The Cup of Trembling and Other Stories Part 12

The young man in No. 8 had evidently taken his fancy; his formal, old-fashioned advances were modestly but promptly met.

"I suppose it is not usual, in these parts, for travelers to inquire each other's names?" the old gentleman remarked to his new acquaintance; "but we seem to have plenty of time on our hands; we might as well improve it socially. My name is David Underhill, and this is my daughter Phebe. Now what might thy name be, friend?"

"My name is Ludovic," said the youth, looking a half-apology at Phebe, who saw no reason for it.

"First or family name?"

"Ludovic is my family name."

"And a very good name it is," said the old gentleman. "Not a common name in these parts, I should say, but one very well and highly known to me,"

he added, with pleased emphasis. "Phebe, thee remembers a visit we had from Martin Ludovic when we were living at New Roch.e.l.le?"

"Thee knows I was not born when you lived at New Roch.e.l.le, father dear."

"True, true! It was thy mother I was thinking of. She had a great esteem for Martin Ludovic. He was one of the world's people, as we say--in the world, but not of the world. Yet he made a great success in life. He was her father's junior partner--rose from a clerk's stool in his counting-room; and a great success he made of it. But that was after Friend Lawrence's time. My wife was Phebe Lawrence."

Young Ludovic smiled brightly in reply to this information, and seemed about to speak, but the old gentleman forestalled him.

"Friend Lawrence had made what was considered a competence in those days--a very small one it would be called now; but he was satisfied.

Thee may not be aware that it is a recommendation among the Friends, and it used to be a common practice, that when a merchant had made a sufficiency for himself and those depending on him, he should show his sense of the favor of Providence by stepping out and leaving his chance to the younger men. Friend Lawrence did so--not to his own benefit ultimately, though that was no one's fault that ever I heard; and Martin Ludovic was his successor, and a great and honorable business was the outcome of his efforts. Now does thee happen to recall if Martin is a name in thy branch?"

"My grandfather was Martin Ludovic of the old New York house of Lawrence and Ludovic," said the cadet of that name; but as he gave these credentials a profound melancholy subdued his just and natural pride.

"Is it possible!" Friend Underhill exulted, more pleased than if he had recovered a lost bank-note for many hundreds. There are no people who hold by the ties of blood and family more strongly than the Friends; and Friend Underhill, on this long journey, had felt himself sadly insolvent in those sureties that cannot be packed in a trunk or invested in irrigable lands. It was as if on the wild, cold seas he had crossed the path of a bark from home. He yearned to have speech with this graciously favored young man, whose grandfather had been his Phebe's grandfather's partner and dearest friend. The memory of that connection had been cherished with ungrudging pride through the succeeding generations in which the Ludovics had gone up in the world and the Lawrences had come down. Friend Underhill did not recall--nor would he have thought it of the least importance--that a Lawrence had been the benefactor in the first place, and had set Martin Ludovic's feet upon the ladder of success. He took the young man's hand affectionately in his own, and studied the favor of his countenance.

"Thee has the family look," he said in a satisfied tone; "and they had no cause, as a rule, to be discontented with their looks."

Young Ludovic's eyes fell, and he blushed like a girl; the dark-red blood dyed his face with the color almost of shame. Phebe moved uneasily in her seat.

"Make room beside thee, Phebe," said her father; "or, no, friend Ludovic; sit thee here beside me. If the train should start, I could hear thee better. And thy name--let me see--thee must be a Charles Ludovic. In thy family there was always a Martin, and then an Aloys, and then a Charles; and it was said--though a foolish superst.i.tion, no doubt--that the king's name brought ill luck. The Ludovic whose turn it was to bear the name of the unhappy Stuart took with it the misfortunes of three generations."

"A very unjust superst.i.tion I should call it," p.r.o.nounced Phebe.

"Surely, and a very idle one," her father acquiesced, smiling at her warmth. "I trust, friend Charles, it has been given thee happily to disprove it in thy own person."

"On the contrary," said Charles Ludovic, "if I am not the unluckiest of my name, I hope there may never be another."

He spoke with such conviction, such energy of sadness, only silence could follow the words. Then the old gentleman said, most gently and ruefully:--

"If it be indeed as thee says, I trust it will not seem an intrusion, in one who knew thy family's great worth, to ask the nature of thy trouble--if by chance it might be my privilege to a.s.sist thee. I feel of rather less than my usual small importance--cast loose, as it were, between the old and the new; but if my small remedies should happen to suit with thy complaint, it would not matter that they were trifling--like Phebe's drops and pellets she puts such faith in," he added, with a glance at his daughter's downcast face.

"Dear sir, you _have_ helped me, by the gift of the outstretched hand.

Between strangers, as we are, that implies a faith as generous as it is rare."

"Nay, we are not strangers; no one of thy name shall call himself stranger to one of ours. Shall he, Phebe? Still, I would not importune thee"--

"I thank you far more than you can know; but we need not talk of my troubles. It was a graceless speech of mine to obtrude them."

"As thee will. But I deny the lack of grace. The gracelessness was mine to bring up a foolish saying, more honored in the forgetting."

Here Phebe interposed with a spoonful of the medicine her father had referred to so disparagingly. "I would not talk any more now, if I were thee, father. Thee sees how it makes thee cough."

At this, Ludovic rose to leave them; but Phebe detained him, shyly doing the honors of their quarters in the common caravan. He stayed, but a constrained silence had come upon him. The old gentleman closed his eyes, and sometimes smiled to himself as he sat so, beside the younger man, and Phebe had strange thoughts as she looked at them both. Her imagination was greatly stirred. She talked easily and with perfect unconsciousness to Ludovic, and told him little things she could remember having heard about the one generation of his family that had formerly been connected with her own. She knew more about it, it appeared, than he did. And more and more he seemed to lose himself in her eyes, rather than to be listening to her voice. He sat with his back to his companion across the aisle; at length the latter rose, and touched him on the shoulder. He turned instantly, and Phebe, looking up, caught the hard, roused expression that altered him into the likeness of another man.

"I am going outside." No more was said, but Ludovic rose, bowed to Phebe, and followed his curt fellow-pa.s.senger.

"What can be the connection between them?" thought the girl. "They seem inseparable, yet not friends precisely. How could they be friends?" And in her prompt mental comparison the elder man inevitably suffered. She began to think of all the tragedies with which young lives are fatalistically bound up; but it was significant that none of her speculations included the possibility of anything in the nature of error in respect to this Charles Ludovic who called himself unhappy.

II

"Stop a moment. I want to speak to you," said Ludovic. The two men were pa.s.sing through the gentlemen's toilet-room; Ludovic turned his back to the marble washstand, and waited, with his head up, and the tips of his long hands resting in his trousers' pockets. "I have a favor to ask of you, Mr. Burke."

"Well, sir, what's the size of it?"

"You must have heard some of our talk in there; you see how it is? They will never, of themselves, suspect the reason of your fondness for my company. Is it worth while, for the time we shall be together, to put them on to it? It's not very easy, you see; make it as easy as you can."

"Have I tried to make it hard, Mr. Ludovic?"

"Not at all. I don't mean that."

"Am I giving you away most of the time?"

"Of course not. You have been most awfully good. But you're--you're d.a.m.nably in my way. I see you out of the corner of my eye always, when you aren't square in front of me. I can't make a move but you jump. Do you think I am such a fool as to make a break now? No, sir; I am going through with this; I'm in it most of the time. Now see here, I give you my word--and there are no liars of my name--that you will find me with you at Pocatello. Till then let me alone, will you? Keep your eyes off me. Keep out of range of my talk. I would like to say a word now and then without knowing there's a running comment in the mind of a man across the car, who thinks he knows me better than the people I am talking to--understand?"

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't," said Mr. Burke, deliberately. "I don't know as it's any of my business what you say to your friends, or what they think of you. All I'm responsible for is your person."

"Precisely. At Pocatello you will have my person."

"And have I got your word for the road between?"

"My word, and my thanks--if the thanks of a man in my situation are worth anything."

"I'm dum sorry for you, Mr. Ludovic, and I don't mind doing what little I can to make things easy"--Mr. Burke paused, seeing his companion smile. "Well, yes, I know it's hard--it's dooced almighty hard; and it looks like there was a big mistake somewheres, but it's no business of mine to say so. Have a cigar?"

Young Mr. Ludovic had accepted a number of Mr. Burke's palliative offers of cigars during their journey together; he accepted the courtesy, but he did not smoke the cigars. He usually gave them to the porter. He had an expensive taste in cigars, as in many other things. He paid for his high-priced preferences, or he went without. He was never willing to accept any subst.i.tute for the thing he really wanted; and it was very hard for him, when he had set his heart upon a thing, not to approach it in the att.i.tude that an all-wise Providence had intended it for him.

About dusk the snow-plow engines from above came down for coal and water. They brought no positive word, only that the plows and shovelers were at work at both ends of the big cut, and they hoped the track would be free by daybreak. But the snow was still falling as night set in.

Ludovic and Phebe sat in the shadowed corner behind the curtains of No.

7. Phebe's father had gone to bed early; his cough was worse, and Phebe was treating him for that and for the fever which had developed as an attendant symptom. She was a devotee in her chosen school of medicine; she knew her remedies, within the limits of her household experience, and used them with the courage and constancy that are of no school, but which better the wisdom of them all.

Ludovic observed that she never lost count of the time through all her talk, which was growing more and more absorbing; he was jealous of the interruption when she said, "Excuse me," and looked at her watch, or rose and carried her tumblers of medicine alternately to the patient, and woke him gently; for it was now a case for strenuous treatment, and she purposed to watch out the night, and give the medicines regularly every hour.

Mr. Burke was as good as his word; he kept several seats distant from the young people. He had a private understanding, though, with the car officials: not that he put no faith in the word of a Ludovic, but business is business.

When he went to his berth about eleven o'clock he noticed that his prisoner was still keeping the little Quaker girl company, and neither of them seemed to be sleepy. The table where they had taken supper together was still between them, with Phebe's watch and the medicine tumblers upon it. The panel of looking-gla.s.s reflected the young man's profile, touched with gleams of lamplight, as he leaned forward with his arms upon the table.

Phebe sat far back in her corner, pale and grave; but when her eyes were lifted to his face they were as bright as winter stars.