Miss Arsdale hurried upstairs to where
in a rear room Marie, with a candle burning beside
her, lay in bed done up like a mummy.
“Par Di’, Mam’selle
Elaine,” exclaimed the old housekeeper, her eyes
growing brighter at sight of her. “I had
a dream about a black horse. Is anything wrong
with you?”
“Nothing. And your poor
lame knees, Marie they are better?”
“N’importe,” she
grunted, “but I do not like the feel of the night.
Was M’sieur Ben down there with you?”
“Yes.”
“You should be in bed by now. You must
go at once.”
“I think I shall sleep in the little room off
yours to-night.”
“Bien. Then if you need anything in the
night, you can call me.”
Marie was scarcely able to turn herself
in her bed, but, she still felt the responsibility
of the house.
“Very well, Marie. Good night.”
She kissed the old housekeeper upon
the forehead and was going out when she heard the
latter murmur as though to herself,
“The black horse may mean Jacques.”
“Have you heard nothing from
him in his new position?” she asked, turning
at the door.
“Non,” she answered sharply. “Go
to bed.”
So the girl went on into a darkness
that she, too, found ridden by black horses.
For three generations the Arsdales
had been a family of whom those who claim New York
as their inheritance had known both much and little.
It was impossible to ignore the silent part Horace
Arsdale, the grandfather, had played in the New York
business world or the quiet influence he had exerted
in such musical and literary centres as existed in
his day. Any one who knew anybody would answer
an inquiry as to who they might be with a surprised
lift of the eyebrows.
“The Arsdales? Why they are the
Arsdales.”
“But what ”
“Oh, they are a queer lot. But they have
brains and money.”
Horace Arsdale died in an asylum,
and there were the usual ugly rumors as to what brought
him there. He left a son Benjamin, and Benjamin
built the present Arsdale house at a time when it was
like building in the wilderness. Here he shut
himself up with his bride, a French girl he had met
on his travels. Ask any one who Benjamin Arsdale
was and they would be apt to answer,
“Benjamin Arsdale? Oh,
he is Benjamin Arsdale. They say he has a great
deal of talent and money.”
The first statement seemed to be proven
by some very delicate lyrical verse which appeared
from time to time in the magazines. Though a
member of the best half dozen New York clubs, not a
dozen men out of the hundreds who knew his name had
ever seen him.
His wife died within three years,
some say from a broken heart, some say from homesickness,
leaving a boy child six months old. At this
point Benjamin Arsdale’s name disappeared even
from the magazines, and save to a very few people
he was as though dead and buried beneath his odd house.
An old Frenchman, his wife, and his son Jacques
Moisson seemed content to live there and look
after the household duties. Some ten years later
a little girl of nine appeared, a niece of Arsdale’s,
it was said, and this completed the household, though
old Pere Moisson died in the course of time,
leaving his wife and Jacques as a sort of legacy to
his old master, for a body-guard. The only reports
of the inmates to the outside world came through the
other servants who were employed here from time to
time, and the most they had to say was that Arsdale
was “queer,” and they did n’t think
it was the place to bring up young children, though
the master did adore the very ground they walked on.
When the children were older, Arsdale was seen at
concerts and the theatre with them, but seemed to
resent any attempt on the part of well meaning acquaintances
to renew social ties. People remarked upon how
old for his age he had grown, and some spoke in a whisper
of the spirituality of his features.
So much every one knew and that was
nothing. What Elaine Arsdale, whom he had legally
adopted, knew, was what caused the white light about
the bowed head of the man. When she first learned
she could not tell, but as a very young girl she remembered
days when he came to her with his face very white
and tense, and in his eyes the terror of one in great
pain, and said to her,
“Little girl, will you sit with me a bit?”
So she would take a seat by the window
in the library and he would face her very quietly
with his long fingers twined around the chair arms.
He would not speak and she knew that he did not wish
her to speak. He wished for her only to sit
there where he could see her. She was never
afraid, but at times there came into his eyes a look
that tempted her to cry. Sometimes an hour,
sometimes two hours passed, and then he would rise
to his feet and walk unsteadily towards her and say,
“Now I may kiss your forehead, Elaine.”
He would kiss her, and shortly after
fall into a deep sleep of exhaustion.
Between these periods, which she did
not understand save that in some way he suffered a
great deal, he was to her the gentlest and kindest
guardian that ever a girl had. He personally
superintended her studies and those of Ben, her only
other playmate. The day was divided into regular
hours for work and play. In the morning at nine
he met them in the library and heard their lessons
and gave them their tasks for the next day.
He seemed to know everything and had a way of making
one understand very difficult matters such as fractions
and irregular French verbs. In the afternoon
came the music lessons. He was anxious for them
both to play well upon the violin, for he said that
it had been to him one of the greatest joys of his
life. Each night before bedtime he used to play
for them himself and make her see finer pictures than
even those she found in her fairy tales. But
there were other times when he could make his violin
terrible. He used to punish Ben in this way.
When the latter had been over wilful, he made the
boy stand before him. Then taking a position
in front of him, he played things so wild, so fearful,
that the boy would beg for mercy.
“Do you wish your soul to be
like that?” he would demand sternly.
“No, father, no,” Ben would whimper.
“Then you must control yourself.
If ever you lose a grip upon yourself in temper or
anything else, it will be like that.”
But the music even at such times never
frightened her, though it sounded very savage, like
the wind through the trees in a thunder storm.
The only time that he had ever seemed
the slightest bit angry at her was once during that
wonderful summer when he had taken them abroad.
She was seventeen, and on the boat she met a man with
whom she fell in love. He was very much older
than she, and possessed a glorious mustache which
turned up at the corners. He helped her up and
down the deck one day when the wind was blowing, and
that night she lay awake thinking about him.
When she appeared in the morning with her eyes heavy
and her thoughts far away, the father put his arm about
her and escorted her to the stern of the boat.
Then sitting down beside her, he said,
“Tell me what is on your mind, little girl.”
She told him quite simply, and had
been surprised to see his face grow white and terrible.
“He put those thoughts into your heart?”
He rose to his feet and started towards
the saloon. She knew what he was about to do.
She flung her arms around his knees and, sobbing,
pleaded with him until he stayed. Then after
she had calmed a little, he talked to her and she
listened as though to a stranger.
“Little girl,” he cried
fiercely, “there is much that you do not understand,
and much that I pray God you never will understand.
One of these things is the nature of man. If
it were not for all the other fair things there are
in life I would place you in a convent, for the best
man who ever lived, little girl, is not good enough
to take into his keeping the worst woman. They
break their hearts with their weaknesses they
break their hearts.”
“But you, dear Dada ”
“I did it! God forgive me, I did it, too!”
At this point he gained control of
himself and his wild speech, but the words remained
forever an echo in her heart.
They passed the next summer in the
Adirondacks, and here in the deep woods she spent
the pleasantest period of her life. She was strangely
atune with the big pines and the fragrant shadows which
lay beneath them. Arsdale used to sit beside
her in these solitudes and read aloud by the hour
from the poets in his sweet musical voice. At
such times she wondered more than ever what he had
meant in that outburst on the steamer. Here,
too, he told her more of her mother who had died at
almost the same time that Ben’s mother had died.
But of the father all he ever told her was,
“My brother was an Arsdale like the
rest of us.”
So she lived her peaceful life and
was conscious of missing nothing, save at odd moments
the man with the beautiful mustache. Marie, the
old housekeeper, was as careful of her as Jacques was
of her father. Ben was kind to her, though during
the latter years he had grown a bit out of her life.
This had worried the father this and other
things. One day he had called her into the library,
and though he was greatly agitated she saw that it
was not in the usual way.
“Little girl,” he said,
“if it should so happen that you are ever left
alone here with Ben and he he does not seem
to act quite himself, I want you to promise me that
you will go to this address which I shall leave for
you.”
She had promised, knowing well to what he referred.
Then his face had hardened.
“There is still another thing
you must promise; if at the end of six months he is
no better I wish you to promise that you will not live
in this house with him or anywhere near him that
you will cut off your life utterly from his life.”
“But, Dada ”
“Promise.”
She promised again, little thinking
that the crisis of which he seemed to have a foreboding
was so near at hand. A dark day came within two
months when her soul was rent with the knowledge that
he lay stark and cold in that very library where so
much of his life had been lived. Marie gathered
her into her arms and held her tight. She stared
aghast at a world which frightened her by its emptiness.
At her side stood Ben, his lips twitching, and in
his eyes that haunting fear which always foreran the
father’s struggles. A month later the boy
did not come home one night, but came after three
days, a feeble wreck of a man. She tore open
the letter the father had left, and this took her
to Barstow, with whom he had evidently left instructions.
That was five months ago, and in the meanwhile she
had grown from a very young girl into a woman.
This was the sombre background to
her frightened thoughts as she lay in her bed next
to Marie. In the midst of all the figures which
haunted her, there stood now one alone who offered
her anything but fearful things and he
was a stranger. Out of the infinite multitude
of the indifferent who surrounded her, he had leaped
and within these few hours made her debtor to him
for her life, and now for partial relief from a strain
which was worse than sudden death might have been.
In spite of other torments it was like a cool hand
upon her brow to know that out in that chaos into
which the boy had plunged, this other had followed.
She had perfect confidence in him. After all,
it is as easy in a crisis to pick a friend from among
strangers as from among friends.