True and Other Stories Part 13

"All right, Dennie. I won't fail you."

And so the compact was made.

Sylv was absolutely honest in what he said. He knew but one ambition, and the gaining of any woman's love had never formed a part of it. Why was it, then, that his spirits rose so at the thought of being near Adela once more?

CHAPTER X.

THE LIKENESS.

You remember how little Lance had seen of Adela Reefe, and that he knew her scarcely at all. But this makes it the stranger, and rendered it at the time all the more unaccountable to him, that, on her removal from his neighborhood, he should have been afflicted with a sense of vacancy, and should have suffered from the melancholy which one might expect to feel when suddenly separated from a dear friend. Was he not engaged to Jessie, and thoroughly contented in his love? Moreover, Adela had not entered into his life as an important factor. Yet, now that she was gone, he perceived how quickly and completely the web of surmises which he had thrown around her had taken him also into its tangles. Her ident.i.ty and destiny had engaged his thoughts far more deeply than he had guessed.

Acting on his offer of a.s.sistance, and obeying Dennie's wish, Sylv presently came to him to suggest that he would like to go to Newbern to pursue his studies.

"But I have just made arrangements," Lance told him, "to put up a small building where we can experiment with reed-pulp; and I expected you to a.s.sist me."

Not without embarra.s.sment, Sylv made known the special reason proposed by Dennie for his going. Lance thought the plan a rather curious one, and allowed himself a queer, vicarious jealousy on Dennie's account, at the notion of his being so far from Adela when his brother should be in the same town with her. But he had promised to help Sylv; so he consented to send him to Newbern and maintain him there for a while, the cost to be returned in future services.

"Perhaps Dennie will take a hand with me in the pulp experiments," he reflected.

Thus it came to pa.s.s that a shed was built in the woods not far from the manor, where a boiler and a small beater and washer were placed, convenient to the limited water supply from a "run" or creek. An experienced vatman was sent for from the North; Dennie was engaged to collect and haul reeds, and aid in other ways when he could. All this involved a good deal of expense, and the colonel watched the work with suppressed horror at the young man's extravagance. But the experiments went on, and Lance became enthusiastic over the details of drying the reeds, getting the mixture of caustic alkali just right for boiling, and trying rags in various proportions. Finally he was able to produce from the vat a few sheets of tolerably good hand-made paper, on which he fancied that he could see already inscribed a record of the profits that were to be his.

It took many weeks, however, to accomplish that much. At first Jessie entered into the new enterprise with great interest, and made it doubly charming to him; but after a while, finding that it consumed her lover's time and distracted his attention from her, she began to regard the fascinating shed, with its boiler and engine and rude apparatus, as a dangerous rival. Nothing daunted by such symptoms of her discontent as he observed, Lance continued his application with a fervor that seemed to her little less than fanatical. Meanwhile he saw Dennie very often, and was constantly in receipt of news about Adela from him.

Indeed, since neither Aunty Losh nor Dennie had ever become enslaved to the luxury of reading, it was necessary for Lance to interpret Adela's letters to them. These epistles, in the beginning, were somewhat slight and informal. They would begin thus: "I write to inform you that I am enjoying good health. I hope you are the same." But as she went on with her studies, and as the various particulars of her new life appealed more decidedly to her attention, her style became more familiar and cordial; she described what happened at the school, day by day, and often lit up her account of events with flashes of humor that, to Lance, were delightful. She hit off some of the absurdities of modern routine education with a surprising sharpness of perception, and was greatly amused at the old theologian who attended to the religious instruction of the girls. He had shown her some books of Hebrew, the characters in which reminded her of her own invented patterns in silk and beads. But withal it transpired from what she wrote, that she made astounding progress in her lessons. She quickly outstripped her cla.s.smates in their work, and was promoted to a higher grade. Lance wondered whether this were due to the stored-up energy of a nature that was in some respects primitive, or whether it came from inherited apt.i.tude--an apt.i.tude derived partly, through the dim centuries, from Gertrude Wylde. Several times she alluded to Lance, and sent to him reserved messages of friendly thanks for his kindness; but perhaps she would not have written so familiarly on other topics if she had known that he was to see her letters. The truth was, it had not occurred to her that her betrothed and his aunt would apply to Lance to decipher her letters. And Lance, embarra.s.sed by these references to himself, refrained from disclosing them.

Inevitably, from the supervision which thus fell to his lot over everything Adela did or said or thought, so far as her letters formed a record, it ensued that his interest in her increased. I am afraid he watched those letters with an alertness not to be excused, for some trace of a thoughtfulness respecting him, equal to his own toward her; and when she addressed to him directly a short communication, to tell him how she was getting on, and how grateful she was for his a.s.sistance, it was in a mood closely akin to disappointment that he read it through without having detected a word that could be construed as indicating even a commencement of friendship.

Now and again he contemplated turning the letters over to Jessie, and felt a desire to talk with her about the progress of his pupil. But he fancied that she would receive the confidence coldly, and he forbore to say anything, except in the most general terms. Why, in the mean time, he should expect anything more from Adela than a formal recognition of indebtedness, was a riddle to him; but nevertheless he knew that he was unsatisfied.

It should be understood that his peculiar state of mind was not at any one time clearly apparent to him; he merely caught glimpses of it. His preoccupation with the paper manufacture all the while kept his attention busy, and it was but dimly that he perceived what was going on in other regards. But when his experiments had reached their culmination, and he had decided to build a mill and begin operations, it became necessary for him to go North. He resolved to run up to Newbern, first, and see Adela Reefe, before bidding good-by to Jessie. This intention he was about to confide to Jessie, when one morning she unexpectedly presented herself at the engine-shed, at the moment when he was perusing a recent letter from his charge.

"So I've found you at last!" cried Jessie, standing by the sill of the open shed-door, wrapped in a light shawl, with a broad hat bent archly over her head, and looking wonderfully pretty. She caught sight of the letter. "Aha!" she said. "I thought you came here to work. But it's only make-believe, I see. Well, I've a great mind to write you letters myself and send them down to you here to read."

"Oh, it's only a letter from Adela Reefe," Lance answered. "Dennie De Vine brought it; he's just gone away again. Would you like to see it?"

The vatman was occupied at the other end of the shed. Jessie took the letter and glanced at it; then returned it to her lover, indifferently.

"Deely seems to be quite contented," she observed. "When are you going to finish, Ned?"

"Finish? You mean what I'm doing here? Why, I can go with you now, if you want."

"I wish you would, then. I feel just like having a little walk and talk.

You're going away so soon, it's only fair I should see something of you."

"I know that, dearest," said Lance, "and I'm afraid I've spent too much time over this business. It's only fair to me, too, that we should be together."

They sauntered away in company, and strolled through the woods. "I have been thinking," he told her, "that I ought to start in two or three days. But I must see Adela and Sylv first. I don't want to go North without knowing just how they seem up there, in their new life."

A change came over Jessie's manner. "You mustn't go!" she said, with sudden vehemence. "It isn't right, Ned."

"Not right, my dear. Why?" Lance bent his earnest, clean-cut features to look down at her more searchingly.

But Jessie lowered her eyes, and would not meet his glance. "Oh, I have watched you," she said, "and you are often talking with Dennie; you talk about that girl, I am sure. And now she is writing to you. Don't you think you have done enough for her, without going to see her?"

"Perhaps so," said Lance, his energetic mind arrested by a sudden discontent, and by a wonder as to whether he had unconsciously fallen into error. "But surely you don't allow yourself to be troubled about it, do you?"

"Why, no," Jessie answered. "It would be foolish to do that. Why should I? Only, it may be that you don't think what you're doing, Ned. She is not our _friend_, and she never can be. I have agreed that you should be her benefactor if you want to. But think how it might seem for you to go up there and call on her. Isn't it too much?"

"I will do as you think best, my dear," Lance a.s.sented.

"Thank you," said Jessie, at once growing radiant.

They pa.s.sed on through the sun-flecked gallery of the spicy woods, chatting on various topics, and were outwardly quite content. But Lance could not banish the idea that he had been deprived of something which was his right; and Jessie, for her part, was not nearly so serene as she appeared to be. A subtle intuition had warned her that Lance was wrapped up in his care for Adela to an extent which he himself was not able to measure. The circ.u.mstance weighed upon her with increasing force; and many times at night she had been awakened by her own tears, only to fret out the solitary hours with vain questionings and attempts at rea.s.surance. Her trouble seemed needless and absurd; but somehow Adela Reefe came flitting across her dreams, and even darkened her waking moments, like a shadow revived from the past, that had the power to blot out the vivid and sunny present.

That evening the lovers looked over some old miniatures of former Floyds and of the Wyldes, from whom the colonel traced his inheritance. In every one of the female faces Lance instinctively hunted for traits that should account for Jessie's features; but he could not find any. Not only was he baffled in the search, but when he retired to rest the old puzzle as to the similarity between Jessie's face and Adela's grew upon him, as more complicated and less easy to shake off than ever.

A few nights afterward his hands clasped Jessie's cheeks as he bade her farewell, on his departure for Beaufort, where he was to take a coast-wise steamer for New York.

It was late October. There was a chill in the air. The leaves of the deciduous trees had turned, and were already falling. The pines were rusty in places, their needles showered to the ground in great numbers; the snow-goose had already been heard piping in the air, on its southward flight; and the waves of the Sound and the sea, as they broke upon the sh.o.r.e, seemed to shiver with a knowledge of approaching winter.

But Jessie stood with her lover on the veranda, in the darkness; and her face rested so yieldingly in his palms that Lance half imagined he could carry it away with him. There in the night it was like a picture painted long ago and dimmed by time, yet shining out through the obscurity with its youth and loveliness and pa.s.sion still intact. No; he could not carry it bodily away with him, but he could take it in his heart; and so he did, holding it there long after the farewell kiss had left his lips.

But after he reached New York, and during the long months of winter, the magic of fancy played strange tricks with the image he had brought in his heart. Strive as he would, he could not prevent it from wavering and flickering, as it were, and occasionally taking on a darker hue, so that he seemed at times to be contemplating Adela, instead of Jessie.

One of the first things he did was to hunt up some old memoranda in which the tradition concerning Guy Wharton was definitely set down. This cleared up his recollection of it; and his next act was to write to a lawyer of his acquaintance in England, who knew something about the Wharton history, asking him to use his best endeavors to get some authentic likeness of Gertrude Wylde.

Unfolding to Hedson, his father's old partner, the paper-mill project, and finding it received with favor, he next exerted himself to form a small syndicate for purchasing and reclaiming the swamp-lands, since that undertaking would require more capital than he cared to venture.

But the swamp was not the Treasury of the United States, nor was it a fantasy of such vast dimensions as the Panama Ca.n.a.l; so the syndicate could not be formed. For capital, despite all the cant about its conservatism, is really moved by extremes: it is allured either by a dead certainty or by an equally defunct impossibility. Elbow Crook Swamp was a something between the two.

"Wait until spring," Hedson advised. "Then you will have time to explore; and, besides, I may get down there myself to take a look!"

Hedson enjoyed the harmless pride of believing that anything at which Hedson had "taken a look," and was able to speak well of, must necessarily glitter like gold to his brother bondholders.

This affair and others detained Lance a long time. His mind was fixed on settling in North Carolina, at least for the first years of his married life, and he was anxious to get all his investments in good order before making the change. At Christmas he took a flying trip to Fairleigh Park, and enjoyed a brief season of jollity and of companionship with Jessie; but he was soon back again among the snowy streets. He had seen Sylv, but would not permit himself an interview with Adela. On his return Hedson informed him that he was about to sail for England, being called thither by business, to be absent a couple of months. Lance had received no news from his legal friend in London, and did not indeed expect anything valuable from that source; the records of the Surrey Wyldes were doubtless too scattered to be traceable, and it was scarcely possible that any vestige of Gertrude's features would have been retained among the possessions of the Whartons. But, not wishing to forego any chance, he pet.i.tioned Hedson to see the solicitor and co-operate with him. The acute perception of the American man of business might perhaps aid the careful British lawyer in getting at something, even in so sentimental an inquiry. Lance would have gone himself, so active was his interest in the question, had it not been for his reluctance to place the ocean between himself and Jessie.

Toward the end of February Hedson sent him a half-page letter, which ended with the words: "Think I have got something for you." Exasperating silence followed this communication. But, in latter March, Hedson landed at New York, and brought Lance a drawing. "It's from an old picture," he said. "Had the devil's own time getting it; but I bored everybody concerned, until they couldn't stand it any longer, and had to help me ferret it out."

"And you're sure this was Gertrude Wylde?" asked Lance.

"Why, my boy, you don't think I'd say so if I wasn't sure, do you?

Besides, look at this curious monogram on the back. It seems to be two Gs and two Ws intertwined. You see, G. W. alone would stand for either Gertrude Wylde or Guy Wharton--a singular coincidence. The fact that the letters are repeated seems to show that Wharton had noticed this and resolved that his initials should be linked with hers, which were the same, so that in that way at least they might be united. It's a mark of ident.i.ty. But why do you ask?" he added. "Is there anything wrong about it?"

Lance was excited, evidently. The drawing shook in his hand. "No," he said; "nothing wrong. Quite the contrary. It's exactly like her in some ways."

"You don't _look_ crazy, Lance; but how can you possibly know whether it's like or not?"