He was back home again. Don, with his fine nose high in the air, was circling a field and Andy was shouting:
"He"s got "em! He"s got "em sho, Ma.r.s.e Dan!"
He could see Don"s slim white and black figure stepping slowly through the high gra.s.s on velvet feet, glancing back to see if his master were coming--the muscles suddenly stiffened, his tail became rigid, and the whole covey of quail were under his nose!
He was a boy again and felt the elemental thrill of man"s first work as hunter and fisherman. He looked about him at the bald coldness of the artificial park and a desperate longing surged through his heart to be among his own people again, to live their life and feel their joys and sorrows as his own.
And then the memory of the great tragedy slowly surged back, he pushed the dog aside, rose and hurried on in his search for a new world.
He tried the theatres--saw Booth in his own house on 23d Street play "Hamlet" and Lawrence Barrett "Oth.e.l.lo," listened with rapture to the new Italian Grand Opera Company in the Academy of Music--saw a burlesque in the Tammany Theatre on 14th Street, Lester Wallack in "The School for Scandal"
at Wallack"s Theatre on Broadway at 13th Street, and Tony Pastor in his variety show at his Opera House on the Bowery, and yet returned each night with a dull ache in his heart.
Other men who loved home less perhaps could adjust themselves to new surroundings, but somehow in him this home instinct, this feeling of personal friendliness for neighbor and people, this pa.s.sion for house and lawn, flowers and trees and shrubs, for fields and rivers and hills, seemed of the very fibre of his inmost life. This vast rushing, roaring, impersonal world, driven by invisible t.i.tanic forces, somehow didn"t appeal to him. It merely stunned and appalled and confused his mind.
And then without warning the blow fell.
He told himself afterwards that he must have been waiting for it, that some mysterious power of mental telepathy had wired its message without words across the thousand miles that separated him from the old life, and yet the surprise was complete and overwhelming.
He had tried that morning to write. A story was shaping itself in his mind and he felt the impulse to express it. But he was too depressed. He threw his pencil down in disgust and walked to his window facing the little park.
It was a bleak, miserable day in November--the first freezing weather had come during the night and turned a drizzling rain into sleet. The streets were covered with a thin, hard, glistening coat of ice. A coal wagon had stalled in front of the house, a magnificent draught horse had fallen and a brutal driver began to beat him unmercifully.
Henry Berg"s Society had not yet been organized.
Norton rushed from the door and faced the astonished driver:
"Don"t you dare to strike that horse again!"
The workman turned his half-drunken face on the intruder with a vicious leer:
"Well, what t"ell----"
"I mean it!"
With an oath the driver lunged at him:
"Get out of my way!"
The big fist shot at Norton"s head. He parried the attack and knocked the man down. The driver scrambled to his feet and plunged forward again. A second blow sent him flat on his back on the ice and his body slipped three feet and struck the curb.
"Have you got enough?" Norton asked, towering over the sprawling figure.
"Yes."
"Well, get up now, and I"ll help you with the horse."
He helped the sullen fellow unhitch the fallen horse, lift him to his feet and readjust the harness. He put shoulder to the wheel and started the wagon again on its way.
He returned to his room feeling better. It was the first fight he had started for months and it stirred his blood to healthy reaction.
He watched the bare limbs swaying in the bitter wind in front of St.
George"s Church and his eye rested on the steeples the architects said were unsafe and might fall some day with a crash, and his depression slowly returned. He had waked that morning with a vague sense of dread.
"I guess it was that fight!" he muttered. "The scoundrel will be back in an hour with a warrant for my arrest and I"ll spend a few days in jail----"
The postman"s whistle blew at the bas.e.m.e.nt window. He knew that fellow by the way he started the first notes of his call--always low, swelling into a peculiar shrill crescendo and dying away in a weird cry of pain.
The call this morning was one of startling effects. It was his high nerve tension, of course, that made the difference--perhaps, too, the bitter cold and swirling gusts of wind outside. But the shock was none the less vivid.
The whistle began so low it seemed at first the moaning of the wind, the high note rang higher and higher, until it became the shout of a fiend, and died away with a wail of agony wrung from a lost soul.
He shivered at the sound. He would not have been surprised to receive a letter from the dead after that.
He heard some one coming slowly up stairs. It was mammy and the boy. The lazy maid had handed his mail to her, of course.
His door was pushed open and the child ran in holding a letter in his red, chubby hand:
"A letter, daddy!" he cried.
He took it mechanically, staring at the inscription. He knew now the meaning of his horrible depression! She was writing that letter when it began yesterday. He recognized Cleo"s handwriting at a glance, though this was unusually blurred and crooked. The postmark was Baltimore, another striking fact.
He laid the letter down on his table unopened and turned to mammy:
"Take him to your room. I"m trying to do some writing."
The old woman took the child"s hand grumbling:
"Come on, mammy"s darlin", n.o.body wants us!"
He closed the door, locked it, glanced savagely at the unopened letter, drew his chair before the open fire and gazed into the glowing coals.
He feared to break the seal--feared with a dull, sickening dread. He glanced at it again as though he were looking at a toad that had suddenly intruded into his room.
Six months had pa.s.sed without a sign, and he had ceased to wonder at the strange calm with which she received her dismissal and his flight from the scene after his wife"s death. He had begun to believe that her shadow would never again fall across his life.
It had come at last. He picked the letter up, and tried to guess its meaning. She was going to make demands on him, of course. He had expected this months ago. But why should she be in Baltimore? He thought of a hundred foolish reasons without once the faintest suspicion of the truth entering his mind.
He broke the seal and read its contents. A look of vague incredulity overspread his face, followed by a sudden pallor. The one frightful thing he had dreaded and forgotten was true!
He crushed the letter in his powerful hand with a savage groan:
"G.o.d in Heaven!"
He spread it out again and read and re-read its message, until each word burned its way into his soul:
"Our baby was born here yesterday. I was on my way to New York to you, but was taken sick on the train at Baltimore and had to stop. I"m alone and have no money, but I"m proud and happy. I know that you will help me.
"CLEO."
For hours he sat in a stupor of pain, holding this crumpled letter in his hand, staring into the fire.