Horace felt something flaming in his cheeks and choking in his breast, and it was hard for him to keep from snatching those hands from the keys and telling her she knew better.
But he was man enough not to. He controlled himself, and made himself very pleasant to Mrs. Poinsett about not staying to supper, and they set out for the hotel.
The air was cool and damp after the rain.
“You’ve been singing,” said Horace, “and you will catch cold in this air, and lose your voice. You must tie this handkerchief around your throat.”
She took his blue silk handkerchief and tied it around her throat, and wore it until just as they were turning away from the shore, when she took it off to return to him; and the last gust of wind that blew that afternoon whisked it out of her hand, and sent it whirling a hundred yards out to sea.
“Now, don’t say a word,” said Horace; “it isn’t of the slightest consequence.”
But he looked very gloomy over it. He had made up his mind that that silk handkerchief should be the silk handkerchief of all the world to him, from that time on.
It was one month later that Mr. H. K. Walpole received, in care of Messrs. Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather, an envelope postmarked Newport, containing a red silk handkerchief. His initials were neatly—nay, beautifully, exquisitely—stitched in one corner. But there was absolutely nothing about the package to show who sent it, and Horace sorrowed over this. Not that he was in any doubt; but he felt that it meant to say that he must not acknowledge it; and, loyally, he did not.
And he soon got over that grief. The lost handkerchief, whose origin was base and common, like other handkerchiefs, and whose sanctity was purely accidental—what was it to this handkerchief, worked by her for him?
This became the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace that had changed the boy’s whole life. Before this he had had purposes and ambitions. He had meant to take care of his mother, to do well in the world, and to restore, if he could, the honor and glory of the home his father had left him. Here were duty, selfishness, and an innocent vanity. But now he had an end in life, so high that the very seeking of it was a religion. Every thought of self was flooded out of him, and what he sought he sought in a purer and nobler spirit than ever before.
Is it not strange? A couple of weeks at the sea-side, a few evenings under the brooding darkness of hotel verandas, the going to and fro of a girl with a sweet face, and this ineradicable change is made in the mind of a man who has forty or fifty years before him wherein to fight the world, to find his place, to become a factor for good or evil.
And here we have Horace, with his heart full of love and his head full of dreams, mooning over a silk handkerchief, in open court.
Not that he often took such chances. The daws of humor peck at the heart worn on the sleeve; and quite rightly, for that is no place for a heart. But in the privacy of his modest lodging-house room he took the handkerchief out, and spread it before him, and looked at it, and kissed it sometimes, I suppose,—it seems ungentle to pry thus into the sacredness of a boy’s love,—and, certainly, kept it in sight, working, studying, or thinking.
With all this, the handkerchief became somewhat rumpled, and at last Horace felt that it must be brought back to the condition of neatness in which he first knew it. So, on a Tuesday, he descended to the kitchen of his lodging-house, and asked for a flat-iron. His good landlady, at the head of an industrious, plump-armed Irish brigade, all vigorously smoothing out towels, stared at him in surprise.
“If there’s anything you want ironed, Mr. Walpole, bring it down here, and I’ll be more’n glad to iron it for you.”
Horace grew red, and found his voice going entirely out of his control, as he tried to explain that it wasn’t for that—it wasn’t for ironing clothes—he was sure nobody could do it but himself.
“Do you want it hot or cold?” asked Mrs. Wilkins, puzzled.
“Cold!” said Horace desperately. And he got it cold, and had to heat it at his own fire to perform his labor of love.
That was of a piece with many things he did. Of a piece, for instance, with his looking in at the milliners’ windows and trying to think which bonnet would best become her—and then taking himself severely to task for dreaming that she would wear a ready-made bonnet. Of a piece with his buying two seats for the theatre, and going alone and fancying her next him, and glancing furtively at the empty place at the points where he thought she would be amused, or pleased, or moved.
What a fool he was! Yes, my friend, and so are you and I. And remember that this boy’s foolishness did not keep him tossing, stark awake, through ghastly nights; did not start him up in the morning with a hot throat and an unrested brain; did not send him down to his day’s work with the haunting, clutching, lurking fear that springs forward at every stroke of the clock, at every opening of the door. Perhaps you and I have known folly worse than his.
Through all the winter—the red handkerchief cheered the hideous first Monday in October, and the Christmas holidays, when business kept him from going home to Montevista—he heard little or nothing of her. His friends in the city, or rather his father’s friends, were all ingrained New Yorkers, dating from the provincial period, who knew not Philadelphia; and it was only from an occasional newspaper paragraph that he learned that Judge Rittenhouse and his daughter were travelling through the South, for the Judge’s health. Of course, he had a standing invitation to call on them whenever he should find himself in Philadelphia; but they never came nearer Philadelphia than Washington, and so he never found himself in Philadelphia. He was not so sorry for this as you might think a lover should be. He knew that, with a little patience, he might present himself to Judge Rittenhouse as something more than a lawyer’s managing clerk.
For, meanwhile, good news had come from home, and things were going well with him. Mineral springs had been discovered at Aristotle—mineral springs may be discovered anywhere in north New York, if you only try; though it is sometimes difficult to fit them with the proper Indian legends. The name of the town had been changed to Avoca, and there was already an Avoca Improvement Company, building a big hotel, advertising right and left, and prophesying that the day of Saratoga and Sharon and Richfield was ended. So the barrens between Montevista and Aristotle, skirting the railroad, suddenly took on a value. Hitherto they had been unsalable, except for taxes. For the most part they were an adjunct of the estate of Montevista; and in February Horace went up to St. Lawrence County and began the series of sales that was to realize his father’s most hopeless dream, and clear Montevista of all incumbrances.
How pat it all came, he thought, as, on his return trip, the train carried him past the little old station, with its glaring new sign, AVOCA, just beyond the broad stretch of “Squire Walpole’s bad land,” now sprouting with the surveyors’ stakes. After all was paid off on the old home, there would be enough left to enable him to buy out Haskins, who had openly expressed his desire to get into a “live firm,” and who was willing to part with his interest for a reasonable sum down, backed up by a succession of easy installments. And Judge Weeden had intimated, as clearly as dignity would permit, his anxiety that Horace should seize the opportunity.
Winter was still on the Jersey flats on the last day of March; but Horace, waiting at a little “flag station,” found the air full of crude prophecies of spring. He had been searching titles all day, in a close and gloomy little town-hall, and he was glad to be out-of-doors again, and to think that he should be back in New York by dinner time, for it was past five o’clock.
But a talk with the station-master made the prospect less bright. No train would stop there until seven.
Was there no other way of getting home? The lonely guardian of the Gothic shanty thought it over, and found that there was a way. He talked of the trains as though they were whimsical creatures under his charge.
“The’s a freight comin’ down right now,” he said, meditatively, “but I can’t do nothin’ with her. She’s gotter get along mighty lively to keep ahead of the Express from Philadelphia till she gets to the junction and goes on a siding till the Express goes past. And as to the Express—why, I couldn’t no more flag her than if she was a cyclone. But I tell you what you do. You walk right down to the junction—’bout a mile ’n’ a half down—and see if you can’t do something with number ninety-seven on the other road. You see, she goes on to New York on our tracks, and she mostly’s in the habit of waiting at the junction ’bout—say five to seven minutes, to give that Express from Philadelphia a fair start. That Express has it pretty much her own way on this road, for a fact. You go down to the junction—walk right down the line—and you’ll get ninety-seven—there ain’t no kind of doubt about it. You can’t see the junction; but it’s just half a mile beyont that curve down there.”
So there was nothing to be done but to walk to the junction. The railroad ran a straight, steadily descending mile on the top of a high embankment, and then suddenly turned out of sight around a ragged elevation. Horace buttoned his light overcoat, and tramped down the cinder-path between the tracks.
Yes, spring was coming. The setting sun beamed a soft, hopeful red over the shoulder of the ragged elevation; light, drifting mists rose from the marsh land below him, and the last low rays struck a vapory opal through them. There was a warm, almost prismatic purple hanging over the outlines of the hills and woods far to the east. The damp air, even, had a certain languid warmth in it; and though there was snow in the little hollows at the foot of the embankment, and bits of thin whitish ice were in the swampy pools, it was clear enough to Horace that spring was at hand. Spring—and then summer; and, by the sea or in the mountains, the junior partner of the house of Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather might hope to meet once more with Judge Rittenhouse’s daughter.
The noise of the freight-train, far up the track behind him, disturbed Horace’s springtime revery. A forethought of rocking gravel-cars scattering the overplus of their load by the way, and of reeking oil-tanks, filling the air with petroleum, sent him down the embankment to wait until the way was once more clear.
The freight-train went by and above him with a long-drawn roar and clatter, and with a sudden fierce crash, and the shriek of iron upon iron, at the end, and the last truck of the last car came down the embankment, tearing a gully behind it, and ploughed a grave for itself in the marsh ten yards ahead of him.
And, looking up, he saw a twisted rail raising its head like a shining serpent above the dim line of the embankment. A furious rush took Horace up the slope. A quarter of a mile below him the freight-train was slipping around the curve. The fallen end of the last car was beating and tearing the ties. He heard the shrill creak of the brakes and the frightened whistle of the locomotive. But the grade was steep, and it was hard to stop. And if they did stop they were half a mile from the junction—half a mile from their only chance of warning the Express.
Horace heard in his ears the station-master’s words: “She’s gotter get along mighty lively to keep ahead of the Express from Philadelphia.”
“Mighty lively—mighty lively,”—the words rang through his brain to the time of thundering car-wheels.
He knew where he stood. He had made three-quarters of the straight mile. He was three-quarters of a mile, then, from the little station. His overcoat was off in half a second. Many a time had he stripped, with that familiar movement, to trunks and sleeveless shirt, to run his mile or his half-mile; but never had such a thirteen hundred yards lain before him, up such a track, to be run for such an end.
The sweat was on his forehead before his right foot passed his left.
His young muscles strove and stretched. His feet struck the soft, unstable path of cinders with strong, regular blows. His tense forearms strained upward from his sides. Under his chest, thrown outward from his shoulders, was a constricting line of pain. His wet face burnt. There was a fire in his temples, and at every breath of his swelling nostrils something throbbed behind his eyes. The eyes saw nothing but a dancing dazzle of tracks and ties, through a burning blindness. And his feet beat, beat, beat till the shifting cinders seemed afire under him.
That is what this human machine was doing, going at this extreme pressure; every muscle, every breath, every drop of blood alive with the pain of this intense stress. Looking at it you would have said, “A fleet, light-limbed young man, with a stride like a deer, throwing the yards under him in fine style.” All we know about the running other folks are making in this world!
Half-way up the track Horace stopped short, panting hard, his heart beating like a crazy drum, a nervous shiver on him. Up the track there was a dull whirr, and he saw the engine of the express-train slipping down on him—past the station already.
The white mists from the marshes had risen up over the embankment. The last rays of the sunset shot through them, brilliant and blinding. Horace could see the engine; but would the engineer see him, waving his hands in futile gestures, in time to stop on that slippery, sharp grade? And of what use would be his choking voice when the dull whirr should turn into a roar? For a moment, in his hopeless disappointment, Horace felt like throwing himself in the path of the train, like a wasted thing that had no right to live, after so great a failure.
As will happen to those who are stunned by a great blow, his mind ran back mechanically to the things nearest his heart, and in a flash he went through the two weeks of his life. And then, before the thought had time to form itself, he had brought a red silk handkerchief from his breast, and was waving it with both hands, a fiery crimson in the opal mist.
Seen. The whistle shrieked; there was a groan and a creak of brakes, the thunder of the train resolved itself into various rattling noises, the engine slipped slowly by him, and slowed down, and he stood by the platform of the last car as the express stopped.
There was a crowd around Horace in an instant. His head was whirling, but in a dull way he said what he had to say. An officious passenger, who would have explained it all to the conductor if the conductor had waited, took the deliverer in his arms—for the boy was near fainting—and enlightened the passengers who flocked around.
Horace hung in his embrace, too deadly weak even to accept the offer of one of the dozen flasks that were thrust at him. Nothing was very clear in his mind; as far as he could make out, his most distinct impression was of a broad, flat beach, a blue sea and a blue sky, a black steamer making a black trail of smoke across them, and a voice soft as an angel’s reading Latin close by him. Then he opened his eyes and saw the woman of the voice standing in front of him.
“Oh, Richard,” he heard her say,“it’s Mr. Walpole!”
Horace struggled to his feet. She took his hand in both of hers and drew closer to him; the crowd falling back a little, seeing that they were friends.
“What can I ever say to thank you?” she said. “You have saved our lives. It’s not so much for myself, but”—she blushed faintly, and Horace felt her hands tremble on his; “Richard—my husband—we were married to-day, you know—and”—
Something heavy and black came between Horace and life for a few minutes. When it passed away he straightened himself up out of the arms of the officious passenger and stared about him, mind and memory coming back to him. The people around looked at him oddly. A brakeman brought him his overcoat, and he stood unresistingly while it was slipped on him. Then he turned away and started down the embankment.
“Hold on!” cried the officious passenger excitedly; “we’re getting up a testimonial”—
Horace never heard it. How he found his way he never cared to recall; but the gas was dim in the city streets, and the fire was out in his little lodging-house room when he came home; and his narrow white bed knows all that I cannot tell of his tears and his broken dreams.
“Walpole,” said Judge Weeden, as he stood between the yawning doors of the office safe, one morning in June, “I observe that you have a private package here. Why do you not use the drawer of our—our late associate, Mr. Haskins? It is yours now, you know. I’ll put your package in it.” He poised the heavily sealed envelope in his hand. “Very odd feeling package, Walpole. Remarkably soft!” he said. “Well, bless me, it’s none of my business, of course. Horace, how much you look like your father!”
Tuesday, February 14, 1882.
The band was invisible, but, unfortunately, not inaudible. It was in the butler’s pantry, playing Waldteufel’s latest waltz, “Süssen Veilchen.” The English butler, who resented the intrusion of the German leader, was introducing an obbligato unforeseen by the composer. This was the second of Mrs. Martin’s charming Tuesdays in February. Mrs. Martin herself, fondly and familiarly known as the “Duchess of Washington Square,” stopped a young man as he was making a desperate rush for his overcoat, then reposing under three strata of late comers’ outer garments in the second-floor back, and said to him:
“O Dear Jones”—the Duchess always called him Dear Jones—“I want to introduce you to Baby Van Rensselaer—Phyllis Van Rensselaer, you know—they always called her Baby Van Rensselaer, though I’m sure I don’t know why—Phyllis is such a lovely name—don’t you think so?—and your grandfathers were such friends.” [Dear Jones executed an ex post facto condemnation upon his ancestor and hers.] “You know Major Van Rensselaer was your grandfather’s partner until that unfortunate affair of the embezzlement—O Baby dear—there you are, are you? I was wondering where you were all this time. This is Mr. Jones, dear, one of your grandfather’s most intimate friends. Oh, I don’t mean that, of course—you know what I mean—and I do so want you two to know each other.”
Dear Jones: What in the name of the prophet does the Duchess mean by introducing me to More Girls?
Baby Van Rensselaer: I do wish the Duchess wouldn’t insist on tiring me out with slim young men; I never can tell one from the other.
These remarks were not uttered. They remained in the privacy of the inner consciousness. What they really said was:
Dear Jones [inarticulately]: Miss Van Rensselaer.
Baby Van Rensselaer [inattentively]: Yes, it is rather warm.…
And they drifted apart in the crowd.
Thursday, April 13, 1882.
Of course, Dear Jones was the last to arrive of the favored children of the world who had been invited to dine at Judge Gillespie’s “to meet the Lord Bishop of Barset,” just imported from England per steamer “Servia.” In the hall, the butler, whose appearance was even more dignified and clerical than the Bishop’s, handed Dear Jones an unsealed communication.
Dear Jones [examining the contents]: Who in Heligoland is Miss Van Rensselaer?
As Dear Jones entered, Mrs. Sutton—the Judge’s daughter, you know—married Charley Sutton, who came from San Francisco—Mrs. Sutton gave a little sigh of relief, nodded to the butler, and said in perfunctory answer to the apologies Dear Jones had not made: “Oh, no; you’re not a bit late—we haven’t been waiting for you at all—the Bishop has only just come”—(confidentially in his ear) “I’ve given you a charming girl.” [Dear Jones shuddered: he knew what that generally meant.] “You know Baby Van Rensselaer? Of course—there she is—now, go—and do be bright and clever.” And after thus handicapping an inoffensive young man, she took the Bishop’s arm in the middle of his ante-prandial anecdote.
Dear Jones [marching to his fate]: It’s the Duchess’s girl again, by Jove! It’s lucky Uncle Larry is going to take me off at ten sharp.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Why, it’s that Mr. Jones!
These remarks were not uttered. They remained in the privacy of the inner consciousness. What they really said was:
Dear Jones [with audacious hypocrisy]: Of course, you don’t remember me, Miss Van Rensselaer.…
Baby Van Rensselaer [trumping his card unabashed]: I really don’t quite.…
Dear Jones [offering his arm]: Er … don’t you remember the Duch—Mrs. Martin’s—that hideously rainy afternoon, just before Lent?
Here there was a gap in the conversation as the procession took up its line of march, and moved through a narrow passage into the dining-room.
Dear Jones [making a brave dash at the “bright and clever”]: Well, in my house, the door into the dining-room shall be eighteen feet wide.
Baby Van Rensselaer [literal, stern, and cold]: Are you building a house, Mr. Jones?
Dear Jones [calmly]: I am at present, Miss Van Rensselaer, building—let me see—four—five—seven houses.
Baby Van Rensselaer [coldly and suspecting flippancy]: Ah, indeed—are you a billionaire?
Dear Jones: No; I’m an architect.
Baby Van Rensselaer [in confusion]: Oh, I’m sure I beg your pardon—
Dear Jones: You needn’t. I shouldn’t be at all ashamed to be a billionaire.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh, of course not—I didn’t mean that—
Dear Jones [unguardedly]: Well, if it comes to that; I’m not ashamed of my architecture either.
Baby Van Rensselaer [calmly]: Indeed? I have never seen any of it.
Dear Jones: You sit here, I think. This is your card with the little lady in the powdered wig—a cherubic Madame de Staël.
Baby Van Rensselaer: And this is yours with a Cupid in a basket—a nineteenth century Moses.
Dear Jones [taking his seat beside her]: Talking about dinner cards—and billionaires, you heard of that dinner old Creasers gave to fifty-two of his friends of the new dispensation. I believe there was one poor fellow there whose wife had only half a peck of diamonds. He assembled his hordes in the picture-gallery, as the dining-room wasn’t large enough—you see, I didn’t build his house. And to carry out the novelty of the thing, his dinner cards were—
Baby Van Rensselaer: Playing-cards?
Dear Jones: Just so—but they were painted, “hand-painted” on satin.
Baby Van Rensselaer: And what did he take for himself—the king of diamonds?
Dear Jones: For the only time in his life he forgot himself—and he had to put up with the Joker.
Baby Van Rensselaer: What sort of people were there?
Dear Jones: Very good sort, indeed. There was a M. Meissonnier and M. Gérôme and a M. Corot—besides the man who sold them to him.
Everybody knows how a conversation runs on at dinner, when it does run on. On this occasion it ran on for seventy minutes and six courses. Dear Jones and Baby Van Rensselaer discussed the usual topics and the usual bill-of-fare. Then, as the butler served the bombe glacée à la Demidoff—
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh, I’m so glad you liked her. We were at school together, you know, and she was with us when we went up the Saguenay last August.
Dear Jones: Why, I went up the Saguenay last August.
Baby Van Rensselaer [earnestly]: And we didn’t meet? How miserably absurd!
Dear Jones: I’ll tell you whom I did meet—your father’s partner, Mr. Hitchcock. He had his daughter with him, too—a very bright girl. You know her, of course.
Baby Van Rensselaer [coldly]: I have heard she is quite clever. [A pause.] The Hitchcocks—I believe—go more in the—New England set. I have met her brother, though—Mr. Mather Hitchcock.…
Dear Jones: Mat Hitchcock; that little cad?
Baby Van Rensselaer: Is he a little cad? I thought he was rather—bright.
After this, conversation was desultory; and soon the male guests were left to their untrammeled selves, tobacco and the Bishop. At eleven minutes past ten, in the vestibule of Judge Gillespie’s house, a young man and a man not so young were buttoning their overcoats and lighting their cigarettes. In the parlor behind them a soft contralto voice was lingering on the rich, deep notes of “Der Asra,” the sweetest song of Jewish inspiration, the song of Heine and of Rubinstein. They paused a moment as the voice died away in
The man not so young said: “Well, come along. What are you waiting for?”
Dear Jones: What the devil are you in such a hurry for, Uncle Larry? It looked abominably rude to leave those people in that way!
Tuesday, May 30, 1882.
As the first band of the Decoration Day procession struck up “Marching through Georgia” and marched past Uncle Larry’s house, a cheerfully expectant party filed out of the parlor windows upon the broad stone balcony, draped with the flag that had floated over the building for the four long years the day commemorated. Uncle Larry had secured the Duchess to matronize the annual gathering of young friends, the final friendly meeting before the flight out of town; and many of those who accepted him as the universal uncle had accepted also this invitation. Dear Jones and Baby Van Rensselaer were seated in the corner of the balcony that caught the southern sun, Baby Van Rensselaer, in Uncle Larry’s own study chair, while Dear Jones was comfortably and gracefully perched on the broad brown-stone railing of the balcony.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Now, doesn’t that music make your heart leap?
Dear Jones: M’—yes.
Baby Van Rensselaer: You know I haven’t the least bit of sympathy with that affected talk about not being moved by these things, and thinking it vulgar and all that. I’m proud to say I love my country, and I do love to see my country’s soldiers. Don’t you?
Dear Jones: M’—yes.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Of course, I can’t really remember anything about the war, but I try to pretend to myself that I do remember when I was held up at the window to see the troops marching back from the grand review at Washington. (Rather more softly.) Mama told me about it often before she died. And “Marching through Georgia” always makes the tears come to my eyes; don’t it yours?
Dear Jones: M’—yes.
Baby Van Rensselaer: “Yes!” How queerly you say that!
Dear Jones (grimly): I’m rather more inclined to cry when the band makes
Baby Van Rensselaer (coldly): I’m afraid, Mr. Jones, I do not understand you. And you appear to have a very peculiar feeling about these things.
Dear Jones [rather absently]: Well, yes, it is rather a matter of feeling with me. Weak, I suppose—but the fact is, Miss Van Rensselaer, it just breaks me up to see all this. You know, the war hit me pretty hard. I lost my brother in hospital after Seven Pines—and then I lost my father, the best friend I ever had, at Gettysburg, on the hill, you know, when he was leading his regiment, and his men couldn’t make him stay back. So, you see, I wouldn’t have come here at all to-day if—if—
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh, Mr. Jones, I’m so sorry.
Dear Jones [surprised]: Sorry? Why?
Baby Van Rensselaer: I didn’t quite understand you—but I do now. Why, you’re taking off your hat. What is it? Oh, the battle-flags!
Dear Jones: My father’s regiment.
Baby Van Rensselaer [to herself]: I wonder if that is the regiment I saw coming back from Washington?
Tuesday, August 22, 1882.
The train rattled hotly along on its sultry journey from one end of Long Island to the other, a journey the half of which it had nearly accomplished with much fuss and fret. Leaving his impediments of travel in the smoker, Dear Jones entered the forward end of the parlor car in search of an uncontaminated glass of water. As he set down the glass he glanced along the car, and his manner changed at once. He opened the door for an instant and threw on the down track his half-smoked cigarette; and then, smiling pleasantly, he walked firmly down the car, past a rustic bridal couple, and took a vacant seat just in front of Baby Van Rensselaer.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Why, Mr. Jones!
Dear Jones: Why, Miss Van Rensselaer!
Baby Van Rensselaer: Who would have thought of seeing you here in this hot weather?
Dear Jones: Can I have this seat or is it that I mank at the convenances—as the French say?
Baby Van Rensselaer: It’s Uncle Larry’s chair—he’s gone back to talk to one of his vestrymen—he’s taking me to Shelter Island.
Dear Jones: Shelter Island? How long are you going to stay there?
Baby Van Rensselaer: And where are you going?
Dear Jones: I’m going to Sag Harbor to build a house for one of my billionaires.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Sag Harbor? What an extraordinary place for a house.
Dear Jones: Oh, that’s nothing. Last year I had to build a house up in Chemung county.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Chemung?
Dear Jones [spelling it]: C-h-e-m-u-n-g´—accent on the mung. You probably call it Cheémung, but it is really Sh’mung.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Where is it? and how do you get there?
Dear Jones: By the Chemung de fer, of course.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh, Mr. Jones.
Dear Jones: You see, my mind is relaxed by the effort to build a house on the model of the one occupied by the old woman who lived in a shoe—and that variety of early English architecture is very wearing on the taste. What sort of a house is it you are going to at Shelter Island? And how long are you going to stay there?
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh, it’s a stupid, old-fashioned place [pause]. Do you think that bride is pretty? I have been watching them ever since we left New York. They have been to town on their wedding-trip.
Dear Jones: She is ratherish pretty. And he’s a shrewd fellow and likely to get on. I shouldn’t wonder if he was the chief wire-puller of his “deestrick.”
Baby Van Rensselaer: A village Hampden?
Dear Jones: Some day he’ll withstand the little tyrant of the fields and lead a revolt against the garden-sass monopoly, and so sail into the legislature. I fear the bride is destined to ruin her digestion in an Albany boarding-house, while the groom gives his days and nights to affairs of state.
Here the train slackened its speed as it approached a small station from which shrill notes of music arose.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Look, the bride is going to leave us.
Dear Jones: He lives here, and the local fife and drum corps have come to welcome him home. Dinna ye hear that strident “Hail to the Chief,” they have just executed?
Baby Van Rensselaer: How proudly she looks up at him! I think the band ought to play something for her—but they are men, and they’ll never think of it.
Dear Jones: You cannot expect much tact from two fifes and a bass drum, but unless my ears deceive me they have greeted the bride with a well-meant attempt at “Home, Sweet Home.”
Baby Van Rensselaer:
Dear Jones [surprised]: Why—how did you know that poem?
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh, I heard somebody quote it last Decoration Day—I don’t know who—it struck me as very pretty and I looked it up.
Dear Jones [pleased]: Oh, I remember. It has always been a favorite of mine.
Baby Van Rensselaer [coldly]: Indeed?
Dear Jones [as the train starts again]: Bride and groom, fife and drum, fade away from sight and hearing. I wonder if we shall ever think of them again?
Baby Van Rensselaer: I shall, I’m sure. She was so pretty. And, besides, the music was lively. I shan’t have anything half as amusing as that at Shelter Island.
Dear Jones: Don’t you like it, then?
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh, dear no! I shall be glad to get away to my aunt’s place at Watch Hill. It’s very poky indeed, at Shelter Island (sighs). And to think that I shall have to spend just two weeks of primness and propriety there.
Dear Jones: Just two weeks? Ah!
Tuesday, September 5, 1882. (Afternoon.)
Although it is difficult to tell the length from the breadth of the small steamer that plies between Sag Harbor and New London, it is safe to assume that it was the bow that was pointing away from the Shelter Island dock as Baby Van Rensselaer stepped out of the cabin and Dear Jones walked up to her, lifting his hat with an expression of surprise on his face that might have been better, considering that he had rehearsed it a number of times since he left Sag Harbor.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Why, Mr. Jones!
Dear Jones [forgetting his lines, and improvising]: How—how—odd we should meet again just here. Funny, isn’t it?
Baby Van Rensselaer: It is exceedingly humorous.
Dear Jones: I did not tell you, did I!—when I saw you on the train, you know—that I had to go to New London, after I’d finished my work at Sag Harbor.
Baby Van Rensselaer [uncompromisingly]: I don’t think you said anything about New London at all.
Dear Jones: I probably said the Pequot House. It’s the same thing, you know. I have to go to New London to inspect the Race Rock lighthouse—you’ve heard of the famous lighthouse at Race Rock, of course.
Baby Van Rensselaer: I don’t think its fame has reached me.
Dear Jones: It’s a very curious structure, indeed. And, the fact is, one of my—my billionaires—wants a lighthouse. He has an extraordinary notion of building a lighthouse near his place on the seashore—a lighthouse of his own. Odd idea, isn’t it?
Baby Van Rensselaer: It is a very odd proceeding altogether, I should say.
Dear Jones: I suppose you mean that I am a very odd proceeding. Well, I will confess, and throw myself on your mercy. I did hope to meet you—and the Duch—Mrs. Martin. After two weeks of the society of billionaires, I think I’m excusable.… [A painful pause.] And I had to go to Race Rock, so I got off a day earlier than I had meant to, by cutting one of the turrets out of my original plan—he didn’t mind—there are eleven left—and—and—will you forgive me?
Baby Van Rensselaer: Really, I have nothing to forgive, Mr. Jones. I’ve no doubt my aunt will be very glad to see you.
Dear Jones: Ah—how is Mrs. Martin?
Baby Van Rensselaer: She is in the cabin. She is quite well at present; but she is always very nervous about sea-sickness, and she prefers to lie down. I must go in and sit with her.
Dear Jones [quickly]: Indeed—I didn’t know Mrs. Martin suffered from sea-sickness. She’s crossed the ocean so many times, you know. How many is it?
Baby Van Rensselaer: Six, I think.
Dear Jones: No; eight, isn’t it? I’m almost sure it’s eight.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Very possibly. But she is a great sufferer. I must go and see how she is.
Dear Jones: Yes, we’ll go. I want to see Mrs. Martin. One of the disadvantages of the summer season is that one can’t see the Duchess at regular intervals to exchange gossip.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Well, if you have any confidential gossip for the Duchess, I will wait here until you come out. I want to get all the fresh air possible, if I have to sit in the cabin for the rest of the trip.
Dear Jones [asserting himself]: Very well. I have the contents of four letters from Newport to pour into the Duchess’s ear. You know I was staying at the Hitchcocks’ for a fortnight, before I went to Sag Harbor.
He went into the stuffy little cabin, where the Duchess was lying on a bench, in a wilderness of shawls. Baby Van Rensselaer waited a good half-hour, but heard no sound of returning footsteps from that gloomy cave. Finally she went in to investigate, and was told by the Duchess that “Dear Jones has gone after, or whatever you call it, to smoke a cigar.” Baby Van Rensselaer made up her mind that under those circumstances she would go forward and read her book. She also made up her mind that Mr. Jones was extremely rude. His rudeness, she found, as she sat reading at the bow of the boat, really spoiled her book. She knew that she ought not to let such little things annoy her; but then, it was a very stupid chapter, and the fresh sea breeze blew the pages back and forward, and her veil would not stay over her hair, and she always had hated traveling, and it was so disagreeable to have people behave in that way—especially people—well, any people. Just here she turned her head, and saw Dear Jones advancing from the cabin with a bright and smiling face.
Baby Van Rensselaer [about to rise]: My aunt wants me, I suppose.
Dear Jones: Not at all—not in the least—at present. I just came through the cabin—on tiptoe—and she was fast asleep. In fact, not to speak it profanely, she was—she was audible.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh!
Dear Jones: I’m glad to see you’re getting the benefit of the fresh air.
Baby Van Rensselaer: I was afraid of waking my aunt with the rustling of the leaves of my book, so I came out here.
Dear Jones: I’m glad you did. It would be a shame for you to have to sit in that close cabin. That’s the reason I didn’t come back to you when I left Mrs. Martin. I played a pious fraud on you for the benefit of your health.
Baby Van Rensselaer: You were very considerate.
Dear Jones [enthusiastically]: Oh, not at all.
Baby Van Rensselaer [calmly]: And if you’ll excuse me, I’ll finish my book. I can’t read in the cabin.
Baby Van Rensselaer resumed her reading and found the book improved a little. After a while she looked up and saw Dear Jones sitting on the rail, meekly twirling his thumbs.
Baby Van Rensselaer [after an effort at silence]: Don’t be so ridiculously absurd. What are you doing there?
Dear Jones: I’m waiting to be spoken to.
Baby Van Rensselaer smiled. The boat had just swung out of the jaws of the bay. Overhead was the full glory of a sky which made one believe that there never was such a thing as a cloud. And they sped along over the sea of water in a sea of light. Just then there came from the depths under the cabin the rise and fall of a measured, mocking melody, high and clear as the notes of a lark.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Why, that must be a bird whistling—only birds don’t whistle “Amaryllis.”
Dear Jones: ’Tisn’t a bird—it’s an engineer.
Baby Van Rensselaer: An engineer?
Dear Jones: A grimy engineer. Quite a pathetic story, too. Some of the Sag Harbor people took him up as a boy. He had a wonderful ear and an extraordinary tenor voice. They were going to make a Mario of him. They paid for his education in New York, and then sent him over to Paris to the Conservatory to be finished off. And he hadn’t been there six weeks before he caught the regular Paris pleurisy—it’s an article de Paris, you know, and lost his voice utterly and hopelessly.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh!
Dear Jones: And so he had to come back and engineer for his living.
Baby Van Rensselaer: How very sad. Now I can scarcely bear to hear him whistle.
Dear Jones [to himself]: Well, I didn’t mean to produce that effect. [To her.] Oh, he doesn’t mind it a bit. Hear him now.
The engineer was executing a series of brilliant variations on the “Air du Roi Louis XIII.,” melting by ingenious gradations into the “Babies on our Block.”
Dear Jones [hastily]: Race Rock lies over that way. You can’t see it yet—but you will after a while.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh, then there is a Race Rock?
Dear Jones: Why, certainly.…
With this starter, it may readily be understood that a man of Dear Jones’s fecundity of intellect and fine imaginative powers was able to fill the greater part of the afternoon with fluent conversation. Two or three times Baby Van Rensselaer made futile attempts to go into the cabin to see how the Duchess was sleeping; but as many times she forgot her errand. There was a fair breeze blowing from the northeast, but the sea was smooth, and the little boat scarcely rocked on the long, low waves. It was getting toward four o’clock when there was a sudden stoppage of the engineer’s whistling, and of the machinery of the boat. Baby Van Rensselaer sent Dear Jones back to inquire into the cause, for they were alone on the broad sea, with only a tantalizing glimpse of New London harbor stretching out welcoming arms of green, with the Groton monument stuck like a huge clothes-pin on the left arm. Dear Jones came back, trying hard to look decently perturbed and gloomy, but with a barbarian joy lighting up his bronzed features.
Baby Van Rensselaer: What is it?
Dear Jones: The machinery is on a dead centre. And the whistling engineer says that he’ll have to wait until he can get into port and hitch a horse to the crank to start her off again.
Baby Van Rensselaer: But how are we to get into port?
Dear Jones: The whistling engineer further says that we are now drifting toward Watch Hill.
Baby Van Rensselaer: That’s just where we want to go.
Dear Jones: Yes. [An unholy toot from the steam whistle.] And there he is signalling that yacht to take us off!
Baby Van Rensselaer: I must go to my aunt now.
Dear Jones: Why—there’s no hurry.
Baby Van Rensselaer: No, but she’ll be so frightened—she’ll think it’s going to blow up or something.
Baby Van Rensselaer disappeared in the depths of the cabin. Dear Jones disconsolately walked the deck in solitary silence for five minutes. When Baby Van Rensselaer reappeared, his spirits rose.
Baby Van Rensselaer: My aunt is afraid you may have difficulty in reaching New London to-night. She wants me to ask you if you won’t stay over-night at her place at Watch Hill?
Dear Jones: Won’t I? Well, I will—have much pleasure in accepting your aunt’s invitation.
Tuesday, September 5, 1882. (Evening.)
A row of Japanese lanterns shed a Cathayan light along the little path leading from the Duchess’s house on a rocky promontory to the little beach which nestled under its shoulder. The moon softly and judiciously lit up the baby breakers which in Long Island Sound imitate the surf of the outer sea. It threw eerie shadows behind the bath-houses, and fell with gentle radiance upon two dripping but shapely figures emerging from the water, where the other bathers were unwisely lingering.
Dear Jones: I think this is simply delightful. I really never got the perfect enjoyment of an evening swim before.
Baby Van Rensselaer: I am glad you enjoyed it.
Dear Jones: There is something so charming in this aristocratic seclusion, with the shouts and laughter of the vulgar herd just far enough off to be picturesque—if you can call a noise picturesque.
Baby Van Rensselaer [coldly]: I think this beach might be a little more private—it’s shared in common by these three cottages.
Dear Jones: But they seem to be very nice people here. And they all swim so well, it quite put me on my mettle. You are really a splendid swimmer, do you know it? And that girl I towed out to the buoy, who is she?
Baby Van Rensselaer [explosively]: Mr. Jones, this is positively insulting!
Dear Jones: Wh—what—wh—why? I don’t understand you.
Baby Van Rensselaer: To pretend that you don’t know that Hitchcock woman!
Dear Jones [innocently]: Was that Miss Hitchcock? I didn’t recognize her.
Baby Van Rensselaer: If this is your idea of humor, Mr. Jones, it is simply offensive!
Dear Jones: But, upon my soul, I didn’t know the girl—nor she me!
Baby Van Rensselaer: You didn’t know her? After you have been staying two weeks at her house at Newport?
Dear Jones [with something like dignity]: I was staying at her father’s house, Miss Van Rensselaer, and Miss Hitchcock was away on a visit.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Up the Saguenay, perhaps?
Dear Jones: Very likely. Miss Hitchcock may have left a large part of the Saguenay unexplored for all I know. I was introduced to her party only half an hour before we got off the boat at Quebec.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Long enough, however, to discover that she was “bright.”
Dear Jones: Quite long enough, Miss Van Rensselaer. One may find out a great deal of another’s character in half an hour.
There was a pause, which was filled by the strains of a Virginia reel, coming from one of the cottages high up on the bank, where an impromptu dance was just begun. The moonlight fell on Baby Van Rensselaer’s little white teeth, set firmly between her parted lips. The pause was broken.
Baby Van Rensselaer: If you propose to descend to brutality of this sort, Mr. Jones, I think we need prolong neither the conversation—nor the acquaintance.
Dear Jones [honestly]: No—you can’t mean that—Miss Van Rensselaer—Baby—
Baby Van Rensselaer: What, sir! Your familiarity is—I can’t stand familiarity from you! (She clenches her little hands.)
Dear Jones: You have no right to treat me like this. If I am familiar it is because I love you—and you know it!
Baby Van Rensselaer: This is the first I have heard of it, sir. I trust it will be the last. Will you kindly permit me to pass, or must I—
Dear Jones: You may go where you wish, Miss Van Rensselaer—No, come, this is ridiculous—
Baby Van Rensselaer: Is it?
Dear Jones: I mean it is foolish. Don’t let us—
Baby Van Rensselaer: Don’t let us see each other again!
Thursday, February 14, 1884.
As the soft, low notes of the wedding-march from “Lohengrin” fell gently from the organ-loft over the entrance of Grace Church, the quartet of able-bodied ushers passed up the centre aisle and parted the white ribbons—a silken barrier which they had gallantly defended for an hour in a vain effort to keep the common herd of acquaintance separate from the chosen many of the family. Behind them came two pretty little girls, strewing the aisle with white flowers from their aprons. The four bridesmaids, two abreast, passed up the aisle after the little girls, proud in their reflected glory. Then came the bride, leaning on Judge Gillespie’s arm, and radiant with youth and beauty and happiness. As the procession drew near the chancel-rail, the groom came from the vestry and advanced to meet her, accompanied by his best man, Uncle Larry, who relieved him of his hat and overcoat, the which he would dextrously return to him when the happy couple should leave the church man and wife. And in due time the Bishop asked, “Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife?”
Dear Jones: I will.
The Bishop asked again, “Wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded husband?”
Baby Van Rensselaer: I will.
As they knelt at the altar the sun came out and fell through the window, and the stained glass sifted down on them the mingled hues of hope and of faith and love; and the Bishop blessed them.
The good ship sped on her way across the calm Atlantic. It was an outward passage, according to the little charts which the company had charily distributed, but most of the passengers were homeward bound, after a summer of rest and recreation, and they were counting the days before they might hope to see Fire Island Light. On the lee side of the boat, comfortably sheltered from the wind, and just by the door of the captain’s room (which was theirs during the day), sat a little group of returning Americans. The Duchess (she was down on the purser’s list as Mrs. Martin, but her friends and familiars called her the Duchess of Washington Square) and Baby Van Rensselaer (she was quite old enough to vote, had her sex been entitled to that duty, but as the younger of two sisters she was still the baby of the family)—the Duchess and Baby Van Rensselaer were discussing the pleasant English voice and the not unpleasant English accent of a manly young lordling who was going to America for sport. Uncle Larry and Dear Jones were enticing each other into a bet on the ship’s run of the morrow.
“I’ll give you two to one she don’t make 420,” said Dear Jones.
“I’ll take it,” answered Uncle Larry. “We made 427 the fifth day last year.” It was Uncle Larry’s seventeenth visit to Europe, and this was therefore his thirty-fourth voyage.
“And when did you get in?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer. “I don’t care a bit about the run, so long as we get in soon.”
“We crossed the bar Sunday night, just seven days after we left Queenstown, and we dropped anchor off Quarantine at three o’clock on Monday morning.”
“I hope we sha’n’t do that this time. I can’t seem to sleep any when the boat stops.”
“I can; but I didn’t,” continued Uncle Larry; “because my stateroom was the most for’ard in the boat, and the donkey-engine that let down the anchor was right over my head.”
“So you got up and saw the sunrise over the bay,” said Dear Jones, “with the electric lights of the city twinkling in the distance, and the first faint flush of the dawn in the east just over Fort Lafayette, and the rosy tinge which spread softly upward, and”—
“Did you both come back together?” asked the Duchess.
“Because he has crossed thirty-four times you must not suppose he has a monopoly in sunrises,” retorted Dear Jones. “No; this was my own sunrise; and a mighty pretty one it was, too.”
“I’m not matching sunrises with you,” remarked Uncle Larry calmly; “but I’m willing to back a merry jest called forth by my sunrise against any two merry jests called forth by yours.”
“I confess reluctantly that my sunrise evoked no merry jest at all.” Dear Jones was an honest man, and would scorn to invent a merry jest on the spur of the moment.
“That’s where my sunrise has the call,” said Uncle Larry complacently.
“What was the merry jest?” was Baby Van Rensselaer’s inquiry, the natural result of a feminine curiosity thus artistically excited.
“Well, here it is. I was standing aft, near a patriotic American and a wandering Irishman, and the patriotic American rashly declared that you couldn’t see a sunrise like that anywhere in Europe, and this gave the Irishman his chance, and he said, ‘Sure ye don’t have ’m here till we’re through with ’em over there.’”
“It is true,” said Dear Jones thoughtfully, “that they do have some things over there better than we do; for instance, umbrellas.”
“And gowns,” added the Duchess.
“And antiquities”—this was Uncle Larry’s contribution.
“And we do have some things so much better in America!” protested Baby Van Rensselaer, as yet uncorrupted by any worship of the effete monarchies of despotic Europe. “We make lots of things a great deal nicer than you can get them in Europe—especially ice-cream.”
“And pretty girls,” added Dear Jones; but he did not look at her.
“And spooks,” remarked Uncle Larry casually.
“Spooks?” queried the Duchess.
“Spooks. I maintain the word. Ghosts, if you like that better, or spectres. We turn out the best quality of spook”—
“You forget the lovely ghost stories about the Rhine, and the Black Forest,” interrupted Miss Van Rensselaer, with feminine inconsistency.
“I remember the Rhine and the Black Forest and all the other haunts of elves and fairies and hobgoblins; but for good honest spooks there is no place like home. And what differentiates our spook—spiritus Americanus—from the ordinary ghost of literature is that it responds to the American sense of humor. Take Irving’s stories, for example. The Headless Horseman, that’s a comic ghost story. And Rip Van Winkle—consider what humor, and what good-humor, there is in the telling of his meeting with the goblin crew of Hendrik Hudson’s men! A still better example of this American way of dealing with legend and mystery is the marvellous tale of the rival ghosts.”
“The rival ghosts?” queried the Duchess and Baby Van Rensselaer together. “Who were they?”
“Didn’t I ever tell you about them?” answered Uncle Larry, a gleam of approaching joy flashing from his eye.
“Since he is bound to tell us sooner or later, we’d better be resigned, and hear it now,” said Dear Jones.
“If you are not more eager, I won’t tell it at all.”
“Oh, do, Uncle Larry; you know I just dote on ghost stories,” pleaded Baby Van Rensselaer.
“Once upon a time,” began Uncle Larry—“in fact, a very few years ago—there lived in the thriving town of New York a young American called Duncan—Eliphalet Duncan. Like his name, he was half Yankee and half Scotch, and naturally he was a lawyer, and had come to New York to make his way. His father was a Scotchman, who had come over and settled in Boston, and married a Salem girl. When Eliphalet Duncan was about twenty he lost both of his parents. His father left him with enough money to give him a start, and a strong feeling of pride in his Scotch birth; you see there was a title in the family in Scotland, and although Eliphalet’s father was the younger son of a younger son, yet he always remembered, and always bade his only son to remember, that his ancestry was noble. His mother left him her full share of Yankee grit, and a little old house in Salem which had belonged to her family for more than two hundred years. She was a Hitchcock, and the Hitchcocks had been settled in Salem since the year 1. It was a great-great-grandfather of Mr. Eliphalet Hitchcock who was foremost in the time of the Salem witchcraft craze. And this little old house which she left to my friend Eliphalet Duncan was haunted.”
“By the ghost of one of the witches, of course,” interrupted Dear Jones.
“Now how could it be the ghost of a witch, since the witches were all burned at the stake? You never heard of anybody who was burned having a ghost, did you?”
“That’s an argument in favor of cremation, at any rate,” replied Jones, evading the direct question.
“It is, if you don’t like ghosts. I do,” said Baby Van Rensselaer.
“And so do I,” added Uncle Larry. “I love a ghost as dearly as an Englishman loves a lord.”
“Go on with your story,” said the Duchess, majestically overruling all extraneous discussion.
“This little old house at Salem was haunted,” resumed Uncle Larry. “And by a very distinguished ghost—or at least by a ghost with very remarkable attributes.”
“What was he like?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a premonitory shiver of anticipatory delight.
“It had a lot of peculiarities. In the first place, it never appeared to the master of the house. Mostly it confined its visitations to unwelcome guests. In the course of the last hundred years it had frightened away four successive mothers-in-law, while never intruding on the head of the household.”
“I guess that ghost had been one of the boys when he was alive and in the flesh.” This was Dear Jones’s contribution to the telling of the tale.
“In the second place,” continued Uncle Larry, “it never frightened anybody the first time it appeared. Only on the second visit were the ghost-seers scared; but then they were scared enough for twice, and they rarely mustered up courage enough to risk a third interview. One of the most curious characteristics of this well-meaning spook was that it had no face—or at least that nobody ever saw its face.”
“Perhaps he kept his countenance veiled?” queried the Duchess, who was beginning to remember that she never did like ghost stories.