X
“DO I look tired and dragged out?” asked the bride of an hour as they drove to the train.
“You look a little tired, a little flushed, a little ashamed, and tremendously interesting. But you may hold my hand.”
“Iamashamed,” and she pushed the upturned hand from her lap and looked out the window.
“But, Light of my Soul, you give us away by those imbecile blushes. You might just as well thrust your head out of the carriage and cry, ‘Behold the bride and groom!’”
She smiled and leaned back, but still looked out. “That’s the horrid feature of a honeymoon. Everybody knows it and everybody looks at you. Is it too late to go back and undo it?”
“What a bloodcurdling thought!”
“And it shouldn’t rain on our wedding-day, little Amos.”
“Of course it rains. These are the tears of countless lovers who lived before the days of Molly Cabot.”
But they left the rain behind them, and farther South, away down in Carolina, they found plenty of sunshine, with green grass and flowers and piny woods.
One of their first diversions on reaching this southern country was to go out with a driver and a pair of horses, but the harvest of pleasure was insufficient. “The conversation of a honeymoon,” observed the bridegroom, “is too exalted for other ears. If we talk as the spirit moves us, the coachman, unless in love himself, may collapse from nausea: so let us be merciful and drive ourselves.”
Thereupon he secured a buggy with an old gray horse, and from this combination their felicity was much increased. The old horsethey called Browser, because of the only thing he would do without being urged; and it required but a single drive to develop his good points, which happened to be the very qualities required. He was dreamy, inattentive, never hasty, and not easily disgusted. His influence was distinctly restful, and his capacity for ignoring a foolish conversation phenomenal. It was decided by his present associates that these virtues were either hereditary, or had been developed to the highest perfection by a long and tender experience.
“It’s my opinion,” remarked the groom, “that being so extensively used as a nuptial horse has resulted in his regarding honeymoon foolishness as the usual form of conversation. He probably thinks they talk that way in the courts and on the Stock Exchange.”
But accustomed as Browser was to cloying repetitions, there were times when his endurance was sorely tried. On one occasion thebride alighted from the buggy, and going a little ahead, gathered wild flowers by the roadside; and as she returned, Amos, who was giving Browser a handful of grass, raised his hat in a ceremonious manner and advanced toward her with extended hand, exclaiming:
“Why, Miss Cabot! How do you do? I had no idea you were here. My name is Judd.”
“I beg your pardon,” she replied, drawing stiffly back, “your name is not Judd, and you don’t know what it is. I can never marry a man who—”
“Wait till you are asked,” he interrupted, then threw both arms about her, and so they stood for a moment, she making no effort to escape.
Browser blushed and turned away.
In secluded corners of the vast and ramifying hotel piazza they spent long evenings and watched the moon, the other people, and the distant ocean, and talked, and talked, andtalked. Of this talk no serious pen could write. The very ink would laugh or turn to sugar and run away in shame. And when these conversations were finished, two well-dressed and seemingly intelligent people would arise, and with brazen faces enter the grand rotunda of the hotel, where other guests would see them enter the elevator, float heavenward and disappear from human eyes. But the vexatious color still came and went in Molly’s face, and seemed ever ready to give the lie to the gentle dignity and composure which rarely deserted her. Strolling through the gardens of the hotel one afternoon, they met a stately matron with her two daughters, whom Molly knew, and as they separated after the usual conversation, Amos jeered at the bride, saying: “Really, old Girl, it is mortifying the way you blush upon this trip. I don’t blame the blushes for selecting such a face, but you only give yourself away. It is merely another manner ofsaying ‘I know I am guilty, and just see how ashamed I am!’”
“Oh, don’t talk about it! It’s hideous, but I can’t help it. Are all brides such fools?”
“I don’t know, I never travelled with one before, but I shall leave you behind if you keep it up. Try and think you have been married for twenty years. Do you suppose the daisies giggle and the sun winks at the other planets every time we look out the window? Or that it is because Molly and Amos are spliced that the carnations blush and the violets hide their faces? But I will say this for you, Spirit of Old-fashioned Roses, that all this blushing and unblushing is tremendously becoming.”
“Thank you; but I must paint or wear a veil, or only come out at night. There is no other way.”
The days went by, all much alike, in the sunny atmosphere of an overwhelming content. In the woods they found a distant spot whichlaid no claim to publicity, and here upon the pine carpet with the drowsy rustling of the leaves above, they passed many hours in a serene indifference to the flight of time. Sometimes they brought a book, not a page of which was ever read, but no deceit was necessary, as the only witnesses were occasional birds and squirrels whose ideas of decorum were primitive and none too strict. One bird, who seemed to wear a dress-suit with an orange shirt-front, considered his household in danger and acquired an insolent habit of perching himself upon a bough within a dozen feet, and doing his best to scare them off. But as they reappeared day after day and respected his rights his anger gradually diminished, until at last he varied his vituperations by a peculiar song, both joyous and triumphant, which amused the interlopers.
“I should like to know what his little feelings really are,” said the bride, as with a pine-needleshe annoyed the sensitive portions of the head reposing in her lap. The upturned eyes lingered for a moment upon the patch of blue between the pine-tops, then with a look of mild surprise turned lazily to her own.
“Do you really mean to confess, Gentle Roses, that you don’t know what he says?”
As this speech was uttered the instrument of torture was cleverly inserted between the parted lips. “No; and perhaps I don’t care to.”
“But listen. There! Don’t you get it? He knows we are on a honeymoon and keeps repeating, in that victorious way:
“Amos has got her!Amos has got her!”
“Amos has got her!Amos has got her!”
“Amos has got her!
Amos has got her!”
The bride laughed; her face bent over to the one beneath, but the bird upon the bough was not disgusted. He stood his ground and sang his song as if Love and Folly were things to be respected.
When the day of departure came they turned their backs with sorrow upon a resting-place whose cosey corners they knew so well and whose groves no grateful lovers could forget. These tender memories were a soothing recompense for descending to an earthly life. As the train moved away she whispered, “Good-by, honeymoon!”
“Don’t say that!” exclaimed Amos. “Let us hold on to it forever. I shall die a lover and I expect the same of you.”
The promise to Grandmother Jouvenal was not forgotten, and when they left the train at a little station in Maryland a carriage was awaiting them. As they entered the avenue and came in sight of the old house, Molly regarded her companion with eager eyes to be sure that he was properly impressed.
“It’s fine!” he exclaimed. “An ideal mansion of the period. And you say it is over two hundred years old?”
“Yes, the main house is, but just wait till you see the inside! It’s crammed full of colonial furniture and family portraits.”
“What on earth is the circular part at the end of that wing? Is it a circus or only a gymnasium for your grandmother?”
Molly laughed. “That’s the library. Grandpa’s father was an astronomer and started to build an observatory, but died when it was half-way up; so grandpa, who was not an astronomer, finished it as a library. But it makes a beautiful room.”
From her grandmother they received a cordial welcome. It was dark when they arrived, and as Mrs. Jouvenal had accepted for them an invitation to a dance that evening at the house of a neighbor, whose daughters were old playmates of Molly’s, there was little time for seeing the house. But Molly did not like to wait and proposed a hasty tour, wishing to show Amos at once the old portraits and furnitureand the treasures of family silver. To this her grandmother objected. “Do wait till to-morrow, child. Your Amos can sleep without it, and besides the rooms are not in order yet. Remember I only came back myself this morning, after a two months’ absence.”
And so that pleasure was delayed. They arrived early at the ball, and as she joined him at the head of the stairs he glanced at the jewels in her hair and asked, after a moment’s hesitation, if she would do him a little favor.
“Of course I will. Only name it, dusky Rajah,” and looking up at him with admiring eyes she smiled as she remembered for the hundredth time how seriously he was annoyed by any compliment upon his appearance.
“Are you very much attached to that crescent in your hair?”
“If I were it should make no difference. You don’t like it, and that’s enough,” and sheraised her hand to remove the ornament. But he interrupted the motion. “Don’t take it off now, for you have nothing to replace it; but that is the smallest part of the request. The real favor is that you shall not ask me why I do it.”
“That is asking a good deal, but I consent. And now tell me, how do I look? There is a wretched light in there.”
“You look like what you are, the joy of to-day and the rainbow of a happy morrow.”
“No, be serious. Is my hair in every direction?”
He regarded her gravely and with care. “Your hair is just right, and for general effect you are far and away the prettiest, the daintiest, the most highbred-looking girl within a thousand miles of this or of any other spot; and if we were alone and unobserved, I should gather you in as—” Voices close at hand caused them to turn and descend the stairswith the solemnity of an ancient couple who find dignity a restful substitute for the frivolities of youth. Once in the ball-room, with the wild Hungarian music at their heels, there was little repose for two such dancers. When the first notes of the waltz that Molly loved above all others, came floating through the hall, Amos cut in before a youth who was hastening toward the bride and swung her out across the floor. As they glided away with the music that was stirring in her heart old memories of what seemed a previous existence, she heard at her ear “Do you remember when first we waltzed? How you did snub me! But life began that night.”
Instead of returning at eleven o’clock, they returned at two in the morning. By Amos’s request it had been arranged that no servant should sit up for them, but when they entered the hall and found it dark Molly expressed surprise that not a single light should havebeen left burning. They easily found the matches, however, and lighted a candle. Amos had just learned from the coachman that a letter ready at six in the morning would go by an early train, so Molly showed him a little desk of her grandmother’s in the dining-room, and then left him to his writing. Passing through the hall toward the stairs she happened to look into a sitting-room, and beyond it, through a corridor, saw a portion of the big library where the moonlight fell upon a marble bust. She paused, then returning to the door of the dining-room, asked,
“How long shall you be at that letter, little prince?”
“Not five minutes.”
“Then come into the library and see it in the moonlight. You will find a girl there who is interested in you.”
“All right. That girl will not wait long.”
Although familiar with the old library,Molly was impressed anew by its stately proportions as she entered from the little corridor. The spacious room was now flooded by the moonlight that streamed through the high windows at the farther end and brought out, in ghostly relief, the white Ionic columns against the encircling wall. Between them, in varying shapes and sizes, hung the family portraits, and in front of every column stood a pedestal with its marble bust. At the present moment the pallid face of Dante caught the moonbeams, and seemed to follow her with solemn eyes. As she swept with a rustle of silk along the huge, round, crimson carpet, she remembered how deeply she had been impressed in former years by the knowledge that it was made in England expressly for this room. The perfect stillness was broken only by herself as she moved out into the wide circle of mysterious faces.
At her right, between two of the columns,in a lofty mirror that filled the space from floor to cornice, marched her own reflection. She stopped, and regarded it. With her white dress and the moonlight upon her head and shoulders, it was a striking figure and recalled the night, a year ago, when she stood at the window of her chamber, and tried in vain to discover why such a vision should have startled Mr. Amos Judd. Mr. Amos Judd! How she hated him that night! Hated him! the dear, lovely, old, perfect Amos! She smiled, and beat time with a foot, humming a fragment of that bewitching waltz. And the crescent that he had asked her not to wear again, flashed back at her from the mirror. She would remove it now, upon the instant, and never more, not even to-night, should the dear boy be troubled by it. As her fingers touched the jewels she saw something in the mirror that sent the blood from her heart, and caused the hand to drop convulsively to her breast. Behind her,across the room, in the shadow of a pedestal, were glistening two other things that moved like a pair of human eyes. With an involuntary cry she wheeled about, and before she could turn again at a sudden movement behind her, an arm was thrown about her waist, strong fingers clutched her throat and in her ear came a muttered warning: “Be quiet, lady, or it’s up with yer!”
But the cry had reached Amos in the distant dining-room, and she heard his footsteps hurrying across the hall. The fingers tightened at her throat; she was pushed with violence into the shadow of the nearest column, and held there. Gasping, strangling, she seized instinctively with both hands the wrist that was squeezing the life from her body, but her feeble fingers against such a strength were as nothing. Pressing close upon her she saw the dim outline of a cap upon the back of a head, a big neck, and a heavy chin. With burstingthrobs the blood beat through her head and eyes, and she would have sunk to the floor but for the hands that held her with an iron force.
In this torture of suffocation came a blur, but through it she saw Amos spring into the room, then stop for a second as if to find his bearings.
“Moll,” he said, in a half-whisper.
There was no answer. Fainting, powerless even to make an effort, she saw the man before her raise a revolver with his other hand, and take deliberate aim at the broad, white shirt-front, an easy target in the surrounding gloom. In an agony of despair she made a frenzied effort, struck up the weapon as the shot was fired, and sent the bullet high above its mark, through the waistcoat of a colonial governor.
The next instant the fingers were torn from her throat, and as she sank half-fainting to her knees, the two men in a savage tussleswayed out into the room, then back with such force against a pedestal that it tottered, and with its heavy bust came crashing to the floor.
The struggling figures also fell. The burglar was beneath, and as he landed, his weapon was knocked from his hand. With a blow and a sudden twist Amos wrenched away, picked up the pistol, turned upon his swiftly rising foe, and sent a bullet through his skull. Without a sound the man sank back again to the floor.
“Are you hurt, Moll?” was the first question as Amos took a step toward the white, crouching figure. Her bare arm shot out into the moonlight and a finger pointed across the library. “There’s another! look out!”
The second man, in his stocking feet like his comrade, had crept from his hiding place, and as she pointed he swung up his pistol and pulled the trigger. But Amos was quicker. Shots in rapid succession echoed through thehouse, two, three, perhaps half a dozen, she never knew; but she saw to her joy, that Amos at the end of it all was still standing, while the burglar, with a smothered malediction, tumbled heavily into an easy chair behind him, slid out of it to his knees, and pitched forward on his face. There was a convulsive twitching of the legs, and all was still again. Beneath him lay a bag into which, a few moments before, had been stuffed the ancestral silver.
As she climbed painfully to her feet, grasping with tremulous fingers a chair at her side, she saw Amos turn about, and with wavering steps, approach the column between the windows where, in the full light of the moon, hung a little calendar, and on it
Nov.4
He uttered no sound, but his head drooped and he staggered back. Reeling against a low divan he fell his length upon it, and lay with upturned face, motionless as the two men upon the floor.
“The end has come, my Moll”“The end has come, my Moll”
“The end has come, my Moll”
“The end has come, my Moll”
Molly hastened to his side and bent over him with an anxious question. In the full rays of the moon her head and neck with the white dress were almost luminous against the dim recesses of the room behind; and his eyes rested with a dazed, half-frightened look on the diamond crescent, then fell to her face, and up again to the jewels in her hair. With an effort he laid a hand upon her shoulder and answered, with a feeble smile, “The end has come, my Moll.”
“No, no. Don’t say that! I’ll send for the doctor and have him here at once!”
But the hand restrained her. “It’s of no use. The ball went here, through the chest.”
“But, darling, your life may depend upon it! You don’t know.”
“Yes—I do know. My own death, with you bending over me in the moonlight—in thisroom—I saw before we ever met. The same vision again—when you stood before me in the conservatory, was what—startled me—that night, a year ago.”
He spoke with difficulty, in a failing tone. There followed broken words; from the face against his own tears fell upon his cheek, and she murmured, “Take me with you, Amos.”
“No—not that;” then slowly, in a voice growing fainter with each word, “but there is no Heaven without you, Spirit—of Old-fashioned—Roses.”
A gentle pressure from the fingers that held her own, and in the moonlight lay a peaceful face where a smile still lingered on the lips.