They sat in the breakfast room—the family and Cherokee.
“Did I tell you, wife, that when Mr. Frost was here he brought me news of Robert Milburn?”
The tall, graceful woman thus addressed looked from the head of the table, and showing much interest, questioned:
“Indeed! well, how was he doing? I grew very fond of the boy when he was here.”
“The news is sad; he has gone to drinking,” said the Major, sorrowfully.
“I don’t believe it; we have no reason to take this stranger’s word; we don’t know who he is.” Turning to Cherokee she asked:
“Did you ever hear of Mr. Frost in New York?”
With a suppressed sigh, she answered:
“He is an artist of considerable note, I knew him very well.”
Suddenly Mrs. McDowell remembered that this was the bold man of whom Cherokee had told hermuch; so she questioned her no more, for she was always tender and thoughtful of others.
The Major did not understand any connection of names, and he again alluded to the subject.
“This New Yorker said it was about a girl; but the whole thing, to me, savors of some man’s hand—one who did not like him well.”
Here the wife changed the subject by asking:
“Who got any letters? I didn’t see the boy when he brought the mail.”
“Cherokee must have had a love letter or a secret,” remarked the Major cheerily. “I saw her tearing it into tiny bits, and casting them in a white shower on the grass.”
“Come, come, girlie, tell us all about it;” then suddenly the lady said: “How pale you are!”
“I do not feel well this morning,” she answered; “the letter was from a friend of other days.” She stumbled to her feet in a dazed sort of way, and hurried out of the house.
There was a touch of chill in the air, and the roses drooped; only wild-flower scents greeted her as she stopped and leaned against the matted honeysuckle arch by the garden gate. She searched the vine-tangle through, without finding one single blooming spray. This was Saturday; no school to-day. She felt a vague sense of relief in thethought, but what should she do with her holiday. She had lost her usual spirits, she had forgotten to be brave. The letter, maybe, or the stranger guest, had made the pale color in her cheeks; the eyelids drooped heavily on the tear-wet face, and checked the songs that most days welled perpetually over unthinking lips.
She had never told of Robert’s treatment of her; of his cold leave-taking, his altered look, for her to remember always. She had been bearing it in silence. Bred to the nicest sense of honorable good faith, she had kept it alone. But to-day she was weakening; she was agitated, and in a condition of feverish suspense and changeful mind.
Sunrays shone upon her hair as she leaned against the arch, her head bowed on her clasped hands, her slender figure shaken with grief. She heard voices and quick treading on the gravel walk.
“You haven’t aged at all, though it has been eleven years since I was here.”
“Life goes fairly smooth with me; and you have been well, I trust.” She knew that was the Major’s voice, and in the lightning flash of her unerring woman’s instinct she knew the other, as he said:
“I have been blessed with sound body, but life has passed roughly with me since my mother died. You have heard it?”
“Yes.”
“She made home so dear to my boyhood; so real to my after years. She was ever burning there a holy beacon, under whose guidance I always came to a haven and to a refuge.”
Then they suddenly came upon Cherokee, partly concealed.
“I told him we would find you down among the flowers, you little butterfly. Why didn’t you tell me Robert was coming, he is one of my boys?” and the Major laid his hand affectionately on the man’s shoulder; then, without waiting for an answer, he left them together.
Holding out one hand: “I am glad to see you, Cherokee,” and he drew closer.
She crimsoned, faltered, and looked toward the ground, but did not extend her own hand.
“Thank you,” was all she could utter.
He went on: “The very same; the Cherokee of old;” he mused, smiling dreamily, “her own self, like no other.”
Moving a step within the vine covert she said with a shadowy smile:
“I wish I were not the old self. I want her to be forgotten.”
“That is impossible—utterly impossible; I triedto deceive myself into the belief that this would be done; you see how I have failed?”
Raising her eyes full to his, but dropping them after the briefest gaze, she said, timidly:
“Why have you come back?”
“I have come back to mend the broken troth-plight; I have come back to be forgiven,” he answered, humbly.
“You have come back to find a wasted youth, a tired woman who has been the victim of a lie, told in the dark, with the seeming verity of intimate friendship. You have come back to find me stabbed by a thousand disappointments, striving with grim indifference, learning to accept, unquestioning, the bitter stone of resignation for my daily bread. I would scarce venture now to spread poor stunted wings that life has clipped so closely that they bleed when they flutter even toward the smallest hope.”
He fiercely cried, and clinched his hands together, with one consuming glance at her:
“I was to blame, Cherokee, for believing that you had promised to marry Fred Stanhope; Willard Frost is charged with this as well”—he bit his lips hard.
“And it was to the same man that I owe the death of innocence.” Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.
Robert Milburn turned upon her a piteous face, white with an intensity of speechless anguish. He staggered helplessly backward, one hand pressed to his eyes, as though to shut out some blinding blaze of lightning.
“Innocence! great God! He shall die the death——”
“Ah, you do not understand,” she hastily interrupted. “I mean that I thought all men were brave, honorable in everything, business as well as socially; but he was not a brave man; it was a business transaction in which he did me ill. I had measured him by you.”
This was a startling relief to him:
“Thank heaven I was mistaken in your expression of ‘death of innocence.’ But you humiliate, crush me, with a sense of my own unworthiness, to say I have been your standard. What made me listen to idle gossip of the Club—why did I act a brute, a coward?” his lips moved nervously.
“Dearest, show yourself now magnanimous, forgive it all, and forget it. You are so brave and strong—so beautiful—take me back.”
“Was it I who sent you away?”
“Oh! do you not see how humiliating are these reminders? I have confessed my wrong.”
“But would I not still be a burden; you said I could not bear poverty?” she asked.
He looked up with an expression of painful surprise:
“Don’t, don’t! I know now that love is the crown and fulfillment of all earthly good. Have you quit caring for me? I infer as much.”
Hastening to undo the effect of her last words, she said:
“Forgive me, Robert, what need I say? You read my utmost thoughts now as always. I have not changed towards you.”
His sad expression gave place to exquisite joy and adoration.
“I am grateful for the blessing of a good woman’s love.”
They passed out of the gate, down through the browning woods, and all things were now as they, of old, had been. The bracing, cool October air was like rare old wine; it made their flagging pulses beat full and strong. In such an atmosphere, hand in hand with such a companion—a woman so sweet, so young, so pure—Robert could not fail to feel the fires of love burn brighter and brighter. Her forgiveness was spoken from her very soul. Rarely has a wave of happiness so illumined a woman’s face as when she said, “Ilove you so now, I have never understood you before.” There was a degree of love on her part that was veritable worship—her nature could do nothing by halves. Her soul was so thrilled by this surcharged enthusiasm, it could hold no more. There is a supreme height beyond which no joy can carry one, and this height Cherokee had attained. The restraint of her will was overthrown for the moment, and now the pent-up passion of her heart swept on as a mountain torrent:
“Oh, my dearest love, how have I lived until now? What a lovely place this world is with you—you alone. Kiss me! kiss me!” She grasped his hand with sudden tightness, until his ring cut its seal into the flesh. He bent over her head, put her soft lips to his, and folded her in his arms. “Sweetheart, I shall never go away without you.”
All this meant so much to Cherokee—these hours with him—these hours of forgetfulness of all but him—these hours of abandon, of unrestrained joy, flooded her life with a light of heaven. She had given her happiness into his keeping; and he had accepted the responsibility with a finer appreciation of all it meant than is shown by most men.
Where could there have been a prettier trothing-place than here in the free forest, where the good God had been the chief landscape gardener. Herewas the God-touch in everything. Well had the red man called this month the “moon ’o falling leaves.” Softly they came shivering down, down, down, at their feet, breathing the scent of autumn. Now, and here, nature is seen in smoother, softer, mellower aspect than she wears anywhere else in the world. It was nearing the nooning hour when, together, the lovers’ steps tended homeward, and when they reached the house, Robert vowed it would never again be in him to say that he didn’t love the South and the country.
With what a young, young face Dorothy met the Major. As she looked up she saw his wide kind eyes smiling; he leaned forward and laid his hand upon her, saying, “My little girl, after all, love is life.”
At these words a tall, slight woman raised her head—a secret bond of fellowship seemed to have stirred some strange, mysterious sympathy. The Major crossed over to her; what though time had stolen away her youth—her freshness gone, there was still sweet love gleaming in her lined face—it could not be that they were old. Tenderly he took her warm soft hand in his, and told her how he loved her. The sweethearts looked on and rejoiced; neither whispered it to the other, but deep in the heart each said, “So shall ours be forever.”
“Come, let me bless you my children,” and the Major’s wife slipped a hand into one hand of each, and drew them closer. Robert’s eyes lit up; his brave mouth was smiling quietly, while dimples broke out on Cherokee’s face.
“I trust the dark is all behind, the light before, and that you are at the threshold of a great, enduring happiness—but remember that Time will touch you as your joy has done, but his fingers will weigh more heavily—it is then that you must cling all the closer.”
The marriage was to be celebrated in two weeks. Cherokee had too much common sense to wish an elaborate wedding, when it would necessitate more means than she possessed.
The Major and his wife, who was the personification of lovable good nature, considered together, and graciously agreed to extend to Robert, for these two weeks, the hospitality of their roof. What a sweetly good wife the Major had! The graces of her person corresponded to the graces of her mind. The beauty of her character found a fitting symbol in the sweet, gentle face—the refined, expressive mouth, that gave out wise counsel to Cherokee, in whom she felt so deep an interest.
Cherokee had the dimmest memory of her mother, whom she lost when she was a child in words of three letters, frocks to her knees, infantine socks, and little shoes fastened with two straps and a button. The Major’s wife was so full of charity and tenderness that she did her best to compensate for the unhappy want of a mother. She now gaveher assistance in every particular relating to the preliminaries of the wedding.
There is an old saying that “honest work is prayer.” If thus reckoned, there was a deal of praying at Ashland now. At the door, most times, was a large carriage, of the kind which the Major used to call a barouche, with an immense pair of iron-gray horses to it, and on the box was a negro coachman, ready at a moment’s notice to let down the steps, open and close the door, clamber up to his seat, and set off at a brisk pace along down a winding avenue of laurels, to town.
As for Robert, it was the union of inspiration and rest that made the days so wholesome and unique. It was agreed that he and the Major should be no care to the busy ones; they were to find their own entertainments. One or two days had been passed in hunting expeditions. They had bagged quail until the artist fancied himself a great success as a huntsman. Then there were morning strolls where he could take his thoughts and ease in the fulness of all the falling beauty and grandeur of the season. Light winds strewed his way broadcast with leaves—leaves that were saturated, steeped, drunken with color. What a blessed privilege for a man with artistic tastes. There was nothing second-rate about here. The air, as well as the leaves, waspermeated, soaked through and through, with sunlight—quivering, brilliant, radiant; sunlight that blazes from out a sky of pearl, opal and sapphire; sunlight that drenched historic “Ashland” with liquid amber, kissed every fair thing awake, and soothed every shadow; sunlight that caresses and does not scorch, that dazzles and does not blind.
Upon one hunting trip the Major took Robert up near Cherokee’s old home—the woods and fields where her childhood passed. It was well worth the day’s ride. What various charm lies in this region. The wood is alive with squirrels too. They stole upon two of these shy wood rangers, who were busy in their frolic, chasing one another around a huge hickory nut tree.
“Ssh!” whispered Robert, as he motioned the Major to lay down his gun. He wished to watch their antics. They were young ones who, as yet, knew not the burden of existence whose pressure sends so many hurrying, scurrying, all the day long, laying up store of nuts against the coming cold. To these two, life, so far, meant a summer of berries, and milky corn, and green, tender buds, with sleep in a leaf-cradle, rocked by soft summer winds; with morning scampers through seas of dew-fresh boughs. Only glimmering instinct tells them of imminent, deadly change, and, allunknowing, they make ready against it, in such light-hearted, hap-hazard fashion. Now they cease their scampering and drop down to earth, burrowing daintily in its deep leaf-carpet. One rises upon his haunches with a nut in his paws, the other darts to seize it, and for a few minutes they roll over and over—a furry ball, with two waving, plumy tails. It flies swiftly apart, the finder hops upon a rotting tree trunk to chatter in malicious triumph. His mate sits, dejected, a yard away, as his sharp teeth cut the hull; she has given up the contest and is sore over it, though nuts are plentiful, and the yield this year, abundant. Presently, she creeps past to the log’s other end; the other looks sharply at her out of the corner of his eye, then, darts to her side, pats her lightly between the ears, and, as she turns to face him, drops the nut of contention safe within her little paws. At once she falls to ravenous gnawing. He looks on, rubs his head caressingly against her, then darts away to find a new treasure that has just dropped from above; for well they know none were more rightful heirs to nature’s bounty.
The men looked on in silent interest; this was a pretty sight indeed, and few manage to steal upon it for more than a moment. Their luck was due to the youth of the pair, who thought they riskednothing by such delicious idling—nor, indeed, did they; for when the watching was over, the intruders shouldered their guns and left them to life. The Major’s next turn was toward the big south wood, whose edge they saw fringing the top of the bluff. This bluff faces north, a sheer wall of grey-blue limestone, seamed and broken into huge ledges. All manner of wild vines grow in the clefts, grape-vines, wild ivy, poison-oak, trail down into the water. The crown and glory of it, though, was its ferns. The trailing rock-fern runs all over the face of it, each seam and cleft is a thick fringe of maiden-hair ferns, wherever it gets good root. Foxes live in the caves along the bluffs, but the men looked with keenest search and they could not catch a glimpse of one.
Thinking of this, the Major recalled to mind a memorable and exciting chase in which they had run the fox into this very place. He had distanced them by one second, and they lost the game.
While they stood there, letting their horses drink, the Major recounted the things of interest about the hunt.
“It is such royal sport,” declared Robert, “there is nothing so invigorating as a lively chase, though as a sport its palmiest days are in the past. To be a ‘master of fox-hounds’ was once a countrygentleman’s crowning distinction. The chase, when spoken of now, has a reminiscent tone, an old ‘time flavor.’”
“Notwithstanding our neighboring young men keep up this pastime of old days, I go but rarely, now,” said the Major. “Various modern innovations, from wire fences to democratic ideas, have conspired to ruin the country—for fox hunting. Unsportsmanlike farmers will not tolerate broken fences and trampled crops.”
“I should so enjoy just one stirring chase. I wonder if we could get up a ‘swagger’ affair, including the girls?” asked Robert.
“Most assuredly.”
And on the way home, they planned the hunt.
“Resounds the glad hollo,The pack scents the prey;Man and horse follow,Away, hark away!Away, never fearing,Ne’er slacken your pace—What music so cheeringAs that of the chase.”
“Resounds the glad hollo,The pack scents the prey;Man and horse follow,Away, hark away!Away, never fearing,Ne’er slacken your pace—What music so cheeringAs that of the chase.”
“Resounds the glad hollo,The pack scents the prey;Man and horse follow,Away, hark away!Away, never fearing,Ne’er slacken your pace—What music so cheeringAs that of the chase.”
“Resounds the glad hollo,
The pack scents the prey;
Man and horse follow,
Away, hark away!
Away, never fearing,
Ne’er slacken your pace—
What music so cheering
As that of the chase.”
It is dawn. The cool black darkness pales to tender gray. Singeth not the ballad-monger—
“A southerlie wind, a clouded skyeDoe proclaime it huntynge morning?”
“A southerlie wind, a clouded skyeDoe proclaime it huntynge morning?”
“A southerlie wind, a clouded skyeDoe proclaime it huntynge morning?”
“A southerlie wind, a clouded skye
Doe proclaime it huntynge morning?”
Now the long notes of mellow-winded horns come strongly up-wind, undervoiced with a whimpering chorus from the hounds. The fox-hunters are out. What a picture! Eleven blue-grass beauties, all roundnesses and curves, mounted upon eleven Kentucky horses. An equal number of cavaliers put in, made a fair and gallant sight. The company willingly recognized as their chief, the new arrival and visitor, whose noble head andclear-cut features were really quite imposing. Cherokee started out as his companion, and she occupied, with sufficient majesty, her place of triumph. She was upon “Sylvan,” a splendid lead-white horse, who was the pride and pet of her care. What a horse—what a rider! Where could you find such hand, seat, horse, rider—so entirely, so harmoniously, at one? It is a rhythm of motion, wherein grace has wedded strength. Mark the fire, the spirit of the beast; his noble lift of head, arching neck, with its silky, flowing mane; his clean flat leg, his streaming tail of silver shining. How he loves his mistress who sits him so light, so firm, so easily swaying; she bends him to her will by master-strength; yet pats and soothes as she might a frightened child. Sweetness and strength! that is all the magic. The rein is a channel through which intelligence goes most subtly. Good Sylvan knows and loves his rider—feels her vividly to the core of his quick sense; will serve her unquestioning to the limit of his speed and stay.
The hunters have started in a south-easterly direction, the musical-winding of horns, wreathing like a thread of gold, through the heart of the town.
Listen! they are now at the creek ford; hear the splash and beat of hoofs. The dogs ahead, arerunning in leaping circles through field and wood. A whimpering challenge comes sharply from the left; nobody heeds it—it is only the puppy, out for a first run, as yet scarce knowing the scent he seeks. Most likely he is trailing a rabbit—but no; a bell-like note echoes him. Trumpet, king of the pack, cries loud and free—all the rest break out in thrilling jangle, and set all the valley a-ring. Up, up, it swells, truly a jocund noise, under these low pale clouds, this watery moon, this reddening east. They are headed up wind, the cool air goes back heavy-freighted with the wild dog-music. Hoof-beats sound sharply through it. Sylvan is close behind the leading hound. What sharp, exultant shrilling comes out from the followers’ throats. All the hunt is whooping, yelling, as it streams through dusk of dawn. Up, then down, they go; along a gentle slope from whose sparse flints the hoofs strike fire. A fair world smiles up from either hand, but they have no eye, no thought for it. The thrilling, breathless motion wraps them away from other senses; they are drunken with “wine o’ the morning.” Truly, it is the breath of life they draw, in this rush through the dew-fresh air.
Note the leader now, urging his mare; what feet are hers—small, firm, unerring. Her skimming gallop is as the flight of a bird—her leap averitable soar. See! the fox has doubled; now the full cry rings down-wind. See the dogs tumbling, writhing over that crooked fence. They had been running always on view—heads up, tails down—so close upon their quarry there was no need to lay nose to the tainted herbage that he had crossed. They caught the scent hot in the air. All the hunters knew it when they heard the last wild burst of furious dog-music. So hearing, they sat straighter in the saddle, gave the good beasts the spur; a little while and they would be “in at the death;” the next field, certainly the next hill-side, must bring it. So they crash, pell-mell, over the low roadside fence, as the hounds top the high one bounding the pasture land. But now Trumpet stops short, flings his nose to wind, and sets up a whimpering cry—he has lost the trail. The fox has either dodged back under the horses’ feet, or hidden so snug that the dogs have over-run him. Look at the true creatures, panting with lolling tongues, as they run crying about the field, dazed out of all weariness by this astounding check. A minute—two—three—still the trail is lost. There is babble of yelps and shouting, each master calling loudly to his most trusted hound. The leader’s horse champs on the bit, frets lightly against the rein. Sylvan, too, prances gaily under check. This ringing run hasbut well breathed him—the noise of it has set his fine blood afire. Soon a horn breaks faintly out, is instantly from lip, and all the field is in motion. The fox is cunning, but Trumpet is cunninger. He has followed the fence a hundred yards, picked up the trail where the sly thing leaped to earth after running along the rails, and is after it, calling, with deepest notes, to man and beast to follow and save the honors of the field. How straight he goes; his fellows streaming after can do no more than yelp, as with great leaping bounds they devour the grassy space. Nearer, nearer he comes to the dark, sweated, hunted thing that seems a mere shadow on the ground in front of him, so straight, so skimming is his steady flight toward the bluff beyond; his den is there. To it he strains, yet never shall he gain. Almost Trumpet is upon the prize; his hot breath overruns it; it darts aside, doubles—but all in vain. Quickly, cruelly, his jaws close upon it. The leading horseman, Robert, snatches it away, and blows a long blast of his horn. Trumpet stands aquiver with delight, and leaps up for a pat of the hand, while Robert flings the dead fox at his feet before the eyes of all the field.
It was the seventeenth of October—the wedding day at “Ashland.” Little ruffles of south wind blew out of a fair sky, breathing the air of simplicity into grandeur. Up among the ivy leaves, a couple of birds flashed and sang. But indoors, people were so mightily interested in a pair of unwinged lovers, that these two sang their song out, and then flew away unheard.
Carriages bearing guests to the wedding were already rolling past. Those who alighted were the intimate friends. No stranger’s curious stare would fall upon this scene to contrast with its fairness. No shadow was necessary to the harmony of it.
Robert stood at an upper window, and his eyes fell upon the matted honey-suckle where Cherokee had first lifted so sad a face to him—so sad, that, though the first throb of grief awakened by his mother’s death had scarcely yet been stilled, he forgot his own sorrow in the effort to bring happiness again to her—his living love. How his words of tenderness had made her face soft like the latesunshine of a summer day. He looked with emotion upon the scene whose vividness came back with double force to-day. Could all this influence be as fleeting as it was charming? What would be his verdict at the end of a year—what hers?
He was called clever, and “people of talent should keep to themselves and not get married.” Yet his love had overruled the sage’s counsel. This feeling for Cherokee he knew could not be called another name less sweet. Since the first sight of her he had worshipped her from afar, as a devout heathen might worship an idol, or as a neophyte in art might worship the masterpiece of a master. And she was proud of him, too; women want the world’s respect for their husbands. Would he, could he, do anything to make her and the world lose that respect? No, he thought not now—he would be away from his old associations and temptings. “Artists are such funny chaps, they all have the gift of talk and good manners,” he mused, “but they are generally upon the verge of starvation; they are too great spendthrifts to be anything else but worthless fellows. Now I am not a spendthrift, and if I can but conquerone little evil, of which I should have told her, maybe, I will break the record they have made.”
Lost for a time in this reverie, he was dead to the passing of the precious moments. Recalled to himself, he turned quickly to the clock—it still wanted five and twenty minutes to twelve.
As for Cherokee, there were no moments of sober reflection. She was too much in love to calculate for the future, and did not imagine that so delicious a life could ever come to an end. Happy in being the help-mate of Robert, she thought that his inextinguishable love would always be for her the most beautiful of all ornaments, as her devotion and obedience would be an eternal attraction to him.
There was but one thing now left undone. She slipped out the side entrance, down into the lawn where Sylvan was. She laid her soft cheek against his great silvered neck. “I am going away,” she whispered, half aloud, as though he could understand. “But you know he must be very kind and dear if I leave my good friends and you, for him, you brave, big beast; how I hope your next mistress will care for you as I have.” She pressed his neck affectionately, the while his eyes mirrored and caressed her, and, when she started back towards the house, he followed her with a tread that was pathetic.
Inside, the rooms, and halls, and stairway, were wreathed about with delicate vines and roses. AllAshland was in attendance, if not in the house or on the verandas, then gazing through the windows; or waiting outside the gate. Even the negroes, as they peered, tiptoe, had a sense of ownership in the affair.
It was noon—that supreme moment of life and light. The tall silver-faced clock rang out twelve silvery chimes as ten maidens, in wash-white, entered, strewing flowers in the path. These white robed attendants, standing now aisle-wise, made a symphony of bloom. All eyes followed the bride as she appeared on the arm of the handsome, kindly Major, full of dignity, full of sweetness as well. Every heart burst forth into an exclamation of delight and admiration. There was youth, sweetness and love on her flushing face. Few brides have looked happier than Cherokee; few men have looked more manly than Robert Milburn, as he met and took her hand for life.
The ceremony was followed by a shower of congratulations. A hurried change to her going-away gown, and they were ready to take their final leave. The Major and his wife said good-bye, and then again, good-bye, with a lingering emphasis that made the word as kind as a caress.
A few minutes more and they were gone. There was nothing left but the scattered rice on the ground,and Sylvan, with bowed head—as though he knew the hand of Cherokee had now another charge; while over all sifted the long benediction of sunlight and falling leaves.
It was a half hour past midnight. A cab drew up in front of a residence in New York, and two men bore something into the outer doorway.
The bell gave a startling alarm, and presently, from within, a voice asked, with drowsy tremor:
“Is that you, Robert, husband?”
“Open the door quickly,” some one insisted.
“But that is not Robert’s voice,” she faltered.
“Madam, a friend has brought your husband home.”
This assurance caused the door to be quickly opened.
“Good heavens! is he ill? Is he hurt? Bring him this way,” she excitedly directed.
The silken draperies of the bed were trembling, showing that she had just left their folds. After depositing the burden, the cab man bowed, and left them.
“It is not at all serious, my dear madam,” the friend began, “but the truth is—” here he hesitatedconfusedly, he did not mean to tell her the truth at all; anything else but that.
“Oh, sir, tell me the worst; what has happened?” and she leaned lovingly over the unconscious man; she looked so earnest in her grief—so unsuspecting—that Marrion was convinced that this was the first “full” of the honeymoon. “I will help him out of this,” he said to himself.
“Robert had a terrific headache at the club, and we gave him chloral—he took a trifle too much—that is all—he will be quite himself by morning.”
“Oh! sir, are you sure it is not fatal?” Cherokee asked, anxiously, “absolutely sure? But how could anyone be so careless,” she remonstrated.
“I do not wonder that you ask, since it was Marrion Latham who was so thoughtless.”
“Marrion Latham! my husband’s dearest friend.”
“I am what is left of him,” he answered, laughingly.
She extended her hand, cordially:
“I am glad to meet you, for Robert loves you very dearly, and came near putting off the wedding until your home-coming.”
“I am very sorry to have missed it. Have I come too late to offer congratulations?”
“No, indeed, every sunset but closes another wedding day with us,” and she kissed the flushedface of the sleeper she so loved. Too blind was that love to reveal the plight in which this accident had left him. Call it accident this once, to give it tone. Cherokee willingly accepted for truth the statement that Marrion had made. Enough for her woman heart to know that her husband needed her attention and love. There over him she leaned, her hair rippling capewise over her gown, while from the ruffled edge her feet peeped, pink and bare. She was wrapped in a long robe of blue cashmere, with a swansdown collar, which she clasped over her breast with her left hand. It was easy to be seen there was little clothing under this gown, which every now and then showed plainly, in spite of the care she took to hide it.
Art was powerless to give these fine and slight undulations of the body that shone, so to speak, through the soft and yielding material of her garment. Marrion studied the poem she revealed; he saw she had a wealth of charms—every line of her willowy figure being instinct with grace and attractiveness, as was the curve of her cheeks and the line of her lips. Imagine a flower just bursting from the bud and spreading ’round the odor of spring, and you may form some faint idea of the effect she produced. To Marrion she was not a woman, she wasthewoman—the type, theabstraction, the eternal enigma—which has caused, and will forever cause, to doubt, hesitate and tremble, all the intelligence, the philosophy, and religion of humanity.
All his soul was in his eyes; Eve, Pandora, Cleopatra, Phyrne, passed before his imagination and said: “Do you understand, now?” and he answered: “Yes, I understand.”—Robert was safe at home and was now sleeping quietly, so Marrion thought he had done his duty.
“I shall leave you now, Mrs. Milburn; he will be all right when he has had his sleep out.”
“Oh, do not leave us, what shall I do without you?” she pleaded in child-fashion.
“If it will serve you in the least, I shall be glad to remain,” he assured her, as he resumed his seat.
After all, he did not know but that it was best for him to stay. Too well he knew that to every sleep like this there is an awakening that needs a moderator.
Marrion Latham was a tall, splendid-looking man, with a proud, commanding manner. His intimates styled him, “The Conqueror.” He had always had a handsome annuity besides the income he realized from his plays. He had enough money to make the hard world soft, win favors, gild reputation, and enable one to ride instead of walkthrough life; consequently, he had self-indulgent habits, and was destitute of those qualities of self-endurance and self-control that hard work and poverty teach best. Yet he had that high sense of honor which is most necessary to such an imaginative, passionate and self-willed nature as he possessed.
While he sat there quietly, Robert became restless. The stupor was wearing off, and the dreaded awakening came.
“May I trouble you for a glass of water?” was Marrion’s request, that would absent Mrs. Milburn for awhile.
Robert made a ferocious movement, and began thumping his head.
“Wheels in it,” he muttered.
“Be quiet, she does not suspect you,” Marrion whispered.
Cherokee came back to find her husband in the delirious throes of his spree. With sweet and tender solicitude, she asked:
“Do you feel better, dear?”
“I have been desperately ill,” was his almost rational response.
“Bravo,” was Marrion’s mental comment, “so far, so good.” Now, if she would only allow him to be quiet; but who ever saw a woman tire ofasking questions, and who ever saw a drunken man that did not have a tongue for all ten of the heads he imagined he had?
Cherokee chimed in again:
“I have been very uneasy about you. You know I expected you home by ten.”
“Ten! Fifty would be more like it. I know I took that money.”
“What do you mean, Robert?” she asked, as she stared at him, amazed and wounded.
“He means nothing, he is flighty; that’s the way the medicine affects one,” Marrion explained.
“I tell you she is deucedly pretty”—with this Robert calmed down for awhile.
“He is surely out of his head, Mr. Latham.”
“No, I am not,” thundered Robert, “I should feel better if I were,” and all at once he came to his senses.
“What does this mean? What am I doing, lying down in my dress suit?” he demanded, “and it is broad day.”
“It means that you have kept me up all night lying for you,” whispered Marrion.
“The devil you say! have I had too much?”
Cherokee had gone from the room with the stain of wild roses on her cheek, for she had at lastunderstood the situation, and its terrible significance.
“I will leave you now, old boy, and I hope this will not occur again. You have an angel for a wife.”
“Thank you, Latham, stay for breakfast with us.”
“No, I have an appointment early this morning.”
At the door he turned and called to Milburn:
“Oh, Milburn, when you have the headache again, there is one thing you must not forget.”
“What’s that?”
“Chloral,” he answered, chaffingly.
That evening Robert did not go down town to dinner, but stayed at home, by way of doing penance. He sat in his room, reading; suddenly he threw aside the paper and said:
“What nonsense to pretend to read in a home like this, I ought to give all my time to adoration of you; few men are so blessed.”
“How lovely of you to say that; you are the very best husband in all the world, I know you are.”
“And you, my wife, are just what I would have you be.”
She lifted her face and looked ardently into his:
“I am so happy; are you?”
“As happy as I ever wish to be in heaven,” he replied, with great earnestness.
“Oh, don’t say that, it is irreverent—sacrilegious——”
The sentence was cut short by the servant entering and announcing:
“Mr. Latham, Mr. Frost.”
Cherokee, in astonishment, asked:
“Surely it cannot be Willard Frost?”
“S—h—! he will hear you,” warned the husband.
“Then it is he.”
“I shouldn’t wonder, though I do not see what brings him here.”
“He must have been invited; brazen as he is, he never would have intruded here unasked,” she guessed.
“Now, since you speak of it, I did meet him at the Club last night, with Marrion.”
“And you invited him here?” Anger and sorrow were blended in the voice of Cherokee as she asked the question.
“I don’t think I did, though something was said about his calling. The fact is, I had been taking a little too much—too much——”
“Chloral. Yes I understand now, but how could you be friendly with him after the way he had treated me.”
There was reproach in her tones, that told more strongly than her words, of suppressed indignation. Robert noticed it and was visibly embarrassed.
“You forget he gave us a thousand dollar wedding present. He is really a good fellow when you come to know him thoroughly; besides, he is one of the most successful artists in New York,and can be of great service to me. I want to get to the front, you know.”
Cherokee had never told Robert of their meeting, nor that very amount he had so contemptuously returned to her in the guise of a gift—of the reception, and Willard’s boast that she would again receive him. She regretted that now; surely the knowledge on the part of the husband would have restrained him.
“You must go to them,” she said at length, “they will think strangely of the delay.”
“I must go; surely you will accompany me.”
“Don’t ask it, Robert; make some excuse; I can’t meet that man.”
“Nonsense! the embarrassment will be but momentary. You surely won’t stand in the way of my success; besides, Marrion is there, and I am sure you will enjoy knowing him better.”
“Do you really wish me to see this other man, Willard Frost?”
“I do; how can I expect him to be my friend if you fail to receive him?”
“You are everything to me, husband, and I will obey you, although I never expected to be called upon to make a sacrifice like this.”
In the meantime, the guests awaited in the library.
“Latham,” said Frost, “you are a first-rate fellow to arrange things so that I can again meet the lovely Mrs. Milburn.”
“‘Again meet her!’ then you know her already?”
“Know her?” the brief interrogatory, with the accompanying shrug of the shoulders and significant laugh, formed a decided affirmative answer.
A swift flush of indignation swept across Marrion Latham’s features. The manner of his companion annoyed him.
“Why have you never called here before?” he asked, coldly.
“We had a trifling misunderstanding some time ago. Report had it that she was somewhat interested in me, and that too, since my marriage to Frances Baxter.”
“And it was to gain admission here that you insisted on Robert’s drinking last night, even after I asked you not to do it?”
“Oh, no, I like Milburn and want to help him in his art. I was free to call without a special invitation, though I was not sorry when he insisted upon my coming.”
“Hush! here they are.”
The two men rose. Willard Frost’s gaze went straight to the tall, lithe figure that came forward to meet her guests.
Nature had made of her so rare a painting—her’s was a beauty so spirituelle—that it awed to something like reverence, those who greeted her. The flush of indignation had disappeared from her face, but the excitement, the agitation through which she had passed had heightened her color as well as her beauty.
The first thing that Marrion said, aside to Robert, was:
“How is that head?”
“That’s one on me, gentlemen. Have cigars, it’s my treat.”
“With your gracious permission,” remarked Marrion, bowing to the hostess.
“I am pleased to grant it, if you enjoy smoking,” and she handed them matches.
“It is some time since we have met, Mrs. Milburn,” said Frost, with cold courtesy, while the other men were talking together.
“Yes, it is quite a long time. Your wife is well, I trust.”
“I am sorry, but I really can’t enlighten you on that point.”
“Is she out of the city?”
“I am told so. The fact is, she has recently taken a decided liking to a young actor. I understand that she is going upon the stage.”
Cherokee was speechless. The coolness and impudence of that man had completely dumbfounded her.
“She preferred histrionic art to my poor calling,” he continued; “I have instructed my attorneys to take the necessary legal steps to leave her free to follow it.”
Here Robert and Marrion joined them, and the conversation became general.
“By the way,” said Latham, when they got up to leave, “I had almost forgotten my special mission; I came to invite you to a box party next Wednesday evening.”
“We shall be most charmed to go,” replied Cherokee, who had resolved to make herself agreeable. “What is the play?”
“It is my latest.”
“We shall be well entertained, if it is one of yours,” cried Robert enthusiastically.
“And the name of your play, Mr. Latham?”
“When Men Should Blush.”
“An odd title, but he is famous for thinking of things that no one else ever thought of,” put in Frost.
“Yes, I occasionally think of you,” added Latham, good-naturedly.
“You forget that thoughts and dreams sometimesassume the form of nightmares; you had better leave me out—I might be an unpleasant incubus to encounter.”
Latham smiled, and there was the least tinge of a sneer in his smile.
When Cherokee closed her eyes to sleep that night, she could only see Willard Frost—the one man in all the world whom she loathed; the coldest, most unsympathetic creature that ever got into a man’s skin instead of a snake’s.
True, he was handsome, but for the red lips that seemed to indicate sensuality, and the square, resolute jaw that showed firmness of purpose.
* * * * * *
On Wednesday evening all kept their engagement. Lounging in handsome indifference, surrounded by his invited guests, Marrion saw the curtain rise at —— Theater.
His box was the center of attraction. Wild, fervid, impassioned was the play—this youngest creation of his brain. The shifting scenes were gracefully sudden, the denouement clever, and, as the curtain went down on the admirable drama, he had shown the audience that there was something new under the sun.
With some, to write is not a vague desire, but an imperious destiny. This was true of Marrion Latham; to this man of only eight and twenty years, heaven had entrusted its solemn agencies of genius. What a vast experience he must have had, for few people become great writers without tasting all these fierce emotions and passionate struggles. It is said that we must measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have known. Whatever grief he had borne had been in silence, and his laugh was as joyous as when a boy.
He was of high lineage, and Southern born; he came of a stock whose word was as good as their oath, and his success did not make him cut his actors on the street, as some dramatists have been known to do.
He had arranged a little supper after the play. Cherokee, pleased with the fine mind of her host, and having determined not to stand in the way of her husband’s advancement, was the life of the table. She did not put herself forward or seek to lead; much of the charm of her words and manner rose from utter unconsciousness of self.
She was both too proud and too pure hearted for vanity, spoke well, and to the purpose. If but a few words, they were never meaningless; and pervading all she said there was that aroma of culturewhich is so different from mere education. Should she have had no charm of face, her gifted mind alone would have made her attractive beyond most women.
During the supper the talk drifted on woman’s influence. Frost asserted that no woman ever reformed a man if his own mind was not strong enough to make him brace up; he would keep on to the end, an erring, stumbling wretch.
“You are mistaken,” returned Marrion, “many a good woman, mother, wife, has borne the cross to where she could lay it aside and take a crown. Take the drink habit, for instance; once an excessive, always one. Now, I can drink or let it alone.”
“I detest a drunkard,” said Frost, laconically.
“But somebody’s father, brother, or husband, might be strong in all other points and weak in that one,” Cherokee spoke, just a trifle severely.
“And woman has the brunt of it to bear,” said Marrion.
“I hold that we are nearer true happiness when we demand too little from men than when we expect too much,” was Frost’s retort.
Here Robert turned to Marrion:
“I see, from your play, that you believe in an equal standard of morals. You propose to be as lenient with women as with men.”
“Say, rather, I am in favor of justice,” was the manly reply.
“This doctrine of yours is quite dangerous,” Frost interrupted, to which Marrion answered:
“It is the doctrine of Him who teaches forgiveness of sins.”
“Ah, Latham, you have taken a stupendous task upon yourself, if you mean to reform men,” laughed Frost.
“Some men and beasts you can improve, but other natures—like wild hyenas—once wild, wild forever,” was Marrion’s bright rejoinder.
“I am not looking for them,” was the answer.
“Come to the office with me for a moment,” Willard Frost turned to Robert, when the suggestion for returning home had been made. “There is a fine painting in there that I want you to see.”
They were nearly half an hour absent, but, engaged in pleasant conversation, Cherokee and Marrion did not notice the lapse of time. When the men came back, the quick eye of Marrion noticed that Robert had been drinking, and that near the border line of excess.
It was some months afterward. Cherokee, gowned in violet and gold, was on her way to the Chrysanthemum Show, where she felt sure of meeting some of her friends. She was walking briskly, when she was importuned by an old man for help. Dropping some coins into his entreating palm, she passed on.
How little we know whom we may meet when we leave our doors, and before entering them again. Often one’s whole life is changed between the exit and entrance of a home.
“Ah, my dear Mrs. Milburn, how pleased I am to meet you here. Are you out for pleasure?”
Whose voice could that be but Willard Frost’s, sounding in her ears like clods on a coffin.
“Yes, I presume one would call it pleasure, going to the Chrysanthemum Show and to get some flowers for hospital patients. You know the sick love these little attentions.”
“There, that’s an illustration of what I amcontemplating. Do you know I think you are just the person I wanted to meet this morning?”
“Why?” she asked, indifferently.
“Because you can do a great kindness as well as give pleasure to some one who is in need of both, if you will?”
“You want me to help some one who is in distress?”
“I do. Will you?”
“How much does the person need?”
“Your presence would be more good than any service you could render.”
“Then I will go and get my husband to accompany us. He is charitable, and likes to do these things with me.”
“I have just come from his studio; he is very busy now, and I think he would prefer not being interrupted. I have been down all the morning giving a few criticisms on that ‘Seaweed Gatherer.’ That is truly a work of art. But surely you will not refuse me that friendly service.”
“Where would you have me go, and whom to see?”
“A young girl who is dying without a kind word.”
“A woman—has she no friends or means?”.
“I am the only friend she has, the pure, noble, unfortunate,” he said, aiming at tenderness.
“Indeed, I never refuse to help anyone, when I can, but really I prefer someone to be the bearer.”
“Yes, but she has requested me to bring you; this desire comes from a dying human being.”
“But, pray what does she know of me; I do not understand?” she asked, disapprovingly. “You might get yourself and me into a scrape.”
“She has been a model for Robert as well as myself; you have seen her at the studio, and she fairly worships your beauty, your gentleness.”
“Strange my husband has never mentioned her reduced condition. I fail to recall her,” and she drew back with a sinking of heart; she wanted to do what was right, always.
“Oh, think again. I am sure you saw her when you and Robert came to see my ‘Madonna’; I was working on her then.”
“Yes, I do recall a beautiful girl who was posing that day. If it is from her, this request, I will go.”
“Thank you, thank you; she will be so nearly happy, for she has never failed to speak of you whenever I have seen her. I shall never forget how she raved when she saw you, and a question she asked.”
“What was that?”
“‘Does her heart fulfill the promise of her eyes?’ she asked me, as though the answer was of great importance.
“I asked what she meant.
“She answered, ‘They promise to make some one happy; to remove all troubles and cares, making a heavenly paradise upon this earth?’ She wanted to see you, so that you might swear that this promise would be kept.”
“She must be an enthusiast,” Cherokee reflected, losing all sense of the strangeness of this question for the time.
They started on in the direction that Frost wanted to go. She felt as though she was walking through yellow rustling leaves, as she had done back in her lesson-days, when she was trying to steal away from the teacher or playmates on the lawn.
More than once, as she hurried along, Cherokee asked herself if she were not imitating the leopard, and developing another spot of foolishness.
When they reached the place there was nothing strange or unusual about it. He opened the door and walked in, as though he was accustomed to going there; then he softly pushed an inner door and peeped in.
“She is sleeping now, poor tired soul; hergreatest blessing is sleep”—offering Cherokee a chair, “we will wait awhile.”
She nervously looked about her. Her beautiful eyes, so pure, so clear, so unshadowed by any knowledge of sin, knew nothing of the misery that had been in the enclosure of these walls.
Presently a frail, crooked woman came in, abruptly. Cold and bitter was her gaze:
“Why did you not come sooner?” she demanded of Frost, sternly.
“It was impossible; am I not in good time?”
“Yes, for you a very good time—she is dead,” and a short, quick gasp came from the withered frame.
“Do you mean it?” he said, looking at the woman who seemed quite overcome, in spite of her hard, cruel face.
“Go and see for yourself,” and she pointed to the room he had entered before.
Cherokee stood silent, and bowed, as became the house of mourning.
“No, if she is dead, we need not go in,” Frost said, quickly.
But the old woman recoiled a step: “I understand you are ashamed of her.”
“No, not that, but it is now too late to grant her request.”
“I would know it, and it would do no harm for me to know that you could keep your word.”
“Then we will go in; you lead the way.”
Cherokee hesitated, and the miserable woman, seeing this, cried in sudden excitement:
“Is your wife afraid of her, now that she is dead?”
Willard Frost, at the mention of wife, started. He had, after all, forgotten to explain that to Cherokee.
“Do not heed her wild fancy,” he whispered, as he motioned her to go in front.
Instinctively the hag folded her wasted hands; most piteously she raised her bewildered eyes, imploringly, to Cherokee.
“Won’t you please go in, for if she can see from the other world to this, she will be pleased.”
“If it pleases you, I will go in for your sake.” As they entered the waiting doorway, Frost walked to the low lounge—he was more deeply moved than he cared to show. There, before him, lay the pulseless clay, the features horribly distorted, the hands and limbs terribly drawn.
“This,” he said to Cherokee, “was caused by paralysis. Nature was once a kind mother to her.”
He shook his head, musingly, and ran his fingers over the sleeper’s hands. At first he did it with asort of tentativeness, as if waiting for something that eluded him. All at once he leaned over and kissed the hands—he seemed moved by a powerful impulse. Through his mind there ran a thousand incidents of his life, one growing upon the other without sequence; phantasmagoria, out of the scene-house of memory.
He saw a vast stretch of lonely forest in the white coverlet of winter, through which a man followed a desolate track. He saw a scanty home, yet mirthful, and warm from the winter wood. Again he saw that home, when even in the summer height it was chilled and blighted. Then, there, he saw a child with red-gold curls, and he wondered how fate would deal with that baby—a laughing, dimpled romper, without a name.
These are a few of the pictures he saw.
Cherokee, ever gentle in her ministries, spoke kind words to the old woman, whom she supposed was the mother.
She had come too late for another good; the dead do not answer even the most loving, the sweetest voices, and this girl had joined the mysteries. So, what was left but to offer prayers and tears for the living?
While Cherokee talked, the woman sat very still, her face ruled to quietness. At length she said:
“She is better dead.”
The comforter looked surprised; what a strange way for a mother to speak.
“Let us go, now,” urged Frost, impulsively. As they passed out, he placed money in the woman’s hand.
“Put her away nicely.”
Motioning him back, the woman caught his arm and whispered:
“By the right of a life-long debt, I now ask for peace.”
“Is that all?” he sneered.
“And I hope you will be a better man,” she added.
They were on their way home. A flush crept slowly up Willard Frost’s face, then, heaving a sigh and quickly repenting of it, he tried to laugh, to drive away the impression of it.
It had been dismal within, but it was lovely without. The gray transparency of the atmosphere lent a glamour to the autumn hues, like flimsy gauze over the face of some Eastern beauty, and the seductive harmony of the colors acted like magic music on the spirit.
“That dead girl was once the most exquisite piece of flesh I ever saw. This is truly a legend of the beautiful. She supported herself by posing forartists, as long as her beauty lasted,” so Frost began his story, “but six months ago she was stricken with paralysis, which so misused her that it took the bread from her mouth, and but for me they would have starved.
“I had great sympathy for the girl, and from her face I had made many hundreds, so I considered it my duty to look after her in this dark hour of affliction.”
“That was just and noble,” said Cherokee, forgetting for a moment the record of the man.
He went on: “She loved me devotedly, though she knew I was married, and during her illness she fancied she would be perfectly happy if she convinced herself that I was not ashamed to present her to my wife.”
“Then it was your wife she wanted to see, and I was to be presented under false colors,” she demanded, rather sternly.
“It would have been all the same to her, she never would have been wiser.”
“Mr. Frost, I believe you would do anything, and let me say, just here, my courtesy to you is not real. I do it because, strange to say, my husband likes you.”
Just then they reached her stopping place.There was considerable commotion on the car, Frost caught her arm:
“Wait a moment, until they put that drunken brute off.”
Suddenly, Cherokee wrenched herself away, and stepped quickly, unassisted, to the street.
In front of her was the man they had assisted from the car. A gentle arm was passed through his:
“Come, Robert, we will go home together.”
She never looked back, although Willard Frost stood and watched them, a mingled smile of pity and triumph upon his sinister face.