because the natives of North Carolina had no adequate
hospital service. Can you imagine anything more extraor-
dinary? I opened the book curiously; not, of course, that
I cared tuppence for- the natives, but that I had actually
begun to feel interested in Harriet Buxton.
I should never have thought of it again, probably, but for
Harriet herself, for now that the magic string had been
touched, her heart overflowed to its echoes, and my waking
hours were filled with anecdotes touching, brutal or humour-
ous, of her years of joy and labour. Her cottage rent had
cost her forty dollars, her clothes nothing, her food had come
largely from the grateful people. Over and over again she
returned to her ridiculously pitiful calculations. She could
live for one hundred dollars a year. She could have the use
of a deserted schoolhouse, free. Two hundred dollars would
fit up a tiny hospital and lending-closet, with linen, rubber
articles, simple sick-room conveniences. If she had five
hundred, she would start on that and trust to getting help
to go on with. She could stay there a year, then nurse for a
year, and go back with the money she had saved.
And so on, and so on, and so on! The floods of North
Carolina needs that swept over my helpless head would have
drowned a stronger brain than mine. In vain I tried to dam
this tide of confidences and hopes and ha'penny economies:
it was useless. After a week, during which actual photo-
graphs, hideous blue prints, the first advance guard of that
flood of amateur photography destined to wash over the
world, were brought out for my edification, I rebelled and
declared myself cured.
" And to get rid of you," I added crossly, " I am going to
give you this," and I handed her her weekly cheque, plus a
draft for a hundred pounds. " Take it, and get off to those
benighted natives, for heaven's sake!"
[174]
HER WEEKLY CHECK, PLUS A DRAFT FOR A HUNDRED POUNDS
FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS
She stared at it, at me, at it again, then choked and fled
to her room. I felt like a fool.
Later, when I saw what it really meant to the absurd
creature, I surreptitiously copied bits of the sordid little
diary, and sent them to Roger with a slight account of her,
and suggested that he mention this matter to Sarah (who
had recently washed her hands of the American negro on
the occasion of his having bitterly disappointed her hopes in
a brutal race riot) and give that philanthropist's energies a
new direction.
I saw Harriet off to her boat, tried in vain to get a half hour
of rational conversation on topics unrelated to the western
mountains of North Carolina, agreed hastily to all directions
as to my health, held Kitch up to be kissed, and went back
to my sunny garden-corner, for it was full May now, and my
strength was growing with the flowers.
I thought that chapter ended, and was startled and not a
little shaken by the thick letter that found me planning my
lonely. summer early in June. It was from Harriet, a curious,
incoherent screed; tiresomely detailed as to her plans, pain-
fully brief as to important issues. She had found a letter
from Mr. Bradley awaiting her arrival, she had followed his
suggestions and interested Miss Sarah Bradley, his cousin,
in her schemes, with the result that the Episcopal organisa-
tion had sent a deaconess for a year to work under Harriet's
direction and a contribution toward fitting out the little
hospital. She had gone to see Roger and thank him per-
sonally and found him on an island, with Mrs. Bradley in
sudden and acute need of both nurse and physician, the
former with a broken leg, the latter gone to New York for
the day, as his prospective patient was supposed to be in no
immediate need of him. She had hastily set the nurse's leg,
telegraphed for the doctor, then devoted herself to Mrs.
Bradley, who, though beautifully strong and well, developed
sudden complications and gave her quite a little trouble.
Things were rather doubtful and hard for five or six hours,
[i7S]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
but fortunately the doctor had left full supplies for the oc-
casion and the other nurse was able to give the anaesthetic
she was dragged on a sofa by a deaf and dumb man, who ran
five miles to the village just before. It ended triumphantly
at dawn and Mrs. Bradley had a lovely little girl the image
of her father. Both were doing well.
Mr. Bradley had overestimated her services, and as she
could not dream of accepting the fee he offered her, he had
insisted upon paying a salary for three years to a young
physician (selected by the doctor, who arrived at noon) who
was to give his entire time and strength to the mountain
hospital and superintend the affair, now grown into a real
institution, since Mr. Elder had volunteered to supply a
young fellow from his club, anxious to act as orderly and
assistant for the sake of the training, and Mrs. Paynter, a
friend of Mr. Bradley's, had managed to get a full dispen-
sary supply at cost prices from connections of hers in the
wholesale drug line.
"And it all comes from you, Mr. Jerrolds," the letter
ended, "all owing to your wonderful, your noble interest, in
this work! You told Mr. Bradley, and though he is not
justified in thinking I saved her life, it is perfectly true that
those cases give us a great deal of trouble sometimes, and
I was very fortunate in having had a great deal of maternity
work in the mountains, when I had to act all alone and do
rather daring things. But I got the practice there, and so
if I did save your friend's life (or the baby's, which is nearer
the truth, I confess to you, Mr. Jerrolds!) you have amply
rewarded the cause that gave me the training to do what I
did!
"Your grateful
"HARRIET BUXTON."
I sat under the glass-topped wall, the letter between my
knees, staring at the brick walk bordered with green turf.
How strange it was, how incredibly strange ! A curious sense
[176]
FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS
of watchful, relentless destiny grew in me. Truly it slum-
bered not nor slept! I, who had cursed that child unborn,
had reached over seas and helped it into the world ! I, who
had been jealous of my friend, had sent him a friend indeed!
I, who had grudged Margarita husband and child (for in
my black, cruel fever I did this) had given her back to both!
I pondered these things long (as if the thread in the tapes-
try should marvel at its devious windings) and then sum-
moned my landlady.
"Mrs. Drabbit," said I, "I am thinking of going to
America."
[i77]
PART SIX
IN WHICH YOU ARE SHOWN THE RIVER'S VERY
SOURCES, FAR UNDERGROUND
And is it I that must sit and
spin?
And is it I that my hair
must bind ?
I hear but the great seas
rolling in,
I see but the great gulls sail
the wind.
Who sang the grey monk out o' the cell ?
Who but my mother that rode the sea!
She stole a son o' the church to hell,
And out of hell shall the church steal me?
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
179]
CHAPTER XX
A GARDEN GLIMPSE OF EDEN
IT was mid-August, however, before I reached that part
of America that was destined to mean so much to me. A
visit to Mrs. Upgrove, my mother's old friend, extended itself
beyond my plans, largely because of the pleasant acquaintance
I formed there with her son, then Captain, now Major
Upgrove, one of the most charming men I have ever encoun-
tered. Next to Roger he has become my best friend, in-
cidentally disproving a theory of mine that warm friendships
between men are not likely to be formed after thirty. Even
as I write this chapter I am looking forward to his visit, and
the slim Hawaiian girls are looking forward, too, I promise
you, with wonderful, special garlands, and smiles that many
a handsome young sailor may jingle his pockets in vain to
win!
What is it, that strange, lasting charm that wins every
woman-thing of every age and colour ? His mother told me
that he had it in the cradle, that the nurses were jealous
over him and the sweet-shop women put his pennies back
into his pockets! Yes, Lona, and yes, Maiti, the silver-
haired Major is coming surely, and you shall surely dance!
Never mind the wreaths for me, dear hypocrites they were
never woven for bald heads!
It was warm, almost as warm as this languid, creamy
beach, the day I clambered, none too agile, over the thwarts
of Caliban's boat and made my way up the sandy path to
the cottage.
" I'm afraid the fever took it out of you, Jerry," Roger said,
[181]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
looking hard at me, and I nodded briefly and he gripped
my hands a little harder.
"I'm glad you're here," he said.
Through the dear old room we stepped and out the fur-
ther door, and here a surprise met me. The straggling grass
stretch was now a rolling, green-hedged lawn, quartered
by home-like brick paths. Two long ells had been added to
the house, running at right angles straight out from it at
either end, making a charming court of the door yard and
doubling the size of the building; the fruit trees had been
pruned and tended; an old grape arbour raised and trained
into a quaint sort of pergola, a strange sight, then, in America;
a beautiful old sun-dial drowsed in a tangle of nasturtiums.
A delicate, dreamy humming led my eyes to a group of bee-
hives (always dear to me because of the Miel du Chamounix
and our happy, sweet-toothed boyhood!) and near a border
of poppies, marigold and hardy mignonette a great hound
lay, vigilant beside a large, shallow basket, shaded by a
gnarled wistaria clump. The basket was filled with some-
thing white, and as we stood in the door, a woman dressed
in trailing white, with knots of rich blue here and there, came
through a green gate in the side hedge and moved with a
rich, swooping step toward the basket. Behind her through
the open gate I saw a further lawn white with drying linen,
and a quick, pleasant glimpse of a brown, broad woman in
an old-world cap, paring fruit under an apple tree, a yellow
cat basking at her feet.
The white-clad figure leaned over the basket, her deep-
brimmed garden hat completely shading her face, lifted from
it a struggling, tiny doll-creature, with a reddish-gold aureole
above its rosy face, dandled it a moment in her arms, then
sank like a settling gull into the hollow of a low seat-shaped
boulder near the wistaria, fumbled a moment at the bosom
of her lacy gown, and while I held my breath, before I
could turn my eyes, gave it her breast. It pressed its wan-
dering, blind hands into that miraculous, ivory globe (that
[182]
A GARDEN GLIMPSE OF EDEN
pattern of the living world) and through the dense, warm
stillness of that garden spot, where the bees' hum was the very
music of silence, there sounded, so gradually that I could
not tell when the first notes stirred the soundlessness, a
curious cooing and gurgling, a sort of fluty chuckle, a rippling,
greedy symphony. It was not one voice, for below the
cheeping treble of the suckling mite ran a lowing undertone,
a murmurous, organ-like music, a sort of maternal fugue,
that imitated and dictated at once that formless, elemental
melody. Even as we stood riveted to the threshold, the
sounds echoed in the air above us, seemed to descend
mystically from the very heavens themselves, and as my
heart swelled in me, a flock of pigeons swept down from some
barnyard eyrie and dropped musically, in a cloud of grey and
amethyst, beneath the pear tree. They crooned together
there, the woman, the child and the birds, and truly it was
not altogether human, that harmony, but like the notes of
the pure and healthy animals (or the angels, may be ?) that
guard this living world from the fate of the frozen and
exhausted moon.
"I I can't get used to it," said Roger abruptly, "it it
seems too much, somehow," and we turned back into the
room.
"It's not a bit too much for you, Roger!" I answered
heartily (thank God, how heartily!) and we drew deep
breaths and welcomed Miss Jencks, in irreproachable
white duck I had almost written white ducks and talked
about my momentous health.
Miss Jencks had abandoned her seaman's comforters for
a cooler form of handiwork, suspiciously tiny in shape, but
she pursued it relentlessly while we discussed the changes in
the cottage; the gardens, the corn and asparagus planned
for another season; the ducks quartered near the fresh-
water brook; the tiny dairy built for her over the spring; the
brick- wall for Roger's pet wall fruit; the piano dragged
by oxen from the village; the sail-boat, manned now and
[183]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
then by our enthusiastic telegrapher: the wondrous size
and health of the tiny Mary.
She was called, as one who knew Roger might have ex-
pected, for his mother, after the old tradition, too, that gave
every eldest daughter of the Bradleys that lovely name. No
bitter obstinacy, no unyielding pride of Madam Bradley's
could alter in his calm mind the course of his duty, and I
never heard a harsh word from him concerning the matter.
Margarita cared absolutely nothing about it and never, he
told me, expressed the faintest curiosity as to his family or
their relations with her.
Soon she was with us, dear and beautiful, with only a tiny
lavender shadow under those cloudy eyes misty just now
and a little empty, with that placid emptiness of the nursing
mother to mark the change that my not-to-be-deceived scru-
tiny soon discovered. We left the sleepy Mary slowly patrol-
ling the brick walks in a pompous perambulator propelled
by a motherly English nurse under Miss Jencks's watchful
eye, and strolled, in our customary hand-in-hand, to the
boat-house, a low, artfully concealed structure, all but hidden
under a jagged cliff, and faced wherever necessary with
rough cobbled sea-stones sunk in wet cement and hardened
there. The right wing of the cottage stood out unavoidably
at one point against the sky-line, and Roger, who had devel-
oped a surprising gift of architecture and a sort of rough
landscape gardening, was planning an extension of the arti-
ficial sea-wall to cover this.
He worked at this himself, drenched with sweat, tugging
at the stones, while Caliban and a mason from the village
set them and threw sand over the wet plaster (the method
which we decided must have been adopted by the builder of
the cottage), and I, too weak yet to help in this giant's play,
criticised the effect from a rowboat outside the lagoon, tele-
graphing messages by means of a handkerchief code. Often
Margarita would come with me, embroidering placidly in
the bow of the boat, under her wide hat. She detested sew-
[184]
A GARDEN GLIMPSE OF EDEN
ing, and refused utterly to learn any form of it, to Miss
Jencks's sorrow, but had invented a charming fashion of
embroidery for herself and worked fitfully at tiny white
butterflies in the corner of my cambric handkerchiefs the
one and only form this art of hers ever took. It became a
sort of emblem and insignia of her, and Whistler, who be-
gan coming to them, I think, the year after that, or the next,
made much of this fanciful bond between them. It was she
who worked the black butterfly upon the lapel of his even-
ing coat which created such a sensation in Paris one season.
Once while shooting in the Rockies with Upgrove, six
or eight years ago, I pulled out an old buckskin tobacco
pouch, turned it hopefully inside out in the search for a
stray thimbleful, and discovered in a corner of the lining a
faded yellow silk butterfly, all unknown to me till then! She
must have worked it surreptitiously, like a mischievous,
affectionate child; and as I held it in my hands, and stared
at the graceful absurd thing, the lonely camp faded before
me; the sizzling bacon, the rough shelter, the whistling
guide, slipped back into some inconsequential past, and I
lay again on the sun-warmed rocks, watching a yellow-
headed toddler prying damp pebbles from the beach, to
pile them later in her tolerant lap. Oh, Margarita! Oh,
the happy days'
185]
CHAPTER XXI
HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET
I REMEMBER so well the morning of the great discovery.
It was one of those damp, rainy, grey days when happy
people can afford to realise contentment indoors, and we
were a very comfortable group indeed: Margarita sorting
music, Roger drawing plans for a new chimney, Miss Jencks
shaking a coral rattle for the delectation of the tiny Mary, who
lay in her shallow basket under the lee of the great spinning-
wheel, and I hugging the fire and watching them. I con-
sidered Roger's reforms in the matter of chimneys too
thorough-going for the slender frame of the house and told
him so.
"You'll batter the thing to pieces," I said, "see here!"
and lifting my stick, which I had been poking at the baby
after the irrelevant fashion of old bachelor friends, I hit out
aimlessly at the side of the fireplace and struck one of the
bricks a smart blow on one end. It turned slightly and
slipped out of its place, and as I shouted triumphantly and
pulled it away, I displaced its neighbour, too, and poked
scornfully at a third. This, however, was firm as a rock, as
well as all the others near it, and with a little excited suspicion
of something to come I put my hand into the small, square
chamber and grasped a dusty, oblong box, of tin, from the
feel of it.
" Roger! " I gasped, " look here! "
"Well, well," he answered vaguely, "don't pull the place
down on us, Jerry, that's all!"
"But Mr. Jerrolds appears to have discovered a secret
[186]
HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET
hiding-place," Miss Jencks explained succinctly, and then
they both stared at me while I drew out from a good arm's
reach a tin dispatch box, thick with dust, a foot long and
half as wide. I wiped the dust from its surface, and on the
cover we read (for Roger and Miss Jencks were at my elbow
now, I assure you!) written neatly with some sharp instru-
ment on the black japanned surface, the name Lockwood
Lee Prynne. With shaking fingers I lifted the lid, which
opened readily, then recollecting myself, passed the box to
Roger. He glanced curiously at Margarita, but she was ab-
sorbed in her music and as lost to us as a contented child.
He held the box on his knees, pushed back the lid completely
and lifted the top paper of all from the pile. It was badly
burned at the edges, as were the packets of letters, the
columns clipped from yellowed newspapers, the legal-
looking paper with its faded seal and the rough drawings
on stained water-colour paper that lay beneath it. It re-
quired no highly developed imagination to infer that the
contents of the box had been laid on the fire, to be snatched
away later.
Miss Jencks and I were frankly on tiptoe with excitement,
but old Roger's hand was steady as a rock as he unfolded the
stiff yellow parchment and spread before us the marriage
certificate of Lockwood Lee Prynne and Maria Teresa
alas, the shape of a fatally hot coal had burned through
the rest of the name! We skipped eagerly to the next place
of handwriting, the officiating clergyman and the parish
for the form was English but disappointment waited for
us there, too, for the same coal had gone through two thick-
nesses of the folded paper, and only the date, Jan. 26, 186-,
broke the expanse of print. The initials of one witness
"H. L." and the Christian name "Bertha," of another, had
escaped the coal on the third fold, and that was all.
Roger drew a long breath.
"So it's Prynne, after all," he said quietly, and unfolded
the next paper.
[187]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
This was a few lines of writing in a careful, not-too-well-
formed hand, on a leaf torn from an old account-book, to
judge from the rulings.
" Sept. 24, 186-. The child was born at four this morn-
ing," it said abruptly. " It may not live and she can't pos-
sibly. The Italian woman baptised it out of a silver bowl.
It is a dreadful thing, for now if it does live it will be Romish,
I suppose, but he said to let her have her way, so it had to be.
He is nearly crazy. He will kill himself, I think. He knows
she must die. It is named after her mother and an outlandish
lot of other names for different people. As soon as she is dead
the Italian woman is going back to Italy. I shall never leave
him."
The leaf was folded here and several lines badly burned.
At the bottom of the leaf I could just make out one more
line.
" I cannot be sorry she is dying if I burn in hell for it.
Hester Prynne."
Roger and I stared at each other, the same thought in our
minds. I had imagined many things about the mysterious
Hester, but never that she bore that name, as a matter of
simple fact. The connection with Caliban had been too
much for my overtrained imagination, and heaven knows
what baseless theories I had woven around what was at
best (or worst) a mere coincidence. For me the scarlet
letter had flamed upon what I now know to have been a
blameless breast, and in my excited fancy a stormy nature
had suffered picturesque remorse where, as a matter of fact,
only a deep and patient devotion had endured its unre-
corded martyrdom of love unguessed and unreturned. So
much for Literature!
Next came two folded half-columns from a newspaper,
one containing only that dreadful list of the dead that our
mothers read, white-cheeked and dry-eyed, in the war time.
Opposite the names of Col. J. Breckenridge Lee and Lieut.
J. Breckenridge Lee, Jr., were hasty, blotted crosses. The
[188]
HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET
other half-column, cut from another and better printed
sheet, recorded with a terrible, terse clearness the shocking
deaths of the aged Col. J. B. Lee and his son Lieut. J. B. Lee,
Jr., of the Confederate Army, at the hand of his son-in-law,
Capt. Lockwood Prynne, who was defending an encamp-
ment of the Northern forces from a skirmishing party led by
the rebel officers. Captain Prynne recognised what he had
done as the young lieutenant caught his father in his arms
and turned to stagger back, and rushing forward had en-
deavoured to drag them to safety, receiving a shot himself
that shattered his arm, wounding him severely. His re-
covery was doubtful.
Under our sympathetic eyes the old tragedy lived again,
the crisp, cruel lines seemed printed in blood. It needed
only the letter that lay beneath to make everything clear.
"Dear Bob," the letter began in the unmistakable neat
hand we had read on the top of the box, " I cannot leave you
without this word. I cannot explain my brain is on fire,
I think but try to judge with lenience. Blood-poisoning
set in, and my father died in hospital last week. On his
dying bed I swore to him that I would never raise my hand
against his country. I can't repeat all he said, but he's
right, Bob, the South is wrong! Secession is wrong. I
brought the body home, but mother could not come to the
funeral. She is not at all violent, but she will never be the
same again she didn't know me, Bob. I can't describe
how pitiful she is. Uncle James was her twin brother,
you know, and they were everything to each other. When
we heard of Fort Sumter she was nearly wild, and I promised
her with my hand on her Bible never to fight the South. I
meant it then my friends, my home and you all. But I
would have got her to release me if I could. But she couldn't
release me now, and I would die before I broke that promise,
the way she is now. I can't stay here. I couldn't look any-
body in the face. I wish I could be shot. I may be, yet.
I am going to Italy to see about those silk-worms for the
[189]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
plantation, that father was interested in. The war can't
last much longer and it will be something to do. Mother
is well looked after and I can't stay in this country it's not
decent. Can you write to me, Bob? I don't ask much
just write a line. What could I do ? Write, for God's sake.
"LOCKWOOD LEE PRYNNE."
Below this signature, in a different hand, was scrawled:
"I return this letter. I have nothing to say.
"R. S. L."
Alas, alas, the pity of it! The grey moss and the blue
forget-me-nots grow together now over many a nameless
grave, and Northern youth and Southern maid pull daisy
petals beside the sunken cannon ball; but the ancient scar
ploughed deep, and old records like this have heat enough
in them yet to sear the nerves of us who trembled, maybe, in
the womb, when those black lists of the wounded trembled
in our mother's hands.
What a hideous thing it is! Can any bugle's screaming
cover those anguished cries, or any scarlet stripes soak up
the spreading blood? Bullets are merciful, my brothers,
beside the cruel holes they pierce in hearts they never
touched.
Roger laid the papers and letter reverently to one side, and
I, who had been reading over his shoulder, brushed im-
patiently at my eyes. (I was not entirely a well man yet,
remember!) Below the newspaper lay a signed deed,
formally conveying a parcel of twenty acres of land, carefully
measured and described, to Lockwood Lee Prynne, his
heirs and assigns, and all the rest of the legal jargon. This
was hardly burned at all.
Of the two slim packets of letters one was badly charred:
parts of it fell away in Roger's hands, as he carefully opened
it. I cannot transcribe them literally, or even to any great
length, for they are too sad, and no good end would be
[190]
HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET
served by commemorating to what extent that fierce furnace
of the Civil War burned away the natural ties of kindred and
neighbour and home. Enough that the few remaining
members spared out of what must have been a small family
cut Margarita's father definitely off from them, in terms no
man could have tried with any self-respect to modify. His
father, a Northerner, who had identified himself since his
Southern marriage with his wife's interests and kinsfolk,
had lost touch with his own people, and a few death notices,
slipped in among the letters, seemed to point to an almost
complete loneliness, which Roger afterward verified. The
other packet held two letters only, one in Italian (which
language I learned, after a fashion, in order to read it) the
other in French. The Italian letter was not only scorched
badly, but so blistered one did not need to ask how that
parts were quite illegible. The writer, a man, evidently, a
young man, probably, conveyed in satire so keen, a contempt
so bitter, a hatred so remorseless, that it was difficult to be-
lieve it a letter from a brother to his sister. Beneath the
polished, scornful sentences vitriol to a tender young heart
surged a tempest of primitive rage that thrust one back
into the Renaissance, with its daggers and its smiles. "Let
me tell you, then, once and for all" ran one sentence, break-
ing out fiercely, "that there is but one country on earth which
can shelter you and that villain his own! There I scorn to
put my foot or allow the foot of any member of your family, but
let him or his victim leave it and so long as I live my ven-
geance shall search you out and wipe out this insult to my
hmtse, my country and my church!" The opening page
was missing and the last one was badly burned, so we had
absolutely no clue as to the family name.
Roger and I puzzled out enough of it to gather vaguely
what the situation must have been, and when we read the
second letter it was all clear. This second letter was burned
and blistered, too, but its simple, naive repetitions, its tender
terror, its brave, affectionate persistence, left little, even in
MARGARITA'S SOUL
their fragmentary condition, for us to guess. I will give
only a page here and there.
"/ have tried for four months not to write, bid what you
told me last has proved too strong for me and I must. . . . Oh,
my dear one, my more than sister in this world, how could
you have been permitted this deadly sin? It may be I shall be
damned for even this one letter my only one, for you must
not write again. Sister Lisabetta suspects me already, and
asked me last week why I should talk with the baker's daughter
so secretly ? So if she brings another letter I shall tell her to
destroy it. Write to me no more."
Ah, now we knew! Strange indeed was the blood that
ran in Margarita's blue- veined wrist! No light and fleeting
passion had brought her into this world.
*'. . . . When I remember that it was I who brought you
the first letter, I weep for hours. God forgive me, and Our
Lady, but I thought it was only some idle nonsense of Sister
Dolores she was always so light, Dolores! They have sent
her back to Spain / know you loved her best! Sister Lis-
abetta found a bit of your gown caught on the cypress tree.
How dared you risk your life so? I swore I knew nothing,
nor did I, about what she asked me. The Archbishop
came. . . ."
I think I see the little figure slipping from bough to
bough under the stars, the odour of all the vineyards is in my
nostrils, the splashing of the Convent fountain sounds in
my ears!
" .... I could not sleep at night after that wicked letter of
how you love him how dare you, a vowed nun, write such
sinful words? It must be, as they say, wrong to pray for you!
Do not try to excuse yourself because your brother devoted
you against your will you were happy till he climbed the
tree and saw you! Only Satan can make it so that one wicked
look between the eyes should make a man and woman mad for
/ will not remember that sinful letter, I will not! Maria,
thou art lost!"
[192]
HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET
And so, even as she and Roger looked and could not look
away and never after lost each other's eyes, even so, her
mother looked at her lover and looking, lost (or so she
thought) her soul! The wheel turns ever, as Alif taught
me.
" . . . . What good can such a marriage do? No Catholic
could marry you, I am sure. It is no marriage. Your brother
wrote you the truth. I do not wonder that you will never
read or speak an Italian word again you have disgraced
Italy. But as he says, you are no true Italian your English
mother and her Protestant blood has made this horrible thing
possible. Her death was a judgment on you."
Oh, these cruel, gentle women! And on these breasts we
long to lay our heads!
"..../ do not wonder that all his countrymen are
against him, and that he must live alone all his days. Even
in that wild land blasphemy has its deserts, then. But I can-
not help being glad /or you that his kinswoman will be your
servant, for you are ill fitted to grow maize with the painted
savages, ma plus douce! But how strange that even a dis-
tant relative of one so comme il faut should be of a sort to do
this!
" Alas, I talk as if I were again of the world! If Raoul
had not died, I should have been. . . ."
Here the letter was blotted beyond recognition for a whole,
closely written page. It must have been tender here, and one
sees the poor Maria fairly kissing it to pieces. I was grate-
ful to the writer.
". . . . That you should be a mother! And soon! I
cannot comprehend it. My head swims. Reverend Mother
dreamed of you so, suckling it, with a halo around your head,
and she awoke in terror and told Sister Lisabetta, who let it out.
The devil put it into her dream, to tempt her, Sister Lisabetta
says, for she was always too fond of you. She fasted three days
and one heard her groaning in the night she was as white
as paper. Oh, Maria, to feel it at one's breast, tugging there!
[193]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
/ think I am going mad. Never write again, for I shall never
read it, nor know if it is born."
Truly God permits strange things. And yet celibacy is as
old as civilisation, and the Will to Live has denied itself
since first It was conscious. It cannot be pished and
pshawed away, by you or me or another.
"... 7 will get this to the baker's daughter, and then
when I am sure it is gone, I will confess it all, and whatever
penance Reverend Mother puts upon me, I shall be only glad.
It may be I shall be cut off from Our Blessed Lord longer than
I can bear, and then I shall die, but I think I shall be forgiven
finally, for something tells me so, and until I gave you the
letter, that day near the fountain, I cannot think of any very
great sin, can you, Maria? We were always good, we three.
But now I am alone, for they will never let Dolores back. She
grew so thin my heart ached for her.
"Adieu, adieu I have tried to hate you, as I ought, but
your grey eyes look and look at me in the night, and I feel you
tapping my fingers as you used to do oh, if they will let me
I will pray for you every day till I die, and Our Lady will
remember that you were always good until he looked at you!
" For the last time
" Your Josephine."
Under this letter was hidden a crude little sketch of the
cloister-end of some building on a sheet of drawing-paper,
and near it, just outside a high wall, a fair outline of a
thick cypress. There was nothing else in the box.
Nor did we ever learn another word or syllable of the life
of those two in their lonely cottage. Whether Prynne built
it himself or hired labourers for the work we never tried to
discover. That he buried himself there with the passion of
his lonely life, that these flaming lovers, cast off by God and
the world, thought both well lost for what they found in each
other, who can doubt? The love she inspired in him I
can understand, for I have known her daughter; the love
HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET
he woke in her, she being what she was, I do not dare to
guess. What must that woman's soul have been? What
storm of love must have swept her from her cloister-harbour
and on to what rocks, over what eternal depths! Deal
gently with her, Church of her betrayal! Forgive her
sins, I beg you, for she loved much.
[195]
CHAPTER XXII
FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK
I FIND to my surprise that these rambling chapters, in-
tended, in the first place, as a sort of study of Margarita's
development under the shock of applied civilisation, have
grown rather into a chronicle of family history, a detail of
tiny intimate events and memories that must surely disap-
point Dr. M 1, at whose urgent instance they were under-
taken. Margarita was, indeed, at that time, a fit subject for
the thoughtful scientist, and hardly one of her conversations
with her friends but would serve as a text for some learned
psychological dissertation. But it would have been hard,
even for a stony savant, to dissect that adorable personality!
The points that I had intended to discuss are lost, I find,
in her smile; the interest of her relations with the world, as
it burst upon her in all its complications and problems, a
grown woman, but ignorant as a savage and innocent as a
child, is as nothing beside the interest of her relations with
us who formed for so long her little special world. However,
I cannot offer my scientist nor his distinguished colleague,
Professor J s, a mere tangle of personal reminiscences,
so I must try to recall, as accurately as may be, the circum-
stances of Margarita's introduction to orthodox Christianity.
At Miss Jencks's earnest petition Roger, who had grown really
attached as had we all to the good creature, had finally
yielded and allowed her to impart the outline of the New
Testament story to her charge. I found her later, a moist
handkerchief crumpled in her hand and a tiny worn leather
volume on her lap.
[196]
FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK
" It didn't do, then ? " I inquired sympathetically, for
her plain, competent face was more disturbed by grief than
I had ever seen it.
" Mr. Jerrolds," she demanded seriously, " do you think she
has a soul ? Of course that is wrong," she added hastily,
" and I should not say such a thing, but do you know she
treats it just like any other story ? It means nothing to her.
She has no respect for the most sacred things, Mr. Jerrolds! "
"But how could she have, dear Miss Jencks?" I urged
gently. " They are not sacred to her, you must remember.
She is what you would call a heathen, you know."
Miss Jencks folded her handkerchief thoughtfully.
"Yes, I know," she began, "but think, Mr. Jerrolds,
think how gladly, how gratefully the heathen receive the
Gospel! I shall never forget how the missionary described
it that dined with the Governor- General once. It was in Lent,
I remember, and the poor man regretted that it should be,
he had eaten fish so steadily in the Islands! It was only
necessary for him to tell the simple Gospel story, and it won
them directly."
I bowed silently it was at once the least and the most
that I could do.
"And more than that, Mr. Jerrolds," the good woman
continued, unburdening herself, clearly, of the results
of many days of thought, "look at those wonderful
conversions in the slums! Look what this Salvation Army
is doing! The Governor-General used to say they were
vulgar and that it was all claptrap, but that never seemed
to me quite fair. We must have left something undone,
we and the Dissenters, Mr. Jerrolds, if this General B h
can reach people we have lost. Isn't that so?"
To this I agreed heartily, and after a moment she went on.
" Why, the roughest, vilest men weep like children when
they understand Our Lord's sacrifice, Mr. Jerrolds, and
what it did for them, and surely if they, thieves and drunk-
ards and and worse, can be so touched, Mrs. Bradley. . ."
[i97]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"Perhaps," I suggested as gently as I could, "it is just
because Mrs. Bradley is neither a thief nor a drunkard nor
worse, dear Miss Jencks, that she does not feel the neces-
sity for weeping. The emotionalism of the convert is a
curious thing, and the sense of sin together with vague
memories of that Story, connected with childhood and child-
hood's innocence, may produce a state of mind responsible
for a great deal that we could hardly expect from Mrs.
Bradley."
" But we are all sinners, Mr. Jerrolds ! " Again I bowed.
" Surely you believe this, Mr. Jerrolds?"
" I should not care for the task of convincing Mrs. Bradley
of it," I replied dexterously.
"That was the trouble," she admitted mournfully. "I
told her about Adam and Eve, but she said that whatever
they had done was no affair of hers, and it could not be
wrong to eat apples, anyway, she told me, they were so good
for the voice."
I choked a little here.
"She is very literal," I said hastily, "and the apple has
symbolised discord in more than one mythology."
" I showed her that beautiful picture of the Crucifixion,"
Miss Jencks added in a low, troubled voice, "and do you
know, Mr. Jerrolds, she refused to look at it or hear about
it as soon as she understood! She said it was an ugly
story and the picture made her hands cold. She said it could
do no good to kill anyone because she had done wrong.
'Religion is too bloody, Miss Jencks,' she said. 'I do not
think I like it. If I were you I should try to forget it.' Isn't
it terrible, Mr. Jerrolds?"
Poor Barbara Jencks! You were an Englishwoman and
it was twenty years ago !
"Leave thou thy sister when she prays," says the poet,
and with all due respect for his presumable nobility of in-
tention, it is certainly the easiest course to pursue! I left
Miss Jencks.
[198]
FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK
She followed me a little later, however, and told me
that she was not entirely without hopes, for Margarita had
been greatly taken with the Revelation of St. John the
Divine, and had committed to memory whole chapters of it,
with incredible rapidity, saying that it would make beautiful
music. That very evening she sang it to us, or rather, chanted
it, striking chords of inexpressible dignity and beauty on the
piano the pure Gregorian by way of accompaniment.
It was impossible that she could have heard such chords,
for she had never attended a church service in her life and
such intervals formed no part of her vocal instruction.
Afterward, I read Ecclesiastes to her, and she did the same
thing with it, saying that it was the most beautiful thing
she had ever heard she did not care for Shakespeare, by
the way, then or later. Tip Elder came to us for a week
at that time, and the tears stood in the honest fellow's eyes
as Margarita, her head thrown back, her own eyes fixed
and sombre, her rich, heart-shaking voice vibrating like a
tolling bell, sent out to us in her lovely, clear-cut enuncia-
tion the preacher's warning.
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while
the evil days come not. . . .
Oh, the poetry of it, the ageless beauty!
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be
broken. . . .
Her voice was grave, like a boy's, and yet how rich with
subtle promises! It was mellow, like a woman's, but not
mellow from bruising the only way, Mme. M i told
me once. Those poor women!
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the
spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
I can see her now . . . there are those, I know, who have
guessed my poor secret, and who wonder that I do not " con-
sole myseif," in the silly phrase of the day. How could I?
The twitter of the Hawaiian girls is like that of the beach-
birds in my ears, after that golden-ivory voice!
1*99]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
It was in October, I think, that she began to grow restless.
Roger was full of plans for the coming winter, and had even
gone so far as to all but complete the formalities of renting a
house in New York, when she startled us all by inquiring
of me when I intended to start for Italy.
" For I am coming with you," she concluded placidly.
" I'm afraid not, cherie," said Roger, " I must get to work,
you know. You can take lessons in New York, all you want."
"But I do not care to go to New York," she returned
quietly. " I like Paris better. I need not nurse the baby,
now, and I can sing a great deal. Jerry can take me."
" Mr. Bradley means he must be in New York to continue
his professional career, dear Mrs. Bradley," Miss Jencks
interposed, "and you must go with him, of course."
" Why ? " asked Margarita.
"Because a wife's place is by her husband," said Miss
Jencks, after a pause which neither Roger nor I volunteered
to fill
"But why?" Margarita inquired again. "7 cannot do
Roger's pro professional career!"
"No, my dear, but you can help him greatly in it," Miss
Jencks instructed placidly (she was invaluable, was Barbara,
when it was a matter of proper platitude, which flowed
form her lips with the ease of water from a tap and she
believed it, too!) "a man needs a woman in his home.
Her influence "
" Yes, I know, you have told me that before. But you
could stay with Roger, Miss Jencks, and be that influence,"
said Margarita sweetly, " and I could go with Jerry." Was
she impish, or only ingenuous, I wonder ? One could never
tell.
" How about the baby ? " Roger demanded cheerfully.
" I am not going to nurse it any more," said the mother of
little Mary quietly. " Madame said I had better stop it now
it will be better for my voice. So it will not need me.
Dolledge knows all about taking care of it."
[ 200]
FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK
" But, my dear, are you sure it will be good for Mary not to
nurse her? She is not six months old, you know," Miss
Jencks suggested mildly.
Margarita leaned her round chin into the cup of her hands
and gazed thoughtfully at her mentor.
" Then why do you not nurse her, dear Miss Jencks ? "
she asked.
At this Roger and I left the room hastily. I am unable
to state what the late directress of the Governor-General's
family said or did!
It was the next day, I remember, that I was called to
New York on business connected with my mother's small
affairs, and while there I was greatly surprised and not a
little amused to receive a telegram from Roger asking me
to engage passage for himself, Margarita, Miss Jencks,
Dolledge and the baby, on my own boat, if possible, if not,
to change my sailing to fit theirs. It is only fair to say that
Sears, Bradley and Sears had recently become involved in
a complicated lawsuit of international interests and im-
portance, and Roger took some pains to inform me of the
very handsome retaining-fee which his knowledge of the
workings of English law combined with his proficiency in
French quite justified him in accepting in consideration of
his giving the greater part of his time to this case a case
almost certain to drag through the winter and require his
presence in London and his constant correspondence with
Paris.
I received this information as gravely as he offered it, but,
to use his own phrase, I reserved my decision as to whether
the lack of that same international case would have kept
the Bradley menage in New York.
I stayed in Paris long enough to see Margarita and wee
Mary, with their respective guardians, installed comfortably
and charmingly in the Rue Marboeuf, bade Roger god-
speed across the Channel (I could tell from the set of his
[201]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
shoulders how he would plunge into the work there and how
well-earned would be his flying trips Parisward!) and then
struck south into Italy, bent on a private errand of my
own.
This was nothing less than the tracing, if possible, of
Margarita's Italian ancestry, a mission, needless to say,
laid upon me by no one, as she knew nothing of this and
Roger, apparently, cared less. My reasons for undertaking
this search, which I weh 1 knew might prove endless and was
almost sure to be long, were a little obscure, even to myself,
but I now believe them to have sprung principally from my
smouldering rage against Sarah Bradley and her ugly insin-
uations a subject I have not dwelt upon in this narrative.
But I have thought much of it, and I believe now that my vow
was registered from the hour of the finding of the dispatch
box which solved one-half of the problem.
Sue Paynter was of great assistance to me here, and by
judicious questionings of Mother Bradley at the Convent
and artless suggestions and allusions when with the
other good nuns, to whom she was honestly attached and
whom she often visited, she actually procured for me a few
vague clues, breathless rumours of those tragedies that rear,
now and then, their jagged, warning heads above the smooth
pools of cloister life. News travels fast and far among those
quiet retreats; some system of mysterious telegraphy links
Rome and Quebec and New York, and it was not without
the name of a tiny town or two tucked away in my mind
and at least three noble families jotted down on the
inside cover of my bank-book that I started on my wild-
goose chase.
They were, however, quite useless. Two of the noble
families had held no greater sinner than a postulant whose
ardour had cooled during her novitiate, and the third had paid
for what was at best (or worst) a slight indiscretion with a
broken spirit and rapidly failing health. It required no
great exercise of detective powers to beg the genial little
[ 202 ]
FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK
doctor of each tiny neighbourhood for Italian lessons and I
learned more than his language from each. They were veri-
table hoards of gossip and information of all sorts, and my
ever ready and unsuspected note-book held more than verb-
contractions and strange vagaries of local idiom.
It was from none of these, however, that I got my first
clue, but from the boatman who took me out at sunset for
the idle, lovely hour that I love best in Italy and which her
name always brings beforem e. Rafaello was a big, burned
creature, beautiful as Antinous and as simple and faithful as
a dog. He took a huge delight in teaching me all the quaint
terms of his fisher dialect, and many a deep argument
have we held, I gazing into the burning sulphur of the clouds,
he with mobile features flashing and classic brown fingers
never still, while he expounded to me his strange, half pagan,
half Christian fatalism. He was of the South, " well toward
the Boot Heel, signore," but Love, the master mariner,
had driven him out of his course and brought him within
fifty miles of Rome to court a fickle beauty of the hills, whose
brother had come down for the wood-cutting and was
friendly to his suit.
"These marsh people are a poor sort," said Rafaello
contemptuously. " Not that I would take a wife from them,
God forbid! Here they have great tracts, with buffalo and
wild pig yes, I have seen them myself, rooting through
the wild oak but have they the brains to invite the foreign
signori to hunt there and earn fortunes by it? No. Have
they even strength to cut their own timber? Again, no.
They lie and shiver with malaria. Not that they are not a
little better now," he admitted, shifting the sail so that we
looked toward the headlands of Sardinia, a cloud of lateens
drifting like gnats between, " now they are ploughing on the
plains, the boats are out, the bullocks are busy, and the
wind is putting a little strength into the poor creatures.
I swear the best man among them is an old woman I took
across in my felucca, to pleasure my girl's brother she
[203]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
tended him once when he chopped through his foot near her
hut just on the edge of the hills. Seventy years, or nearly,
and tough and wiry yet, and can help neatly with a boat.
And money laid by, too, but is she idle? Never. She spins
her hemp and weaves osiers into baskets and changes them
for goats' hams. That with polenta keeps her all winter and
well, too. She is very close. The money, no one knows
where it came from."
Thus Raf aello babbled on, steering cleverly and suddenly
into one of the vast, unhealthy lagoons that shelter so many
of the winged winter visitors of Italy visitors unrecorded
in the hotels, unnoted by the guides, but of greater inter-
est than many tourists.
I, listening idly to him, caught my breath at the flight of
flaming, rosy flamingoes that lighted inland, just beyond
us, miracles of flower-like beauty.
" From Egypt, excellent: They are not due till Novem-
ber, but the winter will be cold and they started early. In
March they will start back. Why ? How should I know ?
Who sends the wild duck, for that matter? I have seen a
half-mile of them at one flight bound for this place. It may
be the good God warns them and they go."
"It may be, Rafaello."
" But then, excellent, does he send the brown water-hens,
too, and if so, why not tell them of the young nobleman whom
I brought here to shoot only last week ? Is it likely God did
not know I would bring him ? Of course not."
"Perhaps they know, but must go, nevertheless," I
ventured, and we were silent and thoughtful. Did they?
Did they fly, helpless, to their death, bound by some fatal
certainty ? Was Alif right, and is it written for us all ?
"That young Roman was very generous," Rafaello re-
sumed after a while. " A few more like him, and she will
think twice before she refuses again. How I bear it, I can't
tell. Pettish she is, certainly, but oh, signore, lovely, lovely,
like un angiolin 1 ! It was from a nobleman a foreigner,
[204]
SUE SPINS HER HEMP AND WEAVES OSIERS INTO BASKETS AND CHANGES
THEM FOR GOATS' HAMS
FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK
anyway, I suppose it is all one that old 'Cina got her
money, Lippo thinks. He hunted, too, Lippo says, and
'Cina's brother waited on him he came from these parts.
He took her brother north with him afterward, and well he
did, too, for not many good Catholics would help him in
what he did, and that brother was wicked enough, I suppose.
She has little enough religion herself, the old woman
they say her money is for making peace with the church.
For when it comes to the last rattle in the throat,
excellent, the boldest is glad of a little help," said Rafaello
knowingly.
Night was on us now, and I, well knowing that the air
was poisonous for me, could not bring myself to order the
boat home. There, while Perseus burned above us and off
toward Rome Orion hung steady as a lamp in a shrine, I
lost myself in strange, deep thinking, and the marshes were
the desert for me and Alif and Rafaello were the same, and I
who was I ? What was I ?
"The signore sleeps?" the man inquired timidly. "I
think it is not good to sleep here. Shall we go back ? "
"I'm not sleeping, Rafaello, but I suppose we'd better
turn. I heard all you said. And what had this wicked
foreigner done?"
"He stole a nun out of a holy convent, excellenz'," said
Rafaello in a low voice.
I felt my heart jump.
" Near here ? " I asked, as carelessly as I could.
"Oh, no, far away I do not know. Nobody knows.
It was only 'Cina and his sister came from here. Mother of
God, does the signore think any woman born hereabouts
would have blood enough for that? Look you, signore,
she climbed down a tree and went with him in the night!
A professed nun! Oh, no doubt she is burning now, that
one! For no woman need take the veil, that is plain,
but once taken, one is as good as married to God
himself, and then to take a man after! Oh, no. She
[205]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
is certainly burning," concluded Rafaello with simple
conviction.
" But I thought you said she was alive and made baskets,"
I said, persistently stupid.
"No, no, the signore misunderstands. That is 'Cina,
who went with her when they sailed away, being sent for
by her brother. The wicked one died, of course, and 'Cina
came back with all the money. She nearly died, herself, on
the great ship. She ate nothing not a bite nor a scrap
for four days, she was so sick."
" He was an Englishman, I suppose ? "
" No. From the signore' 's country. Not, of course, that
they are all like that," Rafaello added politely, "but the
truth must be told, he was."
Now it was that my studies in Italian temperament came
to my assistance quite as strongly as my knowledge of the
rough fisher patois. The Italian must not be questioned
nor know that anything of interest or importance hangs on
his answer. Even as the Oriental he must be handled
guilefully, and it was with a guileful yawn that I dismissed
the subject.
"It takes an Italian to believe that wild story, Rafaello,"
I said. " I'm afraid your old 'Cina was teasing Lippo. It
all sounds fishy to me. Are we nearly in ? I feel cold."
" Indeed no, signore, it is the truth. (We shall be in in
eight minutes by the signore's watch.) 'Cina will never
again speak to an Englishman or or one from the signore's
country. It is a vow. She would die first. Lippo got a
chance for her to stand at her spinning for a crazy English-
man to paint in a picture good money for it, too! and she
spat in his face. Perhaps the signore will believe that?"
Again I yawned.
"Those stories mean nothing," I said, quivering with
impatience. " They are but as old legends without names
and dates and places. Old women like 'Cina never can
give those names and dates and places. They do not know
[206]
FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK
if it was ten or twenty or fifty years ago, nor if the man were
Austrian or English, or the woman Italian or French or
Spanish. Pin them down, and they begin to make excuses.
But I don't know why we discuss it it is not very interest-
ing, even if it is true. Nevertheless, and because you seem
offended, Rafaello, and I merely want to show you that I
am right, I will cheerfully give a good English sovereign to
you or Lippo or the old woman herself, if she can so much as
tell you the name of this famous nun and the name of her
seducer. You will find she cannot, and then, since I am
willing to wager something, you must take me for a fishing-
trip free a whole day, in the felucca. Is it a bargain ? "
His teeth gleamed as he swore it was a bargain and I
watched him bustle off from the quay with an excitement I
had not felt since my recovery. What would he discover
for that he would discover something I did not Idoubt. What
was Margarita's mother? Some fisher girl, whose father
had won an English lady's-maid with his flashing smile?
Some little shopkeeper's daughter? Child, perhaps, of
some sprig of nobility, caught by a pair of cool, grey English
eyes ? I did not know, but I felt certain that the old 'Cina
did.
I cannot linger too long over this part of my story, drawn
out already far beyond my idle scheme, and enough is said
when I tell you that the name brought me by the childishly
triumphant Rafaello opened my eyes and pursed my lips
into an amazed whistle.
Our little Margarita ! Here was something to startle even
steady old Roger. Only a few names in Italy are worthy
to stand beside the splendid if impoverished House forced
by pride to place its unwedded (because undowered) daugh-
ter in the convent that needs no dot. Obscure in financial
realms alone, it required little search to put my finger on
the epitaph of that brother of the cruel letter (a Cardinal
before his death), on the father's pictured cruel face he
scorned to eat with the mushroom Romanoffs! on the
[207]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
carved door-posts where Emperors had entered in the great
Italian days, even on the gorgeous sculptured mantel-piece
sold by Margarita's grandfather, an impetuous younger
brother at the time of his mad marriage with an English
beauty, whirled from the stage, whose brightest ornament
contemporary record believed she was destined to become,
had he not literally carried her, panting, from the scene of
her first triumph.
Some idea of the relentless iron hands that tamed that
brilliant, baffled creature and hers was the only strain in
Margarita that genius need be called on to vindicate! I
won from the old caretaker, a family retainer, who showed
me, on a proper day, over the gloomy, faded glories of the
musty palace. She was always heretic at heart, the old
gossip mumbled, with furtive glances from my gold piece
to the pictured lords above her, as if afraid they would re-
venge themselves for this tittle-tattle, heretic and light. A
servant or a duke, a flower-seller or His Eminence, all was
one to her crazy English notions. And the truth how
the mad creature told it! Blurted it out to everyone, so
that they had to keep her shut up, finally. And would have
her dogs about her eating like Christians! And no money,
when all was said. Her children? Four sons, all dead
now, and their souls with Christ one, of the Sacred College.
Never a generation without the red hat, thank God. No
daughters. Not so much as one? Why should there be?
Some were spared daughters, when there was no money,
and a blessing, too.
What figure had been cut jrom that group of four youths,
cut so that a small hand that grasped a cup-and-ball showed
plainly against one brother's sleeve? She did not know
how should she? Perhaps a cousin. It was painted by a
famous Englishman and kept because it might bring money
some day. Then why cut it? How should she know?
There were no daughters and the hour was up. Would the
signore follow her?
[208]
THE GLOOMY, FADED GLORIES OF THE MUSTY PALACE
FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK
And Sarah was alarmed for the Bradley blood! Sarah
feared for the pollution of that sacred fluid derived from Eng-
lish yeomen (at best), filtered through the middle-class ex-
patriates of a nation itself hopelessly middle class beside
the pure strain of a race of kings that was old and majes-
tically forgotten ere Romulus was dreamed of! Back,
back through those mysterious Etruscans, back to the very
gods themselves, an absolutely unbroken line, stretched
the forefathers of Margarita. Long before Bethlehem meant
more than any other obscure village, long before its Mystic
Babe began there his Stations of the Cross and brought to
an end at Calvary the sacrifice that sent his agents overseas
to civilise the savage Britons and make those middle-class
yeomen possible, Margarita's ancestors had forgotten more
gods than these agents displaced and had long ceased their
own bloody and nameless sacrifices to an elder Jupiter
than ever Paul knew. Etruscan galleys swarmed the sea,
Etruscan bronze and gold were weaving into lovely lines,
Etruscan bowls were lifted to luxurious and lovely lips at
sumptuous feasts, in a gorgeous ritual, before the natives
of a certain foggy island had advanced to blue-woad decora-
tion! Her people's tombs lie calm and contemptuous under
the loose, friable soil of that tragic land that has suffered
Roman, Persian and Goth alike (wilt thou ever rise up again,
O Mater Dolorosa ? Is the circle nearly complete ? Would
that I might see thee in the rising!) they lie, too, under the
angular and reclining forms of many a British spinster
tourist, panoplied in Baedeker and stout-soled boots, large of
tooth and long of limb, eating her sandwiches over the cool
and placid vaults where the stone seats and biers, the black
and red pottery, the inimitable golden jewelry, the casques
and shields of gold, the ivory and enamel, the amber and
the amulets, lie waiting the inevitable Teutonic antiquary.
The very ashes of the great Lucomo prince and chieftain
lying below this worthy if somewhat unseductive female
would fade in horror away into the air, if one of his gods,
[209]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
Vertumnus, perhaps, or one of the blessed Dioscuri, should
offer him such a companion or hint to him that the creature
was of the same species as the round-breasted lovelinesses
that sport upon the frescoes of his tomb, among the lotus
flowers.
Poor Sarah I can forgive her when I consider the pathos
of her.
I 210]
PART SEVEN
IN WHICH THE RIVER LEAPS A SUDDEN CLIFF
AND BECOMES A CATARACT
Ay cross your brow and
cross your breast
For never again ye'll
smile, Sir Hugh!
Ye flouted them that loved
ye best,
Now ye must drink as ye
did brew.
Syne she was warm against your side,
And now she's singing the rising moon,
She'll float in on the floating tide,
And ye'll hold her soon and ye'll lose
her soon!
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
[211]
CHAPTER XXIII
FATE SPREADS HER NET
[FROM SUE PAYNTER]
PARIS, March 4th, 188
JERRY DEAR:
Frederick died here a week ago. His heart, you know,
was never very good, and the strain of his last concerts was
too much for him. They were very successful, and just
before I came over, the poor fellow had sent me in one of
his periodical fits of reform, Dieu merci! some beautiful
jewels, chains, aigrettes and a gorgeous diamond collar,
begging me to sell them, but on no account to wear them,
as if I would! I sold them pretty well it's all for the
babies, you know. Poor Frederick I'm not sure his reforms
were not the hardest to bear!
He has been for so long so less than nothing to me that
the sense of freedom is startling. I'm glad I came as soon
as I heard he was sinking it was not so very sudden. I
was with him to the last, and the strangest people came to
see him it was tragically funny. He seemed just like a
poor, disreputable brother to me, and nothing mattered,
really, except to get him what little comfort one could.
I brought the children over, and I think we shall stay here
indefinitely. I have a nice little appartement not too far
from the Bradleys, though, of course, I couldn't afford to
live there! and such a dear, sensible bonne (d tout faire,
of course) who gets the children into the park every day for
me when I'm busy. For I am very seriously busy, and how,
do you think ? I wrote a long, gossippy letter to Alice Carter
who loves chiffons, poor soul, though Madam Bradley
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MARGARITA'S SOUL
doesn't give her many, telling her what was being worn and
where, and how, and gave her a little account of a fashion-
able fete that a friend of mine had described to me, and the
dear creature actually took the trouble of copying it, omitting
personalities, of course, and showing it to a friend of Walter's,
an amazing young man who is starting some woman's maga-
zine with a phenomenal circulation, already. He offered
her a really good price for it and said if I would do the
same kind of letter every month, he would pay one hun-
dred dollars for each one five hundred francs! Of course
I accepted, and now I spend two days a week in the
shops, getting ideas and making sketches. You see I am
a business woman, really, Jerry. I have always believed
that plenty of women would do better at their husband's
business, and let them hire housekeepers or attend to the
house themselves! Look at the French women!
It seems so good to be here it always agreed with me, la
belle France, and the children seem well, too for them.
Little Susy really has some colour. They are especially
fond of the Pare Monceau, and this charming out-of-door
life that is so easy here will do wonders for them, I'm sure.
That east wind of Boston ugh, how I loathe it!
I feel so busy and so self-respecting independence agrees
with me. You see, with my few hundreds from father, and
these letters, and the little income Roger got for me, with the
principal put away for the children, I shall do very well
indeed and owe "nothing to nobody." And when Susy
gets old enough, I'm going to have her taught something
trade or profession, rfimportel that will make her as
independent as I am to-day. I think it is criminal not to.
Then she needn't marry unless she wants to.
I wonder if you realise how many women marry to get
away from home? Few men do, I imagine. It's not
particularly flattering to you, messieurs, but it's the truth.
I had four sisters, and I know !
You have heard, I suppose, that Margarita is actually in
training for the opera ? It was very exciting Mme. M i
is really at the bottom of it, I think, though everybody agrees
with her to this extent: the child really has extraordinary
talent, and with her face and figure will be sure of success,
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FATE SPREADS HER NET
one would think. Of course her voice is not phenomenal
I doubt if it is big enough for the New York opera house.
How Frederick used to rail at that building! They wanted
him to play there once, you know, at some big benefit. He
always said no respectable human voice could be judged
there it seems the acoustics is wrong. But it is an ex-
ceptionally fine voice, nevertheless, and so pure and unspoiled.
She had nothing to unlearn, literally, and her acting, Madame
says, is superb. She can memorise anything, and in such a
short time!
But for a Bradley ! Madame is furious that she is married.
There are plenty to have babies and live in America, she says,
without her little Marguerite! M. le mari does not appre-
ciate what a jewel he wishes to shut up, she says but I am
not so sure of that! Whether he is really going to let her or
is only humouring her, I don't know. It is rather an em-
barrassing situation, au fond, because you know what she
is calm, lovely, enchanting what you will, but absolutely
immovable! Reasoning has no effect upon her, and then,
to tell the truth, she has reasons of her own. Her desire for
this is very strong, and her affection for Roger is not strong
enough, apparently, to make her sacrifice herself. Do you
think she has any soul, really? I mean, what we understand
by that something that takes more than two years of or-
dinary life to grow. Passionate, yes. Intelligent, yes.
But a real soul ? Je m' en daute.
"Of course I love Roger, Sue," she said to me, "but why
should I not do what I want to just because I love him? I
can love him and sing, too."
Then Miss Jencks advances to the fray, with pleasant
platitudes about giving up what we like for those we love.
"But Roger loves me, too," says la Margarita "why
does he not give up what he likes because he loves me ? "
Tableau! Que jaire alors?
It is really rather complicated, I think, Jerry, though you
will probably not agree with me, when I explain what I
mean. I have done a great deal of thinking in the years
since my marriage I have been forced to. Things which
would never have occurred to me, never come into my
horizon if, for instance, I had married Roger; things which
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MARGARITA'S SOUL
would never, I can see, be likely to come into the horizon
of the happily (and prosperously) married, have come to me
and I have been obliged, in my poor way, to philosophise
over them.
Have you ever read Ibsen's play, the "Doll's House"?
I don't think it has been acted in America, and probably
won't be, unless, perhaps, in Boston. But get it and read it.
It is to show that a woman is a personality, aside from her
family relations, and must live her life, finally, herself. At
least, so I understand it. It is to be acted in London soon,
and I am going to try to see it the theatre seems to mean so
much more, this side the water! One really takes it seri-
ously, somehow, along with the other arts. But then, there
is no duty on art here!
Will you tell me, Jerry, why, if Margarita really is an
artist and has a great gift, she should not use it? It may
not be what would best please her husband (and you know,
Jerry, I would cut off my hand for Roger! But I must say
what I think) but if she sees a career open to her of fame,
money and satisfaction, why should the fact of her marriage
prevent it ? As far as fame goes, she could be better known
than Roger; as far as money goes, she could almost cer-
tainly earn more than he can; as far as what Nora, in the
play I spoke of, calls "her duties towards herself," she could
surely develop more fully. That is, if it is necessary for a
woman to develop herself fully in any but the physical
sense and isn't it ?
It is all very perplexing and I do so wish it had happened
to any one but Roger! He is much hurt, I know, though
he conceals it well, of course, in his quiet, steadfast sort of
way. What a man he is ! He would never be willing, I am
sure, to go back to his profession in New York and leave
Margarita alone in Europe, exposed to all the temptations
and scandal and dangers that seem almost inevitable in
the life she is preparing for. They might as well be com-
pletely and legally separated, in that case. He has money
enough without practising law, of course, but he would never
be idle he loves his work and as for hanging about as her
business manager I wish you could have seen his face when
Madame suggested it ! I explained to her it was not precisely
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FATE SPREADS HER NET
the sort of thing his family were accustomed to do. She
can't understand it, of course she has the French idea of a
lawyer. When I told her that Mr. Bradley was really vrai
proprietaire and well-to-do aside from his practice, she had
more respect for him.
"Then he will not need to occupy himself," she said tri-
umphantly, "and all the better. Let him rent an estate
and live en gentilhomme! "
She has promised to go back to America for the summer
for two months she can learn her roles there, she says,
and Roger wants to go. Eh bien! We shall have to wait.
The child is beautiful so strong and well, and so ridicu-
lously the image of Roger. She is trying to stand now
think of it! My poor little rats were two years old before
they could. A vous loujours,
SUE.
[FROM MY ATTORNEYS]
SEARS, BRADLEY AND SEARS,
Attorneys and Counsellors-at-Law.
Cable Address, Valleshta.
2 COURT STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
March loth, 188
WINFRED JERROLDS, Esq.,
Cf., Coutts Bros.,
Cairo, Egypt.
DEAR SIR:
Pursuant to our letters to you of six weeks ago, we had
our Mr. James go to the North Carolina plantation to investi-
gate and report on the property. He was almost at once ap-
proached with offers to buy the property on terms which
surprised him. He communicated with us and we took
the responsibility of sending one of our best mining experts
to look over the ground. We found that Pittsburg men had
been making heavy purchases of land a few miles west across
the range and had also been buying tracts adjacent to your
lands both north and south; they had also had a party of
engineers all over your lands under the guise of a fishing
party.
[217]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
The expert, Mr. Minton, reported that he found heavy
outcroppings of coal on both sides of the valley, of ex-
cellent steaming quality. The veins apparently extend
through your lands into the higher lands north and
south of yours. West of you but a few miles these Pitts-
burg people have acquired large bodies of iron ore. But
the most important fact of all is that the valley is the most
practical route for a railroad across the range west of you,
from the coast to the iron lands already mentioned, for
many miles in either direction.
We have been negotiating for three weeks with these
Pittsburg people and they have finally made us an offer
which we enclose. Briefly, it amounts to $300,000 in five
per cent, mortgage bonds, $250,000 in stock (this of proble-
matic value) and a royalty of ten cents per ton on all coal
mined on your lands, with an agreement to mine at least
50,000 tons annually until your coal measures are practically
exhausted.
In view of your unwillingness to come here and yourself
engineer a rival development company, not to speak of the
difficulty of enlisting adequate capital in the face of the
purchases already made by our Pittsburg friends, we think
you cannot do better than accept this offer. Whether we
can get as good an one later is doubtful. We have promised
an answer by cable from you within three days of your
receipt of this letter.
Congratulating you on these most fortunate discoveries,
we remain, Yours very respectfully,
SEARS, BRADLEY AND SEARS.
[FROM TIP ELDER]
UNIVERSITY CLUB, NEW YORK,
March 2oth, 188
DEAR JERRY:
I needn't say how hearty my congratulations are on your
good luck, need I ? What a hit that was! And what a fine
use you are making of it, too! Of course I'll help all I can.
I must hurry to catch this mail-boat, so I will just cut short
[218]
FATE SPREADS HER NET
and merely say that Latham and Waite, of Union Square,
seem to have put in the best bid for the work and I have told
them to send you the detailed budget and contracts as soon
as they can get them ready. They have connections with a
big brick-yard in Tennessee and say that they can put you up
a very good little hospital, three wards, operating-room,
six private rooms, diet kitchen, dispensary, nurses' dormi-
tory and suite for superintendent, including one elevator, for
close under $65,000, on very good terms of payment. This
will include all fittings (hardware, etc.) and two fine, large
piazzas, with arrangements for sun parlour, if desired.
Also four bathrooms. Miss Buxton has selected the site,
as I suppose she has written you, and Miss Bradley has
secured another deaconess-nurse for the permanent staff.
Young Collier has done marvellously well down there, and
the generous endowment you offer will take care of two
more boys, Miss Buxton says. Dr. McGee says that
Collier has a real gift for surgery I think I have got a scho-
larship for him at Johns Hopkins, next year.
What a fine little woman that nurse is! She can't speak of
you without her eyes filling with tears. I teased her a little
by saying that if she had not begged you for the use of that
deserted farm-house on your land for a convalescent home,
you would never have learned about the coal and probably
sold the land for a song, so the credit was really hers you
ought to have seen the sparks in her eyes!
"You have really made him a rich man," I told her.
" I wish I could," she said very soberly, "but it's not money
Mr. Jerrolds needs."
What do you suppose she meant? Anyhow, you've got
it, old fellow, whether you need it or not, haven't you ?
The hundred you sent me (you knew I didn't need any
"fee") has gone into fitting up my club gymnasium. It
went a good way, too. I miss Mrs. Paynter's suggestions
she is a good business-woman. What a release, that black-
guard's death! Strong words for a minister, perhaps you
think, but I tell you, my blood boils when I think what she
endured. I gave up my grandfather's hell, long ago, but
some men make you long to believe in purgatory!
I heard in a round-about way from Roger's brother-in-law
[219]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
Carter (Yale '8 , isn't he ?) that Mrs. Bradley was going on
the stage. I was afraid of it last summer.
Miss Bradley is a good woman, but not much like Roger,
is she ? Queer, how people get into the same family.
Hoping the rheumatism is all right now, and that you'll
make use of me, in any way you can, I am
Yours faithfully,
TYLER FESSENDEN ELDER.
[FROM ROGER'S SISTER]
NEWTON, MASS.,
April 2nd, 188
DEAR JERRY:
I can't resist, in spite of your warning, letting you know
how deeply we appreciate your generous offer for the children.
You know, of course, that we never felt the slightest claim.
It would not have been so much, anyway, if it had been
divided, and father always felt that people had a right to
leave their money as they chose, if they had any rights in it
at all, he said. I believe he thought it ought to go to the
State, or something. He and Mr. C 1 S z used to talk
about it evenings, I remember.
But to provide so generously for them in your will it was
truly kind and Walter feels it very much. I hope it will be
long before they get it, Jerry. Of course Roger will have
a son some day and then you will be giving it to Roger
Bradley, as you say, and it won't have been out of the family
really you were just like one of us for so many years. And
dearer to Unele Win than any of us, I am sure.
With deepest gratitude again from Walter and myself,
and hopes that you are quite well now,
Yours always,
ALICE BRADLEY CARTER.
220]
CHAPTER XXIV
OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN
THAT winter had been my introduction to Egypt. I have
never since let more than three winters, at most, go by with-
out revisiting the strange, haunted place; next to Nippon
the fairy country it is dearest to me of all the warm corners
of the earth and I have dragged my twinging, tortured
muscles to them all. Only last winter for many months
have passed since I copied those last letters into my manu-
script, and I paid dear for a last attempt at a February in
New York I strolled through Cairo streets, drew gratefully
into my nostrils the extraordinary mixture of odours that dif-
ferentiates Cairo from every place in the world (how the
great cities are stamped indelibly each with her own nameless
atmosphere, by the way! And yet not quite nameless, for
London's is based on street mud and flower-trays, Rome is
garlic and incense, Paris is watered asphalt, New York is
untended horses and tobacco-smoke, and Tokyo is rice
straw) and as I strolled, a strange thing happened to me.
I was passing by a street-seller of scarabs, a treacherous-
looking wretch, whose rolling eyes glanced covetously at
the scarab better than any of his that I wore at my
scarf-knot, and pressed against him to avoid a great black
with a tray of brass bowls and platters on his head. Just
ahead of me a lemonade-merchant uttered his wailing, minor
cry, and as the crowd jostled in the narrow, dirty lane, my
eye was caught by a coffee-coloured woman, a big Juno,
with flashing teeth and a neck like a bronze tower. Across
her shoulders sat a naked baby who held his balance by his
[221]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
two chubby hands buried in her thick black hair, one leg
dropping over each splendid breast. She caught my eye,
and laughed outright as the child kicked out with one fat
foot and struck the brasses on the tray so that it tipped and
swayed dangerously.
I stood there, lost in a maze of Cairo streets, and the
babel of the shrieking, blue-clad donkey -boys was the scream
of gulls to my ears and the sun on the swaying brass platters
was the reflection of a polished sun-dial. The turquoises
on the scarab-seller's tray were turquoises about Margarita's
waist, the lemonade was borne by Caliban, and the child
that rode astride those strong shoulders had hair like corn-
silk burned in the sun and eyes as blue as any turquoise!
For so had she held her baby, walking with that free, noble
stride, and so she had laughed and met my eyes, and so the
child had clutched her hair, in the summer just passed.
So vivid was the impression that I stood, as I say, in a maze,
and the scarab-seller and he of the brass tray cursed me
heartily as they struggled for balance in the pushing, scream-
ing, reeking crowd. How meaningless that phrase, "real
life! " Years and years of actual happenings in my life have
been less real than those seconds in the Cairo streets, when
down the alley- ways of sound and sight, across the intricate
network of that spongy, grey tissue in my skull, this tiny,
deathless, unimportant memory led my soul away from
the present and left me, an unconscious, stupid, mechanical
toy, to block the Cairo traffic, while I the real I lived far
away. Truly the poets and the children are our only real-
ists, and Time and Space have fooled the rest of us unmer-
cifully.
I find that trivial recollections of this sort interest me far
more in the recording than my sensations as a wealthy man.
These last were, indeed, strikingly few. Beyond the pleasure
of buying old Jeanne a Cashmere shawl, the hidden ambition
of her life, and giving orders for Harriet's hospital (for I
seemed to have brought the natives of North Carolina
[ 222!
OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN
down on my shoulders, somehow and that without the
faintest interest in them!) my amazing good fortune made
less impression upon me, as a matter of fact, than Uncle
Winthrop's first legacy. What was there for me to do with
it? Roger refused to touch a penny; my mother, beyond
a little increase in her charity fund and a pony phaeton,
was merely bewildered when asked to make any suggestions,
and would have handed purses to every tramp in New
England if she had been given the means; my father's
people were well-to-do, and the conferring of benefactions
has always been difficult for me, anyway. The only way
for me would be to drop gold-pieces on needy thresholds by
night and run away a startling occupation for a rheumatic
bachelor, surely! I do not know how to receive thanks
they embarrass me frightfully. To stand smugly with a
philanthropic smile while the widow and the orphan weep
around my knees, is something I should be forever unable
to achieve. Harriet's hospital was not a charity it was
something to keep the ridiculous creature busy her yacht,
her picture gallery, her stud-farm, if you will.
As for me, I had none of these tastes. I bought the one
or two pictures I had always wanted, that were within my
means (most of them weren't within anybody's!) I put a
piano in my new rooms, laid in a little wine for my appreciative
friends, bespoke the unshared services of Hodgson, who was
unfortunately necessary to me now that every sudden damp
day crippled my right shoulder (he came to me wearing one
of my old suits, by the way) and put a new steam-launch into
Roger's concealed boat-house. I presented Margarita with
another and a larger gift of pearls, it is true, but without
one-tenth of the choking excitement with which I had
clasped that first single one upon her neck.
The lady herself, however, balanced this equation; she
was greatly delighted, and if she had not, perhaps, perfectly
appreciated the first offering, more than atoned by her rap-
turous recognition of the second.
[223]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
" And how they must have cost! " she cried. " Jerry, you
are too generous but I do love them!"
To think of Margarita's estimating the value of a gift!
We had famous talks that August, while Roger sweated
at his new task making an island for us, no less ! and petite
Marie gathered shells and buried them in tiny, wave-washed
graves.
She took to reading that summer, and I read Pendennis and
David Copperfield aloud and she embroidered great grey
butterflies all over her grey gown for Faust, and the big
brindled hound slept at our feet near the bee-hives.
" Which do you like best?" I asked her curiously.
" Oh, the one about Mr. Pendennis is the prettiest," she
answered promptly, " I should have liked the man that made
that book the best. But Mr. Dickens knows about more
things. He makes more different kinds of people."
"Thackeray has been called cynical," I suggested.
"What is that, Jerry?"
I explained, and she shook her head.
" O no, that is not cynical. That is the way things are,
Jerry. Only everybody does not say so."
"Do you think," I asked, "that people really talk the
way Mr. Micawber talks? I never heard anybody. And
certainly nobody ever talked like his wife."
"No," she said thoughtfully, "I never did, either. But
there must be a good many people like them, Jerry, I am
sure. And if they knew as many long words as Mr. Dickens,
that is the way they would talk, I think."
I have never heard a better criticism of the literary giant
of the nineteenth century.
She never made the slightest secret of her affection for me
nor of our thorough comprehension of each other and our
similarity of tastes. Quiet always, or almost always, with
Roger, with me she chattered like a bird, and I could give
her opinion on many matters of which he knew nothing.
" Jerry and I like Botticelli and caviar sandwiches and
[224]
OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN
street songs and Egypt, and Roger does not," she told
Clarence King once I can hear him roar now.
" I can talk better to you than to Roger," she confided to
me one day on the rocks; "if it were the custom to have
two husbands, Jerry, I should like you for the other but
it is not," she added mournfully.
I agreed to this with regret and she went on thoughtfully.
" You see, Roger would not like it, even if it -was the cus-
tom, so I could not, anyway."
" That is very amiable of you," I said.
" It is strange how I always think of what he would like,"
she added, with perfect sincerity, I am sure. "One day
when he would not let me have any more bread it was so
bad for my voice, you know I got very angry and spoke
crossly to him, but still he would not, and I told him that
since he did not want me to sing he had better let me spoil
my voice, if I wanted to and you would think he would,
would you not, Jerry?"
"No," I answered soberly, "no, Margarita, I wouldn't.
He knew you really wanted your voice more than the bread,
so he gave you what you wanted."
" Yes. But that day I was so angry, I planned how much
more free I should be if he were to die was it not terrible,
Jerry? and then I got so interested I could not stop, and
I made a dying sickness for him like my father's, and Miss
Buxton came, and then I got a black frock like Hester when
my father died, and then we you and I made a grave for
him with my father's grave on the little point, and then (this
was all in my mind, you see, Jerry) I was so sad I cried and
cried as I do in Marguerite, all over my cheeks, and then,
what do you think?"
"Heavens, child, what can I think? I don't know," I
said unsteadily, revolving God knows what of possibilities
in my presumptuous and selfish heart.
"Why," she said simply, " I felt so badly that I went to
Roger (in my mind) to tell him about it and show him the
[225]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
beautiful grave we had made and my black frock (I had a
little pointed bonnet with white under the front, like the
widows in Paris) and suddenly I remembered that I could not
show him he would be dead! You see that would have
been very bad, for I had been planning all the time that he
would be there to to well, that he would be there! You
see what I mean, don't you, Jerry? Roger has to be there."
" Yes, I see," I said, very low, filled with sickening shame,
" he has to be there, my dear."
"And so I stopped all that dying sickness directly," she
continued comfortably, " because it was too silly, if I could
not tell him about it afterwards, you see.
"And yet he was very cross to me about the bread," she
burst out childishly. " Why do I think he has to be there,
Jerry? He cannot talk to me nearly so nicely as you carl
lie does not understand. Why must he be there?"
I choked and laughed at once.
" Because you love him, you silly Margarita!" I declared.
"That must be it," she agreed, with a serious, long look
at me out of those deep-sea coloured eyes.
Ah, me!
How we worked at that canal! Caliban and two swarthy
Italians and Roger and' I for I marked out the course of it in
an artfully natural curve and put in the stakes. There were
eighty-odd feet across the part of the peninsula we selected,
and it bade fair to wear us all out and last forever, till I
seized the occasion of a business trip that took Roger away
for four days and hired a great gang of labourers who
finished it all up, so that he walked into his island home
across a foot-bridge, to his great and boyish delight. What
a big boy he was, after all! Not that I did not share his
pleasure in the Island: it gave me a delicious feeling of secur-
ity and distance from the rest of the world. With the help
of the gang I had been able to widen our channel consider-
ably and it took a very respectable bridge indeed to span the
gap. We had made plans for a regular drawbridge, but later
[226]
OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN
we abandoned them, and chopped even the old one down.
The water has washed and washed and worn away since,
on the island side, and now one must be bent upon a swim
indeed who cares to venture among the jagged ledges and
mill-races that my blasting made.
We piped our spring too a beauty up through the dairy
cellar to the kitchen, and Caliban was saved many a weary
trip. Some years afterward I took my chance during another
absence of the lord of the Island, and a hurried and aston-
ished set of plumbers installed a luxurious bathroom in
either ell of the cottage a surprise for his birthday. Profit-
ing by a winter in Bermuda, I copied their roof reservoirs,
allowing one to each ell, sanded without, whitewashed with-
in, an architectural measure which made the skyline even
more rocky and wild, in appearance, from the water. Before
we left, that autumn, we planted fifty evergreens, pines,
hemlocks and spruces, in a broad belt just opposite the
Island, masking it completely from the shore, and hardly a
year passed after that without thickening and lengthening that
concealing wall. Oh, we guarded our jewel, I can tell you!
It was that summer, I think, that Whistler came to us and
drew that series of sepia sketches that frames the big fire-
place. They are on the plaster itself a sort of exquisite
fresco and Venice sails, Holland wind-mills and London
docks cluster round the faded bricks with an indescribably
fascinating effect. At my urgent request I was allowed to
protect them with thin tiles of glass riveted through the
corners into the plaster: how the collectors' mouths water
at the sight of them!
Stevenson came a few years later: all the quaint comforts
and intimate beauties hidden away behind the boulders
plainly caught his elfish, childlike fancy it was he who made
the little grotto beyond the asparagus bed, lined the pool
in it with unusual shells and coloured pebbles, fitted odd bits
of looking-glass here and there, and wrote a poem on a smooth
stone at the door for little Mary, to whom he dedicated it.
[227]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
"The purple pool of mussel shells,
All full of salty ocean smells,
The coral branches in the wall
And you the mermaid queen of all ..."
She used to recite it all very charmingly. Roger never wanted
it printed in the Child's Garden of Verses, where it properly
belongs one of the best of them, in my opinion.
He and Margarita talked together by the hour and I have
seen his dog-like brown eyes fixed on her an hour at a time.
I asked him once if he intended to "put her in a story"
the quaint query of the layman, so strangely irritating to the
book-man and he shook his loose-locked head slowly.
"They say I can't do women, you know," he said, "and
nobody would believe her if I put her in, she's too artistically
effective."
And here am I doing it! Fools rush in ...
It may seem odd that Roger and I should not discuss
the opera business, but we didn't. That it hurt him I knew,
for I knew Roger. Anglo-Saxon to the backbone, the position
which his wife as a successful operatic star must put him in
could be nothing but highly distasteful to him. It is one
thing to snatch your wife from the stage, as Margarita's
noble grandfather had done, and enjoy her in your home;
it is quite another to see her snatched from your home to that
stage, after you have married her. But I have never known a
juster man, and though he talked little of the "rights" of
women, and then in a brief, blunt fashion that would have
exasperated the fast-emerging sex most terribly, he never-
theless respected the rights of every human creature most
scrupulously. Though he had the private appreciation of
the unmistakable good points of the harem-seclusion shared
by every healthy male, he would never have shut Margarita
into a New York house or a honeymoon-island against her
will, and I think he was too proud to reason with her on
the only lines open to him. I think, too, that his quiet re-
fusal to take any strong measures may have been based,
[ 22 8J
OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN
partly, on the full appreciation of the risk he ran in marry-
ing such a bundle of possibilities as Margarita. One of the
greatest passions that ever (I firmly believe) mated two people
had whirled him out of the conventional current of his life,
and because it had, in its course, brought him into the rapids,
he was enough of a man to set his teeth and take it quietly,
knowing that when he left the calm, green-bordered stream
for the adventure of flood tide, he did it with his eyes open
a grown man. Or so, at least, I take it that he reasoned:
he acted as if he had.
Again, it would have been difficult for me to discuss the
matter for another reason than Roger's perfectly characteris-
tic reserve. Much as I regretted that this issue should have
arisen in Roger's household, like Sue Paynter I had a secret
sympathy with Margarita. Roger was never fond of the
stage, and I was. He preferred chamber-music and sym-
phony to opera, and was never deeply sensible to the solo
voice, though a good critic of it. The glamour of the stage
that lime-light that has eternally dazzled the sons of Adam
had little effect upon him: he was the last man in the
world to marry an actress. Now, I was not. Judic, the
naughty creature, had once her charm for me. I have
stood in a crowd to see the Jersey Lily, and the Queen of
English comediennes could have had me for a turn of her
thick lashes before I knew Margarita. My paternal
grandmother was part French, and I have always observed
that a mixture of blood predisposes its inheritors to dramatic
triumphs or enjoyments, if no more.
So he dug at his canal and Margarita practised her Jewel
Song (it was a shade high for her: she was not a pure soprano,
but had one of those flexible mezzos that tempt their
trainers to all sorts of tours-de-force) and Dolledge tended
Mary and Miss Jencks developed Caliban.
The good woman was utterly unhappy without some
subject on which to exercise her really remarkable powers
of education. Mary's attendant resented bitterly any rival
[229]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
in her certainly well-filled sphere, and Margarita was far
beyond her one-time mentor now, and regarded her with the
affectionate tolerance of a princess for her old nurse. This
was hard on the devoted Barbara, for she adored Margarita,
and to find oneself gently sliding to the foot of the pedestal,
when one has not so long ago been occupied in moulding the
statue, cannot be very enlivening, though one be never so
philosophical.
In truth I had at that time a strange sensation: I found
that I had insensibly drifted into a state of mind in which we
five, Roger, Miss Jencks, Dolledge, Caliban and I seemed
to be at home, contented, occupied, attached by every interest
domestic and romantic, to the spot that was dearest on earth
to us, while Margarita, a brilliant bird of passage, but lin-
gered with us for the moment, before she took up her journey
through the world for that she was destined for the world,
who could doubt? We were, to use the homely old figure,
like a circle of motherly hens, staring fatalistically, sadly
or disgustedly, according to our several barnyard tempera-
ments, at our daring, iridescent duckling as she breasted
the (to her) familiar flood.
For it was familiar: there are people for whom taken
though they may have been from the most secluded corner
of the earth, unprepared, undisciplined, unwarned, the great
world, the glitter of its footlights, the shock of its tourna-
ments, the cruelty of its victories, the coldness of its neglect,
have absolutely no terrors. They face it superbly, as one
should face a mob, and the great world, like any proper mob,
licks their feet and fawns on them. Admiration is their
due; devotion is no more than the sky above them or the
earth under them; they keep the divine, expectant hauteur
of childhood and rule us, like the children, through our pity
and our wonder. And Margarita was one of these.
230]
CHAPTER XXV
THE ISLAND TOMB
BUT to go back to Miss Jencks and Caliban. It was Harriet
Buxton who had suggested that the boy was not so deaf as
we had thought, only stupid, and that his dumbness might
yield to the methods then being so successfully used with that
afflicted child who has since triumphed so brilliantly over
more than human obstacles. Although, as Harriet pointed
out, I have always felt that too much credit was given in that
case to the pupil and too little to the teacher. The distance
between English words of one syllable and Greek tragedy
is only a matter of time: the distance between blank chaos
and those one-syllabled words might well have seemed eter-
nal!
Not that Miss Jencks had quite such a task ahead of her.
Caliban had been trained into habits of relentless cleanliness,
and an almost mechanical regularity of routine work. It
was his clumsy hands that had arranged the flaming nas-
turtiums in the silver bowl under the Henner etching, his
rude pantomime that purchased the bi-weekly bone for the
mysteriously named Rosy, his weather wisdom that was
sought when it was a question of an extended sailing party. In
fact, I am inclined to think, in view of his subsequent pro-
gress, that some of his ignorance was feigned, as is often the
case in these instances of arrested mental development. How-
ever that may have been, on the occasion of this visit I found
him marvellously improved, his hair cut, his nondescript
garments evolved into a modest sort of livery, his vocabu-
lary no longer a series of grunts, his very pantomime more
MARGARITA'S SOUL
elastic. Margarita never changed her old methods of com-
munication with him, but the rest of us, at Miss Jencks's
earnest entreaty, fatigued ourselves amiably in order to
elicit the guttural "yes" and "no" and "do not know"
she had so laboriously taught him.
Best of all, his disposition had altered to a very consider-
able extent, and this improvement on his old surliness was of
the greatest assistance to us on the occasion I must now
narrate.
It was I strangely fated to discover so many of the links
in this wonderfully twined chain of Margarita's life who
stumbled by the merest chance on the last one really needed
to complete the story. Zealous for the perfection of our
Island, I selected a deep gully, filled with heavy boughs and
loose unsightly rocks, as the next point for improvement,
and bespoke the services of Caliban for the purpose. Greatly
to my surprise, for he was attached to me, and always
showed pleasure at rowing me over for my visits, he refused
point blank to help me and even tried, in a series of clumsy
ruses, to start me at work elsewhere. Vexed, but quite
unsuspicious, I set to work by myself at pulling off the upper
boughs, trusting to shame him into helping me with the
stones, which seemed to have been tossed there in a sort of
midden. When he found that I was persistent in my plan,
he sat down at the edge of the gully, buried his face in his
clumsy hands and wept silently, shuddering at every bough
I lifted. Greatly interested now, I called Roger, and we
worked together, assisted by the good-natured Italian
retained now as gardener and assistant boatman (his name
was Rafaello, and he was a not-too-unhappy bachelor, for,
as he said, a girl who would run off with a man's rival a
week before the wedding would have made but a doubtful
wife for the most patient of husbands!)
As we neared the bottom of the gully Caliban grew more
and more excited: now he would peer in fearfully, now run
off a few yards, but he could never get very far away, for great
[232]
AH, FAITHFUL CALIBAN,
WHAT HOURS OF TERRIBLE
TUITION MADE THY TASK
CLEAR TO THEE!
THE ISLAND TOMB
as was his terror and sorrow, curiosity was stronger and he
must be near, it seemed, at all costs.
Suddenly, as the last rotting bough was lifted from one
end of the gully, my eye was caught by a series of stones
wonderfully matched in size, eight or ten of them arranged
in a sort of rough cross, and when with a quick thrill of ap-
prehension I pushed aside the withered pine tree that covered
the rest of the stones, the foot of the cross elongated, and
the symbol of Calvary was seen to extend over a slightly
raised oblong mound of earth. There was no mistaking
that shape nor those dimensions; whoever has heard the
rattle of that last remorseless handful and struggled with
that almost nauseating rebellion at the sight of the raw clods,
so unsightly in the smooth, peaceful green, knows that
mound for what it is, and we knew this. Silently we cleared
away the rest, and then the grave I had discerned fell into
its true and illuminating relation to two other and evidently
older crosses at the feet of both and at right angles to them.
In her death as in her life that gaunt, austere Hester was
faithful, and like the stone hound at the ancient knight's
bier she guarded her master's last sleep.
We took off our caps reverently; we needed no monu-
ment, no epitaph to name for us those exiled, unblessed
graves. Prynne had made the first cross, we knew, twenty-
seven years ago; Hester had made the second a few days be-
fore Roger visited the island. And the third? Ah, faith-
ful Caliban, what hours of terrible tuition made thy task
clear to thee ? I shudder at the picture of that indefatigable
New England woman illustrating in terrible pantomime
the duties that would devolve upon her loutish servant at
her death. But the lesson had been learned, the third coffin
taken from the boat-house, the body laid within it at the
graveside, carried swiftly from the house wrapped in a
sheet, the lid nailed down, the earth filled in.
Gaspingly he verified my quiet questions and surmises
I have enough New England blood to know what ghastly
[233]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
forethought we are capable of! and slowly he calmed
himself, seeing that we were neither frightened nor
angry . . .
One end of the island repeats on a tiny scale the forma-
tion of the original peninsula. Three quaint red cedars stand
pointed and forever green, more like the cypresses of Italy
than anything in America; around its rocky beach the waves
beat incessantly, but its grass is fresh and green, for there is
a little spring there. Under the cypresses lie three flat graves,
two side by side, one across their feet, and over each lies a flat
carved table of marble rich carvings that once stretched
under three heavy mullioned windows over the back doors
of an old Italian palace. There are only initials on these .
tables, initials and the numerals of years, but they are not
utterly unblest. Good Parson Elder read the most beauti-
ful burial service in the world over them, broken by the tears
of a trusty servant; the children and the children's children
of the crumbling bodies under two of those tables stood over
them hand in hand; and Nature, who bears no grudge nor
ever excommunicates the fruitful, brings to the sunlight
every year the yellow daffodils and white narcissus, the wild
rose and beach bayberry, the marigold and asters that love
has planted there.
It may be that further clues, more detailed accounts of that
secret island life, were hidden in those coffins; we never tried
if it was so. Unknown and lonely they lived, unknown and
lonely they had wished to lie in death, and so we left them,
safe even from ourselves, who loved them for the wonderful
child they had given us. And I like to think that God is no
less forgiving than the Nature through which he tries to lead
us to him.
[234]
CHAPTER XXVI
A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES
THEY left in October that year; Margarita to get ready
for her ddbut, Roger, quiet and inscrutable, to work, as he
said, at his treatise on Napoleon. He had grown deeply
interested in this and spent most of his leisure at it, and it
had gone far beyond his first idea of an essay. I did not go
with them, but took the occasion for a filial visit to my
mother and a grudging journey to North Carolina, where I
stared uncomprehendingly at the chaotic hospital, a litter
of bricks and scantling, listened to tiresome and enthusiastic
statistics from young Collier and Dr. McGee, distributed
papers of sweets to a ward of convalescent and sticky in-
fants, and refused to take a toilsome journey around the
borders of my one-time coal-lands. They were no longer
mine why should I care to view them ?
Just before I left for Paris, where Captain Upgrove was to
join me, I remembered some drawings I had planned to make
in order to get the dimensions of the rambling, old-fashioned
garden behind the house where I intended to put a certain
ancient shallow stone basin I had in mind, and then beg
Roger to pipe the spring into it for a sort of fountain-pool.
There was such a basin on an old, decaying estate some miles
out of our old school-town: Roger and I knew it well, for we
had often been invited there by a friend of my mother's to
drink tea and eat rusk and fresh butter and confiture (of
field strawberries delicious!) and of all things broiled
bacon, because Roger was devotedly fond of it and never
got it at school. How many June half-holidays have we
[235]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
hung over that old carved basin, teasing the goldfish,
stopping up the tiny fountain till it spouted all over us, sailing
beetles across it on linden leaves, or lolling full-fed and lazy,
smoking contraband cigarettes of caporal! I knew well
how pleased he would be when he saw that battered dolphin
that threw the water and the funny little stone frogs at each
corner, and I had a shrewd idea that old Mrs. Y would
not object to parting with it, moss and lichen and all, if
one made it worth her while!
A cold, rainy week the delayed equinox caught and
held me on the island, huddled over the fire, and it was then
that I conceived the famous idea of the furnace. I had
planned many a pleasant autumn there, for it was now the
best of America to me, and if such weeks as this were pos-
sible (and probable) there would be little comfort for me
away from the chimney corner which has never been my
favourite post, by the way. Caliban and Agnes, the cook,
a kindly Normandy woman, did their best for me and for the
ravenous gang of workmen that laboured (in the slight in-
tervals between their meals!) at the monstrous, many-
mouthed iron tube in the cellar; while I chafed and scolded
at the delays, unwilling to leave the men, weary of my
dear Island now its chief jewel was gone, irritated by the
tramping feet and tuneless whistling where I had heard so
much the patter of petite Marie's slippers and the rich melody
of her mother's voice.
It was then that I fell upon Lockwood Prynne's library
and learned more of his mind, I believe, than anyone else
could ever know. I wish I had known the man himself.
The little I have been able to find out about him in the South
(the war practically wiped out the family) only confirmed
my first idea of him. I actually succeeded in tracking an
old album of daguerreotypes to a shiftless darkey cabin
and identifying a picture of him as a boy from a half-blind
negro mammy, with one of his father in full uniform and a
singularly beautiful head that I am sure from the likeness of
[236]
A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES
the brow and the set of the eyes must have been his mother,
though here the old slave could not or would not help me.
I rescued, too, for Margarita, a rich carved mahogany chair
from a cow stall ("ole Marse Lockwood's pay chair") and
a graceful, brass-handled serving-table, "what his grandpa
done leave fo' li'l Marse Lockwood fer ter rec'leck' him by."
I picked up a silver cup, at a roadside auction (and bid
high for it against a Fifth Avenue dealer) engraved with his
mother's coat-of-arms, and shamelessly inveigled Margarita
into taking it, later, and giving me in return the silver bowl
that stood for so long under the Henner etching. It stands
there still, but not in the old place. Not Caliban, but Hodg-
son fills that bowl to-day and every day that I am in America
with the most beautiful flowers Uncle Winthrop's money
can buy; though Lockwood Prynne no longer lies in the
army cot that faces it, one of his best friends does a friend
who loves him no less, that he never saw his face.
Well, we got that furnace in and fifty tons of coal, too,
towed over in an old scow and binned down in the cellar, and
when I saw the bills for this last, I received the impression
(which I have never been able wholly to abandon) that I
must have been underpaid for those coal-lands!
Many a time have we discussed it since, with a curious,
frightened wonder: why should that furnace have seemed
so all-important to me? At best we expected to spend but
few days at the Island when it could have been necessary;
Margarita had grown up among Atlantic winters and had
more times than she could count broken the ice in her bed-
room ewer; such a luxurious whim would never have oc-
curred to Roger, who, like most men of his type, expected
every one to be as hardy as himself how many generations
of his ancestors had stoically toasted their shins while their
backs were freezing! It must be, as Margarita teasingly in-
sists, that my pathetic care for my rheumatic old bones
was at the bottom of it all, and that I was rapidly
assimilating one of the cardinal doctrines of the swollen
[237]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
purse, that no sum could be ill spent when spent for my
comfort.
Well, well, let it go at that to use the bluff, pertinent
phrase of the present day. Though Barbara Jencks would
have died before she had let it go at anything like that, I as-
sure you, and has spent many an eager moment of shy, per-
sistent effort to make me comprehend the inscrutable and
sleepless interest of Providence, an interest which had in-
tended, from the time of the Exodus, if I seize her idea
correctly, that a hot-air plant should complete the summer
home of Roger Bradley a man who had less interest in
Providence than anyone I know! Poor Barbara! As I
hung about the house that mellow autumn, I fell, more than
once, into musing laughter, as here and there some piece of
furniture, some picture or dish or oddment brought back to
me her uncounted, endless assaults on Margarita's simple,
healthy and (to the orthodox English woman) baseless
scheme of existence. Not that it should have been dignified
by so philosophical a term as " scheme ": Margarita was given
to the practice of life, not its theory. I never tired of watch-
ing the extraordinary effect of her downright mental processes
upon the mass of perfunctory, inherited ideas whose edges,
once sharp-milled and fresh from some startling Mint, we
have dulled and misshapen with generations of unthinking,
accustomed barter.
For instance, a treasure of a Spode fruit dish that I had
picked up at a dewy Devonshire farm, all clotted cream and
apple-cheeked children, caught my eye as it lay on the piano,
and I found myself chuckling as I recalled the unfortunate
eddy of doctrine into which the innocent bit of china had
whirled us. Margarita had asked what the quaint Scriptural
figures upon it illustrated, and Miss Jencks, every ready, had
explained to her the parable of the labourers in the vine-
yard and the marvel of the late comer's good fortune.
"And that is a very beautiful thought, my dear," she con-
cluded, "is it not?"
[238]
A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES
Margarita stared at her in frank surprise.
"Beautiful?" she echoed, "you call it beautiful that so
many poor men should work hard so long, and then have to
see the lazy ones who came in late be paid as much as they
for one-tenth as much work ? I do not know what you mean
by beautiful; it was certainly very unfair."
"My dear, my dear!" poor Barbara fluttered, "it had
the approval of our Lord, remember."
"He was probably not one of the ones who had worked
all day, then," Margarita replied blandly.
"It was not an actual occurrence," said Miss Jencks, a
little coldly, as Roger's irrepressible chuckle echoed from
the porch outside, "it was merely a parable a lesson."
"Oh!" (The exquisite, falling melody of that simple
monosyllable expressed so perfectly, through such a trained
larynx, all the sudden lack of interest!) " It never happened,
then? So of course it does not matter. But why do you
call it a lesson, Miss Jencks?"
"Because it teaches Christian charity," said Barbara
firmly.
Margarita turned away and dismissed the subject.
" If I ever hired myself to anybody, I would rather he had
been taught fairness than Christian charity," she observed,
and left Miss Jencks clutching the fruit plate pathetically,
her eyes fixed hopelessly on me. For it was always my
delicate task to soothe the poor lady after these theological
encounters: Roger's uncompromising treatment of the
situation had a way of uncomfortably resembling his wife's!
"You know, dear Miss Jencks," I began, as seriously as I
could, "she is not really cynical she is no more irreverent
than a child would be. Surely some of your pupils, some-
times ..."
"Never, Mr. Jerrolds, never!" the bulwark of the Gov-
ernor-General's family protested tearfully, "never, I assure
you!"
"Well, well," I said, "it's all the same they might have.
[239]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
You see, she pays these things the great compliment of tak-
ing them seriously and literally. And they wouldn't work,
Miss Jencks, some of them, if one tried them, you know.
Just consider the labour unions for one thing: suppose
Roger were to pay off his workmen on that principle they'd
fling his money in his face."
"Then what would you say to the Prodigal Son?" she
shot at me defiantly.
"I say that it's very beautiful and that I'm old enough to
hope it may be true," I told her, "but for heaven's sake,
Miss Jencks, don't try Mrs. Bradley with it not just now,
at any rate!"
Then there was her guitar, a small one, of lemon-coloured
pear wood, curiously inlaid: Whistler got it for her in one
of those old pawn shops near the London wharves, and we
used to wonder what happy sailor, burnt and eager for the
town, had brought it for what waiting girl all the long miles,
and how it had crept at last, ashamed and stained, into that
dingy three-balled tomb of so many hopes and keepsakes.
He sketched her in charcoal, dressed (he would have it) in
black, with a Spanish comb in her hair and the guitar on a
broad ribbon of strange deep Chinese blue; behind her, on
an aerially slender perch, stands a gaudy Mexican parrot.
It does not look like her to us who know her well (though,
curiously enough, all strangers consider it an extremely fine
likeness) but as a tour de force it is remarkable, and amongst
the plain, Saxon furnishings of the Island living-room it stands
out with an extraordinary vividness an unmistakable bit
of Southern Europe, the perfectly conscious sophistication of
old cities and sunny, secret streets, worn uneven and dis-
coloured before Raleigh started across seas.
Roger never liked it, I believe, and I have always suspected
the impish James of deliberately putting us face to face with
Margarita's foreign strain and the tiny, deep gulf that cut her
off, in some parts of her nature, so hopelessly from us. And
he made us see it, too, that Puck of all painters, even as he
[240]
HE SKETCHED HER IN CHARCOAL, DRESSED (HE WOULD
HAVE IT) IN BLACK
A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES
had intended, and we were forced to thank him for it, for it
was too beautiful to have gone undone, and he knew it.
And Jimmie's dead, worse luck, and one of his most de-
voted collectors told me last week that he really thought the
psychological moment for selling out had arrived, for he'd
never go any higher ! And we're all grass, that to-day is and
to-morrow goes into the oven, and there's no doubt of it, my
brothers.
But how she used to sing O sole mio, with that sweet,
piercing Italian cry, a real cri du cceur (except for the trifling
fact that there was no more heart in it, really, than there is
in most Italian singing ! I suppose that while the art of song
remains among the children of men, that particular child who
is able to throw his voice most easily into what Mme. M i
used to call "ze frront of ze face" and detach it from the
throat, where the true feelings lie gripped, will continue to
thrill the other children with his or her " heart in the voice! ")
And how she would drag the rhythm, deliciously, intention-
ally, and shade the downward notes, and hang a breath too
long on the phrase-ends, as only Italians dare! And how
the distilled essence of Italy dripped out of those luscious,
tender, mocking folk-songs, till the vineyards steeped before
us, and the white city-squares baked in the noon sun, and
the ardent sailor sang to his brown girl over the quaint,
bobbing, weighted nets!
The men who dug the ice-house and piled the coast wall
and blasted out trenches for draining would stop and lean on
their picks, when her resonant, golden humming, like a
drowsy contralto bee, floated out from the verandah vines
to them: I have seen their faces clear and their dull eyes
focus suddenly on some distant, darling memory, while they
dropped back for a precious minute into the past that you
think is all bread and cheese and beer, because, forsooth, they
never sat beside you in white gloves when Margarita sang!
Go to there was Spring and a girl for every man of them,
once, and both were the same as yours.
[241]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
I had to go into her room at that time, to make sure that
the floor should not be unduly marred and that, according
to the best of my poor judgment (Roger should have planned
it all, as a matter of fact) the registers might be inserted in
the best places; and as I moved among the dainty luxuries
that replaced the almost sordid bareness of that room when
I had first seen it, I realised, with surprise but with clear
certainty, that the change was only apparent, not deep or
inherent. They were all there, to be sure, the pretty para-
phernalia that modern woman (and ancient, too, for the
matter of that!) has found necessary to preserve and augment
her mystery and charm; ivory and silver and crystal and
fluted frills and scented silk. Oh, yes, they were all there, but
there was no atmosphere of Margarita amongst them all : she
had escaped out of them and given them the slip as effectu-
ally as in the old, bare days of the brush and comb and the
print gown on a peg in the unscented closet. She was simply
not there, that was all, and the most infatuated lover in all
the Decameron would have felt that here was not the place for
self-indulgent raptures. Margarita used her sleeping-room
as a snail uses his shell or a bird its nest: it was impersonal,
deserted, out of commission, now the room, merely, of a
beautiful woman, who might have been any woman, with a
woman's need of comfort, warmth, clear air, and cleanliness
pushed to an arrogance of physical purity.
My mother's bedroom was her own as definitely as her
blue-veined, pointed hands; Sue Paynter's, into which I went
once to lift out her little son in one of his illnesses, was like
no one's else in the world, individual, intense; even old
Madam Bradley's, in its clear whites and polished dark wood,
translated to my boyish, awed soul, a sense of her impene-
trable character.
But not so Margarita's. It was furnished and decorated
in grey-blue tints, because I had suggested this. It had
odd touches of greyish rose, because Whistler had insisted
on it. It was fitted with old mahogany, because Roger
[242]
A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES
liked this and collected it here and there. But of all the
personality that her father-lover had known how to build
into his home of exile, there was absolutely none.
Was it because there were no work-baskets, spilling lace
and bits of ribbon, no photographs, no keepsakes, hideous
perhaps, but dear for what they represent, no worn girl-
hood's books, no shamefaced toys, lingering from the nursery,
no litter of any other member of her family ? Perhaps.
Mme. Modjeska, then, and even now one of the greatest
actresses on our stage, called it an unwomanly room, but
I am not quite sure that this is precisely what she meant.
No, the most vivid impression the room could make upon
me was one that brings a reminiscent chuckle even to-day.
As my eye fell on the antique dressing-table, I seemed to see,
suddenly and laughably, Margarita, sweeping down the
stairs, enveloped in a billowy peignoir, her hair loose, her
eyes flashing furiously, in her extended finger and thumb,
held as one would hold a noxious adder, a thin navy-blue
necktie.
" Is that yours? " she demanded tragically of her husband.
" Why, yes, I believe it is," said Roger, with the grave
politeness that years of intimacy could never take from him.
" I found it on my dressing-table 1" she thundered, and her
voice echoed like an angry vault, "on my dressing-table!"
She dropped it like a toad at his feet, swept us all with
the lightning of her eyes, coldly, distastefully, and swam up
the stairs, an avenging goddess, deaf to Roger's matter-of-
fact apology, blind to Miss Jencks's deprecating blushes.
As for me, so under the spell of that voice have I always
been, that I swear I thought her hardly used tht darling
vixen!
[243!
PART EIGHT
IN WHICH THE RIVER RUSHES INTO
PERILOUS RAPIDS
Come, my mother that carried me,
Make me to-night an olden spell!
Try if my witch wife loves the Sea,
Or she'll choose the waves or she'll
choose for me,
Then hey, for heaven or ho, for hell!
Circle the Cross on the midnight
sand,
Heap the fire and mutter the charm,
Call her out to ye, soul in hand,
Blind and bare to the moon she'll
stand,
Then out to the sea or in to my arm!
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
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CHAPTER XXVII
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I DID not hear Margarita sing in opera till the night oi
her dibut in Faust. Roger, on the contrary, was allowed to
attend the last rehearsals: Margarita honestly wished for
his criticism, which she knew from the very fact of his utter
aloofness from her professional interests would be perfectly
unbiased and sincere. It was not without a secret thrill of
pleasure through my disappointment that I acquiesced in
her decree; I knew that she would be nervous with me,
from my very sympathy with her.
I can see the Opera now the lights, the jewels, the mou-
staches, the white shirt-bosoms, the lorgnettes, the fat
women with programmes, the great, shrouding curtain.
Sue was there, pallid with excitement, and Tip Elder, who
had come over for a much-needed holiday, and Walter Carter,
who had been on an errand to Germany, and who had (of all
unexpected people!) convinced Madam Bradley that her own
hard pride should no longer be forced to regulate her chil-
dren's enmities, and come to extend the olive-branch to
Roger.
I was as nervous as could be and Roger, I think, was not
quite so calm as he seemed and gnawed his lower lip steadily.
But Margarita, one would suppose, had not only no nerves
but not even any self-consciousness. She told us afterward
that before the curtain rose she was nearly paralysed with
terror and was convinced that her voice had gone it caught
in her throat. She could not remember the words of the
Jewel Song and her stomach grew icy cold if Roger had been
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MARGARITA'S SOUL
there, she said, she would have begged him to take her away
and hide her on the Island! But he was not there. No one
was there but Madame and her maid, and she could not
run away alone.
When she sat spinning at her wheel behind the layers
of gauze, and Faust saw her in his dream, her legs shook so
that she could not work the treadle. But when she paced
slowly onto the scene in her grey gown all worked with tiny,
nearly invisible little butterflies they had made her put
aside the big ones she was as calm and composed as the
chorus around her and her voice was as beautiful as I have
ever heard it.
"The child was born for the stage, there is no doubt!"
Sue whispered to me excitedly, and I nodded hastily, not
wishing to lose a note or a movement.
It was her best-known part and she was very lovely and
magnetic in it, but I do not think it really suited her so well
as the Wagner dramas would have, later. It is with Mar-
guerite as a great English comedienne expressed it to me
some years later, of Juliet: one must be forty to play it
properly and then one is too old to play it properly !
But what a gait she had! Her stride just fitted the stage,
her carriage of neck and head was such as great artists have
worked years to attain and she was unconscious of it.
Her eyes looked sky-blue under the blonde wig, and the
blonde tints were lovely, if not so fascinatingly surprising as
her own.
When she stopped, fixed her great eyes upon Faust
reproachfully and sang, like a sweet, truthful chM,
Non, monsieur, je ne suis bellet
Ni belle, ni demoiselle ....
a little sigh of pleasure ran through the audience: she won
them then and there. It seemed incredible that she was
acting it seemed that she must be real and that the others
were trying to surround her with the reality she expected,
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WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET
as best they could. She had the sweet purity of tone
the candour, if I may so call it, often associated
with delicate, small voices and singers of cool, rather
inexpressive temperaments. But BrilnhUde was the part
for her, and BriinhUde was not cool and anything but in-
expressive.
The only Marguerite I have ever seen since that resembled
hers was Mme Calve"'s, and the French artist seemed studied
and conscious beside Margarita. You see, she was young,
she was sincere and ingenuous, she was slender and beauti-
ful and she had a fresh and lovely voice, well trained, into
the bargain. She would never have made a great coloratura
soprano. Neither her voice nor her temperament inclined
to this. She belonged, properly speaking, to the advance
guard of the natural method, the school of intelligence and
subtle dramatic skill. I cannot imagine Margarita a stout,
tightly laced, high-heeled creature, advancing to the foot-
lights, jewelled finger-tips on massive chest, emitting a series
of staccato fireworks interspersed with trills and scales
apropos of nothing in this world or the next.
Such performances constituted Roger's main objection to
the opera, and though he was considered Philistine once,
it is amusing to see how the tide of even popular opinion
is setting his way, now.
So in the great final trio, Margarita did not show at her
best, perhaps; the situation seemed strained, unreal, and
the final shriek a little high for her. But oh, what a lovely
creature she was, alone in her cell! What lines her supple
figure gave the loose prison robe, what poignant, simple,
cruelly deserted grief, poured from her big, girlish eyes!
And I do not believe anyone will ever again make such ex-
quisite pathos of the poor creature's crazed return to her first
meeting with her lover. So clearly did she picture to herself
this early scene that we all saw it too, and lived it over again
with the poor child.
"Ni belle, ni demoiselle . . "
[249]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
It was the whole of love betrayed, abandoned, yet loving
and forgiving, that little phrase; and I staunchly insist that
the good Papa Gounod deserves credit for it, sentimentalist
though he be!
It was after the garden love-scene that she won her
recalls, over and over again. Above the great sheaf of hot-
house daisies I sent up to the footlights she bowed and bowed
and bowed again and smiled, and the jewels flashed on her
white shoulders and the yellow braids shook at her deep,
triumphant breaths, as she beamed out over us all, the
wonderful, all-embracing smile of the born artist, that can-
not be taught. Part of that brilliant smile came straight into
my misted eyes, back in the loge, and so extraordinary is
the power of such a success, so completely does that row of
footlights cut off the victor from us who applaud below,
that I, even I, who had literally taught this girl some of the
ordinary reserves of decent society, who had found her a sav-
age (socially speaking) only two years ago, now bowed low
to her, dazed, humble as the man beside me who never
saw her before.
How they pounded and cried, those amusing, sophis-
ticated, babyish Parisians!
"Brava, la petite!" I hear the old gentleman now that
turned to me in amazement, chattering like a well-preserved,
middle-aged monkey; "but it is that it is an American, they
tell me? fa y est, alors! It is extraordinary, then, im-
fayable! Je n'en reviens pas! "
"And why, Monsieur?" I asked.
"For the reason, simply, that it is well known how they
are cold, those women, cold as ice, every one. But this one
Monsieur, I have seen many Marguerites, I who speak to
you, but never before has it arrived to me to envy that fat
Faust!"
And I (to whom he spoke) believed him thoroughly, I
assure you. Though I doubt if the portly tenor was much
flattered, for he had accepted the role with the idea of
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IT WAS AFTER THE GARDEN LOVE-SCENE THAT
SHE WON HER RECALLS
WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET
carrying off the honours of the evening, and exhibited, in the
event, not a little of that acrimony which is so curiously in-
separable from any collection of the world's great song-birds.
Ever since Music, heavenly maid, was young, she has been
so notoriously at variance with her fellow-musicians as to
force the uninitiated into all sorts of cynical conclusions!
Such as the necessity for some kind of handicap for all these
harmonies, some make-weight for these unnaturally perfect
chords. And it is but due to the various artists to admit that
they supply these counter-checks bravely.
Well I suppose they would be too happy if it were all as
harmonious as it sounds, and we should all (the poor songless
rest of us) kill ourselves for jealousy! And if the fat Faust
had really been as supremely blissful as he should have been
when Margarita, with that indescribably lovely bending
twist of her elastic body, drooped out of her canvas, rose-
wreathed cottage window and threw her white arms about his
neck in the most touching and suggestive abandon T have
ever seen on the operatic stage why, we should have been re-
gretfully obliged to tear him to pieces, Roger and I and Walter
Carter (I am afraid) and the well-preserved Frenchman!
She was not so philosophical as Goethe nor so saccharine as
Gounod, our Margarita, and I don't know that I am more
sentimental than another; but when the poor child in all her
love and ignorance and simple intoxication with that sweet
and terrible brew that Dame Nature never ceases concoct-
ing in her secret still-rooms, handed her white self over so
trustfully to the plump and eager tenore robusto, a sudden
disgust and fury at the imperturbable unfairness of that
same inscrutable Dame washed over me like a wave and I
could have wept like the silly Frenchman.
Do not be too scornful of that sad and sordid little stage
story, ye rising generation it is not for nothing that the
great stupid public of older days, ignorant alike of Teutonics
and chromatics, but wise in pity and terror, as old Aristotle
knew, took it to their commonplace hearts! Do not trouble
MARGARITA'S SOUL
yourselves to explain to me that Gretchen was but an
episode in a great cosmic philosophy; I knew it once, when
I was young like you. But I am nearly sixty now worse
luck! and I see why the cosmic philosophy has been quietly
buried and the episode remains immortal. 1 And so will you
some day.
It was a great success for Madame and she basked in it;
she had even a compliment for Roger. In our gay little sup-
per, afterward, we had all a kind word an almost patheti-
cally kind word for Roger. Margarita herself had never
been so attentive to him, so eager for his ungrudging praise,
so openly affectionate with him. He was very kind, very
gentle, but in a quiet way he discouraged her demonstrative
sweetness and led her to talk of her professional future.
In her eyes as she looked at him over her wine-glass I seemed
to see something I had never seen before, a sort of frightened
pity; not the terror of a child cut off by the crowd from its
guardian, but rather the fear of one who sees a one-time
comrade on the other side of a widening flood, and regrets
and fears for him and pities his loss and loneliness, but is
driven by Destiny and cannot cross over. I wondered if the
others saw it too, but dared not discover.
It was not altogether a happy petit sottper, you see ; I often
think of it when I assist at similar gatherings, and wonder
to myself if in all the glory and under all the triumph there
is not some dark spot unknown to us flattering guests, some
tiny gulf that is growing relentlessly, though we throw in
never so many flowers and jewels to fill it. The wheel turns
ever, and no pleasure of ours but is built on the shifting sand
of some one's pain, even as Alif told me.
We had the Valentin of the opera, a dapper little French-
man, with us (I fcrget his name: he had been very kind
to Margarita and stood between her and the senseless jealousy
of the big, handsome tenor more than once) and I heard him
as we left the table remark significantly to Mme. M i,
with a glance at Roger,
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WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET
"Monsieur is not artiste, then?"
"Surely that sees itself?" returned the famous teacher
with a shrug.
"Un mari complaisant, alors?" said the baritone lightly.
Madame had never liked Roger, and was, moreover, a
somewhat prejudiced person, but even her feelings could
not prevent the irrepressible chuckle that greeted this.
"Do not think it, my friend jamais de la vie!" she
answered quickly, with a frank grimace as she caught my
eye and guessed that I had overheard.
No, one could not image Roger as the "husband of his
wife." It simply couldn't be supposed.
I had very little to say to him that night, myself. I felt
clumsy and tactless, somehow, and certain that what I
might say woxild be too much or too little.
It was Tip whose cheery, "How wonderfully fine she was,
Roger! How proud you must be of her!" saved the day
and gave us a chance to shake hands and leave them in the
flower-filled coupe.
Well, after that it was all the same thing. Exercise,
practice, performance, success; then sleep, and exercise
again, da capo.
She was a prima donna now, our little Margarita, a suc-
cessful artist, a public character. "Margarita Josdpha,"
Madame had christened her, for twenty years ago simple
American surnames found no favour with the impressario,
and "cette cliarmante Mme. Josepha" "artiste vraiment
ravissante" etc., etc., the critics called her.
As Juliet she looked her loveliest, as Marguerite she acted
her best, as A 'ida she sang most wonderfully. Indeed it was
this last that captured London and gave rise to the much
exaggerated affair of the Certain Royal Personage. She
sang A'ida twelve times in one season (going to London
from Paris) and the boys whistled the airs through the streets
and the bands played from it whenever she rode in the Park
I myself saw the diamond bracelet Miss Jencks returned
[253]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
to the Duke of S (we did not tell Roger, by mutual
consent, till much later) and the Queen's pearl-set brooch
when she sang at Windsor marked at least one satisfying
unanimity among members of the royal family.
I took Mary, long afterward, to hear Mme. G i in
the part Margarita made famous in London, and when the
tears rolled down the child's face as poor Aida (that barbaric
romanesque) dies in melody, portly though starving, and
unconvincingly pale, I wished she might have seen her
mother. There was a death! Nothing in Aida' s life could
possibly have become her like Margarita's leaving of it, I am
sure.
Roger ceased to go after the first performances, and indeed
he was very busy, and crossed the ocean more than once in
the American interests of his French and English clientele.
But whoever stopped at home or went, whoever applauded or
yawned, whoever approved of the present status of the
Bradley family or disapproved, one gaunt figure never left
Margarita's side from the moment she left her door till she
returned to it (except for the inevitable separations of the
actual stage-scene, and I think she regretted the necessity for
these!) This figure was Barbara Jencks's, and hers were
the cool, uncompromising eyes into which the enraptured
devotee gazed when he followed his card into the drawing-
room, hers the strong and knuckly hands that put his flowers
into water and his more valuable expressions of regard back
into their velvet cases, previous to re-addressing them. She
drove with Margarita, when Sue Paynter did not, and would
have ridden with her, I verily believe, had not Carter and
I volunteered to supply that deficiency.
It was she who received that astonished and, I fear,
disappointed kiss from the German officer at Brussels, when
the students drew Margarita's carriage home from the opera
house after her astonishing triumph in the last act of Sieg-
fried. It was an absurd part for her she had never done
Elsa nor Elizabeth, and Mme. M i was very angry with
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WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET
her. Herr M 1, the great director, spent the summer
in Italy and Switzerland and was with our party nearly all
of the time. Purely to please himself he taught Margarita
the role of BriinhUde hi Siegfried and insisted on her singing
it that winter in Brussels under him. It was wonderful, and
showed me what her real forte was to be. She was BriinhUde,
she did not need to act it. How the Master himself would
have revelled in her!
She was very teachable one of the most certain indica-
tions of her great capacities. Her Marguerite was almost
entirely her own, for she had not learned how to use dramatic
instruction; her A'ida was almost Madame's own, for she
had learned, then, and besides, did not understand the
character; her BriinhUde was herself, trained and assisted
into the best canons of interpretation by a loyal Wagnerian.
It is a short part, of course, but it showed what she could
have done with the rest of it. At thirty-five she could have
done the whole Ring; at forty I believe no one could have
equalled her.
Carter got himself snarled hopelessly into a tangle with
the government officials in Berlin (he was no diplomat,
though a good fellow, and wild about Margarita, so that
poor little Alice had more than one bad quarter-hour, I'm
afraid) and it took Roger a great deal of Bradley influence
with the American consul and a lot of patient correspondence
to unravel his unlucky brother-in-law. This gave Roger a
good excuse for being in and near Germany; whether he
would have stayed without it, I don't know.
The work on Napoleon was done: he had laboured over
it in Rome during the summer, and Margarita had been
very sweet, refusing more than one invitation (at Sue Payn-
ter's earnest request) to stay with him. But it was only too
evident that she did not wholly wish to stay and that such a
situation could not last long. Herr M 1 kept her inter-
ested, and Seidl, whom he sent for to hear her practising
for Siegfried, was most enthusiastic about her and displayed
[255]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
his admiration a little too strongly for our peace of mind.
His was a developing, forcing influence, and Margarita
showed the effect of it wonderfully; he inspired her to her best
efforts, and Mme. M i was terribly jealous of him. Per-
sonally, I could not but feel that his undoubtedly great
influence upon her mind and methods represented one of
his many invaluable contributions to the musical history
of America but I speak as an observer, merely, of an
American artist, not as a husband!
Roger and he had what must be confessed was a quarrel
(though the newspaper accounts of a duel were, of course,
absurd) over the advisability of her singing privately for a
young German princeling whom Seidl was very anxious
to honour he was then introducing the Wagnerian dramas
into America and had not been long director of the Metro-
politan Opera House, New York. It all smoothed over
and we agreed to forget it, all of us, but Seidl 's pride was
hurt and Roger had done what I had not seen him do for
fifteen years lost his temper badly. He was not pleasant in
a temper, old Roger, like all men of strong, controlled natures,
and Margarita learned a lesson that day that she never
forgot, I suppose. I believe if on the strength of that im-
pression he had carried her off bodily flung her over his
saddle-bow, as it were, and ceased to respect her rights for
twenty-four hours, we should all have been spared much
strain and suffering. But he regretted his violence and told
her so, which was fatal, or so it seemed to me. There are
occasions when not to take advantage of a woman is to be
unfair to her, and Margarita was very much a woman.
Well, well, it's all over now, and we have no need to regret
that we did not try a different way. It may be we should
have had to pay a greater price for nothing lacks its price-
mark on life's counter, more's the pity, and if we are deceived
by long credit-accounts, the more fools we!
256]
CHAPTER XXVIII
ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND
I HAD much to reconstruct that season in regard to
Margarita. I had found her once before, in Paris, no longer
a child, but a woman; I found her now no woman merely,
but a woman of the world. It seems incredible, indeed, and
I have puzzled over it many an hour when the demon of sci-
atica has clawed at my hip and Hodgson's faithful hands
have dropped fatigued from his ministrations. How she did
it, how an untrained, emotional little savage, with hands as
quick to strike as the paws of a cub lioness, with tongue as
unbridled as the tongue of a four-year-old, with no more
religion than a Parisian boulevardier, with not one-tenth the
instruction of a London board-school child how such a
creature became in two years an (apparently) finished product
of civilisation, I am at a loss to comprehend. That she did
it is certain. My own eyes have seen Boston Brahmins
drinking her tea gratefully; my own ears have heard New
York fashionables babbling in her drawing-room. As
for London, she dominated one whole season, and not to be
able to bow to her, when she rode on her grey gelding of a
morning, was to argue oneself unbowed to! Paris can never
forget her, for did she not invent an entirely new Mar-
guerite? And the Republic of Art is not ungrateful. She
would have been a social success in Honolulu or Lapland, the
witch!
Whether her ancestor the prince or her ancestress the
actress made her development possible, whether her Con-
necticut grandfather or her Virginia grandmother taught
[ 2 57]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
her, how much she owed her bandit father who defied the
world and her mother, the nun, who won it both for love
who shall say?
When I look back on those wonderful months I find
that the fanciful sprite whose province it is to tint imper-
ishably the choice pictures that shall brighten the last grey
days, has selected for my gallery not those hours when the
footlights stretched between us, though one would suppose
them beyond all doubt the most brilliant, but quaint, unex-
pected bits, sudden, unrehearsed scenes that stand out like
tiny, jewelled landscapes viewed through a reversed telescope,
or white sudden statues at the end of a dark corridor.
There is that delicious afternoon when we went, she and I
and Sue Paynter and an infatuated undergrad, to Oxford
together, and ate strawberries and hot buttered tea-cake and
extraordinary little buns choked with plums, and honey
breathing of clover and English meadows, and drank count-
less cups of strong English tea with blobs of yellow, frothing
cream atop. Heavens, how we ate, and how we talked, and
how tolerantly the warm, grey walls, ivy-hung and statue-
niched, smiled through the long, opal English sunset at our
frivolous and ephemeral chatter! They have listened to so
much, those walls, and we shall perish and wax old as a
garment, and still the tea and strawberries shall brew and
bloom along the emerald turf, and infatuated youths shall
cross their slim, white-flannelled legs and hang upon the voice
of their charmer. Not the pyramids themselves give me
that sense of the continuity of the generations, the ebb and
flow of youth and youth's hot loves and hot regrets and the
inexorable twilight that makes placid middle age, as do those
grey walls and blooming closes of what I sometimes think
is the very heart's core of England. My mother's country-
men may fill London with their national caravanseries and
castles with their nation's lovely (if somewhat nasal)
daughters, but Oxford shall defy them forever.
The infatuated undergrad was the owner of a banjo, an
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ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND
instrument hitherto unknown to Margarita and in regard to
which she was vastly curious, and at her request he and three
of his mates blushingly sang for her some of the American
negro melodies then so popular among them. She was de-
lighted with them and soon began to hum and croon un
consciously, the velvet of her voice mingling most piquantly
with their sweet throaty English singing. By little and little
her tones swelled louder and more bell-like : theirs softened
gradually, till the harmony, so simple, yet so inevitable,
dwindled to the nearest echo and barely breathed the quaint,
primitive words:
"Nettie was a lady
Last night she died . . ."
Those deep tones of hers, stolen from envious contraltos,
turned in our ears to a mourning purple; a sombre, tender
gloom haunted us, and the sorrow of life, that alone binds us
together who live, hung like a lifting cloud over all who came
within the magic radius of her voice. The people gathered
like bees to a honeycomb from all sides; black caps and pale
clear draperies drifted into a wondering circle; the clink
of cups, the murmur of gentle English voices died softly away
and the silence that was always her royal right spread around
her.
" Toll the bell for lovely Nell,
My dark . . . Virginia . . . bride!"
Who they were, those listening hundreds, I could not say
for my life. I suppose they must have been some garden
party I distinctly recall the gaiters of a bishop and the
coloured linings of more than one doctor's hood among them.
They are as sudden, as unexplained in my memory, as those
crowds in dreams, so definite, so individualised, where
haunting, special faces stand out and hands clasp and
shoulders touch and all fades away. Around the vivid
emerald lawn they group themselves, and Margarita, a pearl
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MARGARITA'S SOUL
in pearly trailing laces, sits on a stone bench, defaced and
mossy, in the centre, at the back; the lads adore at her feet,
the banjo drops tinkling handfuls of chords at intervals,
the birds flutter through the ivy overhead, the watered turf
smells strong and sweet in the fanlike rays of the slow sun;
bright pencils of yellow light fall like stained glass among
the immemorial ivy; the day goes, softly, pensively. . .
"Toll the bell for lovely Nell . . ."
"Ah-h-h!" they sigh and melt, and I see nothing more.
But the picture is safe.
Then there was the famous house-party down in Surrey,
whither the elect of England, for some reason or other, seem
to gravitate; whether because the long midsummer Surrey
days appear to them the last stage on the way to a peaceful,
well-ordered heaven, in case they expect to spend eternity
there, or a temporary solace, in case they don't! Sue, to
whom all musical Europe opened its doors on poor Freder-
ick's account, had taken Margarita, to whom the said doors
were gladly opening on her own, to one of the famous
country houses of a county famous for such jewels, and
when Roger and I turned up there, who should our host
be but one of my old schoolmates at Vevay younger son of
a younger son, then, and unimportant to a degree, but ad-
vanced since by one of those series of family holocausts that
so change English county history, to be the head of a great
house and lord of more acres than seems quite discreet
until one is m a position to slap the lord on the shoulder!
To Sue and me the soft-shod luxury, the studious, ripe
comfort of the great, hedged establishment, were frankly
marvellous, accustomed as we were to the many grades and
stages of domestic prosperity between this rose-lined ease
and little-a-year; but Margarita, to whom the old red jersey
of the Island was no more real than the barbaric trappings
of A'ida, who accepted shells from Caliban or diamonds
from Mephistopheles with equal sang-froid, displayed an
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ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND
indifference to her surroundings as regal as it was sincere.
Indeed, the two simplest people at that party (famous for
years in country-house annals as the most brilliant gather-
ing of well-mixed rank and talent that ever fought with that
arch-enemy of the leisured classes, Ennui, and throttled him
successfully for sevent r-two hours) were the wife of an
American attorney-at-law and the eldest son of England's
greatest duke the most eligible parti in the United Kingdom,
a youth of head-splitting lineage and fabulous possessions.
They sat together on the floor of a chintz-hung breakfast
room, spinning peg-tops all over the polished wax, for two
rainy hours before dinner (which function was delayed
half an hour to please them, to the awed wonder of the lesser
guests and the apoplectic amusements of the young peer's
father) and were the only occupants of the great house,
except three collie pups who sat with them, to see nothing odd
in the performance, though Saint-Saens was come over from
Paris to accompany Margarita on the piano and the princess
of a royal family was dressed in her palpitating best for
the best reason in the world not unconnected with the son
of an historic house!
Du Maurier drew a picture of it for Punch in his very
best manner (it went the length and breadth of England)
and then, at Roger's grave request, withdrew it from the
all-but-printed page and gracefully presented him with it.
It was wonderfully characteristic of both of them and prettily
done on both sides, to my old-fashioned way of thinking.
Well, it was after that top-spinning that Margarita and
the Fortunate Youth jumped up carelessly, kicked away
the tops, and raced each other to the noble music room, a
magnificent gallery, all oak and Romneys and Lelys, and
there the Fortunate Youth sat down at the piano (Saint-Saens
standing amused in the curve of it) and began to play the
accompaniment of one of Tosti's great popular waltz-songs.
It is no longer in favour, your waltz-song, though I have
lived through a sufficient number of musical fashions to be
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MARGARITA'S SOUL
reasonably certain of its return to power, some day, but then
it was at its height, and subalterns hummed them to military
bands, from Simla to Quebec, and soft eyes dropped under
those subalterns' right shoulders and soft hearts melted as
the chorus was repeated by request, and the dawn found
them still dancing bless the happy days!
Now Providence had seen fit (displaying thus an aston-
ishing lack of socialistic wisdom and an altogether regrettable
tendency to give to those to whom much had already been
given) to bestow upon this Fortunate Youth enough
musical ability to have made the fortune of a pair of Blind
Toms, so that he could play any and all instruments, instinc-
tively, apparently, and almost equally well. He played
also by ear, with the greatest ease, the most complicated
harmonies, and could accompany anybody's singing or
playing of anything whatever if he happened to be in the
mood for it.
" It is a thousand pities that one could not have found him
in the gutter, that boy," as M. Saint-Saens confided to me,
"it would have been of service to him!"
Which remark, being overheard, scandalised many good
British souls horribly and caused the youth to blush with
perfectly ingenuous and modest pleasure.
He sat down at the great Steinway and ran his long white
fingers loosely over the keys, and said to Margarita, while
the butler gazed in agony at his mistress, and the other guests,
all arrayed for one of the climaxes of one of England's most
temperamental importations from the kitchens of France,
stood divided between interest and foreboding,
"I say, Mrs. Bradley, can you sing 'Bid me Good-bye and
Go'? I'm awfully fond of that."
"I can sing it if it is here," said Margarita placidly, "why
not?"
"Oh, it's safe to be here," he answered easily, and sure
enough, it was there, in a cabinet close by.
Well, it was banal enough, heaven knows how else could
[262]
ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND
it have been popular? Lincoln was not a musician, so far
as I know, but he knew that one can't fool all the people all
the time! And the good Tosti, however light he may ring
nowadays, had one little bit of information not always at the
disposal of modern song-writers he understood how to
write for the human voice. Which has always seemed to me
a very valuable acquisition, if one happens to be in the
song-writing trade.
So when Margarita, with a quick glance at the obvious
little melody, put her hands behind her back like a school-
girl she was dressed in a tight, plain little jacket and skirt
of English tweeds, with stiff white collar and cuffs and
thick-soled boots, and what used to be called an "Alpine
hat" and began to sing, to a slow waltz rhythm, one might
not have expected much: indeed, the youth hummed au-
daciously with her, at first, and the other men, not one of
whom was within many degrees of nonentity, beat time care-
lessly.
"Is there a single joy or pain
That I may never know?"
Stop a bit! What caught at your heart and worried you,
Colonel, and stabbed a little under your D. S. O. ? Were
you quite fair to that lovely, high-spirited creature you mar-
ried, all those years ago?
" Take back your love, it is in vain . . ."
Ah, Lady Mary, you are a good twelve stone nowadays,
but when that poor younger cousin gave you that look in the
garden and the roses crawled over the old dial in the moon-
light, you were slighter, and crueler!
"Bid me good-bye and go!"
It was a waltz, oh, yes, but it was a very Dance of Death
to those of us who had any parting to look back to, that
changed our life and we could never go back again and
make it better; never any more. That was what cut so,
[263]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
and Margarita, dark and slim like a plain brown nightingale,
who leaves plumage to the raucous peacock because it
matters so little what she, the real queen of us all, wears
Margarita spelled it out remorselessly, to the tune of a mess-
room waltz, and told us that youth is only once and so sweet
and for so little time! And the boy beside her smiled with
pleasure and embroidered her rich, clear-cut phrasing and
annotated it and threw jewels and flowers of unexpected
chords through it and mocked the sad, charming fatalism
of it as only spendthrift youth can.
" You do not love me, no!
Bid me good-bye and go . . ."
Cruel Margarita, how could you make the tears splash
down the cheeks of the poor little princess, who knew what
was expected of her and had no greater sin on her conscience
than a tiny lock of her yellow hair always warm, now,
in the breast of a ridiculous second cousin on a sheep-
ranch in far Dakota, U. S. A. ?
"Good-bye, good-bye, 'tis better so . . ."
They stand so still in this picture, those big, non-com-
mittal British, each gnawing his lip a little under the droop-
ing mustache; the women's shoulders are ivory against the
panelled oak and bowls of Guelder roses in Chinese bowls;
that beautiful line from the base of the throat to the top of
the corsage which America has not to give her daughters, as
yet, heaves and droops; the Romneys smile behind their
wax candles in sconces. It is only a waltz of the street, but
she has bewitched us with it, has our Margarita.
But strongest and clearest of all, keen in light and dense in
shadow like a Rembrandt, I see that extraordinary night in
Trafalgar Square, that night that surely lives unique in the
memory of Nelson and the Lions, though most that shared it
may be, and doubtless are for they were not for various
reasons long-lived classes of people dead and dust by now.
How and why we found ourselves at Trafalgar Square I
[264]
ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND
could not tell, though I went to the stake for it this minute.
But I think it must have been that Margarita wanted to walk
through the streets, a form of exercise for which she took fitful
fancies at odd times, and that I, as was mostly the case, went
with her.
We were all alone, for Roger, who shared our walks usually,
when he was not too busy, had just left for Berlin an hour
earlier, on one of his patient unravellings of Carter's diplo-
matic tangles.
It had been a dull, damp day the kind of day that tried
Margarita terribly in England, for she was much under the
influence of the weather, and le beau temps brought out her
plumage like her Mexican parrot in Whistler's portrait.
Looking back at it all, too, I seem to feel, though with no
definite reason for it, that she was perturbed and excited
about something known only to herself, for she was strangely
irritable on our walk, contradicted me fiercely, inquired
testily who Nelson might be, then chid me for a dry old
schoolmaster, when I told her, and such like flighty vagaries,
inseparable, I believed, from her sex in general and her
temperament in particular. If I have never taken the
trouble to defend myself from the accusation of thinking
The Pearl perfect in her somewhat spoiled relations with her
best friends at this period of her life, it is because I have
always considered that such people as are too inelastic in
their views of human nature to realise that Margarita
merely exhibited les defauts de ses qualites (as who of us does
not, at one time or another ?) are unworthy even my argu-
mentative powers, which are not great, as I perfectly under-
stand.
So she unsheathed her sharp little female claws and patted
me mercilessly with them, and contrived to make me seem
to myself a tactless, blundering fool to her heart's content
that night, striding easily beside me, meanwhile, like a boy,
though she had refused to change her high-heeled bronze
slippers for more sensible footgear and carried the un-
[265]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
reasonably long train of her black lace dinner gown over
her arm. Roger did not care for her in black, and she seldom
wore it, but had ordered this a few days ago from the great
Worth, who then ruled those fortunate ladies who could
afford to number themselves among his subjects with a sway
he has since, I am assured, been forced to divide among other
monarchs the only monarchs left now to a Republic that
has never denied that one divine succession through all her
revolutions. For that monarchy Paris never will sing
fa ira; for that principle she knows no cynicism; that
wonderful juggernaut, the Fashion, shall never rumble
across channel, it seems!
I had derided myself for a sentimentalist and spinner of fine
theories when I had thought I detected a little defiance in
her first assumption of this midnight black robe, with its
startling corals on her arm and neck, and the foreign-looking
comb behind her high-dressed hair, the whole bringing out
markedly that continental strain that amused Whistler
(naughty Jimmie!) and displeased Roger. But when she
appeared in it that night determined on a dinner where
most of the guests were highly distasteful to Roger, who had
congratulated himself on a quiet evening at home; when
she had dragged him to it at the risk of losing his only train
and teased him shamefully all through it by the most ridicu-
lous flirtation with one of the worst roues of Europe (Mar-
garita was so fundamentally honest and so thoroughly at-
tached to her husband that such performances could only be
doubly painful to him, since they were obviously intended
maliciously) when she sent him off before the long dinner's
close without any but the most casual adieux and without
the remotest intention of accompanying him, I was un-
comfortably forced to the conclusion that this long-trained,
inky dress was a veritable devil's livery, that she had put it
on deliberately and that there would be no stopping her till
the mood was off.
And now I find myself about to write a most unjustifiable
[266]
ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND
thing, in view of the possibility of these idle memories
falling somehow, sometime, somewhere, into the hands of
that ubiquitous Young Person to whom all print is free
as air in these enlightened days. In America it has been
the rule, to suppress such print as could not brave
this freedom; in France, to suppress such Young Per-
sons as could! There is something to be said for both
methods, and each has, perhaps, its defects; the one pro-
ducing more stimulating Young Persons, the other enjoying
more virile prose.
Be that as it may, I am quite aware that my duty to the
youth of Anglo Saxondom should lead me to state, sadly but
firmly, that such conduct as Margarita displayed on the
night in question could have had but one result that of
filling me, her friend and admirer, with a grieved displeasure
and disgust; that her unwomanly carelessness as to the
feelings of others and her wanton disregard of the wishes
and comfort of those who should have been dearest to her
lowered her in my estimation and greatly detracted from
her charm in my eyes. But I am not writing particularly for
the Young Person and candour compels me to state that she
was quite as interesting to me as ever! I djdn't think she
had treated Roger very handsomely true; but Roger had
known that he was marrying a delicious vixen when he
married Margarita, you see, and if I had begun to lecture her,
there were too many others who would have been only too
delighted to relieve her of my society. She abused her power
sometimes, I admit it but then, she had the power! And
oh, the balm she kept for the wounds she gave!
As I have said, I have not the remotest idea of how or
why we confronted Nelson and the Lions, I cannot by any
effort of memory see us arriving or leaving; but I see myself
pausing in my lecture on English history, as a lighted trans-
parency, a straggling crowd and a band bear down upon us
suddenly out of nowhere. It is a poor, vicious sort of crowd,
the gutter-sweepings of London; pale, stunted lads, hag-
[267]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
gard, idle slatterns, a handful of women of the street, a trio
of tawdry flower girls. Around the band, which turns out to
be only a big drum and a clattering tambourine, a group of
men and women in a vaguely familiar uniform, the women
in ugly coal-scuttle bonnets.
"What is that, Jerry?" says Margarita.
"That is the Salvation Army let's get along," I answer.
But she will not, for she is curious, and I resign myself to
the inevitable and wait. Their crude appeals are symbols
born of a deep knowledge of the human heart they fight to
win gleaming light and rhythmic drum: the first groping
of savagery, the last pinnacle of the most highly organised
religious spectacle the world has yet elaborated. They
gather near the fountain, they group about their lighted
banner, and a drawling cockney voice afflicts the air. I can
see the circle now they form in the classic amphitheatre
that knows no century nor country; a humpback pushing a
barrow of something before him stops near us; a woman,
coughing frightfully, leans on it, muttering to herself, staring
at Margarita's scarf-wrapped head.
The cockney's address begins, "O my brothers ..." but
I do not attend: I want to get Margarita out of the growing
crowd, listless, but lifted for a moment from their sordid
treadmill of existence by the light and the muffled, rhythmic
crush and the high-pitched sing-song. They must have
followed for a long way, for they are churnings from the
very dregs of London and alien to Trafalgar Square, and
the officer on his beat looks at them suspiciously enough.
"Won't you give us a song, lieutenant?" says the speaker
suddenly, "pipe h'up there, friends many a sinner's
saved his soul with a song w'y not some o' you ? Are you
ready, lieutenant?"
I can see her so plainly, the pretty, worn little creature;
pale as death and in no condition for street singing, evidently,
but plucky and borne along by the very zeal of the Crusaders.
The other woman, who cannot sing, shakes the tambourine,
[268]
ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND
a great, burly fellow, some rescued navvy, thuds at the drum,
and her sweet, thin little voice rises, shrill, but wonderfully
appealing, though the night.
"/ need Thee every how,
Most gracious Lord!"
It is not difficult now to see why the crowd followed; her
voice is like a child's lost in the wood, but brave, and sure
of ultimate protection; it has a curious effect of the country
and the hedgerows. They listen eagerly, they like it.
"Come, Margarita, I think we ought to get away the
crowd is getting thicker. People are staring at us."
"No, no, Jerry, let me alone! Oh, see the poor woman,
she is too ill to sing! She has lost her voice do you know
it?"
And so she has. With a clutch at her throat and a pathetic
turn of her eyes to the speaker, the little lieutenant shakes
her head at him and is dumb. He seats her deftly on a camp
stool by the drummer, pats her shoulder, sends a friendly
gutter-rat with the face of a sneak-thief for water, and turns
to the crowd.
"Come now, friends, the lieutenant 'ere 'as lost 'er voice
along o' you, an' tryin' to save yer! Can't you pipe up,
some o' you? If some of you'd sing a bit with us, now,
maybe we'd be able to take back one soul to Christ with
us to-night. Can't one o' yer sing ?"
" I will sing! " says some one near me and it is Margarita!
I clutch her cape fiercely, but it slips off in my hand and
she is at the drum, and the lane that opened for her closes
for me, and I fight in vain to reach her Oh, it must be a
dream!
" I need Thee every hour. . . ."
Ah-h-h! The crowd sighs with the old familiar joy, the
magic of the golden voice slips like a veil over the cruel angles
of their broken lives and mists and softens everything.
She has a slip of printed paper in her hand and reads
[269]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
seriously from it; some one holds the transparency near her
shoulder for light her white shoulders, bare in Trafalgar
Square!
" I need Thee every hour,
Most gracious Lord,
No tender voice like thine
Can peace afford . . . ."
They are still as death, tranced in those liquid bell-tones.
The great drum shivers, as it shivered, of old, a tom-tom,
across the African desert; the old, primal thrill creeps
through my blood good heavens, is this fear? Is it
superstition? Is it religion?
"I need Thee oh, I need Thee!"
The woman sobs like a damned soul beside me; a man
coughs huskily. Will no one stop her ? They have wedged
me so that I cannot breathe, I feel them gathering from the
nearby streets. And there she stands, coral like blood on
her bare neck, the scarf fallen from her black hair, the plea of
all humanity pouring in a great anguished stream of melody
out of her white throat.
"I need Thee oh, I need Thee,
Ev'ry hour I need Theel"
The tambourine shudders barbarically across the smooth
flood of her voice: it is the tingling crash of the Greek
Mysteries and I had thought it vulgar!
I hear hansoms jingling up what will Roger say? He
would kill them all, if he could, I know, and yet no one
there would hurt a hair of her head and does she not belong
to the public?
God knows the poor devils need something is it that,
then? Is it a real thing? Do people fight for it like that ?
For this imperious Voice is agonising for something and the
drum is the beat of its heart.
"Gawd's frightful hard on women," the poor creature
beside me moans, and lo, the little dumb lieutenant is by
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THEY ARE STILL AS DEATH, TRANCED IN THOSE LIQUID BELL -TONES
ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND
her side miraculously, and like a shifting kaleidoscope the
crowd lets them through and she kneels, shaking, by the
drum.
Their white faces heap in layers before me; drawn,
wolfish, brutal in the flaring lights they peer and gasp and
sob, like uncouth inhabitants of another world wait a
bit, Jerry, it is your world, just the same, and perhaps you
are responsible for it? Ugh!
"I need Thee . . ."
"Gad, it's little Jose-fa!"
The clear English voice cuts across the hush, and,
"What a lark!" answers a deeper bass.
He is a very important and highly conventional personage,
nowadays, that slender pink dandy, with five grown daugh-
ters and a Constituency; but if by any odd chance he should
read this, I will wager he forgets what he is actually looking
at for a moment and sees against the black shadows and
rising night fog of Trafalgar Square a beautiful, black-
robed woman in red corals lifted to an empty barrow by
two eager club-dandies and held there by a gigantic Guards-
man the best fencer in Europe, once!
Oh, Bertie, the Right Honourable now, the always honour-
able then, do you know that there were tears on your pink
cheeks? And your noble friend, who broke up his estab-
lishment in St. John's Wood the next day and founded the
Little Order of the Sons of St. Francis, does he know that
the lightning stroke that blinded him like Saul of Tarsus
and sent him reeling from Piccadilly to the slums, lighted
for a moment, as it fell, the way of a dazed, rheumatic
bachelor from America, who saw the terror in his eyes and
the sweat on his forehead as he held his corner of the barrow
and Margarita drove him to his God?
" Ev'ry hour I need Thee . . ."
The fog rolls over us, the lights flare through a sea of mist;
the Honourable Bertie produces a hansom, from his pocket
[271]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
apparently, and the wild, dark etching is wiped out like a
child's picture on a slate.
Margarita falls asleep on my shoulder, I gain my usual
philosophical control, gradually, and realise, now the echoes
of that agonised pleading have ceased to disturb my soul,
that the woman beside me is not even a Christian, technically
speaking, and knew not, literally, what she did!
The magic of the Golden Voice ah, what magic can cope
with it ? Of all the pictures hers has painted for me on those
miraculous, grey-tissued walls where memory lives, this
strange coarse-tinted sketch a very Hogarth in its unsparing
contrasts stands out the clearest. At night, when I close
my eyes and think "London," then does that poor sister of
the streets moan to me that "Gawd's frightful hard on
women," and fight her way to Margarita who has been
favoured beyond most women, and knows not God at least,
not that implacable deity of the London slum! Whenever
I hear or read the phrase "Salvation Army" then do I see
a young exquisite with a white camellia in his buttonhole,
gazing like a hypnotised Indian Seer :.t a crude transparency
blotted with unconvincing texts, then rushing off to found a
celibate order from Margarita, who was no more celibate
that Ceres the bountiful!
Ah, well, the Way is a Mystery, as Alif said, and who am
I that I should expect to solve it, when kings and philosophers
have failed ? At any rate, I have my pictures safe.
CHAPTER XXIX
FATE GRIPS HER LANDING NET
SHE sang her French roles in Germany and three times
in Siegfried, and was getting ready for Paris again when a
long letter from Alice Carter besought us all to come to
Boston as quickly as might be. Old Madam Bradley had
been stricken suddenly with paralysis. One side of her
body was beyond movement, but the other was as yet unim-
paired, and by a series of questions they had found out that
she wanted to see Roger and Roger's wife before she died.
Nor was this enough, for the proud, afflicted old creature,
when their ingenuity had failed, traced left-handed upon a
slate, with infinite effort, my initials: evidently she wanted
to make her peace in this world before she left it.
Margarita demurred a little and I, for one, should be the
last to blame her. Greater knowledge of the world and
especially her acquaintance with Walter Carter, who did
not hesitate to blame his mother-in-law, had taught her
to appreciate Madam Bradley's neglect, and her feeling for
death had none of the sacred respect custom breeds in us
at least outwardly. She had just begun to study Lohengrin
and a charming week at a French chateau with Sue had
given her a taste for the society she liked and ornamented
so well. She suggested that Roger and I should go alone,
leaving her with Sue, and we (Sue and I) trembled for the
outcome, for she seemed rather determined, to us.
But we had not counted sufficiently on Roger's sense of
what was right and just. What might be considered a slight-
ing of his personal claims he could endure patiently; what
[273]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
was due to his family and position he could not ignore.
Quietly he cancelled Margarita's early contracts, secured
passage and dismissed the servants.
"Be ready to sail on Saturday, cherie," he said, "I want
my mother to see you very much, and Mary, too."
"Very well," said Margarita, round-eyed and breathing
fast, and Barbara Jencks clapped her hands noiselessly.
She adored Roger, as did all his servants and dependents,
for that matter.
We reached Boston with the first early snows, and though
his mother's face was set and her hand steady as she laid it
on his head, I think they understood each other and were
grateful from their hearts for that hour of reconciliation.
For Margarita the stately silver-haired figure with immovable
features and fixed, withdrawn gaze held some unexpected and
inexplicable charm. She kissed Madam Bradley willingly,
set the little Mary on her lap and beguiled the child with
every graceful wile to laugh and crow and exhibit her tiny
vocabulary. She sang by the hour, so that the gloomy house
brightened now, for the baby's health echoed with her
lovely notes. Bradleys and Searses and Wolcotts flocked to
meet her and spread her fame and charm abroad; and Roger
forgot for a while the load he carried and seemed like himself
again. Even Sarah capitulated, and that before very long, too.
I saw her actually wiping away a tear as she watched Madam
Bradley lift with great effort her cold white finger and trace
the outline of her grandchild's face: the little Mary was
the image of her father and a fine Bradley, with only her
mother's quick motions and mobile smile to remind one of
that side of her ancestry.
Of course Madam Bradley was not demonstrative, nor
even cordial, from any ordinary point of view, but from hers,
and in the light of our knowledge of her, there was a tremen-
dous difference. Already she had given little Mary a beau-
tiful diamond cross and the famous Bradley silver tea-
service. Sarah had softened wonderfully, too, and seemed to
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FATE GRIPS HER LANDING NET
feel that since her aunt did not die, it was incumbent upon
her to pay her debt to heaven by burying the hatchet. I
don't think I ever quite did Sarah justice, so far as her
feeling for Madam Bradley went she appeared to be
deeply and genuinely attached to her and was sick with
anxiety when the stroke took her. She shared perfectly
the grandmother's feeling over the baby, and Margarita's
good taste in presenting Roger with such a perfect Bradley
was set down to her credit with vigourous justice. For she
never forgave poor Alice for the brown little Carters. Alice's
children resembled their father, and Sue's (almost grand-
children, in that house) were sickly and comparatively unat-
tractive ; but Margarita's daughter, perfect in health, beau-
tiful as a baby angel, active, daring, and enchantingly affec-
tionate, satisfied the old lady's pride completely and she
sat for hours contentedly watching her sprawl on an Indian
blanket on the floor.
Either the comfort of renewed relations with her children
mended her health or the fatality of the shock was over-
estimated, for she did not die, not then nor for many years,
but lived, happier, perhaps in her affliction than before it,
for the bond between her and Roger and Mother Mary,
strengthened when she was preparing for death, never
loosened again, and more than once, a black-robed, white-
coiffed figure has visited the home of her father's like a slim
shadow, and carried with her one of the Church's greatest
blessings, surely the healing of old wounds and the restoring
of human loves.
[ 2 7S]
PART NINE
IN WHICH THE RIVER FINDS THE SEA
Like a white snake upon
the sands
She's writhing in the
crispy foam,
She holds her soul in
her open hands,
And now she stag-
gers and now she stands,
And now she runs to her husband's
home!
O I have seen a wife at rest,
That croons the babe upon
her knee,
She lies upon her goodman's breast
As gentle as a bird at nest,
The mermaid's saved her soul from Sea!
Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.
[277]
CHAPTER XXX
A TERROR IN THE SNOW
WELL, they stayed the month nearly out, and then Roger
took a fancy to see the Island in winter, and I, hugging to
my breast the consciousness of that furnace, was easily
persuaded to go with them: it is January, February and
March that punish me so fearfully in the North, and really
only the last two of those. I had thought Margarita a
little distraite and cold to us all, toward the last, and feared
she was resenting her exile: she took a short trip to New
York, accompanied, of course, by the faithful Jencks, and
I had visions of American contracts, but Roger never
mentioned the subject didn't even ask her why she went,
I believe, she hated to be questioned so.
We found everything in first-rate order (I had written
ahead to light the furnace) and you should have seen Roger's
face when he noticed the registers in the big room! Like a
boy's when some good-natured trick has been played upon
him. Suppose we had not had them nor the coal it makes
me cold now to think of it.
I find I can't write about it very fully, after all, and I must
be forgiven if I cut it short. It's a little too near, yet, after
all the years. I know I never want to see snow again it
is the most cruel blue-white in the world.
We stopped the night, of course, and in the morning
Roger and Margarita went for a walk on the crust, for it
had snowed all night and the evening before the great,
fat, grey clouds were full of it and we thought we were in
for another blizzard like last year's. It had "let up" for
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MARGARITA'S SOUL
a little, as they say about there, but Roger was afraid to
risk going away till it had definitely ended, so they went
for their walk, and I chatted with Miss Jencks by the fire.
They had been gone about an hour when we heard a great
scratching and whining at the door (I thought for a moment
it was Kitch) and Rosy bounded in, snapping his teeth and
glaring fearfully. We both jumped up and he flew at me
and caught my sleeve in his teeth for a moment, I confess,
I felt a little queer, for I had seen him throw Caliban and
hold him then, as I drew back, he uttered the most heart-
rending howl I have ever heard, and spun wildly around,
and at that moment I felt suddenly that something was up
and that I was wanted. Miss Jencks felt it at exactly that
moment, too, and ran for my great-coat before I asked her.
She says that I said,
"Where are they, old fellow? Go seek!" but I don't
remember it. I know that she said in a low voice,
" I shall be of no use I can't run but I will have every-
thing ready, ' ' though she says I must have imagined it.
Rosy flew through the door and I after him she had the
sense to bring me my heavy arctic overshoes, or I should
have slipped in a minute and I ran for about fifty yards.
Then something stopped me. Where it came from, what
did it, I don't know and can never know, but I swear I
heard a low, distinct voice close to me (not a cry, mind you,
but a quiet, hoarse voice) saying,
" Get a rope. Get a rope."
I checked like a scared horse and nearly fell.
" Get a rope," I heard again, "get a rope."
Then, cursing at myself for a crazy fool, I actually turned,
with Rosy showing his teeth at me, and dashed back (all
those precious yards!) and grabbed a pile of rope Caliban
had brought out to bind some big logs for hauling and
abandoned under the eaves when we arrived on the island.
Rosy was far ahead now, but he had gone through the crust
at intervals and I tracked him by that.
[280]
I LEANED OVER THE BANK AND CRIED THAT I WAS THERE, BUT
SHE NEVER STOPPED IT WAS TERRIBLE
A TERROR IN THE SNOW
Suddenly the wind it was blowing a steady gale behind
me shifted, and I heard a succession of terrible cries,
great hoarse, high shrieks, like nothing human and yet
unlike any animal. Wordless, throat-tearing screams they
were, and I shouted back, against the head-on wind,
"Coming! Coming! Hold on! I'm coming!" till I
coughed and strangled and had to stop.
How I ran! I never did it before and certainly never can
again. Rosy's tracks curved and twisted, and I felt I was
losing time, but dared not risk missing them, for I was
coming nearer to that awful voice steadily, though it
echoed so I should have been helpless without any other
guide.
Well, I found them. Roger up to his shoulders in icy
water, his head dropped back, white, on her arm, and she up
to her waist on a slippery ledge under the highest point of
the bank the bank that I blasted out! She was caught,
I could see, on a jagged point by her heavy, woollen skirt
(it was made in London, bless it!) and must have wedged
her foot, besides, in some way, for she had his whole weight;
her lips were blue. She wore a blood-red cape, all merry
and Christmas-like against the white ledges, and her hair
streamed in the wind. Her head was thrown back like a
hound's and those blood-curdling screams poured out of it;
her eyes were shut. Now and then Rosy bayed beside her,
scratching at the snow, and where the water was not frozen
in the protected pools it swirled like a mill-race around the
nasty, pointed rocks.
I leaned over the bank and cried that I was there, but she
never stopped it was terrible. Finally I made a slip-noose
and actually managed to fling it over his head Roger had
taught me to do that at school, twenty years ago and that
stopped her, hitting against her cheek, and she opened her
eyes.
"Put it under his arms, can you?" I cried, and after
several efforts, for she was nearly frozen stiff, the brave,
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MARGARITA'S SOUL
clever creature did, and I got it around a tree on the edge.
Then I stopped, panting, for I realised that I could do no
more. The run had taken all the strength out of me I
couldn't have dragged a cat and she was little more than a
foot below me!
I can't write about it. My arms ache now, just as my
infernal shoulders ached with that paralysing, numb ache
then.
"Listen!" I cried, for she had begun to scream again,
" listen, Margarita, or I will beat you! Is he unconscious ?"
She nodded.
" Can you hold on five minutes, with his weight gone?"
She blinked in a sort of stupid assent.
" Could you for ten? Are you braced solid?"
Again she blinked, and with an inspiration I plunged my
shaking hand into my great-coat pocket and pulled out a
brandy-flask. Miss Jencks had taken it from the side-
board.
I tied it into my handkerchief, opened, and swung it down
to her, and she got her lips around it and coughed it down.
It acted instantly and she could move a little, and while I
encouraged her, and after several heartrending failures,
which nearly spilled all the brandy, she got it into his mouth
between his teeth, as his big body swung in the noose. It
ran over his chin and down his neck, but a little got in, and
his eyelids quivered. Soon he coughed, and I dared not
wait another second.
"I am going for Caliban," I said very distinctly, "we
will pull you out in a few minutes. Let him alone and hang
on, do you hear? Don't scream any more you are safe.
Pour all the brandy into him tell him he is tied fast.
Don't try to move you may slip, and tear your skirt.
Hold on!"
Then I turned my back on them and ran, or rather
stumbled off. I leaned over and kissed her forehead, first.
I remember muttering, "I never asked before if You
[282]
A TERROR IN THE SNOW
or Anybody is there, save them! Take me and save them! "
and then I stumbled on and on. . . .
It was not too long. Caliban was coming with his big
wood-sled and more rope and blankets, and as I caught sight
of him the most extraordinary thought flew into my mind,
which worked with a dreadful clearness, for I saw them
stiffen and sink and slip away every second. Rosy bayed
just then, and as my heart sank, for I thought they were
gone, it suddenly occurred to me what Rosy's name must
have been!
" It's Rosencrantz! " I muttered, " and the one Margarita
insists was called 'Gildy' was Guildenstern, and they were
Hamlet's friends poor Prynne!" Perhaps that wasn't
idiotic I laughed as I stumbled along!
Well, they were there, and Roger was enough himself
to strike out with his feet a little and avoid hindering us,
if he couldn't help much. I made another noose for her,
and she hung in it while Caliban dragged him up the fellow
had the strength of an ox and showed wonderful dexterity
and later crawled down the rocks and cut her skirt through
with his big clasp-knife. She was the hardest to move,
for her foot was caught all that saved her. I thought we
should break her ankle before we could get her.
We laid them on the sledge, wrapped in blankets, poured
in more brandy, and Caliban attached Rosy to it by his
collar an old trick of his, it seems and they dragged us all
home, for my worthless legs gave out completely.
Miss Jencks and Agnes rubbed them and mustard-
bathed them and I wrote telegrams for Caliban to take in
the launch wrote them as well as I could in the clutches of
a violent chill, with my teeth like castanets and my hands
palsied and even as I wrote, it came to me that Margarita
had repeated monotonously, all the way home, in a hoarse,
painful voice (but, mercifully, a low one) " get a rope, get a
rope, get a rope."
It was the voice I had heard, that turned me back!
[283]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
She was all right, but very weak and sore and with a little
fever not much. She was perfectly conscious of every-
thing within an hour, and told us about it: how she had
slipped and Roger had hit his head and strained himself
in going after her. She thinks she held him under the arms
ten minutes, screaming all the time! She sent Rosy back,
finally, though at first he refused to go.
Roger was delirious for five days and very dangerously
ill for three weeks it was double pneumonia. Miss Jencks
had seen it before and it was her prompt measures before
we could get the doctor or Harriet that saved him, they
think. It was a bad age for pneumonia; Harriet said she
would rather have pulled Margarita through it. She brought
a deaconess from the little dispensary with her and one or
the other was watching him like a cat every second, for three
weeks. It was a nurse's case, the doctor said, though he
stopped the first week.
When Margarita came to herself after an hour or so, she
asked for me, and as I knelt by her bed and she turned her
great eyes on me I caught my breath, for I was looking at
a new woman. I can't describe it better than by saying
that she had a soul! There had always been something
missing, you see, though I would never have admitted it,
if she hadn't got it then. But it was there.
It was very pathetic, those first days when Roger was
delirious: she was nearly so herself. And yet it was not
wholly grief there was a definite reason for it, which we all
felt, somehow, but she would not give it.
"Will he not know me for a minute, a little minute,
Harriet?" she would beg, so piteously, and Harriet would
soothe her and try to give her hope. The fifth day he was
very low and the doctor told us to make up our minds for
anything: he hadn't slept all night. I took Harriet by the
shoulders and asked her if she could not possibly make him
conscious before. I don't know why I asked her and not
the doctor, but I did. She promised me she would try
[284]
A TERRpR IN THE SNOW
(I think she had nearly given up hope, herself) and at three
the next morning she called me and said that I might have
a chance that he might know us for a moment. Mar-
garita was by the bed: her face was enough to break your
heart.
"Only a minute, Harriet only a little minute!" she
pleaded like a baby. I don't know what insane vow I
didn't offer . . . He opened his eyes and they fell on her.
She put her hand on his forehead and said very plainly.
"Listen, Roger, you must listen. It is I Margarita,
Cherie, you know. Do you hear?"
His eyes looked a little conscious, and Harriet held his
pulse and slipped something into his mouth. In a moment
we all knew that he knew us.
"Now say one thing, Mrs. Bradley quickly!" Harriet
whispered.
Margarita bent like a flash and whispered in his ear very
swiftly: her whole body was tense. You should have seen
his eyes he was old Roger again! I could see his hand
press hers and she kissed him just as the flash went by, and
he took to muttering again.
Harriet pushed her away and put her hand on his fore-
head, then nodded at the deaconess.
"Call the doctor!" she said sharply, and I thought it
was all over. . . .
But it was the turn, and after that by hair's breadths
and hair's breadths they pulled him over.
" Now he knows, Jerry," Margarita said to me, and went
to bed herself.
It was a good week after that, when the doctor had gone
and we were all breathing naturally again, that Harriet
asked me abruptly if I had noticed Mrs. Bradley's voice.
I said yes, that it was still decidedly husky. She looked at me
so sadly, so strangely, that my nerves fairly jumped we
had all been on edge for a month and I commanded her
rather sharply to say what she meant and be done with it.
[285]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
" Is her voice injured ? "
" I am afraid so, yes," she said gently.
"But surely time and rest and proper treatment," I
began, but she shook her head.
"The doctor examined her throat before he left," she
said. "Of course he had no laryngoscope with him, but
he didn't need one, really. The vocal cords are all stretched
he said the specialists might help her and take away a
great deal of the hoarseness, but that in his opinion she can
never stand the strain of public singing again: he thinks
excitement alone would paralyse the cords."
"Who's to tell her?" I said quietly.
You see, we'd all been stretched so taut that we couldn't
use any more energy in exclamations or regrets.
" I thought you might," she said, but I shook my head.
"Miss Jencks " I began, but it appeared that Miss
Jencks felt unequal to it. So Harriet told her, of course,
on the principle that when one has a heavy load he may as
well carry a little more, I suppose.
And after all it wasn't so bad; for Margarita came down
to me a little later, and told me she had known it all the
time!
" But, of course, dear child," I said hopefully, " Doctor
is not a throat specialist, you know, and we can but try
some of those famous fellows, a little later. Perhaps in a
year or two "
"You are very good to me, Jerry," she said, "but it is
no use. I know. I shall never sing again. I am sorry,
because "
" Sorry?" I cried, "why, of course you are sorry! What
do you mean?"
"Because," she continued placidly, "it will not be so
much to give Roger."
"Give Roger?" I echoed stupidly, "how 'give Roger'?"
"I was not going to sing any more, anyway," she
said.
[286]
A TERROR IN THE SNOW
For a moment I was dazed and then the simplicity of it
all flashed over me.
" Why, Margarita!" I cried and that is all the comment
I ever made.
"That was what I wanted to tell him when he did not
know me," she explained. " I I was going to tell him the
night the night it happened."
"And does he know it now?"
" Of course. That is why he got well," she said promptly.
And do you know, I'm not sure she was wrong? That
life was killing him I mean it ran across his instincts and
feeling and beliefs, every way.
There was no doubt she meant it. She never referred to
the subject again.
He wanted her to see somebody else about her throat,
but she absolutely refused to leave the Island till he was out
of bed Sarah came on with the baby two weeks later and
they sat by him all day nearly, the two of them, and he hardly
let go her hand. He had changed a great deal in one way
his hair was quite silvered. But it was very becoming.
I didn't leave till I saw him in a dressing-gown in a long
chair by the fire. Harriet went back to her hospital, and
when Roger was up to it they went South for a bit before he
began to work again.
The day before I left he did an odd thing one of the
two or three impractical, sentimental things I ever knew him
to do in his life. He asked me to bring him his history of
Napoleon it had been packed into their luggage by mis-
take and deliberately laid it on the heart of the fire! I
cried out and leaned forward to snatch it to think of the
labour it represented! but he put his hand on my arm.
"Don't, Jerry I hate every page of it!" he said.
Well, I have been wondering these twenty years if per-
haps they'll talk about it the whole thing some day.
At the time, we all acted as if it were the most natural
thing in the world for Margarita to settle down as a haus
[287]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
frau perhaps when Nora got done with her studies of life
(for I read Sue's Ibsen, you see) that is what she did, after
all!
At any rate, I frankly hope so. For if all the wisdom and
experience and training that the wonderful sex is to gain by
its exodus from the home does not get back into it ultimately,
I can't (in my masculine stupidity) quite see how it's going
to get back into the race at all! And then what good has it
done? I hope Mr. Ibsen knows!
[288]
CHAPTER XXXI
FATE EMPTIES HER CREEL
[FROM SUE PAYNTER]
PARIS, Feb. ioth., 189
JERRY DEAR:
What must you think of me for delaying so long to write,
after the few curt words I found for you that night ? I hope
you know that something must have kept me and have
forgiven me already. Poor little Susy was taken very sick
the night you sailed, with violent pains and a high fever.
Fortunately there is a good American doctor here a
Doctor Collier and we pulled her through, though it
seemed a doubtful thing at one time. The doctor decided
that she had appendicitis (I never heard of it before) and
operated immediately on her, which undoubtedly saved
her life. It seems that Mother Nature is not quite so clever
as we have always thought her and has left a very dangerous
little cul-de-sac somewhere, that ought not to be there, so
modern science takes it out. Isn't that strange ? The doc-
tor has just come over to operate for this in Germany
somewhere; he was an assistant of Dr. McGee, whom you
sent to the South, and can't say enough of the magnificent
work he is doing there. He was much interested to find
I knew all about it and that Uncle Morris stocked the dis-
pensary. Isn't the world small ?
I hope you're not feeling too badly about Margarita
don't. Of course I understand what the stage has lost, and
you will confess that I was as anxious for her career as
anybody, even when I was sorriest for Roger. I wanted her
to have her rights as an artist. But if she doesn't want
[289]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
them ah, that's a different pair of sleeves altogether. She
has sent me her latest photograph, and the eyes are all I need.
Of course, I have no such brilliant future to sacrifice, but if I
had, I am sure I should throw a dozen of them over the wind-
mill for two eyes like hers to-day!
I don't know why I am prosing along at this rate and
avoiding the main object of this letter. I must plunge right
into it, I suppose, and get it over.
Don't think I don't appreciate all your kind, your generous,
offer meant, Jerry. I thought of it so often and so long before
I gave you that brusque answer. And it tempted me for a
moment indeed it did. I think, as you say, that we could
travel very comfortably together and we have many of the
same tastes I know no one so sympathetic as you. As
for "nursing a rheumatic, middle-aged wanderer through
assorted winter-climates," that is absurd, and you know it,
though I should be glad enough to do it, if it were true, as far
as that goes. I know all you would do for the children, and
how kind you would be to them. Not that I like that part,
though, to be quite frank. I could never love another wo-
man's children (especially if I loved their father) and I can't
understand the women that do. So I always imagine
a man in the same position. And I can't help feel-
ing, Jerry, that if you really loved me loved me in the
whole crazy sense of that dreadful world, I mean that you
wouldn't speak so sweetly about the children: how could
you? How can any man I couldn't, if I were one!
But this is very unfair, because you never said you did
love me in that way don't imagine that I thought so for a
moment. Jerry dear, my best friend now, for I must not
count on Roger any more, do you think I am blind? Do
you think I have been blind for three years ? And will you
think me a romantic, conceited fool when I say that unless
I even I, a widow and a jilt, who hurt a good man terribly
and got well punished for it ! can have the kind of love that
you can never give me, because you gave it to someone
else three years ago, I don't want to accept your generous
kindness ? You see, I know how you can love, Jerry, just
as I see now that I never knew how Roger could until
those same three years ago. Of course he didn't either
[290]
FATE EMPTIES HER CREEL
would he ever have known the difference, I wonder, if we
had married?
And there is another reason, too. You might just as well
know it, for my conceit is not pride really, and it may be
you know it already. Whatever love Frederick failed to kill
in me and the very idea of passionate love almost nauseates
me, even yet is not in my power to give you, Jerry dear.
It might, some day, later, wake again, but it would not be
your touch that could wake it.
Now, since this is so of both of us, don't you see, dear,
that things are better as they are ? I promise you that if I
ever need help, I will come to you first of all, since what you
really want is to help me and make me comfortable and
give me the pleasure of wide travel, you generous fellow!
And if ever you really need me, Jerry but you won't, I
am sure. No one else is quite what you are to me, or can be,
now, and we must always be what we have always been
the best of friends. Tell me that you know I am right, and
then let us never discuss it again.
Yours always,
SUE.
UNIVERSITY CLUB, May 2oth, 189
DEAR JERRY:
Have just got back from a little Western trip (my brother
and I exchanged pulpits for a month) and learned of Roger's
illness and the accident. What a terrible thing, and how
fortunate they were! I always liked that big dog, the fine,
faithful fellow. Mrs. Bradley's leaving the stage was no
great surprise to me: she came to New York to ask my advice
about it just before the accident. We had a long talk, and
though she by no means agreed at the time to everything I
said on the subject, she did not seem opposed, herself, to
much of it, in fact, she seemed very anxious to do the fair
thing, it seemed to me. She appreciated perfectly that the
more she did in one way the less she could do in another
how wonderful it is to think that she has never been to
school in her life! It almost seems as if so much schooling
were unnecessary, doesn't it, when association with educated
[291]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
people can do so much in three years. Or perhaps it is only
women that could absorb so quickly.
I hope the doctors are wrong about her voice. They all
say it will be a little husky always (though less and less so
with time) and that singing, except in the quietest, smallest
way, will be impossible. It does not seem to matter very
much to her. She is looking very well indeed (you know,
of course, that she is expecting another child in the autumn
Roger told me). He is quite magnificent with his thick,
silvery hair, I think. Mr. Carter, who dined with me here
at the club a night or two ago (he gave my boys a fine talk
on German customs and military games) tells me that he
hopes (Roger, I mean) to be able to do a great deal of his
work on the Island certainly all the summer and autumn.
He seems to be turning into a sort of consulting lawyer, like
a surgeon. Besides that great text-book business I suppose
you know about. He says there are two or three years' work
on that alone.
I hope that you agree with me that Mrs. Bradley is much
better off in her husband's home, fulfilling the natural
duties of her sex. You seemed to think in your last that Mrs.
Paynter would not, to my great surprise. What in the
world is the matter with the women, now-a-days? Where
shall we be if the finest specimens of them have no leisure
to perpetuate the race ? Are only the stupid and unoriginal,
unattractive ones to have this responsibility? I wish I
dared get up a sermon on these lines; I may try yet!
You know Mrs. Paynter well, Jerry do you think there
is any chance for me there? I have been for ten years
proving that a minister need not be married, and I've done
it, too, but it was only because I never met the woman I
wanted. I have, now, but she won't have me. Does that
mean it's final? I don't know much about women, but I
can't believe one like her would refuse just to be asked again.
Tell me what you think. She seems very decided, though
she sympathises thoroughly with my work.
Yours faithfully,
TYLER FESSENDEN ELDER.
292]
FATE EMPTIES HER CREEL
[FROM MY ROUGH DIARY]
May 30, 189
Have just written Tip Elder how sorry I am about Sue,
but that he'd better give it up. She'll never marry. How
curiously we three are twisted into the Bradley weaving!
M. so happy and beautiful the past seems a dream.
Voice lovely still, but not quite under her control always,
and a tiny roughness in it that humanises, somehow it was
too clear before, though that sounds absurd.
Everybody wondering how everybody else will take her
retirement. Strangely enough, no one regrets much, per-
sonally, but all sure the others will! Are we all more clear-
sighted than we suppose or more sentimental? Surgeon
from Vienna has pronounced condition final. Either she
is a wonderful actress or else we have over-estimated her
vocation; she seems absolutely contented. And yet, think
of her triumphs! And of course, her greatest successes were
all to come. Madame M is furious, but told Sue she
had never trusted Roger he was always too silent! "He
has absorbed a great artist like so much blotting-paper!"
she said. But he has got something into her eyes that
Madame never saw there: we all agree on that. How did
Alif put it "Tis Allah sets the price, brother we have
but to pay." Well, she's paid. And old Roger, for that
matter, and Sue, and Tip and I. Who keeps the shop,
I wonder?
293]
CHAPTER XXXII
THE SUNSET END
To-day I went to Mary's wedding, and it has made me
very thoughtful. She was very lovely a great, blooming
blonde, the image of Roger. They were a fine pair, as he
held her on his arm: he looking younger than his sixty years,
she older than her twenty, for all the children are wonder-
fully mature and well-developed.
She was nearly as tall as young Paynter, whose slender-
ness, however, is like steel. I well remember when Dr.
McGee took him to North Carolina and made him over a
weak, irritable little precocity of twelve or so. He never ate
or slept in a house for three years, and I think that the birds
and trees of that period got into his opera and made it what
it is, the musical event of a decade. He works best in Paris,
and they will live there, after a honeymoon on the Island.
I don't think Mary was ever the favourite child, though
each of the six thinks it is, Margarita is so wonderful with
them! She cannot hide from me, who watch every light
in her eye, that young Roger, the second child and oldest
boy, means a shade more to her than the others, just as
Roger, when he sits alone with Sue, the second daughter,
talks to her more confidentially than to any of the others,
and watches her yellow head most steadily when they are
all swimming, off the Island wharf. They are both fine,
big girls, just as Roger and my namesake are fine, big,
steady fellows and little Lockwood is a fine, big, handsome
child.
But my foolish old heart lost itself long ago to a pair
[294]
THE SUNSET END
of slate-blue eyes set in an olive face under dark, strong
waves of hair, and when into that large, blonde brood there
came a perfect baby Margarita, a slender, dark thing who
flashed the summer twilight sky at one from under her long
dark lashes, I claimed her for mine and mine she is my
Peggy. She is alone among the others, my precious black
swan: her quaint, dreamy thoughts are not their practical,
sunny clear-headedness, her self -peopled, solitary wanderings
are not their merry comradeships, her lovely, statuesque
movements are not their athletic tumbles. She stood to-day
at her mother's knee in just the attitude S n painted them
for me, her eyes clouded with awe just as the bloom upon her
mother's sweeping gown of velvet clouded its elusive blue,
the soft plume upon her bride-maiden's hat leaned against
the rich lace on her mother's breast. How beautiful they
were! As I stared at them and their eyes lighted at the same
moment with just the same dear smile, so that they were more
than ever wonderfully alike, I heard a woman whisper
behind me that the gentleman the beautiful Mrs. Bradley
and her picturesque little daughter were smiling at was the
child's godfather, an old friend all his money left to her
and his namesake, her brother. Before the whisper had
ended Margarita the woman had turned her eyes toward
her husband they could not leave him long that day but
Margarita the child kept hers on me, and under them the
years rolled back and I seemed to see a grave young girl
sitting on the sand in a faded jersey, looking down into my
heart and telling me that I loved her!
How many times since have I not seen her on that beach,
cradling her rosy babies in her strong, smooth arms, mur-
muring with her graceful daughters, judging mildly between
some claim of her tall, eager sons! How many summer
evenings have I sat with Peggy in my arms and watched her
pace that silvering beach with her husband, hand in hand
like young lovers! I think they forget utterly that Time
slips by, he passes them so gently.
[295]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
It is a favourite claim of ours who are bidden to that home
that it is an enchanted isle, and that he only brushes it with
his wings, gliding over, and turns the scythe away and holds
the hour-glass steady. Even the children feel it: it is a
half -jesting, half-serious plaint with them that the goats,
the donkeys, and the ponies to which they successively
transfer their affections can never secure immortal youth
by a yearly sojourn in that happy kingdom. I offered once
to rebuild our old bridge to make it a drawbridge, even,
and thus keep our treasure safe, but after a long council
it was rejected.
" It wouldn't be a really island, then, you see, Jerry dear,"
said my Peggy (always deputed to bear an ultimatum to me)
"and we like it better an island don't you?"
Of course it must be an island! It was marked out for
an island when first the waters were gathered up and the dry
land appeared. I think all the happy places are islands I
should like to make one of Italy. I am convinced that when
the Garden of Eden is definitely settled (and Major Upgrove
is trying to persuade me to come with him to find it he
has a theory) it will be found to be a secret isle in some
great estuary or arm of that ageless Eastern river suspected
by the major. Surely that mysterious Apple (of whose
powers Margarita was once so sceptical) never grew on
any vulgar, easily-to-be-come-at mainland! No, it lurks to-
day in its own island Paradise, and the angel with the flam-
ing sword cut the land apart from all common ground so
that the furrows smoked beneath it as the floods raced in.
If we find it the major and I shall we bring some apples
back to Peggy ? In truth, I am none too sure. Why my
darling's sex has been so eager for that Apple is not yet
entirely evident though I am not too stupidly obstinate to
admit that it may be evident, one day. But the fact re-
mains that Eve certainly regretted it, and Adam, one would
suppose, must have, for he has been settling dressmaker's
accounts ever since!
[296]
IT IS A FAVOURITE CLAIM OF OURS WHO ARE BIDDEN TO THAT HOltE
THAT IT IS AX ENCHANTED ISLE
THE SUNSET END
As to the position held by this father of mankind among
the Bradley children, by the way, volumes might be written.
To suppose that Barbara Jencks, their bond slave in all
else, has remitted an atom of her zeal in bringing them into
the state of religious conviction enjoyed by the Governour-
General's family, would indicate the densest ignorance of
her character. And success has not been entirely lacking,
for my namesake delights in the battles of the Kings and
Sue's sweet life is a very Sermon on the Mount. But Lock-
wood still sacrifices to Pan among the beehives and pro-
pitiates the Thunder God with favourite kittens, and Roger
the Second long ago informed his would-be mentor, to her
horror, that if a fellow tried to be like his father and
told the truth and worked hard, he thought that
fellow could take his chances with God ! Dear, ob-
stinate lad, with your cleft chin and your blue eyes,
it is not your grandmother, who leaves her Emerson
and her Psalms unread together, when she can fill her
keen, proud eyes with you, that will deny your simple
creed!
But my little Peggy has outgrown Pan, and scorns to
appease her baby brother's deities.
" I asked Roger," she said to me one late afternoon, when
we sat in her mother's rocky seat and watched the red sun
sink, "why the sun was here just so that we could see
things? And he said yes. And the moon the same way,
for night. But that little blind girl I see in the Park, in
New York, she can't see things, Jerry dear. She never can.
What is that for?"
" I can't tell, sweetheart."
" You don't know, Jerry dear?"
"No, Peggy, I don't know."
" But someone knows ? "
"That I can't tell, either."
She turned her serious, deep eyes on me.
" But, Jerry dear, nothing can be that someone Someone
[297]
MARGARITA'S SOUL
don't know, can it? That wouldn't be right. There
must be Some one?"
" I hope so, sweetheart."
She stared quietly at the rosy ball that sank, below us
and far away, at the rim of the sea Margarita's sea.
" I know there is, Jerry," she said simply. " Look at
that, the way I do, and you'll know, too."
And just then, I thought I did . . .
Sue was at the wedding, of course, grey, and a little worn,
now, but dressed & merveille and delightful in her pride at
her genius-boy. His sister, a wonderful, modern young
woman, has learned her "trade," indeed, though one that
her mother never dreamed of, and will decorate, furnish
and supply with everything from ancestral portraits to patent
mouse-traps any structure from a hotel to a steam-yacht
that you may place in her capable, college-bred hands. A
remarkable achievement is young Susan the achievement
of the fin de siecle generation. At the wedding-breakfast
she described to me her last "job"; the putting in com-
mission of a dilapidated fifteenth-century chdteau for its
new oil-king owner he was born in a bog-cabin in Ireland
and never tasted anything but potatoes and stir-about till
he was fourteen. But Susan has raked Europe for a service
fit for him to eat his cabbage from and Asia for rugs fit for
his no longer bare feet, and has deposited his good American
cheque in her bank. She is improving the occasion of her
American visit by an extended hunt for old silver and brasses
and china for a great country house on the Hudson its
many-millioned mistress will pay well for her "imported"
treasures!
Truly is Susan a lesson to us, and wide would be her
great-grandmother's eyes could she see Susan disposing of
her girlish samplers and draping her camel's-hair shawl
behind a Hawthorne jar. And I am bound to admit that
Susan is not marrying, though her mother was struggling
with two delicate children at her age. No, Susan has no
[298]
THE SUNSET END
need to " marry to get away from home." As fast as this
accomplished young woman establishes herself in a charming
house, some envious person buys it of her, and she moves
serenely to a new one, a contented, self- respecting Arab with
a bank account.
Ah, well, perhaps it v/ill be, as her mother triumphantly
declares, all the more honour to the man who gets her,
after all! We oldsters must not be stubborn, nowadays.
My mother, like old Mrs. Upgrove, is living still; well and
happy, both of them, thank God, and as proud of their sons
as if either had ever done anything to deserve it. Neither
of them has much to say of Margarita, I have noticed, though
both fondle her children, a little absently, perhaps, and
feign to wonder what it is we see in Peggy that blinds us to
the excellencies of the others stouter children and more
respectful, my dear!
And Death, that spares them both, and old Madam Brad-
ley, too (eighty-eight now and half paralysed for nearly
twenty years!), what had we done that he should take
away one whom we and the world her world could so
ill spare ? Does Someone, indeed, know why, my sweet-
heart Peggy ? I try to think so, but it is hard to see.
Nine years ago Harriet put Peggy into her mother's arms
and praised the little thing and kissed them both, and then
told Roger that she must leave them, for she felt ill and would
not risk the responsibility of further nursing. She would
send a good nurse straight from New York, she said, and
Roger himself took her there, leaving the doctor with Mar-
garita, as soon as he dared. He brought back the other
nurse, wired me to look after Harriet, and left her com-
fortable in the little apartment of a good friend of hers, with
a promise of a speedy return. He never saw her alive again.
Dr. McGee, even then a famous physician and devotedly
attached to her, worked day and night over her, but it was
useless; the over-strained, busy heart had given way and
she lived only three days, growing feebler with every hour.
MARGARITA'S SOUL
I was sitting beside her in the afternoon, trying to be
cheerful, trying to cheer her with those futile subterfuges
we are forced to, trying to get it all clear in my own troubled
mind, when she smiled whimsically at me and begged me to
spare myself such pain.
"A nurse is the last person to need such talk, dear Mr.
Jerrolds," she whispered to me, and as the good deaconess
who had been her first helper in her chosen work burst into
tears and stumbled from the room, she put out her hand and
I took it silently.
"What you have been what you have been, Harriet!"
I muttered unsteadily, and then her eyes met mine.
" What have I been ? " her lips barely formed the words,
" do you know ? "
There in her soft brown eyes I saw at last at once.
God knows I never guessed before. They met mine so
calmly, so honestly, so fearlessly alas, they could be fear-
less now!
"And I have been such a fool such a brute!"
"Hush! you never knew," she whispered, "you could
not help it, my dear. It was so from the very first when
you saw my diary."
"But I might I might have "
Again she smiled whimsically.
" O no," she said quietly, " there was no chance for me,
of course. I never dreamed of it, my dear. But but I
wanted you to know it. There has never been anybody
but you."
I tried to speak, but could not, and again, but the words
dried on my lips. Then I saw that she was sleeping from
exhaustion, probably, and sat by her in silence till the
deaconess came back, red-eyed, and sent me away. I bent
over her and kissed her cheek, before I left, and I am
sure that her lips moved and that the hand I had
held while she slept pressed mine faintly. But she did
not open her eyes, and in the morning the message came
[300]
THE SUNSET END
that she had drifted easily away, in that same sleep before
dawn.
Gone and I never knew, never faintly surmised, never
considered!
Gone and there had never been anybody but me!
Ah, Peggy, there had need be Someone that knows, to
make good the pity of it, the cruelty of it, the senseless
waste of it!
But we three, whom she gave so generously to each other,
whom, in turn, she tended back to life, into whose lives she
has grown as a tree grows, can we call her love wasted ?
Nor is it among us alone that her memory flourishes. No
woman in all those mountain parishes she loved so well
faces her dark hour of travail without blessing her name and
the name of her messengers, whom, in the endowment called
in memorial of her, Margarita sends to them, to tend them
and the children they bear, as Harriet helped her and hers.
She lies among them, a stone's throw from the corner-stone
she laid nearly twenty years ago, now, and many visitors
have never seen the tablet that lies along her grave so
thick the flowers are always lying there.
"Mother says you are not to look so sad, Jerry dear,
because it isn't me that Freddy's marrying!" says Peggy
softly, behind me, and I come back to the present, with a
je 
