Mr. Claghorn's Daughter Part 44

He found Mrs. Joe awaiting him in the room he had left. "Be very kind to her, mother," he said. "She will have something to tell you."

"But you have been so quick----"

He smiled. "I shall not be the hero of the tale. Father Cameril is the lucky man. After all, it is better. I could not have made her happy as she deserves to be. I am glad I was prevented from offering her----" He hesitated.

"Your heart," said Mrs. Joe.

"An insult," he answered curtly, as he left the room, strolling toward Eliphalet's tomb.

And at Eliphalet's tomb he recognized that Natalie had been wise. Now that it was lost to him he knew that his last long-neglected chance for happiness was gone. Happiness! Perhaps the word meant too much, but in Paula's companionship he could at least have found, in time, contentment and cheerfulness, and are these not happiness, the highest happiness?

What now was left him? Money, heaps of money! It barred the way to honorable ambition; its heavy weight lay on his heart, breeding therein suspicion of the love or friendship of all men and women. For him life must be a solitude. He could never lie beside a wife a.s.sured that he had won her for himself. He knew that the deadly poison of distrust must ever and ever more thoroughly taint his being, distorting his vision and rendering the aspect of all things hateful. Yet how many thousand men, whose clothes and dinners were a.s.sured them, would be glad to change places with him! "But all I have are clothes and food," he muttered.

"We are all poor critters!" Deacon Bedott had spoken words of wisdom.

"But the poorest of all is the Rich Man, Deacon," he said.

And then bethought him that by this time Paula and Father Cameril would have made their great announcement. "Little Paula!" he murmured. "Well, she shall have joyous wedding bells, at least, and smiling faces. For the rest let the fond Father look to it!"

CHAPTER XLIV.

WEDDING BELLS.

The summer sun beat pitilessly upon the burnished cobble stones, driving from the crooked street all except the geese, and even these only languidly stretched their necks, hissing inhospitably at the heels of the dusty wayfarer, the sole object of interest to the landlord of the Red-Ox, who stood in the gateway of his hostelry and blinked in the glare of the sun. "Too old for a student," he muttered, "and no spectacles. Perhaps an artist." As the pedestrian came nearer a puzzled gleam, half of recognition, spread over his features. The dusty traveler stopped. "And so you are here yet!" and he slapped the broad shoulder of the host.

"Here yet, and hope to be for many a year to come," answered the fat host; "and you are here, not for the first time, I dare swear; but who you are, or when you last were here----

"That you can't recall. Why should you?"

"_Ein Amerikaner!_ A _studiosus juris_, of the Pestilentia. _Ein alter Bursch_ of ten years back! Remember? Surely, all but the name."

"And what's in a name?" shaking the offered hand of the landlord. "Mine is a mouthful for you--Claghorn."

"_Herr Doktor_ Clokhorn. That's it. Not so great a mouthful after all."

He led the way into the well-remembered garden. "Many a schoppen have you had here," he said; "and many a time sung '_Alter Burschen Herrlichkeit_' at this very table, and many trout----"

"Devoured," interrupted Mark. "That pastime will bear repet.i.tion. As for singing, one loses the desire."

"Not so," observed the fat host. "I am sixty, but I lead the Liederkranz to-day. Wine, woman and song--you know what Luther said----"

"I remember. But not even the Great Reformer's poetry is to be taken too literally. We'll discuss the point later on. Now some trout, then a pipe and a gossip."

When the host departed to attend to the order, Mark unstrapped his knapsack and looked about him.

He had come thousands of miles to see this garden! He admitted the foolish fact to himself, though even to his mother he would have denied it. The fat host was right; he had drunk many a flask of wine in this place, roared in many a chorus, had danced many a waltz with village maidens on yonder platform; but of these various scenes of his student days he had not thought until his host recalled them. They were memories, even memories with some of that tender sadness which renders such memories pleasant, but such as they would never have drawn him here.

And now that he was here, so sharp a pain was in his heart that he recognized his folly. The wound was yet too new. He should have waited a decade or more. Then he might have found solace in recalling her to his mind, here where first he had seen her; he, in all the arrogant pride of youth; she, with all the fresh beauty of a school girl. Now no effort was needed to recall her to his memory--she was ever present.

Nevertheless, he enjoyed his fish and his wine. "A superlative vintage,"

said the host, who had had time to recall his guest more distinctly, and who remembered that in past days _Studiosus Clokhorn_ had dispensed money with a liberal hand.

"And so the inn has been enlarged," said Mark, looking about him. "That means prosperity."

"Forellenbach is becoming a resort," replied the host. "We have parties that remain for days. We have strangers here at this moment."

"Ah!" was the sleepy comment.

"Yes; three ladies. Or rather, two ladies and a maid. Mother and daughter--English."

"Ah!" said Mark again.

At this point the host, rather to the relief of his guest, was called away, and Mark adjusted himself upon the bench and dozed. A long tramp, and perhaps the superlative vintage, had made him sleepy.

When he awoke, sunset shadows were about him. He was vexed, having intended to walk on to Heidelberg, which now he must do in part after dark. However, a walk by night might be pleasanter than had been the tramp under the sun. Before leaving he would look about. It was not likely that he would ever again see a place which would dwell always in his memory.

As he neared the cave where the echo dwelt he saw the slender figure of a woman. Her back was toward him, but the garb and mien proclaimed one, not a permanent resident of the village. "One of mine host's guests," he murmured, "a _gndige Frau_ of artistic taste and economical practice."

He paused, unwilling to disturb feminine meditation. The stranger stood at the entrance to the cave, on the spot where first he had seen the girl who, later, had become the one woman in the world to him. There was something in her att.i.tude, bent head and arms hanging listless, that interested, even moved him. She, too, looked like some lonely being, saying a last farewell at a shrine where love had been born; and then, as she strolled away, hidden by overhanging boughs of trees and the slowly deepening evening shadows, he smiled at his conceit.

He strolled on to where she had been standing, for, though he smiled cynically at his foolishness, the spot was to him a sacred one. If sentimental folly had brought him a thousand leagues, it might well control a few steps more.

As he reached the place he came face to face with another woman, whose old but sharp eyes recognized him instantly. "Mr. Mark!"

"Tabby!" He was so astonished that he could say no more for a moment.

Then he found words: "Was that Natalie?"

Miss Cone, though slightly hysterical from pleasure and surprise, explained that Natalie had just left her. "But what brings you here?"

she added.

"Heaven or fate," was the answer. And then he was for following Natalie at once. But Tabitha restrained him. "Let me prepare her," she urged, and to that plea she found him willing to listen.

Then she told him the story of their wanderings. They had brought Leonard to Europe, princ.i.p.ally for the voyage, which, however, had been of no benefit. They had remained in Ireland, near Londonderry, where they had first landed. He had never been able to move, but pa.s.sed his life in a wheeled chair. His mind had been that of an infant, though before he died he seemed to have gleams of intelligence, and had once in an old churchyard expressed a wish to be buried there, or so Natalie had interpreted his babbling. And there he had slept for a year. "And so,"

sobbed Tabitha, "the poor boy's weary life is over at last. G.o.d bless him!"

"Amen to that," said Mark. "Tabitha! It has been a grief to me, G.o.d knows. So heavy a sorrow that I have thought I could not bear it; yet, at this moment I can say that I am glad that Natalie forgave him and cherished him till he died."

Tabitha looked up. Her hard, worn old face was softened by her tears.

"Those words," she said, "will win her for you; if words can win the heart already yours."

At the appointed hour Tabitha led him to Natalie, who was waiting for him. He could see the swaying of her form as she rose to greet him. He took her in his arms.

"My darling, my darling." He could say nothing else. Her arm had crept upward about his neck; he held her close.

"Why are you here?" he asked, at length, then added: "Bless G.o.d that you are here."

"To say good-bye to a place that has often been in my thoughts. And, since heaven has permitted it, to say good-bye to you."