I offered him cigars, but he declined them, observing that while he never used "the weed," he had up-stairs in his valise, if we would permit him--
We did so, though none the wiser as to what he meant, for he did not complete his sentence, but, bowing acknowledgment, he briskly disappeared, to return at once without further mishap in our deceitful upper hallway--reappearing with a paper bag which he untwisted and offered gallantly to the ladies.
"Lemon-drops," he said. "Permit me, Mrs. Weatherby. Oh, take more, Miss Let.i.tia--do, I beg; they are quite inexpensive, I a.s.sure you--quite harmless and inexpensive. Help yourself liberally, Mrs. Weatherby.
Lemon-drops, as you are doubtless aware, doctor, are the most healthful of sweets, and as a--have another, Miss Primrose, do!--as a relaxation after the day"s toil are much to be preferred, if you will pardon my saying so, Dr. Weatherby--much to be preferred to that poisonous cigar you are smoking there."
"Quite right, Mr. Percival," I a.s.sented.
"They are very nice," Dove said.
"Oh, they are delicious!" cried Let.i.tia.
"Are they not?" said the little man, delighted with his hospitality, and so I left them--two ladies and an Egyptologist sucking lemon-drops and talking amiably of the great stone of Iris-Iris--while I attended on more modern matters, but with regret. I returned, however, in time to escort the scientist to his bedroom, where he opened his valise and took from it a faded cotton night-gown, which with a few papers and a Testament seemed its sole contents. His books, he explained, had gone on by freight. As I turned to leave him he said, earnestly:
"Doctor, my old friend"s daughter is a most remarkable woman, sir--a most remarkable woman."
"She is, indeed," I a.s.sented.
"Why," said he, "she evinced an interest in the smallest detail of my work! Nothing was too trivial, or too profound for her. I was astonished, sir."
"She is a scholar"s daughter, you must remember, Mr. Percival."
"Ah!" said he. "That"s it. That"s it, doctor. And what an ideal companion she would make for another scholar, sir!--or any man."
Next morning I was called into the country before our guest had risen, and when I returned at noon he had gone, leaving me regretful messages.
I heard then what had happened in my absence. Hiram Ptolemy--it is the name we gave to our Egyptologist--had awakened soon after my departure and was found by Dove walking meditatively in the garden. After breakfast, while my wife was busy with little Robin, Let.i.tia listened attentively to a further discourse on the Iris-Iris, which, she was told, bore on its surface a glorious message from the ancient to the modern world.
"It will cause, dear madam," said the scientist, his eyes dilating and his voice trembling with emotion, "a revolution in our retrospective vision; it will bring us, as it were, face to face with a civilization that will shame our own!"
Let.i.tia told Dove there was a wondrous dignity in the little man as he spoke those words. Then he paused in his eloquence.
"Miss Primrose," he said, "permit me to pay you a great compliment: I have never in my life had the privilege--of meeting a woman--of such understanding as your own. You are remarkably--remarkably like your learned and lamented father."
"Oh, Mr. Percival," Let.i.tia said, flushing, "you could not say a kinder thing."
"And yet," said the scientist, "you--you are quite unattached, are you not?"
"Quite--what, Mr. Percival?"
"Unattached," he repeated, "by ties of--the affections?"
"Oh, quite," she answered, "quite unattached, Mr. Percival."
"But surely," he said, "you still have--"
He paused awkwardly.
"Oh," said Let.i.tia, "I shall never marry, Mr. Percival--if you mean that."
He bowed gravely.
"Doubtless, dear madam--you know best."
V
A. P. A.
One spring a strange infection spread through the land and appeared suddenly in our corner of it. First a rash became a matter of discussion in our public places, but was not thought serious until the journals of the larger cities brought us news that set our town aflame with apprehension. Half our citizens broke out at once in a kind of measles, not, however, of the common or school-boy sort--that speckled cloud with a silver lining of no-more-school-till-it"s-over--nor yet that more malignant type called German measles. It was, in fact, quite Irish in its nature, generally speaking, and in particular it was what might be termed anti-papistical--for, hark you! it had been discovered that the Catholics were arming secretly to take the world by storm!
There are many Romanists in Gra.s.sy Ford. St. Peter"s steeple, tipped with its gilded cross, towers higher than our Protestant spires, and on the Sabbath a hundred farmers tie their horses beneath its sheds and follow their womenfolk and flocks of children in to ma.s.s. In those days Father Flynn was the priest, a youngish, round-faced man, who chanted his Latin with a rich accent derived from Donegal, and who was not what is called militant in his manner, but was, in fact, the mildest-spoken of our Gra.s.sy Ford divines. He held aloof from those theological disputes which sometimes set his Protestant brethren by the ears, declining politely all invitations to attend the famous set debates between our Presbyterian and Universalist ministers, which ended, I remember, in a splendid G.o.d-given victory for--the one whose flock you happened to be in. Father Flynn only smiled at such encounters; he was not belligerent, and while his parish might with some good reason be described as coming from fine old fighting stock, it had never given evidence, so far as I am aware, of any desire to use cold steel, its warm, red, hairy fists having proven equal to those little emergencies which sometimes arise--more particularly on a Sat.u.r.day night, at Riley"s. But when it was whispered, then spoken aloud, and finally charged openly on the street corners and even in letters to the _Gazette_, then edited by b.u.t.ters"s son, that Father Flynn was training a military company in the bas.e.m.e.nt of St. Peter"s church, that the young Romanists had been armed with rifles, and that ammunition was being stored stealthily and by night under the very altar!--and this by order from the Vatican, where a gigantic plot was brewing to seize the New World for the Pope!--then it was shrewdly observed by those who held the rumors to be truth that Father Flynn _did_ have the look of a conspirator and that he walked with a military ease and swing.
The priest and his flock denied the charges with indignant eloquence, but without convincing men like Shears, who argued that the guilty were ever eager to deny. Shears himself was of no persuasion, religious or otherwise, but belonged by nature to the great party of the Opposition, whose village champion he was, whether the issue was the paving of a street or a weightier matter like the one in hand, of protecting the nation, as he said, from the treason of its citizens and the machinations of a decaying power eager to regain its ancient sway! He was a lawyer by profession, but one whose time hung heavily on his hands, and, frequenting village shops where others like him gathered daily to argue and expound, he would hold forth glibly on any theme, the chief and awe-inspiring quality of his eloquence being an array of formidable statistics, culled Heaven knows where, but which few who listened had the knowledge or temerity to oppose. He was now br.i.m.m.i.n.g with figures concerning Rome--ancient, mediaeval, or modern Rome: "Gentlemen, you may take your choice; I"m your man." He was armed also, by way of climax and reserve, should statistics fail to convince his auditors, with some strange stories having a spicy flavor of Boccaccio, which he told in a lowered voice as ill.u.s.trations of what had been and what might be again should priests prevail.
To hear him p.r.o.nounce the Eternal City"s name was itself ominous. His mouth, always a large one, expanded visibly as he boomed out "R-rome!"
discharging it as from a cannon"s muzzle, and with such significance and effect that many otherwise sanguine men began to suspect that there might be truth in his solemn warnings. Lights _had_ been seen in St.
Peter"s church at night! Catholic youths _did_ hold some kind of drill there on certain week-day evenings! And, lastly, it was pointed out, Father Flynn himself had ceased denials!
"And why?" Shears asked. "Why, gentlemen? I"ll tell ye!--_I"ll_ tell ye!--orders from R-rome! You mark my words--orders from Rome!"
Apprehension grew. A society was formed, with Shears at its head, to protect the village, and a.s.sist, if need be, the State itself. Meetings were held--secret and extraordinary sessions--in the Odd Fellow"s Block.
Watches were set on the priest"s house and on St. Peter"s. Resolute men stood nightly in the shrubbery near the church lest guns and cartridges should be added to the stores already there. Zealous Protestant matrons of the neighborhood supplied hot coffee to the midnight sentinels. All emergencies had been provided for. At a given signal--three pistol-shots in quick succession, and the same repeated at certain intervals--the Guards of Liberty would a.s.semble, armed, and march at once in two divisions, a line of skirmishers under Tommy Morgan, the light-weight champion of Gra.s.sy Fordshire, followed by the main body in command of Shears. No one, however, was to fire a shot, Shears said--"not a shot, gentlemen, till you can see the whites of their eyes. Remember your forefathers!"
Every night now half the town pulled down its curtains and opened doors with the gravest caution.
"Who"s there?"
"Peters, you fool."
"Oh, come in, Peters. I thought it might be--"
"I know: you thought it might be the Pope."
It was considered wise to take no chances. a.s.sa.s.sination, it was widely known, had ever been a favorite method with conspirators, especially at Rome, and Shears made it plain, in the light of history, that "the vast fabric," as he loved to call the Romish world, was composed of men who, certain of absolution, would murder their dearest friends if so commanded by cipher orders from the Holy See!
Meanwhile, in Gra.s.sy Ford, friendships of years were crumbling.
Neighbors pa.s.sed each other without a word; some sneered, some jeered, some quarrelled openly in the street, and there were fisticuffs at Riley"s, and in the midst of this civil strife some one remembered--Shears himself, no doubt--that Dago pictures hung shamelessly on the walls of a public school-room!
"Michael the Angelo" had been a Catholic!
_What if Let.i.tia Primrose were the secret ally of the Pope!..._
"But she"s not a Catholic," said one.
"She"s Episcopalian," said another.