Next morning, at about eleven o'clock, my good sister Josephine came to me in my study, and said, “She is awake now and wishes to see you.”
“I am at her service,” I replied. “Will she join me here?”
“She is eager to have you operate. She asked me where you would do so. I told her I supposed there, in her bed. Then she said she would not waste time by getting up, and wished me to tell you that she is waiting to have it done. I suspect that she is partly influenced by a reluctance to put on her prison uniform again. I should have offered her the use of my wardrobe, but she is so much taller and larger than I, that that would be absurd.”
“Yes, to be sure, so it would. Very well. I will go to her directly. If she is in a favourable condition of mind and body, it will, perhaps, be as well not to delay. But first tell me—you have held some conversation with her?”
“Yes, a little.”
“And what impression do you form of her character?”
“She is very pretty. She is even beautiful.”
I laughed. “What has that to do with her character?99
“I infer her character as much from her appearance as from her behaviour, as much from her physiognomy as from her speech.”
“Oh, I see. And your inference is?”
“I cannot be quite sure. There is a certain hardness in her face, a certain cynical listlessness in her manner, which may indicate a vice of character, but which may, on the other hand, result simply from hardship and suffering. She is undoubtedly clever. She has received a good education; she expresses herself well; she has a marvellously musical voice. Yet, on the whole, I cannot say that I find her likeable or agreeable. She seems to proceed upon the assumption that nobody is moved by any but selfish motives; that everybody has an axe to grind; and that she must be constantly on her guard lest we take some advantage of her. She is horribly suspicious.”
“Well, go on.”
“Well, I do not know that I can say anything more. I cannot quite fathom her—quite make her out. It is a question in my mind whether she is naturally a young woman of good instincts, whose passions have betrayed her into the commission of some crime, or whether she is inherently and intrinsically corrupt.”
“Towards which alternative do you incline?”
“I do not like to express a final opinion; but I am afraid, from what little I have seen of her, I am afraid that I incline towards the latter.”
“That she is intrinsically bad. Well, it will be interesting, after our operation, to see whether, in a new environment, under new conditions, the good that is latent in her—as good is latent in every human soul—will be developed. And now will you come with me to her room?”
“Will she not prefer to see you alone?”
“Why should she? Come, let us go.”
We found her sitting up in bed, waiting for us. By daylight she seemed to me even more beautiful than she had seemed by gaslight. Her features were strongly yet finely modelled; her skin was exquisitely delicate, both in texture and in colour; and her eyes were wonderfully liquid and translucent. But an expression of deep melancholy brooded over her whole countenance; while underlying that again, was certainly visible the cynical hardness that Josephine had complained of.
Having wished her good-morning, I proceeded at once to my business as a physician; ascertained her pulse and her temperature, and inquired how she had slept.
“I have not had such a night's sleep for I know not how long,” she answered. “Heaven knows I had enough to think about to keep me awake, yet I must have lain in total unconsciousness for fully nine hours. What was most grateful, I did not dream. All which leads me to suspect that, despite your protestations to the contrary, the medicine you made me drink last evening contained an opiate.”
“The medicine I prevailed upon you to drink last evening,” I explained, “was the mildest composing-draught known to the Pharmacopoeia—a most harmless mixture of orange-flower water, bromide, and sugar. If it had the effect of a sleeping-potion, I am very glad to learn it, for it indicates the degree of your nervous susceptibility—a point upon which it is highly desirable that I should be informed. And are you still of the same mind in which I left you? You have not reconsidered your determination?”
“No. I am still ready to be killed or regenerated—I am really quite indifferent which. When I awoke this morning, I could not help fancying that the conversation which I seemed to recall had never really taken place—that I had dreamed it. But this lady, your sister, assures me that my doubt is groundless. Now I can only request you to begin and get over with it as soon as possible.”
“My beginning must be in the nature of an interrogatory. I must ask you for certain information.”
“Very well. Ask.”
“My questions shall be few: only those formal ones which, as a physician, I should put to any patient whom I was about to treat. First, then, what is your name?”
“My name is Louise Massarte, spelt M-a-s-s-a-r-t-e.”
I opened my case-book, prepared my fountain-pen for action, and wrote “Louise Massarte.”
“It is a foreign name, is it not?” I inquired “Were you born in this country?”
“Like the other hopeful subject of whom you told me last night, I was born in France—at the city of Tours.”
“Native of France,” I wrote. Then aloud s “Of French parents?”
“Yes, I am French by descent and by place of birth. But I have lived in America all my life. I was brought here when I was two years old.”
“But you speak French, I take it?”
“I speak French and English with equal ease.”
“Any other language?”
“No other.”
“How old are you, if you will forgive my asking?”
“I shall be six-and-twenty on the eighth of August.”
“Are your parents living?”
“Both my father and mother are long since dead.”
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“I was an only child.”
“Are you married or single?”
“I have never been married.”
“And now, finally, is there any fact or circumstance which you would like to mention and have recorded? For, you must bear in mind, you will shortly have forgotten everything connected with your past; and if there is anything you will wish to remember, you had better tell it to me now, and I will make a memorandum of it.”
“There is nothing that I shall wish to remember,” she replied. “Nothing but what I shall be glad to forget. However, I fancy what you say is but a hint to the effect that you are curious to know my history. I have no objection in telling it to you. It is not an edifying history. Most women, I daresay, would be ashamed to tell it; but I have got beyond even pretending to feel ashamed of anything; and if you desire to hear it, you have only to say so.”
“On the contrary,” I rejoined, “you must not think of telling it. It would excite you and fatigue you; whereas it is of the highest importance for the success of our operation that you should be at rest in mind as well as in body. Besides, and irrespective of that consideration, it is better that neither my sister, nor I, nor indeed any living person, should hear it. You yourself will in a little while have forgotten it. What right has anybody else to remember it?”
“Oh, well, you will doubtless find the gist of it in the morning paper. It will in all likelihood be printed with an account of my escape from the Penitentiary,” she returned.
At which insinuation my sister Josephine cried out, “You little know my brother. There is indeed something about your escape in the morning paper; but the instant he discovered the headlines of the article, he said, 'This is something, Josephine, that neither you nor I must read.' And he threw the paper into the fireplace, and applied a match to it.”
The woman made no answer.
I left the room and descended to my study, where I procured my instruments and the requisite anæsthetic.
I watched her carefully as she recovered from the effects of the ether. An uncommonly small quantity of that drug had sufficed to deprive her of her senses; and now her recovery was unusually speedy.
Having taken her respiration, her temperature, and her pulse, and having found each to be nearly normal, I looked her straight in the eyes, and demanded, making every syllable clear and emphatic, “Louise Massarte, do you know me?”
Had I addressed my inquiry to a month-old infant, the result would have been the same.
I repeated the question in French: “Louise Massarte, me reconnaissez vous?”—with precisely the same negative result.
I then wrote the question both in French and English upon a slip of paper, and held it before her eyes.
No sign of intelligence.
In the end I applied tests to each of her five senses, and satisfied myself that each was unimpaired.
After which, “Well, Josephine,” I said, “unless all signs fail, we have succeeded to admiration. None of her senses have sustained the slightest injury, yet she has lost the knowledge of language, both spoken and written. Louise Massarte is dead, annihilated, abolished from the face of creation. This is a new-born infant, this apparently full-grown woman lying here. Her soul is still to develop and unfold itself. It will be for us to shape it, to colour it, to direct it towards good or evil. Heredity has furnished the capacities, the propensities, which her environment will quicken, stimulate, cause to grow and to ripen. And it is for us to provide and to regulate that environment. May Heaven guide our labours.”
“Amen, heartily. It is an awful responsibility. And yet———-”
“And yet?”
“And yet I cannot help hoping for the best. Look at her, brother. See how beautiful she is. Surely, such a beautiful face must be meant to go with a beautiful spirit. Already the expression of bitterness, of hardness, of suspicion, seems to have faded from it. It is as if it had been washed in some element infinitely cleansing. I never saw a more innocent face than hers has become already. Yes, I am sure we may hope for the best.”
“Well, for the present, we need concern ourselves only for the welfare of her body. We must darken the room. Inflammation is the only ill consequence we have to fear; and that can be averted, if we keep her in darkness and in silence until the wound has healed.”
The wound healed quickly. Not an unpleasant symptom of any kind manifested itself. And, as I had foreseen she would do, our patient relearned the primary lessons of life with an ease and a rapidity that seemed almost incredible. I had anticipated this because she was an adult; because, that is to say, her brain, as an organ, was of mature development.
She began to speak as soon as ever we allowed ourselves to speak in her presence, at first simply imitating the sounds we made, but very speedily coming to employ words with understanding. A single lesson taught her how to walk. After my sister had dressed her twice, she was perfectly well able to dress herself—no trivial achievement when the intricacy of the feminine toilet is borne in mind. At the end of an incredibly short period of time she could read and write as easily as I can. Of the former capability she made good use, devouring eagerly all such books as we thought wise to give her. Her progress, in a word, precisely corresponded to that made by a bright child, only it was infinitely more rapid; and what a fascinating thing it was to observe, I need not stop to tell. It was like watching the growth and blossoming of some most wonderful and beautiful flower. We were permitted, so to speak, to be eye-witnesses of a miracle. If you had met her at the expiration of one year, and had conversed with her, you would have put her down for a singularly intelligent and well-informed, yet at the same time singularly innocent and unsophisticated, girl of eighteen. Yes, I mean it—a girl of eighteen. For the most astonishing result of my operation—most astonishing because least expected—was this: that in body as well as in mind she seemed to have been rejuvenated. With the obliteration of her memory, every trace of experience faded from her face. You would have laid a wager that it was the face of a young maiden not yet out of her teens. She had said that she was all but six-and-twenty. It was unbelievable when you looked at her now. To the desperate-eyed woman whom I had dissuaded from self-destruction on that clouded Bummer's night a year gone by, she bore only such a resemblance as a younger sister might have borne. To Josephine I remarked, “Is it possible that we have builded better than we knew? That we have stumbled upon the discovery which the alchemists sought in vain—the Elixir of Youth?”
“Indeed,” Josephine assented, “she has grown many years younger. She has the appearance and the manner of seventeen.”
“It only proves,” said I, “the truth of the oft-repeated commonplace: that it is experience and not time which ages one; time being simply the receptacle and measure of experience. Could we double the rate of our experience—experiencing as much in one year as we are now able to experience in two—we should grow old just twice as quickly, reaching at thirty-five the limit which we now reach at threescore-and-ten. Contrariwise, could we halve the rate of our experience—requiring two years to experience what we can now experience in one—we should grow old just twice as slowly, being mere boys at forty, and at seventy in the very prime of early manhood. Our consciousness of time, in other words, is simply the consciousness of so much experience. Well and good. Now, in this case, her experience has been undone. That is to say, her memory, the storehouse of her experience, has been destroyed. Past time, so far as it affects her mind, has been neutralised, has been cancelled out of her equation. Hence this return to adolescence. Her bodily structure—the size and shape of her bones, and all that—of course remains as it was. But her spirit returns to the condition of youth; and, since it is the spirit which animates the body, it gives to her body the expression and the activity of its own age.”
Then I offered to perform my operation upon Josephine herself, to the end that she also might enjoy a restored youth: which offer Josephine haughtily declined.
“It is very fortunate,” she added, “that this alteration in her appearance has taken place, for now it will be impossible for anybody who may have known her in former days to identify her: a danger which otherwise we should have had to fear.”
“Yes,” I acquiesced, “that is very true.”
The disposition which our visitor developed, furthermore, better than answered to our most sanguine anticipations. Her new environment vivified the best of those propensities which heredity had implanted in her, and left dormant those that were for evil. Her quality was so sweet and winning, that in a little while she had taken our old hearts captive, and become the delight and the treasure of our home. We loved her like a daughter; and the notion that we might some time have to part with her was intolerable. Therefore, we put our heads together, and entered into a pious conspiracy, agreeing to represent to her that she was our niece, the child of our brother, an orphan, eighteen years old, by name Miriam, who, on the 14th day of June, 1884, had sustained an accident which had destroyed her recollection of the past. As our niece, recently arrived from England, we introduced her to our friends. She reciprocated our affection in the tenderest manner, called us aunt and uncle, and was in every respect a blessing to our lives—so beautiful, so gentle, so merry, so devoted.
This mysterious and impressive circumstance I must not for one moment allow to be lost sight of:—That, of all living human beings, she who least suspected that such a woman as Louise Massarte had ever lived, sinned, suffered, was Miriam Benary. She upon whom Louise Massarte's life, sins, and sufferings had least effect or influence, was Miriam Benary. Her identity was in every respect as separate, and as distinct from that of Louise Massarte, as mine is from my reader's. Louise Massarte was dead, dead utterly. Into her tenement of clay a new soul had entered It was a fearful and wonderful metamorphosis, rich in suggestiveness; a datum, it seems to me, bearing importantly upon three sciences: Psychology, Divinity, and Ethics.
Thus nearly four years elapsed, and it was Monday, the 12th day of March, 1888, the day of the memorable snowstorm, called the Blizzard.
On that day certain imperative business demanded my presence in the lawyer's quarter of the town. I had been summoned, in short, to appear as a witness in a litigation that was pending in the Court of Common Pleas—a summons which I felt myself the more disposed to obey inasmuch as a penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars attached to contempt of it. Therefore, despite the unprecedented brutality of the weather, and against the earnest remonstrances of Josephine and Miriam, I was foolhardy enough to venture out.
The clock on our drawing-room mantel marked a few minutes before ten when I left the house, my immediate destination being the Jefferson Street Station of the Overhead Railway—distant not more than a quarter of a mile from my own door, and in ordinary circumstances an easy five minutes' walk.
However, it must be remembered, I was at that time within a few months of completing my seventieth year; and such a storm was raging, and such a gale blowing, as might have strained the mettle of a youngster one third my age: a veritable tempest, indeed, the like of which Adironda had never in the memory of man experienced before. The mercury stood below zero Fahrenheit; the wind was travelling at the pace of sixty miles an hour; and the snow was falling in such unheard of quantities as to obscure the air like fog. I don't mind owning, therefore, that I was pretty badly exhausted when I arrived at my journey's end, and that I had consumed a good half-hour in the process of getting there.
My path, as it were, had led through one continuous and unbroken drift, knee-deep at its shallowest, waist-high at its average, and frequently engulphing me up to my chin. Through this I had dug and ploughed my way, with the wind cold and furious in my teeth, and under a running fire of snow-flakes, frozen so hard, and driven with such force, that they stung my face like bird-shot, and nearly put out my eyes. I can assure the reader that it was no child's play. My nose and ears, from burning as if in a bath of scalding water, had become numb and rigid, like features of wood. The moisture from my breath had congealed in my beard, until that appendage felt like an iron mask. My legs were stiff and heavy. My shoulders ached. My respiration had become painful and laborious; my heart-action so faint as to induce sickness similar to that which one suffers at sea.
And finally, to cap the climax, when I reached the station, I found a chain stretched across the entrance to the booking-office, and a placard announcing that no trains were running! So that I had earned my labour for my pains; and there was nothing for me to do but to turn my face back toward home, and retrace my steps.
Exhausted as I was, then, I set forth at once upon that undertaking. Of course, it was excessively imprudent for me to do so, without first seeking shelter in some public house, and resting there until I had got warmed through, and in a measure recovered my strength. But I suppose I did not realise at the moment how far gone I was; and the prospect of regaining the comfort of my own fireside was a deliciously tempting one. So off I started, down Jefferson Street, towards Myrtle Avenue.
Very soon, however, I had reason to repent my rashness. A hundred yards or thereabouts from the corner, a mountainous drift of snow stretched diagonally across the road. I was half blinded; my wits were half frozen; I underestimated both its depth and its width, and plunged boldly into it.
Next instant I found myself buried up to my neck.
I struggled to push on. My legs were as immovable as if bound with ropes.
Then I strove to dig myself free with my hands. My arms, too, I learned, were pinioned as in a strait-waistcoat.
Here was a pleasant predicament, and one that constantly increased in interest; for, to say nothing of the deadly and aggressive cold, the snow was pouring down upon me by the bucket-full; and I appreciated very vividly the fact that unless I speedily effected an escape, I should be covered over my head.
My only hope, it was obvious, lay in calling for assistance. Whether other human beings were within hearing distance or not, I had no means of discovering; for, so opaque was the atmosphere rendered by the multitude of snow-flakes that filled it, I could see nothing beyond a radius of two or three yards; and even the houses that lined the street were indistinguishable, except when, by fits and starts, for a second at a time, the wind rent asunder the veil that hid them. Nevertheless, my only hope lay in trying the experiment of a cry for help; and that accordingly I did, with the utmost energy I could command:
“Help! help!”
But at the sound of my voice, my heart sank. It was the still, small ghost of itself, to such a degree had the exposure and the hardship of the last half-hour depleted my physical resources; and besides, dampened by the blanket of snow in which I was enveloped, and lost in the roar of the hurricane, the likelihood that it would carry beyond a rod in any direction seemed infinitesimally slight.
“Well, I am lost,” thought I. “Here, not five hundred yards from my own doorstep, lost as hopelessly as if wrecked in mid-ocean. Ah, well! they say death by freezing is comparatively painless. Anyhow, it will soon be over. Yet——”
Suddenly, with the desperate unreasonableness of a man in extremities—like him who, drowning, clutches at a chip—I repeated my feeble signal of distress: “Help! help!”
I waited half a minute, and then repeated it for a third time: “Help!”
Conceive my emotions, to hear instantly, and from immediately behind me, the response, in the lustiest of baritones: “Hello, there!”
“Heaven be praised!” I gasped. Then: “Can you help me out of this drift?”
“That remains to be tried,” came the reply. “I shouldn't wonder, though.”
And therewith I felt myself seized by two strong arms, lifted bodily from off my feet, and a moment later set down upon a spot of the pavement which the wind had swept clean, where I had a chance to see and to thank mv rescuer.
He was a tall and athletic-looking man, perhaps thirty years old, with a ruddy, good-humoured face, an honest pair of blue eyes, and a curling yellow beard. He wore a sealskin cap which came down over his ears, sealskin gloves which reached up above his coat-sleeves nearly to his elbows, a pea-jacket, and rubber top-boots. His beard, his eyebrows, and so much of his hair as was exposed, were dense with frozen snow, and from his moustache depended a series of icicles, like tusks, where his breath had condensed and congealed.
“I believe I have to thank you for saving my life,” I began, in such voice as I could muster, and I noticed that my utterance was thick, like that of a drunken man. “A very little more and I had been done for.”
“Yes, you were in rather a nasty box,” he admitted. “But all's well that ends well; and you're safe enough now. When I heard you calling, I thought it was a child, your voice was so thin and faint.”
“It's highly fortunate for me that you heard me at all. I had given myself up for lost. What a storm this is!”
“Yes; glorious, isn't it? It's the grandest spectacle I've ever seen. I tell you, sir, it's well for us that Nature should occasionally show us her sharp claw; otherwise we'd get to considering her a quite tame domestic pet, which she's not by any means. She's man's hereditary foe; there stands a perpetual feud between her and us, a vendetta handed down from father to son, from generation to generation. It's only by the exercise of an eternal vigilance and industry that we manage to subsist in spite of her. She's constantly striving, one way or another, to exterminate us: freeze us out, roast us out, starve us out—I know not what all. Here we are, huddled together upon this bleak, mysterious planet, parasites upon its surface, like mould on cheese, sheltering ourselves in fortresses of straw—wondering whence we came, why we're here, whither we're bound, and what the fun of the whole thing is—while she whirls us through her dark immensities, and seeks hourly to shake us off; which is rather unmannerly of her, seeing it was she herself who brought us here. Life which she gives us with one hand, she withholds with the other. She begrudges what she lavishes. Oh, it is strange, it is magnificent; it's some grand paradoxical farce, which we haven't wit enough to see the point of. Still, there's an exhilaration in the conflict, unequal though it is. She's sure to win in the end; she plays with us like a cat with a mouse, amused at our desperate antics, but confident of her power to administer a quietus when they begin to pall; yet there's a pleasure, somehow, in the struggle. They say, you know, the fox enjoys being hunted. To-day she's in a particularly frolicsome mood, and puts vim into her buffets. For my part, I'm grateful to her. She'll laugh best, because she'll laugh last; but she can't prevent my relishing my laugh meanwhile. I have not lived in vain, who have lived to experience this storm. Isn't it stimulating? I vow, it makes a man feel like a boy.”
I had stood shivering, teeth chattering, while he delivered himself of this extraordinary harangue. Now, “That would depend somewhat upon the age and the physique of the man,” I stammered.
“Why, yes, true enough. Your observation is altogether apposite and just. But for me, I declare, it is like wine. Which way do you go?”
“I go east and south—to my home, which is in Riverview Road, if you know where that is. But to tell you the truth, I doubt my ability to go at all. I'm pretty badly used up. I think I shall ask to be taken in at one of these neighbouring houses.”
“As you like it. But I know where River-view Road is; in fact I'm bound in that direction myself, being curious to see how the storm affects the Yellow Snake. It must be a sight for the gods—the writhing and the lashing of the reptile river under such a wind. If you please we'll march together. I suspect, with my assistance, you'll be able to arrive.”
“You've already saved my life, and now you offer to see me safely home. I shall owe you a heavy debt. But I could never consent to take you out of your way.”
“As I've already had the honour to intimate, that's precisely what you won't do. I was bound for the riverside—upon my word. Come on.”
And the next thing I knew, my robust interlocutor had again lifted me from my feet, and was trudging off towards Myrtle Avenue, bearing me like a child in his arms—which, of course, was altogether too ignominious a position for me to occupy without protest.
“Oh, this is needless. I beg of you to put me down. Really, I can't submit to this. Let me walk at your side, and lean upon your arm, and I shall do very well.”
“My dear sir,” he rejoined, “permit me to observe—and I beseech you not to resent the observation as personal—that if ever a mortal man was completely tuckered out, you are. You've lost your wind, and your legs are as shaky as if you had the palsy. Pardon my austere frankness—the circumstances compel it. You couldn't get as far as the corner yonder to save your neck. You are, to employ the politest of modern languages, hors de combat. You are ansgespielt, you are non compos corporis—that is to say, in pure Americanese, you are busted. Now, so far as I am concerned, on the contrary, I don't mind carrying you any more than I would a baby. At the outside you don't weigh ten stone; and what's the like of that to a fellow of my horse-power? Lie still, and I sha'n't know you're there. Lie still and rest, recover your breath, and be yourself again.”
“But the thing is too ridiculous. I can't in dignity consent to it, I entreat you to put me down.”
I attempted to release myself, but his arms were like bands of iron.
“There, there—resign yourself! I prithee, wriggle not,” he said. “I shall put you down presently—when the time is ripe. And as for your dignity, remember the device of Cæsar: Esée quant videri. This, sir, is an occasion for choosing between appearances and a very grim reality. I can understand that, other things equal, you wouldn't care to have the world see us in our present situation; but console yourself with the reflection that the storm answers every purpose of a dose of fern-seed, and renders us beautifully invisible. Anyhow, I take it, your dignity isn't as precious to you as your health; and I will go bail for this, that if you tried to foot it another hundred yards, you'd pay for your temerity with a fit of sickness. Consider, furthermore, that I am old enough to be your son. Let me play a son's part for the nonce, and carry you home.”
“Well, I have no right to quarrel with you,” I answered; “but you place me under an obligation which I shall never be able to discharge. It will bear as heavily upon my conscience as I now weigh upon your muscles.”
“Then it will cause you mighty slight annoyance. To tell you the truth, it's a jolly good lark for me. It's an added excitement, a most interesting adventure; and it will provide a capital chapter for the winter's tale that I shall have to tell. But a truce to talk. Let's waste no further breath in that way. You lie still there and meditate. I'll devote my energies to the business of getting on.”
So for a good while we forbore speech. At length, “Now, then,” he announced, “here's Riverview Road. Our toilsome journey's o'er; and, all our perils past, in harbour safe at last we rest. What would you more?—What's your number?”
“Sixty-three, the fourth house from the corner.”
“Well, here you are on your own doorstep.—There!”
He set me upon my feet.
“And now, sir,” he concluded, “trusting that you may suffer no ill effects from your experience, I will wish you farewell. Farewell, a long farewell. This is a life made up of partings. Again, farewell.”
“Farewell by no manner of means,” I hastily retorted. “You must come in. You must do me the honour of entering my house, and allowing me to offer you some refreshment. And besides, if, as you said, you are anxious to watch the play of the storm upon the river, you could possess no better coigne of vantage than one of my back windows.”
“Such an inducement, sir, is superfluous. Your invitation in itself would be quite irresistible. For, aside from the pleasure I derive from your society, and the instruction from your conversation, I will confidentially admit to you that I shall be glad to thaw out my nose.”
I opened the door with my latch-key, and preceded him into my study.
A beautiful fire was blazing in the grate. The transition from the cold and uproar of the street, to the snug quiet and warmth of this cosy book-lined room, was an agreeable one, I can tell you. I was pretty well rested by this time; and, except for the tingling of my nose, ears, toes, and fingers, felt very little the worse for my encounter with the elements.
“Now,” said I to my guest, “the tables are turned. But a moment since, I was your prisoner; now you are mine. Draw up to the fire. Throw off your over jacket and your rubber-boots. I hope you are not wet through; for, we are built respectively upon such different patterns, it would be ironical for me to offer you dry garments from my wardrobe.”
“You need give yourself no uneasiness upon that score, sir. Im as dry as a Greek lexicon.”
“In that case, let me at once offer you a drop of something wet,” I said, producing a decanter and a couple of glasses.
“Yes,” he assented, “a toothful of this will do neither of us harm.”
We clinked our glasses, and drank.
“Ah,” he cried, smacking his lips, “sweet ardent spirit of the rye, may the shade of Christopher Columbus be fed upon you thrice every day, to reward him for the discovery of this continent. I've tasted Irish and I've tasted Scotch, Dutch barley-brandy and Slavonic vodka; but of all distillations to make glad the inmost heart of man, give me Kentucky rye! Another glass? Thank you, kind sir, not e'en another drop. 'Twere desecration worthy only of a widower to take a second after so rare a first. And now, by-the-bye, since I find myself the beneficiary of your hospitality, it behoves me to introduce myself. My name is Henry Fairchild, and by trade I am a sculptor.”
“My name is Leonard Benary, physician and surgeon. And I trust, Mr. Fairchild, that you have no urgent affairs to call you from my house, for I should never feel easy in my mind if I permitted you to leave it before this storm has abated; and that doesn't look like an imminent event. My affairs are not urgent. In fact, as I believe I have already remarked, when we ran across each other I was abroad for my diversion, pure and simple. But that is no reason why I should abuse your kindness. If I may thaw here before your fire for a half-hour, I shall be in perfect condition to make my way home.”
“That would depend upon the distance of your home from mine.”
“My home is in my studio. And my studio is in St. Matthew's Park.”
“So far! Very well, then. I shall certainly not hear of your leaving me so long as the storm continues. It would be as much as your life is worth to attempt such a journey in such circumstances. It's a matter of three, four, well-nigh five miles. And since all public conveyances are at a standstill, you'd have to trust yourself for the whole distance to Shanks's mare. I shall count upon your spending the night here, at least. There's no prospect of the weather moderating before to-morrow. And now, if you will excuse me, I will leave you here for a few moments, while I go to change my clothes.”
“That's the wisest thing you could possibly do,” he returned. “I shall amuse myself excellently looking out of the window; but as for your kind invitation to remain over night——”
“As for that, since you acknowledge that you have no pressing business to call you elsewhere, I will listen to no refusal.”
I went upstairs, my first care being to make known my return to Josephine and Miriam, who, of course, were thereby greatly surprised and relieved. They professed they had suffered the acutest anxiety ever since I had left the house; and as they listened to the account I gave them of my misadventures, they paled and shuddered for very terror.
“Mr. Fairchild, the young man who came to my rescue, is even now below stairs in the library,” I concluded.
“Oh, is he? Then,” cried Miriam, addressing Josephine, “let us go to him at once, and tell him how we thank him. To think that, except for him, my uncle might——” She completed her sentence by putting her arms around my neck, and giving me three of the sweetest kisses that were ever given in this world: one on either cheek and one full on the lips. “Now, sir,” she went on, shaking the prettiest of fingers at me, “I hope that you have learned a lesson, and will never do anything again that we two wise women warn you not to.”
“I promise to be a good, obedient, little old man in the future,” I replied; and was rewarded for my docility with a fourth kiss—this time imprinted among the wrinkles on my forehead.
The two wise women went off downstairs.
I joined them as soon as I had got into dry clothing; and we sat down to luncheon—the young sculptor enlivening and entertaining us with a flow of droll, high-spirited talk. He and Miriam got on famously together—chatting, laughing, exchanging bits of repartee, with the vivacity that was becoming to their age. Josephine and I hearkened and enjoyed. At least, I enjoyed; and I had no reason to suppose that my sister did not. Luncheon concluded, we adjourned to the drawing-room. There, observing the piano, Fairchild demanded of Miriam whether she played. She answered, “Yes.” (We had procured for her the best musical instruction to be had in Adironda; and she had mastered the instrument with a facility which proved that Louise Massarte must have been a talented pianist.) Miriam answered, “Yes,” and then Fairchild said—
“Will you not be persuaded to play for us now?”
She played one of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, and then something of Chopin's, and then something of Schumann's; after which, leaving the piano, she said to Fairchild—
“Now you must sing for us.”
“Why, how do you know I can sing?” cried he.
“It is evident from the timbre of your voice,” she answered.
“You must not be too sure of that,” he protested. “The speaking voice and the singing voice are two very different things.”
“Nevertheless, please sing for us,” she repeated.
“Very good,” said he, taking possession of the key-board, “I will sing for you; but at your peril. The beauty of the song, however, may perhaps be allowed to atone for the deficiencies of my execution. It is by the English composer, Marzials, a man of the rarest genius, too little known out of his own country. He wrote both words and music, and the song is entitled 'Never Laugh at Love.'”
Therewith, to his own accompaniment, he sang in his sweet baritone one of the pleasantest and wittiest songs of its kind that I have ever heard.
Oh, never laugh at Love, Miss, fancy free,
Lest the wanton boy should laugh at thee!
Should he but aim in play his tiny dart—
Ping! 't will break your heart!
I knew a queen with golden hair,
Few so proud, and none so fair;
Her maids and she, one twilight gray,
Went wand'ring down the garden way.
A pretty page was standing there;
Their eyes just met. Oh, long despair!
For both have died of love, they say.
So never laugh at Love, Miss, fancy free,
Lest the wanton boy should laugh at thee!
I cannot forbear quoting that one verse, to give a notion of the quaint mediæval charm of the words. * I wish I could transcribe the melody as well, which was delicious with the same quaint flavour.