CHAPTER IV
FATE REELS IN
There is nothing more certain than that the bare facts of life are misleading in the extreme. This is doubtless nature"s reason for concealing the human skeleton; it is undeniably necessary, but not many of us take it into daily consideration, and n.o.body but a few negligible anthropologists would dream of bringing it forward as proof of anything in particular. And yet people who are fond of describing themselves as practical persistently fold their hands over their abdomens, shrug their shoulders and reiterate monotonously: "But, my dear fellow, there are the facts! It is only necessary to consider the facts of the case!" or, "I"m sorry, but I"m afraid the bare facts are against you!" I suppose that is why they are so often called bare, because so little of the important, informing or attractive is draped around them.
Consider for instance, the bare facts of Roger"s adventure. Here is a man who, meeting a perfectly unknown and singularly beautiful young woman in a questionable locality at dusk, enters into conversation with her, takes her to a French restaurant for dinner, then finds himself embroiled in a disgraceful altercation in which wine-gla.s.ses are thrown and chairs waved, and finally escapes with her in a closed carriage, which soon becomes the scene of a violent struggle culminating in a ferocious kiss! The case is really too clear; it is almost too conventional for an art student of any initiative and originality. Anyone possessed of the slightest acquaintance with fiction or the daily papers could tell you instantly that here were a dissipated clubman and a too-unfortunately-stereotyped creature who not only required no description but were best, in the interests of morality, undescribed. And yet Roger was emphatically not dissipated, nor even a clubman, in the sense in which the word appears to be used in America, and Margarita was not in the least unfortunate and so far from stereotyped that she pressed the unusual hard toward the utterly unique.
"Well, well," I hear the practical man, "but this is a case in one--five--ten thousand, surely! We all know--"
My good man, there is absolutely nothing we all know except that we shall certainly die, one day, and from this one bare fact more utterly contradictory inferences have been drawn than I can afford ink to enumerate. Nothing could be more certain than this bare fact, and can you show me anything more productive of human uncertainty? I trow not.
What do you know of the private life of the man in the next house?
Have you a friend who cannot tell you from one to three melodramatic tales, lying quite within his experience, at which you will gasp, "Why, it"s as exciting as a novel!" The best novels never get into print and the most blood-curdling, goose-pimpling dramas are played by the boxholders. The longer I live the more firmly am I convinced that the really quiet life is relatively rare.
To Roger, indeed, after his climax in the four-wheeler, it seemed impossible that life could ever again be quiet. If I have not impressed you with the idea that he was a decent sort of man, I have wasted a whole chapter and demonstrated the folly of attempting authorship at my age, and you will be but poorly prepared to learn that when the cabby knocked at the gla.s.s, after heaven knows how many minutes of interested observation, Roger discovered his ident.i.ty again--and loathed it. His conduct appeared to him indescribably beneath contempt, his situation deplorable. Margarita, sobbing quietly in her corner, seemed unlikely to raise either his spirits or his estimate of himself.
Opening the door of the carriage he repeated his directions to the too-confidential driver and spoke stiffly to his companion.
"I will not attempt to excuse myself to you," he said, "for it would be pointless. If you can believe me, I will try my best to help you to your friends. Can you not tell me the name of one?"
"What is your name?" she asked, her voice only a little shaken from her sobs, which had ceased as soon as he began to speak.
"My name is Roger Bradley," he answered promptly.
"Then that is the name of my first friend," said Margarita Josephine Dolores, "but I hope to find others."
Roger"s revulsion of feeling was so great, his state of mind so perturbed and confounded that he crushed them into a short, husky laugh. Had he been the hero of a novel he would undoubtedly have launched into a bitter speech, but he did not.
"Others like me?" he said briefly, and all the bitterness of the novel-hero was there if Margarita had been able to read it. But she only smiled, a little uncertainly, it is true, and replied:
"Yes, I should like them like you--only not so strong," she added softly, with a shy glance at her wrists.
It has been quite unnecessary for me to consult letters or diaries to give me a very clear insight into Roger"s feelings at this point, for I myself have experienced them. It was when I took Margarita out in a rowboat and she began to rock herself in it.
"Don"t do that, Margarita!" I cried. "That is an idiotic trick."
She continued to rock it.
"Do you hear me, Margarita?" I demanded, tapping her foot with some irritation, for she really was irritating. In fact she completely upset the theory that tact and adaptability const.i.tute her s.e.x"s chief charm.
"Of course I hear you. If you kick me, I shall only rock the harder,"
she answered composedly--and did so.
Shipping the oars carefully I arose, advanced upon Margarita and boxed her ears with determination. I should have done it in mid-ocean. I doubt if sharks in sight would have deterred me. As I was boxing her ears--beautiful, strong ones, they were, not tiny, selfish, high-set bits of porcelain: W--r M--l (who would have been _Sir_ W--r M--l in England to-day) said of Margarita"s ears that they were set convincingly low and that he looked to her to demonstrate one of his favourite tests of longevity--in the very act of this boxing. I repeat, I was cruelly bitten in the wrists, and, snorting with rage, pure, primitive, unchivalrous rage, I fell upon that shameless little Pagan and shook her violently, till the teeth rattled in her head.
Over we went, the pair of us, struggling like demons, into the chilly, rational water, and as Margarita, like so many people who live by the sea, was utterly ignorant of the art of swimming and like so many people of her temperament, violently averse to the sudden shock of cold water, it was a subdued and dripping young woman that I dragged to the overturned boat and ultimately towed to sh.o.r.e. I worked hard to get her there and had no time for remorse, but as I hurried her up the beach it flooded over me.
"What must you think of me?" I asked her through chattering teeth.
"You will not care to meet any more of Roger"s friends, I fear."
"Oh, yes," she returned sweetly, looking incomprehensibly lovely--ah, me, that long, smooth line of her hip, that round, sleek head, shining like bronze in the sun! I can see it now--"Oh, yes, I hope he has many more like you, Jerry, but not so strong--you hurt my arm!"
It is useless to ask me why that should have endeared her a hundred times over to me, who would have given a year of my life to kiss her but might not. It did thus endear her, however, and so I know what hot, foolish hope flooded Roger off his footholds of conventions and convictions and floated him away in a warm, alluring sea, where the tropic palm-isles of Fata Morgana were the only sh.o.r.es. I, too, caught a glimpse of those sh.o.r.es; the warmth of that sea was only the blood pounding through my veins, and I knew it, but I shut my eyes and let the waves lap at me a moment. Roger, lucky dog, did not know and did not need to know what was happening to him, and it was not for a moment, but forever, as far as he knew, that he slipped into the current and drifted with it.
It was very characteristic of him that his next words had, apparently, no bearing whatever on his state of mind.
"We are now," he said, "at the station. If you will tell me the name of the town from which you came here, I will see that you get back there. Believe me, it is the only possible thing to do. You cannot stay here. Now, where did you come from?"
It took some few minutes to convince Roger that the girl literally did not know the name of the station at which she had purchased her ticket to New York. She knew she had travelled all day, and that was all. She had slipped out from her home at dawn or before, left the mysterious Hester Prynne asleep, walked five miles (Hester had said it was five miles to the railroad) to a little town where a girl had sold her the clothes she had on for one of her banknotes and advised her to go to New York if she wished to see the world, "which was what I did wish,"
said Margarita.
A young man behind some bars had given her the ticket and some small money back from another note and a kind old man with white hair and a tall black hat had sat beside her after a while, and pressed so hard against her that she had no room for her knees. She had told him of this inconvenience, but to no avail. He had put his arm about her shoulders and asked her why she did not change her plans and come to Boston. Then she had told him that though she wanted friends she did not care for such old ones, and when he still pressed against her she had asked the man with the shining b.u.t.tons who looked at her ticket if he would not remove the old man, because she did not like to sit so close to anyone, and she was sure the old man was sitting closer all the time. Then he of the b.u.t.tons took her somewhere else and bade her sit beside a woman, grey-haired also, who would not talk at all, and left her by and by. After this the b.u.t.toned man gave her meat between bread. Still later a young man with beautiful, large eyes inquired if he might sit beside her and she agreed gladly. He smelled very good.
He asked where she was going and she said to find friends. He said she would find many on Broadway and that easily; she had only to show herself there. He offered to point out the way there and just as all seemed in the best possible way the b.u.t.toned man came again, frowned on the good-smelling young man and took his seat. He talked a good deal to Margarita--so much that she could not very well attend to it.
At last he gave her a large grey veil and commanded her to wrap her head in it, and he would look after her when they got to New York. But when they did get to New York she eluded him and asked the way to Broadway, and then she met Roger. So, as the young man had said, there were friends on Broadway. But there were none in the town from which she took the ticket and she had no idea what its name was. Hester never mentioned it. She did not believe it had a name.
All this as the cab rested by the kerbstone. It was perfectly obvious that she was speaking the truth. They had patronised this particular driver long enough, anyway, and Roger paid him liberally and led Margarita into the draggled, dusty station; the new one was not then built. Seated beside her in a relatively dim corner he tried to formulate some plan, but the absurd emptiness of the situation baffled even his practical good sense. How could he take this girl to a town that neither he nor she knew the name of? How, on the other hand, could he fling such a projectile as Margarita into any respectable hotel? What would she do--or say? True, he might possibly have presented her as his sister and kept her sternly in view during every possible moment, but she was not sufficiently well dressed to be his sister. And his overcoat was b.u.t.toned suspiciously high. Was he to stroll out of the waiting-room and leave her abandoned, like some undesirable kitten, in the corner? The idea was ludicrous: she must be taken care of. Had she thrust herself upon him, enticed him, challenged him? a.s.suredly not; moved by some completely inexplicable influence, utterly alien to himself, his birth, his training, he had deliberately and persistently questioned her, prolonged a trifling encounter unjustifiably, whirled her away, literally; and now that he had found no suitable place of deposit it was incredible that he should deliver this extraordinary and self-a.s.sumed charge to civil authority. It would have been almost as well to lead her back to Broadway, he told himself sternly. The most exotic foreigner would have found herself in better case, it occurred to him, for interpreters of one sort or another can always be found. But Margarita seemed foreign to this planet, very nearly. What should be said of a person who lived on a nameless sh.o.r.e, served by Hester Prynne and Caliban? Who scooped hundreds--perhaps thousands--out of a chest, to flee at dawn from a town whose name she had never heard mentioned, though she had lived within walking distance of it all her life?
[Ill.u.s.tration: SCOOPED HUNDREDS--PERHAPS THOUSANDS--OUT OF A CHEST, TO FLEE AT DAWN]
It was absurd--but something must be done. Margarita sat contented and amused, devouring the shabby bustle all around her with her great deep-set eyes, willing, apparently, to sit there indefinitely.
"Will you let me examine your bag?" Roger said at last, and she handed him the coa.r.s.e, imitation-leather affair. There was a soiled, cheap handkerchief in it, some four hundred dollars in banknotes, and a torn envelope with a town and state written clearly on it.
I have tried to write the name of this town, and when I found that impossible, I tried to invent one to take its place, but I could not do it. Surely it is nothing to any of you who may happen to read this poor attempt of mine to pa.s.s my time, nothing, and less than nothing, just what may be the name of the utterly unimportant little backwater of a village from which, if you know the way, you may walk four miles or so to Margarita"s home. Undoubtedly many of you sail by it often, but it is hidden from you by the rise of the ground, the high rocks and the great, ancient-looking wall that I helped to pile. These and the reefs protect it quite sufficiently. And I do not want you there.
It would prove far too interesting a spot to jaded trippers and trotters--and it is amazing how quickly your new countries grow jaded; more eager for fresh scenes than old j.a.pan herself, Nippon the rice-blest, the imperishable, whence I send these words.
Be satisfied, then, to know that in the direction of this torn envelope Roger held the clew to Margarita"s nameless home. Yes, the young woman had sold her the bag with the clothing and advised her to put the banknotes in it. No, she did not know her name. She smelled good--like the young man who advised Broadway.
"Come, Margarita," said Roger gravely, "let us see when you can start," and she followed him submissively to the wicket, matched her stride to his on his discovery that a train which would take them half way was just about to start, and ran beside him to the steps of the car. He motioned to her to mount and she did so, turning at the top of the steps with a face of sudden terror.
"You are not going to leave me, Roger Bradley?" she cried, "where am I going?"
"Certainly I shall not leave you. You are going home," he said quietly, and mounted after her. The guard stared at them, the bell clanged sadly and the train moved out of the station. The play, you see, was well along.
PART TWO
IN WHICH THE SPRING FLOWS IN A LITTLE STREAM
O father, mother, let me be, Never again shall I have rest.
For as I lay beside the sea, A woman walked the waves to me, And stole the heart out of my breast.
_Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._