"I can a.s.sure you that there will be no--trouble. That skeleton is safely locked in its closet, and the key to that closet is missing--more thanks to you. You acted very n.o.bly in the whole affair, Rudolph. I wish I could do things like that. As it is, of course, I shall always detest you for having been able to do it."
Charteris said, thereafter: "I shall always envy you, though, Rudolph.
No other man I know has ever attained the good old troubadourish ideal of _domnei_--that love which rather abhors than otherwise the notion of possessing its object. I still believe it was a distinct relief to a certain military officer, whose name we need not mention, when Anne decided not to marry you."
The colonel grinned, a trifle consciously. "Well, Anne meant youth, you comprehend, and all the things we then believed in, Jack. It would have been decidedly difficult to live up to such a contract, and--as it were--to fulfil every one of the implied specifications!"
"And yet"--here Charteris flicked his cigarette--"Anne ruled in the stead of Aline Van Orden. And Aline, in turn, had followed Clarice Pendomer. And before the coming of Clarice had Pauline Romeyne, whom time has converted into Polly Ashmeade, reigned in the land--"
"Don"t be an a.s.s!" the colonel pleaded; and then observed, inconsequently: "I can"t somehow quite realize Aline is dead. Lord, Lord, the letters that I wrote to her! She sent them all back, you know, in genuine romantic fashion, after we had quarreled. I found those boyish ravings only the other day in my father"s desk at Matocton, and skimmed them over. I shall read them through some day and appropriately meditate over life"s mysteries that are too sad for tears."
He meditated now.
"It wouldn"t be quite equitable, Jack," the colonel summed it up, "if the Aline I loved--no, I don"t mean the real woman, the one you and all the other people knew, the one that married the enterprising brewer and died five years ago--were not waiting for me somewhere. I can"t express just what I mean, but you will understand, I know--?"
"That heaven is necessarily run on a Mohammedan basis? Why, of course,"
said Mr. Charteris. "Heaven, as I apprehend it, is a place where we shall live eternally among those ladies of old years who never condescended actually to inhabit any realm more tangible than that of our boyish fancies. It is the obvious definition; and I defy you to evolve a more enticing allurement toward becoming a deacon."
"You romancers are privileged to talk nonsense anywhere," the colonel estimated, "and I suppose that in the Lichfield you have made famous, Jack, you have a double right."
"Ah, but I never wrote a line concerning Lichfield. I only wrote about the Lichfield whose existence you continue to believe in, in spite of the fact that you are actually living in the real Lichfield," Charteris returned. "The vitality of the legend is wonderful."
He c.o.c.ked his head to one side--an habitual gesture with Charteris--and the colonel noted, as he had often done before, how extraordinarily reminiscent Jack was of a dried-up, quizzical black parrot. Said Charteris:
"I love to serve that legend. I love to prattle of "ole Marster" and "ole Miss," and throw in a sprinkling of "mockin"-buds" and "hants" and "horg-killing time," and of sweeping animadversions as to all "free n.i.g.g.e.rs"; and to narrate how "de quality use ter c.u.m"--you spell it c-u-m because that looks so convincingly like dialect--"ter de gret hous." Those are the main ingredients. And, as for the unavoidable love-interest--" Charteris paused, grinned, and pleasantly resumed: "Why, jes arter dat, suh, a hut Yankee cap"en, whar some uv our folks done shoot in de laig, wuz lef on de road fer daid--a quite notorious custom on the part of all Northern armies--un Young Miss had him fotch up ter de gret hous, un nuss im same"s he one uv de fambly, un dem two jes fit un argufy scanlous un never spicion hucc.u.m dey"s in love wid each othuh till de War"s ovuh. And there you are! I need not mention that during the tale"s progress it is necessary to introduce at least one favorable mention of Lincoln, arrange a duel "in de low grouns"
immediately after day-break, and have the family silver interred in the back garden, because these points will naturally suggest themselves."
"Jack, Jack!" the colonel cried, "it is an ill bird that fouls its own nest."
"But, believe me, I don"t at heart," said Charteris, in a queer earnest voice. "There is a sardonic imp inside me that makes me jeer at the commoner tricks of the trade--and yet when I am practising that trade, when I am writing of those tender-hearted, brave and gracious men and women, and of those dear old darkies, I very often write with tears in my eyes. I tell you this with careful airiness because it is true and because it would embarra.s.s me so horribly if you believed it."
Then he was off upon another tack. "And wherein, pray, have I harmed Lichfield by imagining a dream city situated half way between Atlantis and Avalon and peopled with superhuman persons--and by having called this city Lichfield? The portrait did not only flatter Lichfield, it flattered human nature. So, naturally, it pleased everybody. Yes, that, I take it, is the true secret of romance--to induce the momentary delusion that humanity is a superhuman race, profuse in aspiration, and prodigal in the exercise of glorious virtues and stupendous vices. As a matter of fact, all human pa.s.sions are depressingly chicken-hearted, I find. Were it not for the police court records, I would pessimistically insist that all of us elect to love one person and to hate another with very much the same enthusiasm that we display in expressing a preference for rare roast beef as compared with the outside slice. Oh, really, Rudolph, you have no notion how salutary it is to the self-esteem of us romanticists to run across, even nowadays, an occasional breach of the peace. For then sometimes--when the coachman obligingly cuts the butler"s throat in the back-alley, say--we actually presume to think for a moment that our profession is almost as honest as that of making counterfeit money...."
The colonel did not interrupt his brief pause of meditation. Then the novelist said:
"Why, no; if I were ever really to attempt a tale of Lichfield, I would not write a romance but a tragedy. I think that I would call my tragedy _Futility_, for it would mirror the life of Lichfield with unengaging candor; and, as a consequence, people would complain that my tragedy lacked sustained interest, and that its partic.i.p.ants were inconsistent; that it had no ordered plot, no startling incidents, no high endeavors, and no especial aim; and that it was equally deficient in all time-hallowed provocatives of either laughter or tears. For very few people would understand that a life such as this, when rightly viewed, is the most pathetic tragedy conceivable."
"Oh, come, now, Jack! come, recollect that your reasoning powers are almost as worthy of employment as your rhetorical abilities! We are not quite so bad as that, you know. We may be a little behind the times in Lichfield; we certainly let well enough alone, and we take things pretty much as they come; but we meddle with n.o.body, and, after all, we don"t do any especial harm."
"We don"t do anything whatever in especial, Rudolph. That would be precisely the theme of my story of the real Lichfield if I were ever bold enough to write it. There seems to be a sort of blight upon Lichfield. Oh, yes! it would be unfair, perhaps, to contrast it with the bigger Southern cities, like Richmond and Atlanta and New Orleans; but even the inhabitants of smaller Southern towns are beginning to buy excursion tickets, and thereby ascertain that the twentieth century has really begun. Yes, it is only in Lichfield I can detect the raw stuff of a genuine tragedy; for, depend upon it, Rudolph, the most pathetic tragedy in life is to get nothing in particular out of it."
"But, for my part, I don"t see what you are driving at," the colonel stoutly said.
And Charteris only laughed. "And I hardly expected you to do so, Rudolph--or not yet, at least."
PART FIVE - SOUVENIR
"I am contented by remembrances-- Dreams of dead pa.s.sions, wraiths of vanished times, Fragments of vows, and by-ends of old rhymes-- Flotsam and jetsam tumbling in the seas Whereon, long since, put forth our argosies Which, bent on traffic in the Isles of Love, Lie foundered somewhere in some firth thereof, Encradled by eternal silences."
"Thus, having come to naked bankruptcy, Let us part friends, as thrifty tradesmen do When common ventures fail, for it may be These battered oaths and rhymes may yet ring true To some fair woman"s hearing, so that she Will listen and think of love, and I of you."
F. Ashcroft Wheeler. _Revisions_.
I
When the _Reliance_, the _Const.i.tution_ and the _Columbia_ were holding trial races off Newport to decide which one of these yachts should defend the _America"s_ cup; when the tone of the j.a.panese press as to Russia"s actions in Manchuria was beginning to grow ominous; when the Jews of America were drafting a pet.i.tion to the Czar; and when it was rumored that the health of Pope Leo XIII was commencing to fail:--at this remote time, the Musgraves gave their first house-party.
And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted and admired the apparent unconcern with which John Charteris and Clarice Pendomer encountered at Matocton. And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted with approval the intimacy which was, obviously, flourishing between the little novelist and Patricia.
Also Colonel Musgrave had presently good reason to lament a contretemps, over which he was sulking when Mrs. Pendomer rustled to her seat at the breakfast-table, with a shortness of breath that was partly due to the stairs, and in part attributable to her youthful dress, which fitted a trifle too perfectly.
"Waffles?" said Mrs. Pendomer. "At my age and weight the first is an experiment and the fifth an amiable indiscretion of which I am invariably guilty. Sugar, please." She yawned, and reached a generously-proportioned arm toward the sugar-bowl. "Yes, that will do, Pilkins."
Colonel Musgrave--since the remainder of his house-party had already breakfasted--raised his fine eyes toward the chandelier, and sighed, as Pilkins demurely closed the dining-room door.
Leander Pilkins--butler for a long while now to the Musgraves of Matocton--would here, if s.p.a.ce permitted, be the subject of an encomium.
Leander Pilkins was in Lichfield considered to be, upon the whole, the handsomest man whom Lichfield had produced; for this quadroon"s skin was like old ivory, and his profile would have done credit to an emperor.
His terrapin is still spoken of in Lichfield as people in less favored localities speak of the Golden Age, and his mayonnaise (boasts Lichfield) would have compelled an Olympian to plead for a second helping. For the rest, his deportment in all functions of butlership is best described as super-Chesterfieldian; and, indeed, he was generally known to be a byblow of Captain Beverley Musgrave"s, who in his day was Lichfield"s arbiter as touched the social graces. And so, no more of Pilkins.
Mrs. Pendomer partook of chops. "Is this remorse," she queried, "or a convivially induced requirement for bromides? At this unearthly hour of the morning it is very often difficult to disentangle the two."
"It is neither," said Colonel Musgrave, and almost snappishly.
Followed an interval of silence. "Really," said Mrs. Pendomer, and as with sympathy, "one would think you had at last been confronted with one of your thirty-seven pasts--or is it thirty-eight, Rudolph?"
Colonel Musgrave frowned disapprovingly at her frivolity; he swallowed his coffee, and b.u.t.tered a superfluous potato. "H"m!" said he; "then you know?"
"I know," sighed she, "that a sleeping past frequently suffers from insomnia."
"And in that case," said he, darkly, "it is not the only sufferer."
Mrs. Pendomer considered the attractions of a third waffle--a mellow blending of autumnal yellows, fringed with a crisp and irresistible brown, that, for the moment, put to flight all dreams and visions of slenderness.
"And Patricia?" she queried, with a mental hiatus.
Colonel Musgrave flushed.
"Patricia," he conceded, with mingled dignity and sadness, "is, after all, still in her twenties----"
"Yes," said Mrs. Pendomer, with a dryness which might mean anything or nothing; "she _was_ only twenty-one when she married you."
"I mean," he explained, with obvious patience, "that at her age she--not unnaturally--takes an immature view of things. Her unspoiled purity,"
he added, meditatively, "and innocence and general unsophistication are, of course, adorable, but I can admit to thinking that for a journey through life they impress me as excess baggage."