"NOW DO YOU REMEMBER?"
Farnham's convalescence was rapid. When the first danger of fever was over, the wound on the head healed quickly, and one morning Mrs. Belding came home with the news that he was to drive out that afternoon. Alice sat in the shade by the front porch for an hour, waiting to see him pass, and when at last his carriage appeared, she rose and waved her handkerchief by way of greeting and congratulation. He bowed as he went by, and Alice retired to her own room, where she used her handkerchief once more to dry her wet and happy eyes.
It was not long after, that Farnham came to dine with them. They both looked forward to this dinner as an occasion of very considerable importance. Each felt that much depended upon the demeanor of the other. Each was conscientiously resolved to do and to say nothing which should pain or embarrass the other. Each was dying to fall into the other's arms, but each only succeeded in convincing the other of his or her entire indifference and friendship.
As Farnham came in, Mrs. Belding went up to him with simple kindliness, kissed him, and made him sit down. "You dear boy," she said, "you do not know how glad I am to see you here once more."
Alice looked on, almost jealous of her mother's privilege. Then she advanced with shy grace and took Arthur's hand, and asked: "Do you begin to feel quite strong again?"
Farnham smiled, and answered, "Quite well, and the strength will soon come. The first symptom of returning vitality, Mrs. Belding, was my hostility to gruel and other phantom dishes. I have deliberately come to dinner to-day to dine."
"I am delighted to hear of your appetite," said Mrs. Belding; "but I think you may bear a little watching at the table yet," she added, in a tone of kindly menace. She was as good as her word, and exercised rather a stricter discipline at dinner than was agreeable to the convalescent, regulating his meat and wine according to ladylike ideas, which are somewhat binding on carnivorous man. But she was so kindly about it, and Alice aided and abetted with such bashful prettiness, that Farnham felt he could endure starvation with such accessories. Yet he was not wholly at ease. He had hoped, in the long hours of his confinement, to find the lady of his love kinder in voice and manner than when he saw her last; and now, when she was sweeter and more tender than he had ever seen her before, the self-tormenting mind of the lover began to suggest that if she loved him she would not be so kind. He listened to the soft, caressing tones of her voice as she spoke to him, which seemed to convey a blessing in every syllable; he met the wide, clear beauty of her glance, so sweet and bright that his own eyes could hardly support it; he saw the ready smile that came to the full, delicate mouth whenever he spoke; and instead of being made happy by all this, he asked himself if it could mean anything except that she was sorry for him, and wanted to be very polite to him, as she could be nothing more. His heart sank within him at the thought; he became silent and constrained; and Alice wondered whether she had not gone too far in her resolute kindness. "Perhaps he has changed his mind," she thought, "and wishes me not to change mine." So these two people, whose hands and hearts were aching to come together, sat in the same drawing-room talking of commonplace things, while their spirits grew heavy as lead.
Mrs. Belding was herself conscious of a certain constraint, and to dispel it asked Alice to sing, and Farnham adding his entreaties, she went to the piano, and said, as all girls say, "What shall I sing?"
She looked toward Farnham, but the mother answered, "Sing 'Douglas'——"
"Oh, no, Mamma, not that."
"Why not? You were singing it last night. I like it better than any other of your songs."
"I do not want to sing it to-night."
Mrs. Belding persisted, until at last Alice said, with an odd expression of recklessness, "Oh, very well, if you must have it, I will sing it. But I hate these sentimental songs, that say so much and mean nothing." Striking the chords nervously she sang, with a voice at first tremulous but at last full of strong and deep feeling, that wail of hopeless love and sorrow:
"Could you come back to me, Douglas, Douglas,
In the old likeness that I knew,
I would be so faithful, so loving,
Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true."
There had been tears of vexation in her eyes when her mother had forced her to sing this song of all others; but after she had begun, the music took her own heart by storm, and she sang as she had never sung before—no longer fearing, but hoping that the cry of her heart might reach her lover and tell him of her love. Farnham listened in transport; he had never until now heard her sing, and her beautiful voice seemed to him to complete the circle of her loveliness. He was so entranced by the full rich volume of her voice, and by the rapt beauty of her face as she sang, that he did not at first think of the words; but the significance of them seized him at last, and the thought that she was singing these words to him ran like fire through his veins. For a moment he gave himself up to the delicious consciousness that their souls were floating together upon that tide of melody. As the song died away and closed with a few muffled chords, he was on the point of throwing himself at her feet, and getting the prize which was waiting for him. But he suddenly bethought himself that she had sung the song unwillingly and had taken care to say that the words meant nothing. He rose and thanked her for the music, complimented her singing warmly, and bidding both ladies good night, went home, thrilled through and through with a deeper emotion than he had yet known, but painfully puzzled and perplexed.
He sat for a long time in his library, trying to bring some order into his thoughts. He could not help feeling that his presence was an embarrassment and a care to Alice Belding. It was evident that she had a great friendship and regard for him, which he had troubled and disturbed by his ill-timed declaration. She could no longer be easy and natural with him; he ought not to stay to be an annoyance to her. It was also clear that he could not be himself in her presence; she exercised too powerful an influence upon him to make it possible that he could go in and out of the house as a mere friend of the family. He was thus driven to the thought which always lay so near to the surface with him, as with so many of his kind; he would exile himself for a year or two, and take himself out of her way. The thought gave him no content. He could not escape a keen pang of jealousy when he thought of leaving her in her beautiful youth to the society of men who were so clearly inferior to her.
"I am inferior to her myself," he thought with genuine humility; "but I feel sure I can appreciate her better than any one else she will ever be likely to meet."
By and by he became aware that something was perplexing him, which was floating somewhere below the surface of his consciousness. A thousand thoughts, more or less puzzling, had arisen and been disposed of during the hour that had elapsed since he left Mrs. Belding's. But still he began to be sure that there was one groping for recognition which as yet he had not recognized. The more ho dwelt upon it, the more it seemed to attach itself to the song Alice had sung, but he could not give it any definiteness. After he had gone to bed, this undefined impression of something significant attaching itself to the song besieged him, and worried him with tantalizing glimpses, until he went to sleep.
But Farnham was not a dreamer, and the morning, if it brought little comfort, brought at least decision. He made up his mind while dressing that he would sail by an early steamer for Japan. He sent a telegram to San Francisco, as soon as he had breakfasted, to inquire about accommodations, and busied himself during the day with arranging odds and ends of his affairs. Coming and going was easy to him, as he rarely speculated and never touched anything involving anxious risks. But in the afternoon an irresistible longing impelled him to the house of his neighbor.
"Why should I not allow myself this indulgence?" he thought. "It will be only civil to go over there and announce my departure. As all is over, I may at least take this last delight to my eyes and heart. And I want to hear that song again."
All day the song had been haunting him, not on account of anything in itself, but because it vaguely reminded him of something else—something of infinite importance, if he could only grasp it. It hung about him so persistently, this vague glimmer of suggestion, that he became annoyed, and said at last to himself, "It is time for me to be changing my climate, if a ballad can play like that on my nerves."
He seized his hat and walked rapidly across the lawn, with the zest of air and motion natural to a strong man in convalescence. The pretty maidservant smiled and bowed him into the cool, dim drawing-room, where Alice was seated at the piano. She rose and said instinctively to the servant, "Tell mamma Captain Farnham is here," and immediately repented as she saw his brow darken a little. He sat down beside her, and said:
"I come on a twofold errand. I want to say good-by to you, and I want you to sing 'Douglas' for me once more."
"Why, where are you going?" she said, with a look of surprise and alarm.
"To Japan."
"But not at once, surely?"
"The first steamer I can find."
Alice tried to smile, but the attempt was a little woful.
"It will be a delightful journey, I am sure," she faltered, "but I can't get used to the idea of it, all at once. It is the end of the world."
"I want to get there before the end comes. At the present rate of progress there is not more than a year's purchase of bric-a-brac left in the empire. I must hurry over and get my share. What can I do for you?" he continued, seeing that she sat silent, twisting her white fingers together. "Shall I not bring you the loot of a temple or two? They say the priests have become very corruptible since our missionaries got there—the false religion tumbling all to pieces before the true."
Still she made no answer, and the fixed smile on her face looked as if she hardly heard what he was saying. But he went on in the same light, bantering tone.
"Shall I bring you back a Jinrickishaw?"
"What in the world is that—but, no matter what it is—tell me, are you really going so soon?"
If Farnham had not been the most modest of men, the tone in which this question was asked would have taught him that he need not exile himself. But he answered seriously:
"Yes, I am really going."
"But why?" The question came from unwilling lips, but it would have its way. The challenge was more than Farnham could endure. He spoke out with quick and passionate earnestness:
"Must I tell you then? Do you not know? I am going because you send me."
"Oh, no," she murmured, with flaming cheeks and downcast eyes.
"I am going because I love you, and I cannot bear to see you day by day, and know that you are not for me. You are too young and too good to understand what I feel. If I were a saint like you, perhaps I might rejoice in your beauty and your grace without any selfish wish—but I cannot. If you are not to be mine, I cannot enjoy your presence. Every charm you have is an added injury, if I am to be indifferent to you."
Her hands flew up and covered her eyes. She was so happy that she feared he would see it and claim her too soon and too swiftly.
He mistook the gesture, and went on in his error.
"There! I have made you angry, or wounded you again. It would be so continually, if I should stay. I should be giving you offence every hour in the day. I cannot help loving you, any more than I can help breathing. This is nothing to you or worse than nothing, but it is all my life to me. I do not know how it will end. You have filled every thought of my mind, every vein of my body. I am more you than myself. How can I separate myself from you?"
As he poured out these words, and much more, hot as a flood of molten metal, Alice slowly recovered her composure. She was absolutely and tranquilly happy—so perfectly at rest that she hardly cared for the pain her lover was confessing. She felt she could compensate him for everything, and every word he said filled her with a delight which she could not bear to lose by replying. She sat listening to him with half-shut eyes, determined not to answer until he had made an end of speaking. But she said to herself, with a tenderness which made her heart beat more than her lover's words, "How surprised he will be when I tell him he shall not go."
The rustling of Mrs. Belding's ample approach broke in upon her trance and Farnham's litany. He rose, not without some confusion, to greet her, and Alice, with bright and even playful eyes, said, "Mamma, what do you think this errant young cavalier has come to say to us?"
Mrs. Belding looked with puzzled inquiry from one to the other.
"Simply," continued Alice, "that he is off for Japan in a day or two, and he wants to know if we have any commissions for him."
"Nonsense! Arthur, I won't listen to it. Come over to dinner this evening and tell me all about it. I've got an appointment this very minute at our Oriental Gospel rooms and cannot wait to talk to you now. But this evening, you must tell me what it all means, and I hope you will have changed your mind by that time."
The good lady did not even sit down, but rustled briskly away. Perhaps she divined more of what was toward than appeared—but she did as she would have wished to be done by, when she was young, and left the young people to their own devices.
Farnham turned to Alice, who was still standing, and said, "Alice, my own love, can you not give me one word of hope to carry with me? I cannot forget you. My mind cannot change. Perhaps yours may, when the ocean is between us, and you have time to reflect on what I have said. I spoke too soon and too rashly. But I will make amends for that by long silence. Then perhaps you will forgive me—perhaps you will recall me. I will obey your call from the end of the world."
He held out his hand to her. She gave him hers with a firm warm grasp. He might have taken courage from this, but her composure and her inscrutable smile daunted him.
"You are not going yet," she said. "You have forgotten what you came for."
"Yes—that song. I must hear it again. You must not think I am growing daft, but that song has haunted me all day in the strangest way. There is something in the way you sing it—the words and your voice together—that recall some association too faint for me to grasp. I can neither remember what it is, nor forget it. I have tried to get it out of my mind, but I have an odd impression that I would better cherish it—that it is important to me—that life or death are not more important. There! I have confessed all my weakness to you, and now you will say that I need a few weeks of salt breeze."
"I will sing you the song first. Perhaps we may pluck out its mystery."
She preluded a moment and sang, while Farnham waited with a strained sense of expectancy, as if something unspeakably serious was impending. She sang with far more force and feeling than the night before. Her heart was full of her happy love, as yet unspoken, and her fancy was pleased with that thought that, under the safe cover of her music, she could declare her love without restraint. She sang with the innocent rapture of a mavis in spring, in notes as rich and ardent as her own maiden dreams. Farnham listened with a pleasure so keen that it bordered upon pain. When she came to the line,
"I would be so tender, so loving, Douglas,"
he started and leaned forward in his chair, holding his hands to his temples, and cried,
"Can't you help me to think what that reminds me of?"
Alice rose from the piano, flushing a pink as sweet and delicate as that of the roses in her belt. She came forward a few paces and then stopped, bent slightly toward him, with folded hands. In her long, white, clinging drapery, with her gold hair making the dim room bright, with her red lips parted in a tender but solemn smile, with something like a halo about her of youth and purity and ardor, she was a sight so beautiful that Arthur Farnham as he gazed up at her felt his heart grow heavy with an aching consciousness of her perfection that seemed to remove her forever from his reach. But the thought that was setting her pulses to beating was as sweetly human as that of any bride since Eve. She was saying to herself in the instant she stood motionless before him, looking like a pictured angel, "I know now what he means. He loves me. I am sure of him. I have a right to give myself to him."
She held out her hands. He sprang up and seized them.
"Come," she said, "I know what you are trying to remember, and I will make you remember it."
He was not greatly surprised, for love is a dream, and dreams have their own probabilities. She led him to a sofa and seated him beside her. She put her arms around his neck and pressed his head to her beating heart, and said in a voice as soft as a mother's to an ailing child, "My beloved, if you will live, I will be so good to you." She kissed him and said gently,
"Now do you remember?"
THE END.