“I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie.She’s as pure as the lily in the dell——”
The voice grew louder; came in front of the house; came into the yard; came and sang just under Cora’s window. There it fell silent a moment; then was lifted in a long peal of imbecile laughter, and sang again:
“Then slowly, slowly rase she upAnd slowly she came nigh him,And when she drew the curtain by—`Young man I think you’re dyin’.’”
Cora’s door opened and closed softly, and Laura, barefooted, stole to the bed and put an arm about the shaking form of her sister.
“The drunken beast!” sobbed Cora. “It’s to disgrace me! That’s what he wants. He’d like nothing better than headlines in the papers: `Ray Vilas arrested at the Madison residence’!” She choked with anger and mortification. “The neighbours——”
“They’re nearly all away,” whispered Laura. “You needn’t fear——”
“Hark!”
The voice stopped singing, and began to mumble incoherently; then it rose again in a lamentable outcry:
“Oh, God of the fallen, be Thou merciful to me! Be Thou merciful—merciful—merciful” . . .
“MERCIFUL, MERCIFUL, MERCIFUL!” it shrieked, over and over, with increasing loudness, and to such nerve-racking effect that Cora, gasping, beat the bedclothes frantically with her hands at each iteration.
The transom over the door became luminous; some one had lighted the gas in the upper hall. Both girls jumped from the bed, ran to the door, and opened it. Their mother, wearing a red wrapper, was standing at the head of the stairs, which Mr. Madison, in his night-shirt and slippers, was slowly and heavily descending.
Before he reached the front door, the voice outside ceased its dreadful plaint with the abrupt anti-climax of a phonograph stopped in the middle of a record. There was the sound of a struggle and wrestling, a turmoil in the wet shrubberies, branches cracking.
“Let me go, da——” cried the voice, drowned again at half a word, as by a powerful hand upon a screaming mouth.
The old man opened the front door, stepped out, closing it behind him; and the three women looked at each other wanly during a hushed interval like that in a sleeping-car at night when the train stops. Presently he came in again, and started up the stairs, heavily and slowly, as he had gone down.
“Richard Lindley stopped him,” he said, sighing with the ascent, and not looking up. “He heard him as he came along the street, and dressed as quick as he could, and ran up and got him. Richard’s taken him away.”
He went to his own room, panting, mopping his damp gray hair with his fat wrist, and looking at no one.
Cora began to cry again. It was an hour before any of this family had recovered sufficient poise to realize, with the shuddering gratitude of adventurers spared from the abyss, that, under Providence, Hedrick had not wakened!
Much light shatters much loveliness; but a pretty girl who looks pretty outdoors on a dazzling hot summer morning is prettier then than ever. Cora knew it; of course she knew it; she knew exactly how she looked, as she left the concrete bridge behind her at the upper end of Corliss Street and turned into a shrub-bordered bypath of the river park. In imagination she stood at the turn of the path just ahead, watching her own approach: she saw herself as a picture—the white-domed parasol, with its cheerful pale-green lining, a background for her white hat, her corn-silk hair, and her delicately flushed face. She saw her pale, live arms through their thin sleeves, and the light grasp of her gloved fingers upon the glistening stick of the parasol; she saw the long, simple lines of her close white dress and their graceful interchanging movements with the alternate advance of her white shoes over the fine gravel path; she saw the dazzling splashes of sunshine playing upon her through the changeful branches overhead. Cora never lacked a gallery: she sat there herself.
She refreshed the eyes of a respectable burgess of sixty, a person so colourless that no one, after passing him, could have remembered anything about him except that he wore glasses and some sort of moustache; and to Cora’s vision he was as near transparent as any man could be, yet she did not miss the almost imperceptible signs of his approval, as they met and continued on their opposite ways. She did not glance round, nor did he pause in his slow walk; neither was she clairvoyant; none the less, she knew that he turned his head and looked back at her.
The path led away from the drives and more public walks of the park, to a low hill, thoughtfully untouched by the gardener and left to the shadowy thickets and good-smelling underbrush of its rich native woodland. And here, by a brown bench, waited a tall gentleman in white.
They touched hands and sat without speaking. For several moments they continued the silence, then turned slowly and looked at each other; then looked slowly and gravely away, as if to an audience in front of them. They knew how to do it; but probably a critic in the first row would have concluded that Cora felt it even more than Valentine Corliss enjoyed it.
“I suppose this is very clandestine,” she said, after a deep breath. “I don’t think I care, though.”
“I hope you do,” he smiled, “so that I could think your coming means more.”
“Then I’ll care,” she said, and looked at him again.
“You dear!” he exclaimed deliberately.
She bit her lip and looked down, but not before he had seen the quick dilation of her ardent eyes. “I wanted to be out of doors,” she said. “I’m afraid there’s one thing of yours I don’t like, Mr. Corliss.”
“I’ll throw it away, then. Tell me.”
“Your house. I don’t like living in it, very much. I’m sorry youcan’tthrow it away.”
“I’m thinking of doing that very thing,” he laughed. “But I’m glad I found the rose in that queer old waste-basket first.”
“Not too much like a rose, sometimes,” she said. “I think this morning I’m a little like some of the old doors up on the third floor: I feel rather unhinged, Mr. Corliss.”
“You don’t look it, Miss Madison!”
“I didn’t sleep very well.” She bestowed upon him a glance which transmuted her actual explanation into, “I couldn’t sleep for thinking of you.” It was perfectly definite; but the acute gentleman laughed genially.
“Go on with you!” he said.
Her eyes sparkled, and she joined laughter with him. “But it’s true: you did keep me awake. Besides, I had a serenade.”
“Serenade? I had an idea they didn’t do that any more over here. I remember the young men going about at night with an orchestra sometimes when I was a boy, but I supposed——”
“Oh, it wasn’t much like that,” she interrupted, carelessly. “I don’t think that sort of thing has been done for years and years. It wasn’t an orchestra—just a man singing under my window.”
“With a guitar?”
“No.” She laughed a little. “Just singing.”
“But it rained last night,” said Corliss, puzzled.
“Oh,hewouldn’t mind that!”
“How stupid of me! Of course, he wouldn’t. Was it Richard Lindley?”
“Never!”
“I see. Yes, that was a bad guess: I’m sure Lindley’s just the same steady-going, sober, plodding old horse he was as a boy. His picture doesn’t fit a romantic frame—singing under a lady’s window in a thunderstorm! Your serenader must have been very young.”
“He is,” said Cora. “I suppose he’s about twenty-three; just a boy—and a very annoying one, too!”
Her companion looked at her narrowly. “By any chance, is he the person your little brother seemed so fond of mentioning—Mr. Vilas?”
Cora gave a genuine start. “Good heavens! What makes you think that?” she cried, but she was sufficiently disconcerted to confirm his amused suspicion.
“So it was Mr. Vilas,” he said. “He’s one of the jilted, of course.”
“Oh, `jilted’!” she exclaimed. “All the wild boys that a girl can’t make herself like aren’t `jilted,’ are they?”
“I believe I should say—yes,” he returned. “Yes, in this instance, just about all of them.”
“Is every woman a target for you, Mr. Corliss? I suppose you know that you have a most uncomfortable way of shooting up the landscape.” She stirred uneasily, and moved away from him to the other end of the bench.
“I didn’t miss that time,” he laughed. “Don’t you ever miss?”
He leaned quickly toward her and answered in a low voice: “You can be sure I’m not going to miss anything aboutyou.”
It was as if his bending near her had been to rouge her. But it cannot be said that she disliked his effect upon her; for the deep breath she drew in audibly, through her shut teeth, was a signal of delight; and then followed one of those fraught silences not uncharacteristic of dialogues with Cora.
Presently, she gracefully and uselessly smoothed her hair from the left temple with the backs of her fingers, of course finishing the gesture prettily by tucking in a hairpin tighter above the nape of her neck. Then, with recovered coolness, she asked:
“Did you come all the way from Italy just to sell our old house, Mr. Corliss?”
“Perhaps that was part of why I came,” he said, gayly. “I need a great deal of money, Miss Cora Madison.”
“For your villa and your yacht?”
“No; I’m a magician, dear lady——”
“Yes,” she said, almost angrily. “Of course you know it!”
“You mock me! No; I’m going to make everybody rich who will trust me. I have a secret, and it’s worth a mountain of gold. I’ve put all I have into it, and will put in everything else I can get for myself, but it’s going to take a great deal more than that. And everybody who goes into it will come out on Monte Cristo’s island.”
“Then I’m sorry papa hasn’t anything to put in,” she said.
“But he has: his experience in business and his integrity. I want him to be secretary of my company. Will you help me to get him?” he laughed.
“Do you want me to?” she asked with a quick, serious glance straight in his eyes, one which he met admirably.
“I have an extremely definite impression,” he said lightly, “that you can make anybody you know do just what you want him to.”
“And I have another that you have still another `extremely definite impression’ that takes rank over that,” she said, but not with his lightness, for her tone was faintly rueful. “It is that you can makemedo just what you want me to.”
Mr. Valentine Corliss threw himself back on the bench and laughed aloud. “What a girl!” he cried. Then for a fraction of a second he set his hand over hers, an evanescent touch at which her whole body started and visibly thrilled.
She lifted her gloved hand and looked at it with an odd wonder; her alert emotions, always too ready, flinging their banners to her cheeks again.
“Oh, I don’t think it’s soiled,” he said, a speech which she punished with a look of starry contempt. For an instant she made him afraid that something had gone wrong with his measuring tape; but with a slow movement she set her hand softly against her hot cheek; and he was reassured: it was not his touching her that had offended her, but the allusion to it.
“Thanks,” he said, very softly.
She dropped her hand to her parasol, and began, musingly, to dig little holes in the gravel of the path. “Richard Lindley is looking for investments,” she said.
“I’m glad to hear he’s been so successful,” returned Corliss.
“He might like a share in your gold-mine.”
“Thank heaven it isn’t literally a gold-mine,” he exclaimed. “There have been so many crooked ones exploited I don’t believe you could get anybody nowadays to come in on a real one. But I think you’d make an excellent partner for an adventurer who had discovered hidden treasure; and I’m that particular kind of adventurer. I think I’ll take you in.”
“Do you?”
“How would you like to save a man from being ruined?”
“Ruined? You don’t mean it literally?”
“Literally!” He laughed gayly. “If I don’t `land’ this I’m gone, smashed, finished—quite ended! Don’t bother, I’m going to `land’ it. And it’s rather a serious compliment I’m paying you, thinking you can help me. I’d like to see a woman—just once in the world—who could manage a thing like this.” He became suddenly very grave. “Good God! wouldn’t I be at her feet!”
Her eyes became even more eager. “You think I—Imightbe a woman who could?”
“Who knows, Miss Madison? I believe——” He stopped abruptly, then in a lowered, graver voice asked: “Doesn’t it somehow seem a little queer to you when we call each other, `Miss Madison’ and `Mr. Corliss’?”
“Yes,” she answered slowly; “it does.”
“Doesn’t it seem to you,” he went on, in the same tone, “that we only `Miss’ and `Mister’ each other in fun? That though you never saw me until yesterday, we’ve gone pretty far beyond mere surfaces? That we did in our talk, last night?”
“Yes,” she repeated; “it does.”
He let a pause follow, and then said huskily:
“How far are we going?”
“I don’t know.” She was barely audible; but she turned deliberately, and there took place an eager exchange of looks which continued a long while. At last, and without ending this serious encounter, she whispered:
“How far doyouthink?”
Mr. Corliss did not answer, and a peculiar phenomenon became vaguely evident to the girl facing him: his eyes were still fixed full upon hers, but he was not actually looking at her; nevertheless, and with an extraordinarily acute attention, he was unquestionably looking at something. The direct front of pupil and iris did not waver from her; but for the time he was not aware of her; had not even heard her question. Something in the outer field of his vision had suddenly and completely engrossed him; something in that nebulous and hazy background which we see, as we say, with the white of the eye. Cora instinctively turned and looked behind her, down the path.
There was no one in sight except a little girl and the elderly burgess who had glanced over his shoulder at Cora as she entered the park; and he was, in face, mien, and attire, so thoroughly the unnoticeable, average man-on-the-street that she did not even recall him as the looker-round of a little while ago. He was strolling benevolently, the little girl clinging to one of his hands, the other holding an apple; and a composite photograph of a thousand grandfathers might have resulted in this man’s picture.
As the man and little girl came slowly up the walk toward the couple on the bench there was a faint tinkle at Cora’s feet: her companion’s scarfpin, which had fallen from his tie. He was maladroit about picking it up, trying with thumb and forefinger to seize the pin itself, instead of the more readily grasped design of small pearls at the top, so that he pushed it a little deeper into the gravel; and then occurred a tiny coincidence: the elderly man, passing, let fall the apple from his hand, and it rolled toward the pin just as Corliss managed to secure the latter. For an instant, though the situation was so absolutely commonplace, so casual, Cora had a wandering consciousness of some mysterious tensity; a feeling like the premonition of a crisis very near at hand. This sensation was the more curious because nothing whatever happened. The man got his apple, joined in the child’s laughter, and went on.
“What was it you asked me?” said Corliss, lifting his head again and restoring the pin to his tie. He gazed carelessly at the back of the grandsire, disappearing beyond a bush at a bend in the path.
“Who was that man?” said Cora with some curiosity.
“That old fellow? I haven’t an idea. You see I’ve been away from here so many years I remember almost no one. Why?”
“I don’t know, unless it was because I had an idea you were thinking of him instead of me. You didn’t listen to what I said.”
“That was because I was thinking so intensely of you,” he began instantly. “A startlingly vivid thought of you came to me just then. Didn’t I look like a man in a trance?”
“What was the thought?”
“It was a picture: I saw you standing under a great bulging sail, and the water flying by in moonlight; oh, a moon and a night such as you have never seen! and a big blue headland looming up against the moon, and crowned with lemon groves and vineyards, all sparkling with fireflies—old watch-towers and the roofs of white villas gleaming among olive orchards on the slopes—the sound of mandolins——”
“Ah!” she sighed, the elderly man, his grandchild, and his apple well-forgotten.
“Do you think it was a prophecy?” he asked.
“What doyouthink?” she breathed. “That was really what I asked you before.”
“I think,” he said slowly, “that I’m in danger of forgetting that my `hidden treasure’ is the most important thing in the world.”
“In great danger?” The words were not vocal.
He moved close to her; their eyes met again, with increased eagerness, and held fast; she was trembling, visibly; and her lips—parted with her tumultuous breathing—were not far from his.
“Isn’t any man in great danger,” he said, “if he falls in love with you?”
“Well?”
Toward four o’clock that afternoon, a very thin, fair young man shakily heaved himself into a hammock under the trees in that broad backyard wherein, as Valentine Corliss had yesterday noticed, the last iron monarch of the herd, with unabated arrogance, had entered domestic service as a clothes-prop. The young man, who was of delicate appearance and unhumanly pale, stretched himself at full length on his back, closed his eyes, moaned feebly, cursed the heat in a stricken whisper. Then, as a locust directly overhead violently shattered the silence, and seemed like to continue the outrage forever, the shaken lounger stopped his ears with his fingers and addressed the insect in old Saxon.
A white jacketed mulatto came from the house bearing something on a silver tray.
“Julip, Mist’ Vilas?” he said sympathetically.
Ray Vilas rustily manoeuvred into a sitting position; and, with eyes still closed, made shift to accept the julep in both hands, drained half of it, opened his eyes, and thanked the cup-bearer feebly, in a voice and accent reminiscent of the melodious South.
“And I wonder,” he added, “if you can tell me——”
“I’m Miz William Lindley’s house-man, Joe Vaxdens,” said the mulatto, in the tone of an indulgent nurse. “You in Miz Lindley’s backyard right now, sittin’ in a hammick.”
“I seem to gather almost that much for myself,” returned the patient. “But I should like to know how I got here.”
“Jes’ come out the front door an’ walk’ aroun’ the house an’ set down. Mist’ Richard had to go downtown; tole me not to wake you; but I heerd you splashin’ in the bath an’ you tole me you din’ want no breakfuss——”
“Yes, Joe, I’m aware of what’s occurred since I woke,” said Vilas, and, throwing away the straws, finished the julep at one draught. “What I want to know is how I happened to be here at Mr. Lindley’s.”
“Mist’ Richard brought you las’ night, suh. I don’ know where he got you, but I heered a considerable thrashum aroun’, up an’ down the house, an’ so I come help him git you to bed in one vem spare-rooms.” Joe chuckled ingratiatingly. “Lord name! You cert’n’y wasn’t askin’ fer nobed!”
He took the glass, and the young man reclined again in the hammock, a hot blush vanquishing his pallor. “Was I—was I very bad, Joe?”
“Oh, you was allright,” Joe hastened to reassure him. “You was jes’ on’y a little bit tight.”
“Did it really seem only a little?” the other asked hopefully.
“Yessuh,” said Joe promptly. “Nothin’ at all. You jes’ wanted to rare roun’ little bit. Mist’ Richard took gun away from you——”
“What?”
“Oh, I tole him you wasn’ goin’ use it!” Joe laughed. “But you so wile be din’ know what you do. You cert’n’y was drunkes’ manIsee inlongwhile,” he said admiringly. “You pert near had us bofe wore out ‘fore you give up, an’ Mist’ Richard an’ me, weuse’’to han’lin’ drunkum man, too—use’ to have big times week-in, week-out ‘ith Mist’ Will—at’s Mist’ Richard’s brother, you know, suh, what died o’ whiskey.” He laughed again in high good-humour. “You cert’n’y laid it all over any vem ole times we had ‘ith Mist’ Will!”
Mr. Vilas shifted his position in the hammock uneasily; Joe’s honest intentions to be of cheer to the sufferer were not wholly successful.
“I tole Mist’ Richard,” the kindly servitor continued, “it was a mighty good thing his ma gone up Norf endurin’ the hot spell. Sence Mist’ Will die she can’t hardly bear to see drunkum man aroun’ the house. Mist’ Richard hardly ever tech nothin’ himself no more. You goin’ feel better, suh, out in the f’esh air,” he concluded, comfortingly as he moved away.
“Joe!”
“Yessuh.”
Mr. Vilas pulled himself upright for a moment. “What use in the world do you reckon one julep is to me?”
“Mist’ Richard say to give you one drink ef you ask’ for it, suh,” answered Joe, looking troubled.
“Well, you’ve told me enough now about last night to make any man hang himself, and I’m beginning to remember enough more——”
“Pshaw, Mist’ Vilas,” the coloured man interrupted, deprecatingly, “you din’ broke nothin’! You on’y had couple glass’ wine too much. You din’ make no trouble at all; jes’ went right off to bed. You ought seen some vem ole times me an Mist’ Richard use to have ‘ith Mist’ Will——”
“Joe!”
“Yessuh.”
“I want three more juleps and I want them right away.”
The troubled expression upon the coloured man’s face deepened. “Mist’ Richard say jes’ one, suh,” he said reluctantly. “I’m afraid——”
“Joe.”
“Yessuh.”
“I don’t know,” said Ray Vilas slowly, “whether or not you ever heard that I was born and raised in Kentucky.”
“Yessuh,” returned Joe humbly. “I heerd so.”
“Well, then,” said the young man in a quiet voice, “you go and get me three juleps. I’ll settle it with Mr. Richard.”
“Yessuh.”
But it was with a fifth of these renovators that Lindley found his guest occupied, an hour later, while upon a small table nearby a sixth, untouched, awaited disposal beside an emptied coffee-cup. Also, Mr. Vilas was smoking a cigarette with unshadowed pleasure; his eye was bright, his expression care-free; and he was sitting up in the hammock, swinging cheerfully, and singing the “Marseillaise.” Richard approached through the yard, coming from the street without entering the house; and anxiety was manifest in the glance he threw at the green-topped glass upon the table, and in his greeting.
“Hail, gloom!” returned Mr. Vilas, cordially, and, observing the anxious glance, he swiftly removed the untouched goblet from the table to his own immediate possession. “Two simultaneous juleps will enhance the higher welfare,” he explained airily. “Sir, your Mr. Varden was induced to place a somewhat larger order with us than he protested to be your intention. Trusting you to exonerate him from all so-and-so and that these few words, etcetera!” He depleted the elder glass of its liquor, waved it in the air, cried, “Health, host!” and set it upon the table. “I believe I do not err in assuming my cup-bearer’s name to be Varden, although he himself, in his simple Americo-Africanism, is pleased to pluralize it. Do I fret you, host?”
“Not in the least,” said Richard, dropping upon a rustic bench, and beginning to fan himself with his straw hat. “What’s the use of fretting about a boy who hasn’t sense enough to fret about himself?”
“`Boy?’” Mr. Vilas affected puzzlement. “Do I hear aright? Sir, do you boy me? Bethink you, I am now the shell of five mint-juleps plus, and am pot-valiant. And is this mere capacity itself to be lightlyboyed? Again, do I not wear a man’s garment, a man’s garnitures? Heed your answer; for this serge, these flannels, and these silks are yours, and though I may not fill them to the utmost, I do to the longmost, precisely. I am the stature of a man; had it not been for your razor I should wear the beard of a man; therefore I’ll not be boyed. What have you to say in defence?”
“Hadn’t you better let me get Joe to bring you something to eat?” asked Richard.
“Eat?” Mr. Vilas disposed of the suggestion with mournful hauteur. “There! For the once I forgive you. Let the subject never be mentioned between us again. We will tactfully turn to a topic of interest. My memories of last evening, at first hazy and somewhat disconcerting, now merely amuse me. Following the pleasant Spanish custom, I went a-serenading, but was kidnapped from beneath the precious casement by—by a zealous arrival. Host, `zealous arrival’ is not the julep in action: it is a triumph of paraphrase.”
“I wish you’d let Joe take you back to bed,” said Richard.
“Always bent on thoughts of the flesh,” observed the other sadly. “Beds are for bodies, and I am become a thing of spirit. My soul is grateful a little for your care of its casing. You behold, I am generous: I am able to thank my successor to Carmen!”
Lindley’s back stiffened. “Vilas!”
“Spare me your protests.” The younger man waved his hand languidly. “You wish not to confer upon this subject——”
“It’s a subject we’ll omit,” said Richard.
His companion stopped swinging, allowed the hammock to come to rest; his air of badinage fell from him; for the moment he seemed entirely sober; and he spoke with gentleness. “Mr. Lindley, if you please, I am still a gentleman—at times.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Richard quickly.
“No need of that!” The speaker’s former careless and boisterous manner instantly resumed possession. “You must permit me to speak of a wholly fictitious lady, a creature of my wanton fancy, sir, whom I call Carmen. It will enable me to relieve my burdened soul of some remarks I have long wished to address to your excellent self.”
“Oh, all right,” muttered Richard, much annoyed.
“Let us imagine,” continued Mr. Vilas, beginning to swing again, “that I thought I had won this Carmen——”
Lindley uttered an exclamation, shifted his position in his chair, and fixed a bored attention upon the passing vehicles in the glimpse of the street afforded between the house and the shrubberies along the side fence. The other, without appearing to note his annoyance, went on, cheerfully:
“She was a precocious huntress: early in youth she passed through the accumulator stage, leaving it to the crude or village belle to rejoice in numbers and the excitement of teasing cubs in the bear-pit. It is the nature of this imagined Carmen to play fiercely with one imitation of love after another: a man thinks he wins her, but it is merely that she has chosen him—for a while. And Carmen can have what she chooses; if the man exists who could show her that she cannot, she would follow him through the devil’s dance; but neither you nor I would be that man, my dear sir. We assume that Carmen’s eyes have been mine—her heart is another matter—and that she has grown weary of my somewhat Sicilian manner of looking into them, and, following her nature and the law of periodicity which Carmens must bow to, she seeks a cooler gaze and calls Mr. Richard Lindley to come and take a turn at looking. Now, Mr. Richard Lindley is straight as a die: he will not even show that he hears the call until he is sure that I have been dismissed: therefore, I have no quarrel with him. Also, I cannot even hate him, for in my clearer julep vision I see that he is but an interregnum. Let me not offend my friend: chagrin is to be his as it is mine. I was a strong draught, he but the quieting potion our Carmen took to settle it. We shall be brothers in woe some day. Nothing in the universe lasts except Hell: Life is running water; Love, a looking-glass; Death, an empty theatre! That reminds me: as you are not listening I will sing.”
He finished his drink and lifted his voice hilariously:
“The heavenly stars far above her,The wind of the infinite sea,Who know all her perfidy, love her,So why call it madness in me?Ah, why call it madness——”
He set his glass with a crash upon the table, staring over his companion’s shoulder.
“What, if you please, is the royal exile who thus seeks refuge in our hermitage?”
His host had already observed the approaching visitor with some surprise, and none too graciously. It was Valentine Corliss: he had turned in from the street and was crossing the lawn to join the two young men. Lindley rose, and, greeting him with sufficient cordiality, introduced Mr. Vilas, who bestowed upon the newcomer a very lively interest.
“You are as welcome, Mr. Corliss,” said this previous guest, earnestly, “as if these sylvan shades were mine. I hail you, not only for your own sake, but because your presence encourages a hope that our host may offer refreshment to the entire company.”
Corliss smilingly declined to be a party to this diplomacy, and seated himself beside Richard Lindley on the bench.
“Then I relapse!” exclaimed Mr. Vilas, throwing himself back full-length in the hammock. “I am not replete, but content. I shall meditate. Gentlemen, speak on!”
He waved his hand in a gracious gesture, indicating his intention to remain silent, and lay quiet, his eyes fixed steadfastly upon Corliss.
“I was coming to call on you,” said the latter to Lindley, “but I saw you from the street and thought you mightn’t mind my being as informal as I used to be, so many years ago.”
“Of course,” said Richard.
“I have a sinister purpose in coming,” Mr. Corliss laughingly went on. “I want to bore you a little first, and then make your fortune. No doubt that’s an old story to you, but I happen to be one of the adventurers whose argosies are laden with real cargoes. Nobody knows who has or hasn’t money to invest nowadays, and of course I’ve no means of knowing whetheryouhave or not—you see what a direct chap I am—but if you have, or can lay hold of some, I can show you how to make it bring you an immense deal more.”
“Naturally,” said Richard pleasantly, “I shall be glad if you can do that.”
“Then I’ll come to the point. It is exceedingly simple; that’s certainly one attractive thing about it.” Corliss took some papers and unmounted photographs from his pocket, and began to spread them open on the bench between himself and Richard. “No doubt you know Southern Italy as well as I do.”
“Oh, I don’t `know’ it. I’ve been to Naples; down to Paestum; drove from Salerno to Sorrentoby Amalfi; but that was years ago.”
“Here’s a large scale map that will refresh your memory.” He unfolded it and laid it across their knees; it was frayed with wear along the folds, and had been heavily marked and dotted with red and blue pencillings. “My millions are in this large irregular section,” he continued. “It’s the anklebone and instep of Italy’s boot; this sizable province called Basilicata, east of Salerno, north of Calabria. And I’ll not hang fire on the point, Lindley. What I’ve got there is oil.”
“Olives?” asked Richard, puzzled.
“Hardly!” Corliss laughed. “Though of course one doesn’t connect petroleum with the thought of Italy, and of all Italy, Southern Italy. But in spite of the years I’ve lived there, I’ve discovered myself to be so essentially American and commercial that I want to drench the surface of that antique soil with the brown, bad-smelling crude oil that lies so deep beneath it. Basilicata is the coming great oil-field of the world—and that’s my secret. I dare to tell it here, as I shouldn’t dare in Naples.”
“Shouldn’t `dare’?” Richard repeated, with growing interest, and no doubt having some vague expectation of a tale of the Camorra. To him Naples had always seemed of all cities the most elusive and incomprehensible, a laughing, thieving, begging, mandolin-playing, music-and-murder haunted metropolis, about which anything was plausible; and this impression was not unique, as no inconsiderable proportion of Mr. Lindley’s fellow-countrymen share it, a fact thoroughly comprehended by the returned native.
“It isn’t a case of not daring on account of any bodily danger,” explained Corliss.
“No,” Richard smiled reminiscently. “I don’t believe that would have much weight with you if it were. You certainly showed no symptoms of that sort in your extreme youth. I remember you had the name of being about the most daring and foolhardy boy in town.”
“I grew up to be cautious enough in business, though,” said the other, shaking his head gravely. “I haven’t been able to afford not being careful.” He adjusted the map—a prefatory gesture. “Now, I’ll make this whole affair perfectly clear to you. It’s a simple matter, as are most big things. I’ll begin by telling you of Moliterno—he’s been my most intimate friend in that part of the continent for a great many years; since I went there as a boy, in fact.”
He sketched a portrait of his friend, Prince Moliterno, bachelor chief of a historic house, the soul of honour, “land-poor”; owning leagues and leagues of land, hills and mountains, broken towers and ruins, in central Basilicata, a province described as wild country and rough, off the rails and not easy to reach. Moliterno and the narrator had gone there to shoot; Corliss had seen “surface oil” upon the streams and pools; he recalled the discovery of oil near his own boyhood home in America; had talked of it to Moliterno, and both men had become more and more interested, then excited. They decided to sink a well.
Corliss described picturesquely the difficulties of this enterprise, the hardships and disappointments; how they dragged the big tools over the mountains by mule power; how they had kept it all secret; how he and Moliterno had done everything with the help of peasant labourers and one experienced man, who had “seen service in the Persian oil-fields.”
He gave the business reality, colouring it with details relevant and irrelevant, anecdotes and wayside incidents: he was fluent, elaborate, explicit throughout. They sank five wells, he said, “at the angles of this irregular pentagon you see here on the map, outlined in blue. These red circles are the wells.” Four of the wells “came in tremendous,” but they had managed to get them sealed after wasting—he was “sorry to think how many thousand barrels of oil.” The fifth well was so enormous that they had not been able to seal it at the time of the speaker’s departure for America.
“But I had a cablegram this morning,” he added, “letting me know they’ve managed to do it at last. Here is, the cablegram.” He handed Richard a form signed “Antonio Moliterno.”
“Now, to go back to what I said about not `daring’ to speak of this in Naples,” he continued, smiling. “The fear is financial, not physical.”
The knowledge of the lucky strike, he explained, must be kept from the “Neapolitan money-sharks.” A third of the land so rich in oil already belonged to the Moliterno estates, but it was necessary to obtain possession of the other two thirds “before the secret leaks into Naples.” So far, it was safe, the peasants of Basilicata being “as medieval a lot as one could wish.” He related that these peasants thought that the devils hiding inside the mountains had been stabbed by the drills, and that the oil was devils’ blood.
“You can see some of the country people hanging about, staring at a well, in this kodak, though it’s not a very good one.” He put into Richard’s hand a small, blurred photograph showing a spouting well with an indistinct crowd standing in an irregular semicircle before it.
“Is this the Basilicatan peasant costume?” asked Richard, indicating a figure in the foreground, the only one revealed at all definitely. “It looks more oriental. Isn’t the man wearing a fez?”
“Let me see,” responded Mr. Corliss very quickly. “Perhaps I gave you the wrong picture. Oh, no,” he laughed easily, holding the kodak closer to his eyes; “that’s all right: it is a fez. That’s old Salviati, our engineer, the man I spoke of who’d worked in Persia, you know; he’s always worn a fez since then. Got in the habit of it out there and says he’ll never give it up. Moliterno’s always chaffing him about it. He’s a faithful old chap, Salviati.”
“I see.” Lindley looked thoughtfully at the picture, which the other carelessly returned to his hand. “There seems to be a lot of oil there.”
“It’s one of the smaller wells at that. And you can see from the kodak that it’s just `blowing’—not an eruption from being `shot,’ or the people wouldn’t stand so near. Yes; there’s an ocean of oil under that whole province; but we want a lot of money to get at it. It’s mountain country; our wells will all have to go over fifteen-hundred feet, and that’s expensive. We want to pipe the oil to Salerno, where the Standard’s ships will take it from us, and it will need a great deal for that. But most of all we want money to get hold of the land; we must control the whole field, and it’s big!”
“How did you happen to come here to finance it?”
“I was getting to that. Moliterno himself is as honourable a man as breathes God’s air. But my experience has been that Neapolitan capitalists are about the cleverest and slipperiest financiers in the world. We could have financed it twenty times over in Naples in a day, but neither Moliterno nor I was willing to trust them. The thing is enormous, you see—a really colossal fortune—and Italian law is full of ins and outs, and the first man we talked to confidentially would have given us his word to play straight, and, the instant we left him, would have flown post-haste for Basilicata and grabbed for himself the two thirds of the field not yet in our hands. Moliterno and I talked it over many, many times; we thought of going to Rome for the money, to Paris, to London, to New York; but I happened to remember the old house here that my aunt had left me—I wanted to sell it, to add whatever it brought to the money I’ve already put in—and then it struck me I might raise the rest here as well as anywhere else.”
The other nodded. “I understand.”
“I suppose you’ll think me rather sentimental,” Corliss went on, with a laugh which unexpectedly betrayed a little shyness. “I’ve never forgotten that I was born here—was a boy here. In all my wanderings I’ve always really thought of this as home.”
His voice trembled slightly and his face flushed; he smiled deprecatingly as though in apology for these symptoms of emotion; and at that both listeners felt (perhaps with surprise) the man’s strong attraction. There was something very engaging about him: in the frankness of his look and in the slight tremor in his voice; there was something appealing and yet manly in the confession, by this thoroughgoing cosmopolite, of his real feeling for the home-town.
“Of course I know how very few people, even among the `old citizens,’ would have any recollection whatever of me,” he went on; “but that doesn’t make any difference in my sentiment for the place and its people. That street out yonder was named for my grandfather: there’s a statue of my great uncle in the State House yard; all my own blood: belonged here, and though I have been a wanderer and may not be remembered—naturally amnotremembered—yet the name is honoured here, and I—I——” He faltered again, then concluded with quiet earnestness: “I thought that if my good luck was destined to bring fortunes to others, it might as well be to my own kind—that at least I’d offer them the chance before I offered it to any one else.” He turned and looked Richard in the face. “That’s why I’m here, Mr. Lindley.”
The other impulsively put out his hand. “I understand,” he said heartily.
“Thank you.” Corliss changed his tone for one less serious. “You’ve listened very patiently and I hope you’ll be rewarded for it. Certainly you will if you decide to come in with us. May I leave the maps and descriptions with you?”
“Yes, indeed. I’ll look them over carefully and have another talk with you about it.”
“Thank heaven,that’sover!” exclaimed the lounger in the hammock, who had not once removed his fascinated stare from the expressive face of Valentine Corliss. “If you have now concluded with dull care, allow me to put a vital question: Mr. Corliss, do you sing?”
The gentleman addressed favoured him with a quizzical glance from between half-closed lids, and probably checking an impulse to remark that he happened to know that his questioner sometimes sang, replied merely, “No.”
“It is a pity.”
“Why?”
“Nothing,” returned the other, inconsequently. “It just struck me that you ought to sing the Toreador song.”
Richard Lindley, placing the notes and maps in his pocket, dropped them, and, stooping, began to gather the scattered papers with a very red face. Corliss, however, laughed good-naturedly.
“That’s most flattering,” he said; “though there are other things in `Carmen’ I prefer—probably because one doesn’t hear them so eternally.”
Vilas pulled himself up to a sitting position and began to swing again. “Observe our host, Mr. Corliss,” he commanded gayly. “He is a kind old Dobbin, much beloved, but cares damn little to hear you or me speak of music. He’d even rather discuss your oil business than listen to us talk of women, whereas nothing except women ever really interestsyou, my dear sir. He’s not our kind of man,” he concluded, mournfully; “not at all our kind of man!”
“I hope,” Corliss suggested, “he’s going to be my kind of man in the development of these oil-fields.”
“How ridic”—Mr. Vilas triumphed over the word after a slight struggle—“ulous! I shall review that: ridiculous of you to pretend to be interested in oil-fields. You are not that sort of person whatever. Nothing could be clearer than that you would never waste the time demanded by fields of oil. Groundlings call this `the mechanical age’—a vulgar error. My dear sir, you and I know that it is the age of Woman! Even poets have begun to see that she is alive. Formerly we did not speak of her at all, but of late years she has become such a scandal that she is getting talked about. Even our dramas, which used to be all blood, have become all flesh. I wish I were dead—but will continue my harangue because the thought is pellucid. Women selecting men to mate with are of only two kinds, just as there are but two kinds of children in a toy-shop. One child sets its fancy on one partic”—the orator paused, then continued—“on one certain toy and will make a distressing scene if she doesn’t get it: she will have that one; she will go straight to it, clasp it and keep it; she won’t have any other. The other kind of woman is to be understood if you will make the experiment of taking the other kind of child to a toy-shop and telling her you will buy her any toy in the place, but that you will buy her only one. If you do this in the morning, she will still be in the shop when it is closing for the night, because, though she runs to each toy in turn with excitement and delight, she sees another over her shoulder, and the one she has not touched is always her choice—until she has touched it! Some get broken in the handling. For my part, my wires are working rather rustily, but I must obey the Stage-Manager. For my requiem I wish somebody would ask them to play Gounod’s masterpiece.”
“What’s that?” asked Corliss, amused.
“`The Funeral March of a Marionette!’”
“I suppose you mean that for a cheerful way of announcing that you are a fatalist.”
“Fatalism? That is only a word,” declared Mr. Vilas gravely. “If I am not a puppet then I am a god. Somehow, I do not seem to be a god. If a god is a god, one thinks he would know it himself. I now yield the floor. Thanking you cordially, I believe there is a lady walking yonder who commands salutation.”
He rose to his feet, bowing profoundly. Cora Madison was passing, strolling rather briskly down the street, not in the direction of her home. She waved her parasol with careless gayety to the trio under the trees, and, going on, was lost to their sight.
“Hello!” exclaimed Corliss, looking at his watch with a start of surprise. “I have two letters to write for the evening mail. I must be off.”
At this, Ray Vilas’s eyes—still fixed upon him, as they had been throughout the visit—opened to their fullest capacity, in a gaze of only partially alcoholic wildness.
Entirely aware of this singular glare, but not in the least disconcerted by it, the recipient proffered his easy farewells. “I had no idea it was so late. Good afternoon. Mr. Vilas, I have been delighted with your diagnosis. Lindley, I’m at your disposal when you’ve looked over my data. My very warm thanks for your patience, and—addio!”
Lindley looked after him as he strode quickly away across the green lawn, turning, at the street, in the direction Cora had taken; and the troubled Richard felt his heart sink with vague but miserable apprehension. There was a gasp of desperation beside him, and the sound of Ray Vilas’s lips parting and closing with little noises of pain.
“So he knows her,” said the boy, his thin body shaking. “Look at him, damn him! See his deep chest, that conqueror’s walk, the easy, confident, male pride of him: a true-born, natural rake—the Toreador all over!”
His agitation passed suddenly; he broke into a loud laugh, and flung a reckless hand to his companion’s shoulder.
“You good old fool,” he cried. “You’llnever play Don Jose!”