Fool There Was — An Incident; Of Certain Goings
AN INCIDENT.
Destiny has a sense of humor; a sense of humor sardonic, it is true, cruel, sometimes grewsome; and yet it is a sense of humor.
Otherwise-- There had been in France a man of the nobility--a man in whose veins flowed the blood of three kings--a man handsome of face, graceful of figure, debonair--a man who had sinned much, and who had paid for that sinning only in the sufferings of others; and they had been many.
That man had many estates--many servants--many horses--much money.
He had been to Brittany twice; and only twice.
Yet he went a third time, and after five years.
He went alone.
He rode his horse through the narrow, brush-grown path by which had gone the stranger who had seen the naked girl, at the edge of the woodland pool, five years before.
And he came, at length, to the edge of the wood, and to the clearing where lay the little hut, smoky, dirty, littered.
He dismounted from his horse, there, why, he did not know.
He went forward, to the hut.
An old woman, bent, white haired, sat on a rude chair, in the sun, beside the door.
She looked up as he approached.
She, in no way, heeded the elaborate bow that he made--a graceful bow, low and sweeping, and yet a salutation sarcastic.
"_Bon jour_, madame," he began.
"Madame looks well; but Death is never far from the aged....
It should be a consolation," looking about him, casually, "for one who lives as madame."
The shrivelled old woman made no answer.
The man went on, evenly, the while tapping; with the end of his slender crop a booted leg: "_Eh bien_, I have come, as you see.
The paternal passion will not down in the breast of a man domestically inclined."
He laughed.
"I have been going about, seeing my families," he smiled.
"It has been interesting--drolly interesting.
_Ma foi_!"
Yet again he laughed, musically.
"There have been pleadings, and revilings--tears, and curses-- bended knees, and unbended arms."
He indicated with a graceful gesture a deep cut upon the back of his left hand.
"It was a woman--a very pretty woman," he explained.
"At least, she had been pretty; and she was again pretty; when she did that.
Her eyes--it was like lighting a fire in a cave.
Did you ever light a fire in a cave, madame?"
he queried, gently, graciously; and then: "But, of course not!
Women kindle their fires in stoves--or fireplaces.
It is for men to light the fires of caves."
Yet once more he laughed, softly.
The old woman, with the white, wispy hair, still was silent, motionless;
though her eyes spoke.
And that which they spoke, his eyes heard; and once more he laughed.
"I had a daughter here," he continued.
"Did I not?
Or was it a son?
_Ma foi_!
It were difficult--ah, yes!
I remember now!
A daughter.
A
little, red, hairless, dirty thing she was.
I have a great curiosity-- the blood of three kings, you know; surely that would overcome the blood of the good God knows how many peasant swine.
She is not red, and hairless, and dirty now, in faith!
She is clean-limbed, and straight, and white.
A thousand louis to a sou, that she is!"
...
His brow was creased in the travail or retrospection.
"I gave her a name, did I not?"
he asked.
"It seems to me--ah, yes.
Rien, it was.
A very pretty name--yes, an excellent name--meaning much and little--everything, and yet nothing."
He laughed at his own conceit, softly.
"Tell me, where is she now?
It might be that she is dead, eh?"
He eyed the old woman, closely; then he shook his head.
"No," he went on, "she is not dead.
She--" He had seen nothing, that is certain.
Yet, suddenly he ceased in his speech; the smile left his lips; and slowly, very slowly, he turned.
She was standing there, behind him, her eyes upon him....
She was straight, and slender, and perfectly formed.
A single garment covered her, running across one shoulder, reaching to her knees.
It left one breast exposed, and the white, slender legs and perfect feet.
She stood in a posture of infinite grace--of infinite poise.
She looked at him.
Then it was that the shrivelled old woman spoke.
She said to the girl: "_Votre pere_."
And that was all.
The child looked at the man; the man looked at the child; and so for a long, long time they stood eye upon eye....
At length she began to smile a little, with her lips.
But he did not smile....
After a long, long time, she took a slow, sinuous step toward him--then another....
He stepped back, still looking at her, his eyes still on hers....
He was back to the great cliff--the sheer cliff at the base of which the huge seas ever beat in sullen, unceasing impotence....
Yet, another step she took, toward him....
His breath came chokingly, gaspingly.
Yet another step he took, away from her....
Yet another....
And then....
It was an accident, perhaps.
Yes, of course; it must have been an accident.
He had not noticed....
For, as again she advanced, her eyes on his, his eyes on hers, again he retreated.
And suddenly, in utter silence save for the rending of crumbling earth and uprooted grass, he slid over the edge of the great rock....
Before the eyes of the girl lay only the restless, heaving sea.
and beyond the dull gray of the horizon and the cupped sky.
She turned, slowly, smiling a little.
The shrivelled, shrunken old woman bent her head forward upon her flat breast, thrice.
"_Bien_," she muttered.
And that was all.
[Illustration] CHAPTER EIGHT.
OF CERTAIN GOINGS.
It so happened that, on the winter after Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake graduated from college, death came to the big houses on the Avenue.
Mrs. John Stuyvesant Schuyler went first; Mrs. Thomas Cathcart Blake went, almost, with her; for she had been by the bedside of her friend during all her illness; and her friend, going, had bestowed upon her its horrible heritage.
And so she went, too.
Their going left in the two great houses, monstrous voids that might never be filled.
John Stuyvesant Schuyler and Thomas Cathcart Blake loved their wives; and when a man has loved a woman, and that woman his wife, as these two had loved, it seems in a way to disrupt the cosmogony of things.
It takes ambition from the brain, and the stamina from the spine;
and the days are very, very long, while the nights are yet infinitely longer.
Thomas Cathcart Blake, in the vastness of all that now was not, forgot to care for himself.
He, who had been jovial, became silent.
Some times, of nights, he would walk alone for hours.
The weather made no difference--in fact, he seldom noticed what the weather was.
He was an old man now, close to sixty....
Dr. DeLancey, on a night visit, met him one thick, sodden night at the corner of Thirty-third Street and the Avenue, coming from the club.
The good doctor bumbled out of his brougham, seized him by the arm and drew him wet and dripping into its protected interior.
"You fossiliferous-headed old chump," he howled, exasperatedly.
"You pin- headed old amphibian.
If your sole and utter ambition is to get pneumonia and die, I don't know any way in which you can better achieve your purpose.
Sit down in the corner there and drink this," he extracted from his case a little flask of brandy, "or I'll ask the horse to come in and bite you!"
"Turn around there, Mose!"
he yelled, "and drive to Mr. Blake's house."
Mose did so; and once there, the doctor, abusing and bullying his patient, got him upstairs and into the bed, and then applied to the protesting man who seldom had known what it was even to have a cold, all manner of exposurial antidotes.
"But the patient that you were going to see!"
protested Thomas Cathcart Blake.
"No friend of mine," returned Dr. DeLancey.
"Only a patient.
Patients are plenty, but friends are few.
Let him get someone else, or die, as he chooses.
It's none of my business.
Here, drink this."
And he poured between the protesting lips of Thomas Cathcart Blake a nauseating draught of something that was most malodorous; for Dr. DeLancey was an allopath, and a good one.
But, good as he was, he was too late.
Pneumonia had been before him; and, two weeks later, in spite of all that the good doctor, and several other equally good doctors, could do, Thomas Cathcart Blake died.
And he didn't seem sorry at going.
Before he went, he called to him his son, and to that son he said many things.
Most of the things that he said are neither your business nor mine.
But of the things that he said, we may know one.
He wanted his son to marry the daughter of the widow of Jimmy Blair.
Young Tom Blake, between the sobs that are becoming a man, answered: "I want to, dad.
I've always wanted to.
And I will, if I can."
His father counselled, weakly: "Get her honestly, boy, or not at all.
If you get her, cherish her--give her everything that there is in you to give--for there's nothing that a man can give that a good woman doesn't deserve.
Now, God bless you, son-- and--go."
Tom Blake clung to the sheets.
It was hard to lose such a father and such a mother, and all within a six month.
He cried, as you would cry, or I, and be glad that crying might be....
Dr. DeLancey, at length, managed to loosen his clenching fingers.
Dr. DeLancey was crying, too; the tears ran down his veined cheeks to lose themselves in the hair of his cheeks.
He tried to fume and fuss and splutter, as was his wont; but he couldn't. He could just put his hand around Tom Blake's heaving young shoulders, listen to his choking, broken sobs and say, over and over, and over again: "There, there, my boy!
There, there!
There, there!"
It's pretty hard, you know, to lose a father and a mother like that, and all within six months.
[Illustration] CHAPTER NINE.
