One thing which troubled him was the difficulty of using the first person when telling a story to the Mistress of the House. He could tell his stories best in that fashion, but he did not believe that this hearer would be satisfied with them; she would not be likely to give them enough belief to make them interesting. He had a story all ready to tell to the Daughter of the House, for he had been sure she would want one some day soon, and this one, told in a manner which would please him, he thought would please her; but it was very different with her mother. He must be careful.
When the two ladies came to the bed where the beans were to be planted, the gardener found that he had not mistaken their errand.
"John," said the Mistress of the House, "I hear you tell a very good story, and I want you to tell me one. Let us find a shady place."
There was a pretty summer-house on the upper terrace, a shady place where the air was cool and the view was fine; and there they went: but there was no need of John Gayther"s making any pretence of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g up pea-sticks this time.
"I have a story," said he, his stool at a respectful distance from the two ladies, who were seated on a bench outside the little house.
"Is it about yourself?" asked the Daughter of the House.
"No, miss, not this time," he answered.
"I am sorry for that," she said, "for I like to think of people doing the things they tell about. But I suppose we can"t have that every time."
"Oh, no," said her mother; "and if John has an interesting story about anybody else, let him tell it."
The gardener began promptly. "The name of this story is "The Lady in the Box,"" said he, "and, with the exception of the lady, the princ.i.p.al personage in it was a young man who lived in Florence toward the end of the last century."
"And how did you come to know the story?" asked the Daughter of the House. "Has it ever been told before?"
Now there was need to a.s.sert himself, if John Gayther did not wish to lose grace with his hearers, and he was equal to the occasion. "It has never been printed," said he, quietly but boldly. "It came to me in the most straightforward way, step by step."
"Very good," said the Mistress of the House; "I like a story to come in that way."
"The young man, whose name was Jaqui," continued John Gayther, "was of good parts, but not in very good circ.u.mstances. He was a student of medicine, and was the a.s.sistant of a doctor, which means that he did all the hard work, such as attending to the shop, mixing the drugs, and even going out to see very poor patients in bad weather. Jaqui"s employer--master, in fact--was Dr. Torquino, an elderly man of much reputation in his town. The doctor expected Jaqui to be his successor, and as the years went on the younger man began to visit patients in good circ.u.mstances who fell sick in fine weather. At last Dr. Torquino made a bargain with Jaqui by which the latter was to pay certain sums of money to the old man"s heirs, and then the stock and good-will of the establishment were formally made over to him; and, shortly afterwards, the old doctor died. But before his death he told Jaqui everything that it was necessary for him to know in regard to the property and the business to which he had succeeded.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The gardener began promptly.]
"Torquino"s house was a very good one, consisting of three floors. On the ground floor were the shop, the private office, and the living-rooms. The old doctor and Jaqui lodged on the third floor. The second floor was very handsomely furnished, but was not then occupied--at least, not in the ordinary way. It belonged to Dr. Paltravi, the old doctor"s former partner; a somewhat younger man, and married. He had been greatly attached to his wife, and had furnished these rooms to suit her fancy. He was a scientific man, and much more devoted to making curious experiments than he was to the ordinary practice of medicine and surgery. In a small room on this floor, at the very back of the house, was Donna Paltravi, in a box."
"Was she dead?" exclaimed the Daughter of the House.
"It was believed by Dr. Torquino that she was not, but he could not be sure of it."
"And her husband?" asked the elder lady. "Was he dead?"
"No," replied the gardener; "at least, there was no reason to suppose so. About forty years before the time of this story he had left Florence, and this was the way of it: Donna Paltravi was a young and handsome woman, but her health was not as satisfactory as it might have been, for she had a tendency to fall into swoons, and to remain in them, sometimes for many hours, coming out of a trance as lively as before she went into it. Now this disposition had a powerful effect upon her husband, and he studied her very closely, with an interest which almost devoured the other powers of his mind. He experimented upon her, and became so expert that he not only could bring her out of her trances whenever he chose, but he could keep her in them; and this he did, sometimes as long as a week, in order to prove to himself that he could do it."
"Shame upon him!" exclaimed the Daughter of the House.
"Never mind," said her mother; "let John go on."
"Well," continued the gardener, "the old doctor told Jaqui a great many things about Paltravi and his wife, and how she came to be at that time in the box. Paltravi had conceived a great scheme, one which he had believed might have immense influence on the happiness of the world. He determined that when his wife next went into a trance he would try to keep her so for fifty years, and then revive her, in the midst of her youth and beauty, to enjoy the world as she should find it."
"There was nothing new about that," said the Mistress of the House.
"That is a very old story, and the thing has been written about again and again and again."
"That is very true, madam," answered John Gayther, "and Dr. Paltravi had heard many such stories, but most of them were founded upon traditions and myths and the vaguest kind of hearsay, and some were no more than the fancies of story-tellers. But the doctor wanted to work on solid and substantial ground, and he believed that his wife"s exceptional opportunities should not be sacrificed."
"Sacrificed!" exclaimed the Daughter of the House. "I like that!"
"Of course I will not attempt to explain the doctor"s motives, or try to excuse him," said the gardener. "I can only tell what he did. He protracted one of his wife"s trances, and when it had continued for a month he determined to keep it up for half a century, if it could be done; and he went earnestly to work for the purpose. The old doctor had not altogether approved of his partner"s action, but I don"t believe he disapproved very much, for he also possessed a good deal of the spirit of scientific investigation. When everything had been arranged, and the lady had been placed in a large and handsome box which had been designed with great care by her husband and constructed under his careful supervision, she was carried into the little room which had been her boudoir; and there her husband watched and guarded her for nearly a year. In all that time there was not the slightest change in her so far as mortal eye could see, but there came a change over her husband. He grew uneasy and restless, and could not sleep at night; and, at last, he told Dr. Torquino he would have to go away; he could not stay any longer and see his beautiful wife lying motionless before him. The desire to revive her had become so great he found it impossible to withstand it, and therefore, in the interest of science and for the advantage of the world, he must put it out of his power to interfere with the success of his own great experiment.
"He wrote down on parchment everything that was necessary for the person to know who had charge of this great treasure, and he made Dr. Torquino swear to guard and to protect Donna Paltravi for forty-nine years, if he should live so long, and, if he did not, that he would deliver his charge into the hands of some worthy and reliable person. If, at the end of the lady"s half-century of inanimation, Paltravi should not make his appearance, on account of having died, (for nothing else would keep him away), then the person in charge of the lady was to animate her in the manner which was fully and minutely described on the parchment. Paltravi then departed, and since that time nothing had been heard of him.
"When Jaqui came into possession of Dr. Torquino"s house, he felt he owned the contents of only two floors, and that the second floor, especially the little room in the rear, was a great responsibility which he did not desire at all, and of which he would have rid himself if Dr. Torquino had not made him swear that he would guard it sacredly for the ten years which still remained of the intended period of inanimation.
"He had seen the lady in the box, for the old doctor had taken him into her room, and they had removed the top of the box and had looked at her through the great plate of gla.s.s which covered her. She was very beautiful and richly dressed, and seemed as if she were merely asleep.
But, in spite of her beauty and the interest which attached to her, he wished very much somebody else had her to take care of. Such thoughts, however, were of no use; she went with the business and the property, and he had nothing to say about it.
"Jaqui did not have a very good time after the old doctor"s death,"
continued John Gayther. "It was not even as good as he had expected it to be. For nearly fifteen years he had been living in that house with Dr. Torquino, and in all that time the lady in the box had never troubled him; but now she did trouble him. Various legal persons came to attend to the transfer of the property, and, although they found everything all straight and right so far as the old doctor"s possessions were concerned, they were not so well satisfied in regard to the contents of the second floor, some of them thinking the government should have something to say in regard to the property of a man who had been away for forty years; but as Paltravi had made Torquino his heir when he left Florence, and Jaqui had the papers to show, this matter was settled. But, for all that, Jaqui was troubled, and it was about the box of the lady. It was such a peculiar-looking box that several questions were asked as to its contents; and when Jaqui boldly a.s.serted that it contained anatomical preparations, he was asked why it happened to be in that handsome little room. But by the help of money and his generally good reputation Jaqui got rid of the legal people.
"But after this he had to face the neighbors. These heard of the box, and it revived memories, in the minds of some of the elders, of strange stories about Dr. Paltravi. His wife had died several times, according to some of them, and she had at last been carried to her native town in Lombardy for burial. But n.o.body knew the name of that town, and there were one or two persons who said she never had been buried, but that her husband had preserved her skeleton, and had had it gilded, he was so very fond of her. Jaqui had a good deal of trouble with these people, who had never dared to trouble old Dr. Torquino with their idle curiosity, for he was a man with a high temper and would stand no meddling.
"But when the neighbors had ceased to talk, at least to him, there came a third cla.s.s of troublers, worse than either of the others. These were some scientific people who long ago had heard of the experiment Dr. Paltravi had been making with his wife. Several of these wrote to Jaqui, and two of them came to see him. These insisted on looking at the lady in the box, and Jaqui was obliged to show her. The two scientists were very much interested--extremely so; but they did not in the least believe the lady was alive. They considered the beautiful figure the most admirable specimen of the preservation of the human body after death that they had ever seen, and that Paltravi was ent.i.tled to the greatest credit for the success of his experiment. They were anxious to be informed of the methods by which this wonderful result had been obtained. But this, Jaqui firmly informed them, was now his secret and his property, and he would not divulge it. The scientists acknowledged the justice of this position, and did not urge their point; but each of them, when he went away, resolved that in the course of a few years he would come back, and if the body of the lady was still in good preservation, he would buy it if he could. Jaqui might be poor by that time, or dead.
"Jaqui now thought his troubles were over; but he was mistaken. A new persecutor appeared, who belonged to a fourth cla.s.s, fortunately not a very large one. This person was a young man who was not only a fool but a poet."
"Unfortunate creature!" exclaimed the Mistress of the House.
"I don"t know, madam," said John Gayther. "He was very happy. It was the people with whom he a.s.sociated in this world who were unfortunate. This young man, whose name was Florino, lived in Milan, and it would have been much better for Jaqui if he had lived in Patagonia. By great bad luck he had overheard one of the scientists who had visited Jaqui talking about what he had seen at his house, and the poet instantly became greatly interested in the story. He plied the learned man with all manner of questions, and very soon made up his mind that he would go to Florence to see the lady in the box. He believed she would make a most admirable subject for a poem from his pen.
"When Florino presented himself to Jaqui he came as the general of an army who settles down before a town to invest it and capture it, if he shall live long enough. At first Jaqui tried to turn him away in the usual manner; but the poet was not to be turned away. He had no feelings which could be hurt, and Jaqui was afraid to hurt his body on account of the police. The young man begged, he argued, he insisted, he persisted.
All he wanted was to see, just once, the face of the beautiful lady who had been so wonderfully preserved. He visited the unfortunate Jaqui by day and by night; and at last, when Florino solemnly promised that if he should be given one opportunity of seeing the lady he would go away and never trouble Dr. Jaqui any more, the latter concluded that to agree to this proposition would be the best way to get rid of the youth, and so consented to allow him to gaze upon the face which forty years before had been animated by the soul of Donna Paltravi.
"When the upper part of the lid of the box had been removed and the face of the lady appeared under the plate of gla.s.s, the soul of the young poet who tremblingly bent over it was filled with rapturous delight.
Never in his life had he seen anything so beautiful, and, more than this, he declared he had never dreamed of features so lovely. For a time it interested Jaqui to listen to the rhapsodies and observe the exaltation of the fool-poet, but he soon had enough of this amorous insanity, and prepared to close the box. Then Florino burst into wild entreaties--only ten minutes more, five minutes, three minutes, anything! So it went on until the poet had been feasting his eyes on the lady for nearly half an hour. Then Jaqui forcibly put him out of the room, closed the box, and locked the door.
"Florino had no more idea of keeping his word than he had of becoming a blacksmith. He persecuted Jaqui more than he had before, and when his solicitations to see the lady again were refused he went so far as to attempt to climb up to her window. Of course Jaqui could have called in the aid of the police, but it would have made it very unpleasant for him to bring the whole affair into court, and Florino knew this as well as he did. After a short time the poet tried a new line of tactics, and endeavored to persuade Jaqui that it was his duty to revive the lady; when this idea once got well into the head of the young man he became a worse lunatic than before. Jaqui attempted to reason with him; but Florino would listen to nothing he had to say, and went on being a fool, and a poet, and a lover, at the same time; and Jaqui began to be afraid that some day he would get into the room by foul means, break open the box, seize upon the sealed parchment which lay under the lid, and try to revive the lady himself.
"It is quite possible this might have happened had not something very unexpected occurred. Dr. Paltravi came back to his old home. Jaqui recognized him immediately from the description which Torquino had given of him. He was now nearly seventy years old, but he was in good health and vigor; his tall form was still upright, and the dark eyes, which the old doctor had particularly described, were as bright and as piercing as ever they had been.
"He told Jaqui he had hoped to postpone the revival of his wife until the expiration of the fifty years, but that of late his resolution had been weakening. It had become very hard for him to think he must wait ten years more before he came back to his home and his wife. Science was a great thing, but the love of a man for a woman such as he loved was still greater; and when he heard of the death of Dr. Torquino he had instantly made up his mind he would not leave his wife in the custody of any one but his old friend and partner. So here he was, fully resolved to lose no time in reviving his wife and in spending his life here with her in their old home so long as they might survive.
"Jaqui was now a happy man. Here was the owner of the lady, ready to take her off his hands and relieve him of all the perplexing responsibility and misery which her possession had caused him. As he looked at the stalwart figure of the returned husband it made him laugh to think of the fool-poet.
"Dr. Paltravi and Jaqui were both practical men, and that evening they laid out the whole plan for the revivification of the lady in the box.
Jaqui was so glad to be rid of her that he willingly undertook to do anything to a.s.sist Paltravi in starting out on his new career of domestic happiness.
"It was agreed that it was most important that when she woke again to life Donna Paltravi should not be too much surprised, and her husband did everything he could to prevent anything of the kind. He had her old bedroom swept and garnished and made to look as much as possible as it had been when she last saw it. Then he went out into the town, and was fortunate enough to engage as maid a young girl who was the daughter of the woman who had been his wife"s maid forty years before. Then it was decided that this girl, having been well instructed as to what was expected of her, should be the first to see the lady when she should revive; and that after that, when it should be deemed a suitable moment, Jaqui should have an interview with her in the capacity of physician, and explain the state of affairs so that she should not be too greatly excited and shocked by the change in the appearance of her husband.
Then, when everything had been made plain, Paltravi was to go to her."
"Those two were a couple of brave men," remarked the Mistress of the House.
"They were very fortunate men, I think," said her daughter. "What would I not give to be the first to talk to a woman who had slept for forty years!"