The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Part 166

There was a timid knock at the door, and a forlorn little figure, clad in a rumpled calico, with an old shawl over her head, half concealing an eager and pretty face, stood in the doorway, and hesitatingly came in.

"Meine Mutter sent me to see how Father Damon is," she explained; "she could not come, because she washes."

She had a bunch of flowers in her hand, and encouraged by the greeting of the invalid, she came to the bedside and placed them in his outstretched hand--a faded blossom of scarlet geranium, a bachelor's b.u.t.ton, and a sprig of parsley, probably begged of a street dealer as she came along.

"Some blooms," she said.

"Bless you, my dear," said Father Damon; "they are very pretty."

"Dey smells nice," the child exclaimed, her eyes dancing with pleasure at the reception of her gift. She stood staring at him, and then, her eye catching the violets, she added, "Dose is pooty, too."

"If you can stay half an hour or so, I should like to step round to the chapel," Father Monies said to the doctor in the front room, taking up his hat.

The doctor could stay. The little girl had moved a chair up to the bedside, and sat quite silent, her grimy little hand grasped in the father's. Ruth, saying that she hoped the father wouldn't mind, began to put in order the front room, which the incidents of the night had somewhat disturbed. Father Damon, holding fast by that little hand to the world of poverty to which he had devoted his life, could not refrain from watching her, as she moved about with the quick, noiseless way that a woman has when she is putting things to rights. This was indeed a novel invasion of his life. He was still too weak to reason about it much. How good she was, how womanly! And what a sense of peace and repose she brought into his apartment! The presence of Brother Monies was peaceful also, but hers was somehow different. His eyes had not cared to follow the brother about the room. He knew that she was unselfish, but he had not noticed before that her ways were so graceful.

As she turned her face towards him from time to time he thought its expression beautiful. Ruth Leigh would have smiled grimly if any one had called her beautiful, but then she did not know how she looked sometimes when her feelings were touched. It is said that the lamp of love can illumine into beauty any features of clay through which it s.h.i.+nes. As he gazed, letting himself drift as in a dream, suddenly a thought shot through his mind that made him close his eyes, and such a severe priestly look came upon his face that the little girl, who had never taken her eyes off him, exclaimed:

"It is worse?"

"No, my dear," he replied, with a rea.s.suring smile; "at least, I hope not."

But when the doctor, finis.h.i.+ng her work, drew a chair into the doorway, and sat by the foot of his bed, the stern look still remained on his pale face. And the doctor, she also was the doctor again, as matter of fact as in any professional visit.

"You are very kind," he said.

There was a shade of impatience on her face as she replied, "But you must be a little kind to yourself."

"It doesn't matter."

"But it does matter. You defeat the very work you want to do. I'm going to report you to your order." And then she added, more lightly, "Don't you know it is wrong to commit suicide?"

"You don't understand," he replied. "There is more than one kind of suicide; you don't believe in the suicide of the soul. Ah, me!" And a shade of pain pa.s.sed over his face.

She was quick to see this. "I beg your pardon, Father Damon. It is none of my business, but we are all so anxious to have you speedily well again."

Just then Father Monies returned, and the doctor rose to go. She took the little girl by the hand and said, "Come, I was just going round to see your father. Good-by. I shall look in again tomorrow."

"Thank you--thank you a thousand times. But you have so much to do that you must not bother about me."

Whether he said this to quiet his own conscience, secretly hoping that he might see her again on the morrow, perhaps he himself could not have decided.

Late the next afternoon, after an unusually weary round of visits, made in the extreme heat and in a sort of hopeless faithfulness, Dr. Leigh reached the tenement in which Father Damon lodged: In all the miserable scenes of the day it had been in her mind, giving to her work a pleasure that she did not openly acknowledge even to herself, that she should see him.

The curtains were down, and there was no response to her knock, except from a door in the pa.s.sage opposite. A woman opened the door wide enough to show her head and to make it evident that she was not sufficiently dressed to come out, and said that Father Damon had gone. He was very much better, and his friend had taken him up-town. Dr. Leigh thanked her, and said she was very glad.

She was so glad that, as she walked away, scarcely heeding her steps or conscious of the chaffing, chattering crowd, all interest in her work and in that quarter of the city seemed dead.

XIII

It is well that there is pleasure somewhere in the world. It is possible for those who have a fresh-air fund of their own to steam away in a yacht, out of the midsummer ennui and the weary gayety of the land.

It is a costly pleasure, and probably all the more enjoyed on that account, for if everybody had a yacht there would be no more feeling of distinction in sailing one than in going to any of the second-rate resorts on the coast. There is, to be sure, some ennui in yachting on a rainy coast, and it might be dull but for the sensation created by arrivals at watering-places and the telegraphic reports of these sensations.

If there was any dullness on the Delancy yacht, means were taken to dispel it. While still in the Sound a society was formed for the suppression of total abstinence, and so successful was this that Point Judith was pa.s.sed, in a rain and a high and chopping sea, with a kind of hilarious enjoyment of the commotion, which is one of the things desired at sea. When the party came round to Newport it declared that it had had a lovely voyage, and inquiry brought out the great general principle, applicable to most coast navigation for pleasure, that the enjoyable way to pa.s.s Point Judith is not to know you are pa.s.sing Point Judith.

Except when you land, and even after you have got your sea-legs on, there is a certain monotony in yachting, unless the weather is very bad, and unless there are women aboard. A party of lively women make even the sea fresh and entertaining. Otherwise, the game of poker is much what it is on land, and the constant consulting of charts and reckoning of speed evince the general desire to get somewhere--that is, to arrive at a harbor. In the recollections of this voyage, even in Jack's recollections of it after he had paid the bills, it seemed that it had been simply glorious, free from care, generally a physical setting-up performance, and a lark of enormous magnitude. And everybody envied the fortunate sailors.

Mavick actually did enjoy it, for he had that brooding sort of nature, that self-satisfied att.i.tude, that is able to appropriate to its own uses whatever comes. And being an unemotional and very tolerable sailor, he was able to be as cynical at sea as on land, and as much of an oracle, in his wholly un.o.btrusive way. The perfect personal poise of Mavick, which gave him an air of patronizing the ocean, and his lightly held skeptical view of life, made his company as full of flavor on s.h.i.+p as it was on sh.o.r.e. He didn't know anything more about the weather than the Weather Bureau knows, yet the helmsman of the yacht used to consult him about the appearances of the sky and a change of wind with a confidence in his opinion that he gave to no one else on board. And Mavick never forfeited this respect by being too positive. It was so with everything; he evidently knew a great deal more than he cared to tell. It is pleasing to notice how much credit such men as Mavick obtain in the world by circ.u.mspect reticence and a knowing manner. Jack, blundering along in his free-hearted, emotional way, and never concealing his opinion, was really right twice where Mavick was right once, but he never had the least credit for wisdom.

It was late in August that the Delancy yacht steamed into the splendid Bar Harbor, making its way slowly through one of the rare fogs which are sometimes seen by people who do not own real estate there. Even before they could see an island those on board felt the combination of mountain and sea air that makes this favored place at once a tonic and a sedative to the fas.h.i.+onable world.

The party were expected at Bar Harbor. It had been announced that the yacht was on its way, and some of the projected gayeties were awaiting its coming, for the society reenforcement of the half-dozen men on board was not to be despised. The news went speedily round that Captain Delancy's flag was flying at the anchorage off the landing.

Among the first to welcome them as they landed and strolled up to the hotel was Major Fairfax.

"Oh yes," he said; "we are all here--that is, all who know where they ought to be at the right moment."

To the new-comers the scene was animated. The exotic shops sparkled with cheap specialties; landaus, pony-phaetons, and elaborate buckboards dashed through the streets; aquatic and law-tennis costumes abounded.

If there was not much rowing and lawn-tennis, there was a great deal of becoming morning dressing for these sports, and in all the rather aimless idleness there was an air of determined enjoyment. Even here it was evident that there was a surplus of women. These lovers of nature, in the summer season, who had retired to this wild place to be free from the importunities of society, betrayed, Mavick thought, the common instinct of curiosity over the new arrival, and he was glad to take it as an evidence that they loved not nature less but man more. Jack tripped up this ungallant speech by remarking that if Mavick was in this mood he did not know why he came ash.o.r.e. And Van Dam said that sooner or later all men went ash.o.r.e. This thin sort of talk was perhaps pardonable after the weariness of a sea voyage, but the Major promptly said it wouldn't do.

And the Major seemed to be in charge of the place.

"No epigrams are permitted. We are here to enjoy ourselves. I'm ordered to bring the whole crew of you to tea at the Tavish cottage."

"Anybody else there?" asked Jack, carelessly.

"Well, it's the most curious coincidence, but Mrs. Henderson arrived last night; Henderson has gone to Missouri."

"Yes, he wrote me to look out for his wife on this coast," said Mavick.

"You kept mighty still about it," said Jack.

"So did you," retorted Mavick.

"It is very curious," the Major explained, "how fas.h.i.+onable intelligence runs along this coast, apparently independent of the telegraph; everybody knows where everybody else is."

The Tavish cottage was a summer palace of the present fas.h.i.+on, but there was one good thing about it: it had no tower, nor any make-believe balconies hung on the outside like bird-cages. The rooms were s.p.a.cious, and had big fireplaces, and ample piazzas all round, so that the sun could be courted or the wind be avoided at all hours of the day. It was, in short, not a house for retirement and privacy, but for entertainment.

It was furnished luxuriously but gayly, and with its rugs and portieres and divans it reminded Mavick of an Oriental marquee. Miss Tavish called it her tepee, an evolution of the aboriginal dwelling. She liked to entertain, and she never appeared to better advantage than when her house was full, and something was going on continually-lively breakfasts and dinners, dances, theatricals, or the usual flowing in and out of callers and guests, chattering groups, and flirtatious couples. It was her idea of repose from the winter's gayety, and in it she sustained the role of the non-fatigueable society girl. It is a performance that many working-girls regard with amazement.

There was quite a flutter in the cottage, as there always is when those who know each other well meet under new circ.u.mstances after a short separation.

"We are very glad to see you," Miss Tavish said, cordially; "we have been awfully dull."

"That is complimentary to me," said the Major.

"You can judge the depths we have been in when even the Major couldn't pull us out," she retorted. "Without him we should have simply died."

"And it would have been the liveliest obsequies I ever attended."

Carmen was not effusive in her greeting; she left that role to Miss Tavish, taking for herself that of confidential friend. She was almost retiring in her manner, but she made Jack feel that she had a strong personal interest in his welfare, and she asked a hundred questions about the voyage and about town and about Edith.