E
Everylife has its history: this is the story of Ruth Welch, the placid-faced, silver-haired woman who sat in the September twilight looking out over the moorlands one Saturday evening, and considering many things.
The house faced toward the south. It looked across a little creek which made in from the sea, and it had in its prospect only level heaths to the horizon’s edge. On the west stretched the waters of an arm of the Atlantic, and the tides came twice a day around the low cape into the inlet, and the wind blew over the moors; but in all directions one looked upon level wastes,—“the plains,” the country people called them, speaking of them sometimes as “Welch’s bogs,” or in sections as the “blueb’ry plains,” or the “cramb’ry marshes;” and people who lived outside of them regarded the moors as painfully dull.
They were not, too, without some excuse for such an opinion. The rhodora and thekalmia—the “lamb-kill”—in spring spread over sections of the waste transient sheets of glowing color, but for the most part the country was either white or brown, and to one not fond of it the effect of the monotone of hue was depressing. The shade of brown varied, changing from a grayish or even greenish brown in midsummer to a sombre, almost uniform umber in autumn, which latter tint now and then during the winter appeared in desolate patches through the flats of snow, until in March the whole plain came to light darker and more forbidding than ever.
All these long months the only break in the low monochrome of the landscape was the red cottage which still was called “Gran’sir’ Welch’s,” although the old man had been dead many a year, and the little garden before it that kept up, with old-fashioned flowers, a show of bravery until the frosts came. The tint of the old house was dull and dingy, but in so colorless a setting the hue seemed brighter, as a single event might assume undue importance in a monotonous life. If one could have supposed the builder an imaginative man or one given to refinements of sentiment, it might be easy to imagine that when he built his house thus alone in the plains, with not another dwelling in sight and withouta break in the level landscape, he felt the need of giving it some color that should protest against the deadly grayness of all around and hearten its owner by its warmth of tone.
So overwhelming were the solitude and the unbroken sameness of the place, however, that an imaginative man would scarcely have chosen it as an abiding-place, although once involved in its powerful fascination he would have been held to his life’s end. By what accident Gran’sir’ Welch’s grandfather had chosen to build here, half a score of miles from the little fishing village which stood to the people of that region for the world, no one knew, and very likely no one cared. Folk thereabout concerned themselves little with reasons for anything, facts being all they found mental grasp sufficient to hold. Once established in the plains, however, there was no especial cause to suppose the family would not continue to live on there until its course was interrupted either by extinction or by the arrival of the Judgment-Day.
Extinction was not very far off now, since only this white-haired woman remained to bear the name. Her mother had died in the daughter’s infancy. Mrs. Welch had never adapted herself to the silence and loneliness of the moors, and her people over at thevillage declared that she had “died of the plains;” and it is possible that they were right. Ruth’s father, when she was still but a child, had been lost at sea; and the girl had been cared for by her grandfather and the old serving-woman Bethiah, who had once been supposed to be a hired girl, but had ended by being so thoroughly identified with the family that her surname was wellnigh forgotten, and she was designated, when she was spoken of at all, as Bethiah Welch.
The child grew much in the same way as grew the houseleeks in the boxes beside the southern door, very slowly and dully. Once or twice she went for a few months to stay with an aunt in the village ten miles away, it being the unanimous opinion of her relatives that as the Welches always had known how to read and write it was proper that something should be done for Ruth’s education; and the village school was the only educational means known in the region. The girl pined for home, however, and was never content away from the red house. Perhaps by a strange perversity of circumstance the home-longing of the mother was in the child transformed into a clinging fondness for the place where the former was so lonely and alien. The low, level moors were necessary toRuth’s life; in their colorless monotony she somehow found the complement for her uneventful life. Perhaps the very dulness developed her imagination, as special organs appear in animals whose abnormal conditions of existence render them needful. If this were so, it was no less true that the moors absorbed whatever mental life they stimulated, until the girl seemed hardly less a part of them than the knolls of leathery shrubs, the scattered, shallow pools, the tufts of coarse grass, or the whispering voices of the wind which all night long and every night were hurrying to and fro, concerned with unspeakable tidings which perhaps came from the sea that forever moaned along the moorland’s edges.
Little conscious imagination had Ruth at nineteen; and it was at nineteen that the single, trifling event of her life occurred. She was a maiden by no means uncomely. She was not educated in any conventional sense of the term; but her life alone with her grandfather and old Bethiah and the great brown moors had bred in her a certain sweet gravity which was not without its charm, had there been but those to see who could appreciate it.
Along the front of the house ran a bench, where people seldom sat, since there werenone to sit, but where the milk-pans dried in the sun, a gleaming row; and one sunny morning late in September the flash of their shimmer caught the eye of a skipper who in his yacht in the bay studied the horizon with his glass. He was not yet past those years when a man still finds amusement in imitating fate and nature by yielding to his impulses; the gleam suggested pleasant draughts of fresh milk; and without more ado, he headed the trig little craft in which he and a brother artist were skirting the coast of the Gulf of Maine for the little inlet upon which Gran’sir’ Welch’s red cottage stood.
In those days yachts were less common than now, and both Ruth and Bethiah left their work to watch the boat as it ran up to the low wharf, and the snowy sail fell with a musical rattle and clash of metallic rings.
The skipper, a stalwart young fellow, too handsome by half, came briskly ashore and did his errand, and while the old servant went for the milk, stood with Ruth by the open door asking idle questions, to which she replied without either shyness or boldness. His eyes were just on a level with hers as she stood on the threshold above him, and their bold, merry glance saw with full appreciation how clear were her sherry-brown orbs. Heremoved his cap and leaned against the door-post, letting his glance stray over the landscape. Here and there upon the brown surface his keen eye detected the flame of a scarlet leaf amid the prevailing russet, but the combined effect of all the red leaves upon the plain could not warm the sombre wastes.
“Don’t you get tired of the sameness?” he asked suddenly, as if the monotony all at once seemed to him too great to be borne.
“Oh, no,” Ruth answered, smiling faintly, “I like it.”
He brushed back his curly, golden locks with a shapely brown hand, and regarded her more closely.
“It is like a fish in the water,” was his conclusion when he spoke again. “It would drown me.”
Ruth smiled again, showing her white, even teeth a little, although she did not in the least understand what he meant; and before the conversation could go further Bethiah appeared with the milk she had been getting. Ruth put aside the stranger’s offer of pay, and with an instinct of hospitality which must have been genuine indeed to have survived so long disuse from lack of opportunity, she stepped down into the little garden-plot and picked a nosegay of the old-fashioned flowerswhich in the southern exposure were still unharmed by frost.
“Put a posy in my button-hole,” he requested lightly, when she gave them to him. “Pick out the prettiest.”
She had never stuck a flower in a man’s coat, but she was too utterly devoid of self-consciousness to be shy. She selected a beautiful clove pink, and smiling her grave smile, thrust the stem through the buttonhole of his yachting-jacket as he held out the lapel.
“It would be just the color of your cheeks,” he said, “if it could only get sunburned.”
A redder glow flushed up at his words, and so tempting was the innocent face before him that half involuntarily he bent forward to kiss the smooth lips. The girl drew back, in that grave, unemotional fashion of hers which was to the stranger so unaccountable at once and so fascinating, and he failed of his intent.
“Ah, well,” he said, in nowise disconcerted, “keep the kiss for your sweetheart, but thank you for the flowers.”
He laughed with a gleeful, deep-toned note, and turned down the faintly-defined path to the shore again.
Ruth looked on with interest at the hoistingof the sail; she smiled responsively as the two mariners doffed their caps to her, and then, regardless of the old superstition of the ill-luck of watching people out of sight, she kept her eyes fixed upon the pretty little craft as it skimmed over the waters, as long as it could be seen. Then she turned a comprehensive glance over all her moors, as if to to take them into confidence regarding the pleasant incident which had just happened, and returned to her interrupted domestic duties. The interview had touched her with no repinings; and even could she have known that in that brief moment all the romance of her life had been acted, she would scarcely have sighed. She smiled as she went about her homely occupations, and flushed a little with the consciousness of innocent vanity as she found herself glancing into the glass at the reflection of her softly-glowing cheeks, reddened with health and with the sun.
This September day was the single glowing spot in the slow, mellow years of Ruth’s life. She came and went, slept and waked, perhaps even dreamed. She was always in a happy, contented repose among her moors, becoming of them every day more and more completely a part. The wide plains grew green in spring with transient verdure, thepurple petals of the rhodora flushed through their brief day and dropped into the shallow brown pools left by the late rains in the hollows; then all the waste turned to fawn and russet under the suns of summer, and the cycle of the year was completed by deepening browns and the wide stretches of snow. Now and again great rolling masses of mist came up from the sea and hid wold and wave alike from sight, but yet the sense of the plains was like a presence to Ruth, as with heart warm as an egg beneath the mother-bird’s breast, she went her way and lived her span of life.
She was far from being dull in her feelings. Indeed, for one in her station and surroundings, she was unusually sensitive to mood of shore and sky, to the beauty of the sunsets or of the wild flowers which sprang amid the low shrubs. She was simply content. She was so perfectly in harmony with her world that she could not be unhappy. She grew as a bluebell grows. She was not deficient in womanly sentiment. She thought sometimes of the handsome sailor lad whose bold brown eyes had looked into hers, and she smiled anew with simple pleasure that he had found her fair. She remembered the audacious gleam which crossed his face whenhe bent forward to kiss her, and she did not forget his words about a sweetheart. She never spoke of her memories,—she came of a reticent race, and neither Gran’sir’ Welch nor Bethiah was especially adapted to the reception of confidences,—but she speculated concerning the sweetheart she never had, and of whose coming fate gave no sign. There was never any tinge of melancholy in these reflections. She accepted life too simply to be sad, even with that vague oppression which seemed to casual observers the obvious consequence of the overpowering presence of the wastes.
As years went on, she accepted the fact that the time of dreams of love was past, and with placid content she reflected that the shadow of the ungiven kiss of the sailor would never be disturbed by the pressure of lover’s lips upon hers.
It is between twenty and thirty that the temperament of a woman becomes fixed, and all her future irrevocably made or marred. Before this her character is too flexible, after this too rigid for impressions to be lasting. During these years the peace of the wide, calm, and sombre moorlands stamped indelibly upon Ruth a sweet, grave content which nothing could destroy or shake.
There came a time when into the calm of the old house death rushed, with that dreadful precipitancy which always marks his coming, even when expected, and old Gran’sir’ Welch, long past fourscore, was, in the quaint language of the King James version, gathered to his fathers.
In the gray dawn Ruth tapped softly at the hives of the bees which stood, straw-thatched, against the eastern end of the cottage, and announced the sad news, firmly believing that unless within twelve hours the swarms were told of death they would desert their homes. Then in the sunny autumn afternoon a funeral procession of boats trailed from the red cottage to the graveyard behind the church in the village, where slept such of his forefathers as the sea had spared to die in their beds. With evenly dipping oars went first the quaintly-shaped pinky bearing the coffin between two stout fisherman, one at prow and one at stern; while after followed the dories in which were the few nearer relatives who had come to attend the services at the house.
Ruth sat beside a cousin and listened half unconsciously to the plash of the oars and the rhythmic beat of the waves against the boat, looking back with tear-dimmed eyes tothe red house until it was by distance blended with the dun country as the last spark dies amid the ashes. She was sad, and she felt that oppressive terror which the presence of death brings; yet her calm was not seriously or permanently shaken.
In their relentless, even course the years moved on, and one day in spring, when the rhodora was in all its glory, and the one bush of mountain-laurel in the wide plains, which had strayed into the heath like a lamb into the wilderness, was as white in the distance as a bunch of upland maybloom, again Ruth went softly and gravely to tell the bees that death had been in the red house, and the procession of boats, like the Egyptian train over the Lake of the Dead, bore away the mortal remains of faithful old Bethiah.
Ruth’s relatives in the village tried to induce her now to come to them, and when she could not be moved to do this, urged her at least to have some one live with her. She was getting to be an old woman, they said among themselves, although in truth she was little past fifty, and since for that part of the world she was not ill-provided with worldly goods, there was no lack of those who were willing to take up their abode as her companion in the red house.
Ruth put all offers aside,—kindly, indeed, but decisively. She was pleased to live alone; not from a misanthropic dislike of her kind, but because it was so deep and inexhaustible a delight to her to brood happily among her plains. More and more she loved these umber wastes, over which cloud-shadows drifted like the darkening ripple of the wind on the sea. She knew all their ways, those mysterious paths which wind between the hillocks of deserted heaths as if worn with the constant passing of invisible feet, and she was never weary of wandering among the ragged hummocks, breathing in the salt air from the sea and noting with happy eyes all the weeds and wild flowers, the shrubs that were too inconspicuous to be singled out at a distance, but which to the careful and loving observer revealed themselves as full of beauty. She was fond of the faint, sweet scents of the opening flowers in spring, of the dying grass in fall, of the burning peat when fires broke out sometimes to smoulder until the next rain. She never thought about her feelings or phrased the matter to herself, but she loved so perfectly these wastes which seemed so desolate that they were to her as kindred and home; perhaps even the maternal instinct which is inbornin every woman’s breast found some not quite inadequate expression in her almost passionate fondness for the great heath.
Her relatives spoke of her always as “odd,” and were aggrieved that her ways should be different from theirs; but everything that continues comes in time to be accepted, and as the years went on Ruth’s method of life came to seem proper because it had so long been the same. A brawny armed fisher cousin sailed over from the village every Sunday morning to see that all was well at the red house, and to bring whatever might be needed from the village store. Sometimes in winter he found her house half buried in snow, but he never could report that she appeared either discontented or sad.
It was of the coming of this emissary that Ruth was thinking on this Saturday night in September where first this record found her. She had been reflecting much to-day about dying. In her walk about the heath she had come upon a dead bird, and the sight had suggested to her her own end. She acknowledged to herself that she was old, and for perhaps the only time in her life her thought had formulated a general truth. She had regarded the tiny corpse at her feet, and then, looking about upon the moors, itcame over her how immortal is the youth of the world and how brief is man’s life. The land about her was no older than when she had looked upon it with baby eyes. For a single instant a poignant taste of bitterness seemed set to her lips; then in a moment the very wide, changeless plain that had caused her pain seemed itself somehow to assuage it.
To-night sitting here she admitted to herself that her strength had failed somewhat of late. Yes, she was old. It was almost half a century ago that that bold-eyed handsome stranger had compared the color in her cheeks to a clove pink. She smiled serenely, although her reflections were of age and death, so perfectly did she recall the sunny day and the air with which the sailor would have kissed her. Placid and content in the gathering dusk, she smiled her own grave, sweet smile, which it were scarcely too fanciful to liken to the odor of the clove pink of her garden-plot whose hue half a century ago had been in her cheek. She had but one regret in leaving life, and that was to leave her moorlands. She had found existence so pleasant and had been so well content that she could not understand why people so usually spoke of life as sad; but she could not think without pain ofleaving the plains behind and going away to lie in the bleak hillside graveyard where slept her kinsfolk. It had never occurred to her before to consider to which she held more strongly, her people or the wide brown stretches of open about her, but to-night she debated it with herself and decided it. She resolved to say to her cousin tomorrow that she wished her grave made in the plains. Very likely her relatives would object. They had always thought her ideas strange; but they would surely let her have her way in this. She would even make some concessions and perhaps let Cousin Sarah come to live with her if they would agree to do as she wished about this. It would be so great a comfort to her to be assured that she was not in death to be separated from her dearly loved moors. She liked Sarah well enough, only that it was so pleasant to live alone with her bees and the plains. Besides, if she should chance to die alone, who would tell the bees? It would be a pity to have the fine swarms lost.
Suddenly she started up in the dusk, and without knowing clearly why she did it, she wrote on the bottom of the list of errands which she always made on Saturday for her cousin her wish concerning her grave. Thespot she mentioned was a knoll near the house, where the ground rose a little before it dipped into the sea. She reflected as she wrote that it was wiser to be prepared for whatever could happen, and, although she would not own it frankly even in these lonely musings, Ruth had felt strangely weak and worn to-day.
She frugally blew out the candle when her writing was done, and with calm content sat down again in her rocking-chair by the window darkening to “a glimmering square.” She heard the sound of the sea and the low wind blowing over the wide plains; and, lulled by the soft sounds, she fell at last asleep.
The wind rose in the night, and it was afternoon when the cousin from the village came in sight of the red house. No smoke rose from its chimney, and as he tied his clumsy sail-boat to the low wharf where so long ago a yacht had been briefly fastened, a long wavering line of bees rose glistening from the straw-thatched hives, floating upward and away like the departing soul of mortal. Their mistress had been dead more than twelve hours and they had not been told. Perhaps it was a chance flight; perhaps they were seeking her serene spirit over the moors she loved so well.
[The drawing-room of Mr. Sylvanus Potts Thompson, banker. Mr. Thompson and his wife, with ten guests, making a neat round dozen in all, are waiting the announcement of dinner. Enter Mr. Sylvanus Potts, a wealthy uncle from the country.]
Mr. Potts.I told the man there was no need to announce me; you knew I was coming next week, and a few days don’t matter. How do you do, nephew? how do you do, Jane?
Mr. Thompson.Why, uncle, we did not expect you so soon, but we are always glad to see you, of course.
Mrs. Thompson.Yes, always, dear Uncle Sylvanus. How is everybody at home?
Mr. P.Oh, they’re all well; you seem to be having a party, nephew?
Mr. T.Only a few friends to dinner. Let me introduce you.
[He takes him on his arm and presents him to his guests. While this is being done, a sentimental, elderly young woman, with thin curls, after whispering impressively with her neighbor, glides up to the hostess, and holds a moment’s conversation with that lady. Mrs. Thompson turns pale, and seems engaged in a mental calculation. Then she starts quickly toward her husband and draws him aside]
Mrs. T.Sylvanus, do you know how many people there are in this room?
Mr. T.Oh, about a dozen, I suppose.
Mrs. T.About a dozen! There are thirteen, Sylvanus, thirteen!
Mr. T.Well, what of it?
Mrs. T.What of it! Why, we can’t sit down to dinner with thirteen at table. Maria Smith says she should have a fit.
Mr. T.But she wouldn’t, my dear; she’s too fond of her dinner.
Mrs. T.Mr. Thompson, is it kind to speak so of my most particular friend?
Mr. T.But what does Maria expect us to do about it? Turn Uncle Sylvanus out of the house? Wasn’t I named for him, and haven’t I always been his favorite? Do you want me to be left out of his will?
Mrs. T.But something must be done. Don’t you see everybody is whispering and counting? Can’t we get somebody else?
Servant(who has entered unperceived). There is a man downstairs, sir, wants you to sign something.
Mr. T.Ah, my dear, here’s the very man,—young Jones. He’s our new cashier, and a very clever fellow.
[Exit Mr. Thompson. During his absence Mrs. Thompson communicates to Miss Smith the solution of the difficulty at which they have arrived. Everybodyhas soon heard of it, so that on Mr. Thompson’s return with Mr. Jones, the pair are greeted with much joking about the ill-luck which is thus averted. The necessary introductions take place.]
Mr. Jones.I am sure I am rejoiced at being instrumental in bringing good luck.
Miss Smith.You can certainly see how welcome you are, Mr. Jones.
Mr. J.But I fear it is not for myself, Miss Smith.
Miss S.That will undoubtedly come later, when we know you better.
Mr. P.I am glad you found somebody, nephew; for I must say I never would have given up my dinner for a foolish superstition; and as I came last and uninvited—
Mrs. T.(relieved of her fears and remembering the will) You are always invited to this house, Uncle Potts; and we would never hear of your going away.
Mr. Robinson.Well, it is all very well to call it a superstition, you know; but I knew—
[Mr. Robinson proceeds to narrate a grewsome and melancholy tale, in which disaster and death resulted from the imprudence of sitting down with thirteen at table; half a dozen other guests begin simultaneously the relation of six more equally or even more grewsome and melancholy tales upon the same subject, when they are interrupted by the arrival of a note for Mr. Robinson.]
Mr. R.My dear Mrs. Thompson, I am so sorry,but my brother has telegraphed for me to come to him at once on a matter of the utmost importance. I regret—
Mrs. T.But Mr. Robinson, don’t you see that—
Servant.Dinner is served.
Mr. T.May I have the honor, Mrs. Brown?
Miss S.But we can’t go to dinner now. Mr. Robinson is called away, and that leaves us thirteen again.
[An awful hush ensues, during which Mr. Robinson, finding himself regarded as a criminal, suddenly slips away, leaving the company to extricate themselves from their trying situation as best they can. The hush is followed by a Babel of voices, in which all sorts of suggestions are made.]
Mr. J.(with heroic and renunciatory self-denial) Let me speak, please, Mrs. Thompson. It was very kind in your husband to invite me to remain to dinner, but now that I shall be the thirteenth, I am sure you’ll excuse me.
Mr. T.But it seems so inhospitable.
Mrs. T.But it is more generous to deprive ourselves of Mr. Jones’s company than to be the means of bringing ill-luck upon him.
Mr. J.Quite right. I bid you good evening, Mrs. Thompson. I sincerely hope nothing further will occur to mar the pleasure of your evening.
[Mr. Jones having retired, a move is at once made toward the dining-room, but just as Mr. Thompson and Mrs. Brown reach the drawing-room door, theyare confronted by Mr. Robinson, who comes in breathless but triumphant.]
Mr. R.I thought it was so unkind of me to throw all your arrangements into confusion after the ill-luck of numbers you have already had, that I concluded to telegraph to my brother instead of going. Phew! How I have hurried! I am glad I am in time.
Mrs. Brown.Mr. Thompson, I positively cannot sit down at table with thirteen. My aunt died of it, and my second cousin. I am positive it runs in the family, and I know I should be the one to bear the consequence if we had thirteen at any table where I sat down.
[The greatest confusion follows. Miss Maria Smith is heard to declare that“Fate takes delight in persecuting her!”while young Algernon White mumbles something which has a distinct flavor of the Apostles’ Creed. Mr. Robinson shows a disposition to consider himself a most ill-used individual, thus to be rewarded for the trouble he has taken.]
Mr. T.My dear, what shall we do now?
Mrs. T.There is only one thing that I can think of; we can send across the street for Widow Ellis. You might go yourself and explain to her how it is.
[This suggestion being acted upon, the company settles into a solemn gloom, pending the return of the host with Widow Ellis. Every one knows the dinner will be spoiled, none being more acutely conscious of that fact than the hostess, and every one is nearly perishingwith hunger. More grewsome and melancholy stories are told, but in a wavering and subdued manner, as if they are being offered as excuses for resisting the cravings of appetite, which are rapidly becoming insupportable. Young White is heard to mutter, with fresh suspicions of theological terms, that one might as well die of thirteen at table as of starvation, and that for his part he prefers the former method of extinction. The return of Mr. Thompson with the Widow Ellis awakens some feeble enthusiasm, but it is evident that nothing short of a substantial dinner can restore the spirits of the company.]
Mr. P.Well, nephew, now I hope we may have some dinner. I, for one, am faint with hunger.
Mr. T.Oh, immediately. Mrs. Brown, we—
[At this juncture poor Mrs. Thompson, overcome with anxiety, fatigue, and hunger, produces a diversion by falling in a dead faint. The shrieks of Miss Maria Smith are re-enforced by those of other ladies of the company, and it is to be feared that Mr. Algernon White no longer enjoys the exclusive privilege of indulging in ecclesiastical references. The excitement usual upon such occasions reigns, and when at length Mrs. Thompson is restored to consciousness, but is found to be too ill to stand, and is borne off to her chamber, the company, once more reduced to thirteen, distributes itself in a stricken and overwhelmed state about the drawing-room, with the air of having ceased to struggle against an adverse fate.]
Widow E.We are thirteen again, neighbor; and if you’ll excuse me—
Mr. P.Thirteen or no thirteen, nephew, I’m going to have something to eat if it’s in this house.
[He disappears toward the dining-room, and as the resolution of Widow Ellis seems to have solved once more the dreadful conundrum of the fated number, the company hastily follow, too nearly famished to notice that the lady does not carry out her apparent intention of returning home, so that after all they sit down thirteen at table.]
I
Itwas fortunate that when the editor of the “Dark Red” magazine first did me the honor to request a story from my pen, I had one ready for him, and one, moreover, with which I was so well satisfied. I had so long vainly desired to be really asked for a contribution, and thus raised from the numerous and indiscriminate company of scribblers who send hopeful manuscripts to the magazines, and in trembling uncertainty await the issue, that it is not strange my bosom swelled with gratified pride, and that I dispatched my copy with so perfect a sense of complacency that I almost seemed to condescend a little in letting the editor have it.
I was fond of that story. I experienced a certain delight in recalling the circumstances under which it was composed, and I felt in it that confidence which an author is sure to have in work which has sprung spontaneously, and as it were full-grown, from hisbrain. Every literary worker, down to the veriest penny-a-liner of them all, knows the difference between a tale which makes itself, so to speak, growing unforced into beauty and completeness like a crystal, and a laboriously constructed piece of work, be it contrived never so ingeniously and cleverly. The fiction I sent to the editor of the “Dark Red” was of the former variety. It had come into my head all of itself, as the children say, while I was travelling between New York and Boston, so complete and so distinct that I scarcely seemed to have more to do with its creation than the later putting upon paper.
The circumstances were these:—
I had reached the Grand Central Station just in time to catch the morning train; and as the cars swept out into the daylight, I settled myself into a seat with a comfortable and something too self-satisfied feeling. In the first place, I was glad to be out of New York,—partly because it was hot and dusty there, partly because I am not over-fond of Gotham, and partly because sundry pleasant bachelor friends and divers good times were awaiting me at the Boston end of the journey.
I looked out upon the sunny landscape, over which the splendors of an April daycast a glow of warmth and brightness, smiled at the remembrance of a retort I had made at the Century Club on the previous evening, which seemed to me rather neat, and then with a sort of mental nod of farewell to all the outside world I took up my book and prepared to follow the fortunes of the woful and wicked, but thoroughly charming French heroine with whose adventures I was at that particular time occupying myself. To my vexation, however, I discovered that instead of the second volume I had taken the first, and as I had no especial desire to peruse again the somewhat detailed account of the heroine’s youth, her career at school, her first confession and early marriage,—all these being preliminary to the impropriety and the interest of the book, which, after the reprehensible manner of French novels, began together,—I laid down the volume with a sigh, and resigned myself to a ride of unalleviated dulness.
A resource instantly presented itself, however, in the page which the lady in the seat before me was reading. As I glanced up I saw that she was entertaining herself with poetry, and the next moment a familiar line caught my eye:—
“If you were April’s lady, and I were lord of May.”
“If you were April’s lady, and I were lord of May.”
“If you were April’s lady, and I were lord of May.”
“Swinburne,” I mused, “or a collection of selected poems, perhaps. Wiseacres would say one ought to know what a reader is like by the book she reads; but in the first place that’s nonsense, and in the second place I don’t know what book she is reading. She has an exquisite ear, and her hair is something bewildering. ‘If you were April’s lady.’ April’s lady should be a capricious creature, all smiles and tears, with winning ways and wilful wiles,—impulsive and wayward, and thoroughly enchanting. It would not,”—my thoughts ran on in a professional turn, while my eyes dwelt appreciatively, if somewhat presumptuously, upon the lovely curve of my neighbor’s neck,—“it would not be a bad notion to write a story of such a maiden and call it ‘April’s Lady.’ Let me see, what should it be like?”
And upon this impulse I fell to pondering, when suddenly, as if by magic, a tale presented itself all complete in my mind. My mental action appeared to me more like that of remembering than of creating, so real and so complete was the pretty history. The self-willed, volatile damsel whose fortunes it concerned seemed one whom I had known, and whom I might meet again some day. In my mind she assumed, it is true, an outwardsemblance similar to that of the lady before me, upon whose back I fixed my regards in an absorbed stare, which should have disturbed her could looks make themselves felt. She did not move, however, and as she did not turn the leaf of her book, I fancied she might have fallen into a reverie as deep as my own. I had not been able fully to see her face, although a lucky turn had given me a glimpse of a profile full of character and beauty, and which made me desire to behold more. I did not, however, trouble myself about the exact details of my heroine’s features, since every story-teller has a stock of choice personal charms with which to endow his fictitious children, but continued to gloat over my little romance; and so vividly was the tale of “April’s Lady” impressed upon my mind that although some weeks elapsed before I found time to put it upon paper, I had not the slightest difficulty in recalling even its most trifling incidents.
Almost the whole of my journey was taken up in turning the story over in my mind, and when we drew into the Boston station, and my neighbor closed her volume to begin the collection of her numerous feminine possessions, I had half a mind to lean forward and thank her for having given me, although unconsciously, so good a story.
It did seem to me, even after I had sent my manuscript off and the dreadful moment came when one realizes that it is too late to make changes and consequently thinks of plenty of things he wishes to alter, that “April’s Lady” was the best work I had ever done. I had let a month or two pass between its first writing and the final revision, and I was pretty well satisfied that I had produced a really capital story. I fondly hoped Mr. Lane, the editor of the “Dark Red,” would be moved by its excellence to give me further orders; and the eagerness with which I one morning tore open an envelope upon which I recognized his handwriting, may be easily enough imagined, at least by members of the literary guild. My impatience gave place to profound astonishment as I read the following note:—
Office Dark Red Magazine,Boston, September 27.My dear Mr. Gray,—Can you drop into my office to-morrow about noon? By some odd coincidence I received a story very similar to your “April’s Lady,” and bearing the same title, several days earlier, and should like to talk with you about it.Very truly yours,J. Q. Lane.
Office Dark Red Magazine,Boston, September 27.
My dear Mr. Gray,—Can you drop into my office to-morrow about noon? By some odd coincidence I received a story very similar to your “April’s Lady,” and bearing the same title, several days earlier, and should like to talk with you about it.
Very truly yours,J. Q. Lane.
I was utterly confounded. I racked my brains to discover who could possibly have stolen my story, and even suspected the small black girl who dusted my rooms, although the sooty little morsel did not know one letter from another. The first draft of the story had lain in my desk for some time, it was true, yet that any literary burglar should have forced an entrance and then contented himself with copying this seemed, upon the whole, scarcely probable. I ransacked my memory for some old tale which I might unconsciously have plagiarized, but I could think of nothing; and, moreover, I reflected that the coincidence of names certainly could not be accounted for in this way, even did I recall the germ of my plot.
I presented myself at the office of the “Dark Red” at the hour appointed with a clear conscience, it is true, but with positively no suggestion whatever to offer in regard to the method by which a copy of my story could have reached the editor in advance of my own manuscript.
Mr. Lane received me with the conventionally cordial manner which is as much a part of editorial duties as is the use of the blue pencil, and without much delay came to the business of the call.
“There is something very singular about this affair,” he said, laying out my manuscript, and beside it another which I could see was written in a running feminine hand. “If the stories were a little more alike, I should be sure one was copied from the other; as it is, it is inconceivable that they have not at least a common origin. Where did you get your idea?”
“Why, so far as I know,” I replied in perplexity, “I evolved it from my inner consciousness; but the germ may have been the unconscious recollection of some incident or floating idea. I’ve tried to discover where I did get the fancy, but without a glimmer of success. Who sent you the other version?”
“A lady of whose integrity I am as sure as I am of yours. That’s the odd part of it. Besides, you are both of you too clever to plagiarize, even if you weren’t too honest. The mere similarity of theme isn’t so strange; that happens often enough; but that the title of the stories should be identical, and that in each the heroine should be named May—”
“Is her heroine named May?” I interrupted in astonishment; “why, then, she must have seen my copy; or,” I added, a new thought striking me, “she must have got the name in the same way I did. Itook the title of the story and the name of the heroine from a line of Swinburne, and—”
“And,” interrupted the editor in turn, catching up the manuscript before him, “so did she.”
And he showed me, written at the head of the page:—
“If you were April’s lady, and I were lord of May.”
“If you were April’s lady, and I were lord of May.”
“If you were April’s lady, and I were lord of May.”
“Well,” I remarked, with a not unnatural mingling of philosophy and annoyance, “it is all of a piece with my theory that ideas are in the air, and belong, like wild geese, to whoever catches them first; but it is vexatious, when I captured a fancy that particularly pleased me, to find that some woman or other has been smart enough to get salt on its tail-feathers before I did.”
Mr. Lane smiled at my desperate air, and at that moment his little office-boy, whom I particularly detest because of the catlike stillness and suddenness of his movements, silently produced first himself and then a card.
“‘Agnes Graham,’” read Mr. Lane. “Here is your rival to speak for herself. I hope you don’t mind seeing her?”
“Oh, by no means,” I replied rather ungraciously. “Let us see what she is like, and what she will have to say about this puzzle.”
The name was not wholly new to me, as I had seen it signed to various magazine articles, concerning which at this moment I had only the most vague and general idea. I was sitting with my back to the door, and in rising I still kept my face half turned away from the lady who entered, but I saw the reflection of her face in a mirror opposite without any sense of recognition. As she advanced a step or two, however, and half passed me, I knew her. The delicate ear, the fine sweep of the neck, the knot of golden brown hair, were all familiar. It was the lady who had sat before me in the cars from New York on that April day.
As she turned in recognition of Mr. Lane’s introduction, a faint flush seemed to show that she too recognized me, although I was unable to understand how she should know me, since she certainly had not turned her head once in the entire journey. I set it down to pure feminine intuition, not having wholly freed myself from that masculine superstition which regards woman’s instinct as a sort of supernatural clairvoyance.
My sensations on discovering her identity were not wholly unlike those of a man who inadvertently touches a charged Leyden jar.
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, “what apsychological conundrum, or whatever you choose to call it. The whole matter is as plain to me now as daylight.”
“Well?” Mr. Lane asked, while Miss Graham regarded me with an air which seemed to question whether my insanity were of a dangerous type.
“Pardon me, Miss Graham, if I cross-question you a little,” I went on, becoming somewhat excited. “You came from New York on the morning train on Wednesday, the fifteenth—no, the sixteenth of last April, did you not?”
“Yes,” she answered, her color again a trifle heightened, but her appearance being rather that of perplexity than of self-consciousness.
“And on the way you read Swinburne till you came to the line,