The Lost Road, etc.

R >> Richard Harding Davis >> The Lost Road, etc.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

With the "surface indications" of a young man about to ask her
to marry him she was painfully familiar; but this time the possibility
was the reverse of painful. What she meant to do about it she did
not know, but she did know that she was strangely happy. Between
living on as the dependent of a somewhat exacting relative and
becoming the full partner of this young stranger, who with men
had proved himself so masterful, and who with her was so gentle,
there seemed but little choice. But she did not as yet wish to make
the choice. She preferred to believe she was not certain. She assured
him that before his leave of absence was over she would tell him
whether she would remain on duty with the querulous aunt, who had
befriended her, or as his wife accompany him to the Philippines.

It was not the answer he wanted; but in her happiness, which was
evident to every one, he could not help but take hope. And in the
questions she put to him of life in the tropics, of the life of
the "officers' ladies," he saw that what was in her mind was a
possible life with him, and he was content.

She became to him a wonderful, glorious person, and each day she
grew in loveliness. It had been five years of soldiering in Cuba,
China, and on the Mexican border since he had talked to a woman
with interest, and now in all she said, in all her thoughts and
words and delights, he found fresher and stronger reasons for
discarding his determination to remain wedded only to the United
States Army. He did not need reasons. He was far too much in love
to see in any word or act of hers anything that was not fine and
beautiful.

In their rides they had one day stumbled upon a long-lost and
long-forgotten road through the woods, which she had claimed as
their own by right of discovery, and, no matter to what point
they set forth each day, they always returned by it. Their way
through the woods stretched for miles. It was concealed in a
forest of stunted oaks and black pines, with no sign of human
habitation, save here and there a clearing now long neglected and
alive only with goldenrod. Trunks of trees, moss-grown and
crumbling beneath the touch of the ponies' hoofs, lay in their
path, and above it the branches of a younger generation had
clasped hands. At their approach squirrels raced for shelter,
woodcock and partridge shot deeper into the network of vines and
saplings, and the click of the steel as the ponies tossed their
bits, and their own whispers, alone disturbed the silence.

"It is an enchanted road," said the girl; "or maybe we are
enchanted."

"Not I," cried the young man loyally. "I was never so sane, never
so sure, never so happy in knowing just what I wanted! If only
you could be as sure!"

One day she came to him in high excitement with a book of verse.
"He has written a poem," she cried, "about our own woods, about
our lost road! Listen" she commanded, and she read to him:

"'They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ringdove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

"'Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate
(They fear not men in the woods
Because they see so few),
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods. . . .
But there is no road through the woods.'"

"I don't like that at all," cried the soldierman. "It's too--too
sad--it doesn't give you any encouragement. The way it ends, I
mean: 'But there is no road through the woods.' Of course there's
a road! For us there always will be. I'm going to make sure. I'm
going to buy those woods, and keep the lost road where we can
always find it."

"I don't think," said the girl, "that he means a real road."

"I know what he means," cried the lover, "and he's wrong! There
is a road, and you and I have found it, and we are going to
follow it for always."

The girl shook her head, but her eyes were smiling happily.

The "season" at Agawamsett closed with the tennis tournament, and
it was generally conceded fit and proper, from every point of
view, that in mixed doubles Lee and Miss Gardner should be
partners. Young Stedman, the Boston artist, was the only one who
made objection. Up in the sail-loft that he had turned into a
studio he was painting a portrait of the lovely Miss Gardner, and
he protested that the three days' tournament would sadly
interrupt his work. And Frances, who was very much interested in
the portrait, was inclined to agree.

But Lee beat down her objections. He was not at all interested in
the portrait. He disapproved of it entirely. For the sittings
robbed him of Frances during the better part of each morning, and
he urged that when he must so soon leave her, between the man who
wanted her portrait and the man who wanted her, it would be kind
to give her time to the latter.

"But I had no idea," protested Frances, "he would take so long.
He told me he'd finish it in three sittings. But he's so critical
of his own work that he goes over it again and again. He says
that I am a most difficult subject, but that I inspire him. And
he says, if I will only give him time, he believes this will be
the best thing he has done."

"That's an awful thought," said the cavalry officer.

"You don't like him," reproved Miss Gardner. "He is always very
polite to you."

"He's polite to everybody," said Lee; "that's why I don't like
him. He's not a real artist. He's a courtier. God gave him a
talent, and he makes a mean use of it. Uses it to flatter people.
He's like these long-haired violinists who play anything you ask
them to in the lobster palaces."

Miss Gardner looked away from him. Her color was high and her
eyes very bright.

"I think," she said steadily, "that Mr. Stedman is a great
artist, and some day all the world will think so, too!"

Lee made no answer. Not because he disagreed with her estimate of
Mr. Stedman's genius-he made no pretense of being an art
critic--but because her vehement admiration had filled him with
sudden panic. He was not jealous. For that he was far too humble.
Indeed, he thought himself so utterly unworthy of Frances Gardner
that the fact that to him she might prefer some one else was in
no way a surprise. He only knew that if she should prefer some
one else not all his troop horses nor all his men could put
Humpty Dumpty back again.

But if, in regard to Mr. Stedman, Miss Gardner had for a moment
been at odds with the man who loved her, she made up for it the
day following on the tennis court. There she was in accord with
him in heart, soul, and body, and her sharp "Well played,
partner!" thrilled him like one of his own bugle calls. For two
days against visiting and local teams they fought their way
through the tournament, and the struggle with her at his side
filled Lee with a great happiness. Not that the championship of
Agawamsett counted greatly to one exiled for three years to live
among the Moros. He wanted to win because she wanted to win.
But his happiness came in doing something in common with her,
in helping her and in having her help him, in being, if only in
play, if only for three days, her "partner."

After they won they walked home together, each swinging a fat,
heavy loving-cup. On each was engraved:

"Mixed doubles, Agawamsett, 1910."

Lee held his up so that the setting sun flashed on the silver.

"I am going to keep that," he said, "as long as I live. It means
you were once my 'partner.' It's a sign that once we two worked
together for something and won." In the words the man showed
such feeling that the girl said soberly:

"Mine means that to me, too. I will never part with mine,
either."

Lee turned to her and smiled, appealing wistfully.

"It seems a pity to separate them," he said. "They'd look well
together over an open fireplace."

The girl frowned unhappily. "I don't know," she protested. "I
don't know."

The next day Lee received from the War Department a telegram
directing him to "proceed without delay" to San Francisco, and
there to embark for the Philippines.

That night he put the question to her directly, but again she
shook her head unhappily; again she said: "I don't know!"

So he sailed without her, and each evening at sunset, as the
great transport heaved her way across the swell of the Pacific,
he stood at the rail and looked back. With the aid of the first
officer he calculated the difference in time between a whaling
village situated at forty-four degrees north and an army
transport dropping rapidly toward the equator, and so, each day,
kept in step with the girl he loved.

"Now," he would tell himself, "she is in her cart in front of the
post-office, and while they sort the morning mail she gossips
with the fisher folks, the summer folks, the grooms, and
chauffeurs. Now she is sitting for her portrait to Stedman" (he
did not dwell long on that part of her day), "and now she is at
tennis, or, as she promised, riding alone at sunset down our lost
road through the woods."

But that part of her day from which Lee hurried was that part
over which the girl herself lingered. As he turned his eyes from
his canvas to meet hers, Stedman, the charming, the deferential,
the adroit, who never allowed his painting to interrupt his talk,
told her of what he was pleased to call his dreams and ambitions,
of the great and beautiful ladies who had sat before his easel,
and of the only one of them who had given him inspiration.
Especially of the only one who had given him inspiration. With
her always to uplift him, he could become one of the world's most
famous artists, and she would go down into history as the
beautiful woman who had helped him, as the wife of Rembrandt
had inspired Rembrandt, as "Mona Lisa" had made Leonardo.

Gilbert wrote: "It is not the lover who comes to woo, but the
lover's way of wooing!" His successful lover was the one who
threw the girl across his saddle and rode away with her. But one
kind of woman does not like to have her lover approach shouting:
"At the gallop! Charge!"

She prefers a man not because he is masterful, but because he is
not. She likes to believe the man needs her more than she needs
him, that she, and only she, can steady him, cheer him, keep him
true to the work he is in the world to perform. It is called the
"mothering" instinct.

Frances felt this mothering instinct toward the sensitive,
imaginative, charming Stedman. She believed he had but two
thoughts, his art and herself. She was content to place his art first.
She could not guess that to one so unworldly, to one so wrapped up
in his art, the fortune of a rich aunt might prove alluring.

When the transport finally picked up the landfalls of Cavite
Harbor, Lee, with the instinct of a soldier, did not exclaim:
"This is where Dewey ran the forts and sank the Spanish fleet!"
On the contrary, he was saying: "When she comes to join me, it
will be here I will first see her steamer. I will be waiting with
a field-glass on the end of that wharf. No, I will be out here in
a shore-boat waving my hat. And of all those along the rail, my
heart will tell me which is she!"

Then a barefooted Filipino boy handed him an unsigned cablegram.
It read: "If I wrote a thousand words I could not make it easier
for either of us. I am to marry Arthur Stedman in December."

Lee was grateful for the fact that he was not permitted to linger
in Manila. Instead, he was at once ordered up-country, where at a
one-troop post he administered the affairs of a somewhat hectic
province, and under the guidance of the local constabulary chased
will-o'-the-wisp brigands. On a shelf in his quarters he placed
the silver loving-cup, and at night, when the village slept, he
would sit facing it, filling one pipe after another, and through
the smoke staring at the evidence to the fact that once Frances
Gardner and he had been partners.

In these post-mortems he saw nothing morbid. With his present
activities they in no way interfered, and in thinking of the days
when they had been together, in thinking of what he had lost, he
found deep content. Another man, having lost the woman he loved,
would have tried to forget her and all she meant to him. But Lee
was far too honest with himself to substitute other thoughts for
those that were glorious, that still thrilled him. The girl could
take herself from him, but she could not take his love for her
from him. And for that he was grateful. He never had considered
himself worthy, and so could not believe he had been ill used. In
his thoughts of her there was no bitterness: for that also he was
grateful. And, as he knew he would not care for any other woman
in the way he cared for her, he preferred to care in that way,
even for one who was lost, than in a lesser way for a possible
she who some day might greatly care for him. So she still
remained in his thoughts, and was so constantly with him that he
led a dual existence, in which by day he directed the affairs of
an alien and hostile people and by night again lived through the
wonderful moments when she had thought she loved him, when he
first had learned to love her. At times she seemed actually at
his side, and he could not tell whether he was pretending that
this were so or whether the force of his love had projected her
image half around the world.

Often, when in single file he led the men through the forest, he
seemed again to be back on Cape Cod picking his way over their
own lost road through the wood, and he heard "the beat of a
horse's feet and the swish of a skirt in the dew." And then a
carbine would rattle, or a horse would stumble and a trooper
swear, and he was again in the sweating jungle, where men, intent
upon his life, crouched in ambush.

She spared him the mockery of wedding-cards; but the announcement
of the wedding came to him in a three-months-old newspaper. Hoping
they would speak of her in their letters, he kept up a somewhat one-sided
correspondence with friends of Mrs. Stedman's in Boston, where she now
lived. But for a year in none of their letters did her name appear. When
a mutual friend did write of her Lee understood the silence.

From the first, the mutual friend wrote, the life of Mrs. Stedman
and her husband was thoroughly miserable. Stedman blamed her
because she came to him penniless. The rich aunt, who had
heartily disapproved of the artist, had spoken of him so frankly
that Frances had quarrelled with her, and from her no longer
would accept money. In his anger at this Stedman showed himself
to Frances as he was. And only two months after their marriage
she was further enlightened.

An irate husband made him the central figure in a scandal that
filled the friends of Frances with disgust, and that for her was
an awakening cruel and humiliating. Men no longer permitted their
womenfolk to sit to Stedman for a portrait, and the need of money
grew imperative. He the more blamed Frances for having quarrelled
with her aunt, told her it was for her money he had married her,
that she had ruined his career, and that she was to blame for his
ostracism--a condition that his own misconduct had brought upon
him. Finally, after twelve months of this, one morning he left a
note saying he no longer would allow her to be a drag upon him,
and sailed for Europe.

They learned that, in Paris, he had returned to that life which
before his marriage, even in that easy-going city, had made him
notorious. "And Frances," continued Lee's correspondent, "has
left Boston, and now lives in New York. She wouldn't let any of
us help her, nor even know where she is. The last we heard of her
she was in charge of the complaint department of a millinery
shop, for which work she was receiving about the same wages I
give my cook."

Lee did not stop to wonder why the same woman, who to one man was
a "drag," was to another, even though separated from her by half
the world, a joy and a blessing. Instead, he promptly wrote his
lawyers to find Mrs. Stedman, and, in such a way as to keep her
ignorant of their good offices, see that she obtained a position
more congenial than her present one, and one that would pay her
as much as, without arousing her suspicions, they found it
possible to give.

Three months had passed, and this letter had not been answered,
when in Manila, where he had been ordered to make a report, he
heard of her again. One evening, when the band played on the
Luneta, he met a newly married couple who had known him in
Agawamsett. They now were on a ninety-day cruise around the
world. Close friends of Frances Gardner, they remembered him as
one of her many devotees and at once spoke of her.

"That blackguard she married," the bridegroom told him, "was
killed three months ago racing with another car from Versailles
back to Paris after a dinner at which, it seems, all present
drank 'burgundy out of the fingerbowls.' Coming down that steep
hill into Saint Cloud, the cars collided, and Stedman and a
woman, whose husband thought she was somewhere else, were killed.
He couldn't even die without making a scandal of it."

"But the worst," added the bride, "is that, in spite of the way
the little beast treated her, I believe Frances still cares for
him, and always will. That's the worst of it, isn't it?" she
demanded.

In words, Lee did not answer, but in his heart he agreed that was
much the worst of it. The fact that Frances was free filled him
with hope; but that she still cared for the man she had married,
and would continue to think only of him, made him ill with
despair.

He cabled his lawyers for her address. He determined that, at
once, on learning it, he would tell her that with him nothing was
changed. He had forgotten nothing, and had learned much. He had
learned that his love for her was a splendid and inspiring
passion, that even without her it had lifted him up, helped and
cheered him, made the whole world kind and beautiful. With her he
could not picture a world so complete with happiness.

Since entering the army he had never taken a leave of absence, and he
was sure, if now he asked for one, it would not be refused. He determined,
if the answer to his cable gave him the address, he would return at once,
and again offer her his love, which he now knew was deeper, finer, and
infinitely more tender than the love he first had felt for her. But the cable
balked him. "Address unknown," it read; "believed to have gone abroad in
capacity of governess. Have employed foreign agents. Will cable their
report."

Whether to wait for and be guided by the report of the
detectives, or to proceed to Europe and search for her himself,
Lee did not know. He finally determined that to seek for her with
no clew to her whereabouts would be but a waste of precious
moments, while, if in their search the agents were successful, he
would be able to go directly to her. Meanwhile, by cable, he
asked for protracted leave of absence and, while waiting for his
answer, returned to his post. There, within a week, he received
his leave of absence, but in a fashion that threatened to remove
him forever from the army.

The constabulary had located the will-o'-the-wisp brigands behind
a stockade built about an extinct volcano, and Lee and his troop
and a mountain battery attempted to dislodge them. In the fight that
followed Lee covered his brows with laurel wreaths and received
two bullet wounds in his body.

For a month death stood at the side of his cot; and then, still weak
and at times delirious with fever, by slow stages he was removed to the
hospital in Manila. In one of his sane moments a cable was shown
him. It read: "Whereabouts still unknown." Lee at once rebelled
against his doctors. He must rise, he declared, and proceed to
Europe. It was upon a matter of life and death. The surgeons
assured him his remaining exactly where he was also was a matter
of as great consequence. Lee's knowledge of his own lack of
strength told him they were right.

Then, from headquarters, he was informed that, as a reward for
his services and in recognition of his approaching convalescence,
he was ordered to return to his own climate and that an easy
billet had been found for him as a recruiting officer in New York
City. Believing the woman he loved to be in Europe, this plan for
his comfort only succeeded in bringing on a relapse. But the day
following there came another cablegram. It put an abrupt end to
his mutiny, and brought him and the War Department into complete
accord.

"She is in New York," it read, "acting as agent for a charitable
institution, which one not known, but hope in a few days to cable
correct address."

In all the world there was no man so happy. The next morning a
transport was sailing, and, probably because they had read the
cablegram, the surgeons agreed with Lee that a sea voyage would
do him no harm. He was carried on board, and when the propellers
first churned the water and he knew he was moving toward her, the
hero of the fight around the crater shed unmanly tears. He would
see her again, hear her voice; the same great city would shelter
them. It was worth a dozen bullets.

He reached New York in a snow-storm, a week before Christmas, and
went straight to the office of his lawyers. They received him with
embarrassment. Six weeks before, on the very day they had
cabled him that Mrs. Stedman was in New York, she had left the
charitable institution where she had been employed, and had again
disappeared.

Lee sent his trunks to the Army and Navy Club, which was
immediately around the corner from the recruiting office in Sixth
Avenue, and began discharging telegrams at every one who had ever
known Frances Gardner. The net result was discouraging. In the
year and a half in which he had been absent every friend of the
girl he sought had temporarily changed his place of residence or
was permanently dead.

Meanwhile his arrival by the transport was announced in the
afternoon papers. At the wharf an admiring trooper had told a
fine tale of his conduct at the battle of the crater, and
reporters called at the club to see him. He did not discourage
them, as he hoped through them the fact of his return might be
made known to Frances. She might send him a line of welcome, and
he would discover her whereabouts. But, though many others sent
him hearty greetings, from her there was no word.

On the second day after his arrival one of the telegrams was
answered in person by a friend of Mrs. Stedman. He knew only that
she had been in New York, that she was very poor and in ill
health, that she shunned all of her friends, and was earning her
living as the matron of some sort of a club for working girls. He
did not know the name of it.

On the third day there still was no news. On the fourth Lee
decided that the next morning he would advertise. He would say
only: "Will Mrs. Arthur Stedman communicate with Messrs. Fuller &
Fuller?" Fuller & Fuller were his lawyers. That afternoon he
remained until six o'clock at the recruiting office, and when he
left it the electric street lights were burning brightly. A heavy
damp snow was falling, and the lights and the falling flakes and
the shouts of drivers and the toots of taxicabs made for the man
from the tropics a welcome homecoming.

Instead of returning at once to his club, he slackened his steps.
The shop windows of Sixth Avenue hung with Christmas garlands,
and colored lamps glowed like open fireplaces. Lee passed slowly
before them, glad that he had been able to get back at such a
season. For the moment he had forgotten the woman he sought, and
was conscious only of his surroundings. He had paused in front of
the window of a pawn-shop. Over the array of cheap jewelry, of
banjos, shot-guns, and razors, his eyes moved idly. And then they
became transfixed and staring. In the very front of the window,
directly under his nose, was a tarnished silver loving-cup. On it
was engraved, "Mixed Doubles. Agawamsett, 1910." In all the world
there were only two such cups, and as though he were dodging the
slash of a bolo, Lee leaped into the shop. Many precious seconds
were wasted in persuading Mrs. Cohen that he did not believe the
cup had been stolen; that he was not from the Central Office;
that he believed the lady who had pawned the cup had come by it
honestly; that he meant no harm to the lady; that he meant no
harm to Mrs. Cohen; that, much as the young lady may have needed
the money Mrs. Cohen had loaned her on the cup, he needed the
address of the young lady still more.

Mrs. Cohen retired behind a screen, and Lee was conscious that
from the other side of it the whole family of Cohens were taking
his measurements. He approved of their efforts to protect the
owner of the cup, but not from him.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17