Books: Love, The Fiddler
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Lloyd Osbourne >> Love, The Fiddler
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"Tell me that you love me, Frank," she burst out. "Tell me, tell
me!" Then, as he did not answer, she went on passionately: "That's
why I went to sea, Frank. I was mad with jealousy. I couldn't give
you up to her. I couldn't let her have you!"
She pressed closer against him, and tiptoeing so as to raise her
mouth to his ear, she whispered: "I always liked you better than
anybody else in the world, Frank. I love you! I love you!"
For the moment he could not realise his own good fortune. He could
do nothing but look into her eyes. It was her reproach for years
afterwards that she had to kiss him first.
"I suppose it had to come, Frank," she said. "I fought all I
could, but it didn't seem any use!"
"It was inevitable," he returned solemnly. "God made you for me,
and me for you!"
"Amen," she said, and in an ecstasy of abandonment whispered
again: "I love you, Frank. I love you!"
FFRENCHES FIRST
I suppose if I had been a hero of romance, instead of an ordinary
kind of chap, I would have steamed in with the Tallahassee, fired
a gun, and landed in state, instead of putting on my old clothes
and sneaking into the county on an automobile. However, I did my
little best, so far as making a date with Babcock was concerned,
and as it turned out in the end I dare say the hero of romance
wouldn't have managed it much better himself. It was late when I
got into Forty Fyles (as the village was called), and put up at
one of those quaint, low-raftered, bulging old inns which still
remain, thank Heaven, here and there, in the less travelled parts
of England. If I were dusty and dirty when I arrived, you ought to
have seen me the next day after a two-hours' job with the
differential gears. By the time I had got the trouble to rights,
and had puffed up and down the main street to make assurance sure
and astonish the natives (who came out two hundred strong and
cheered), I was as frowsy, unkempt, and dilapidated an American as
ever drove a twelve H.P. Panhard through the rural lanes of
Britain. Indeed, I was so shocked at my own appearance when I
looked at myself in the glass (such a wiggly old glass that showed
one in streaks like bacon) that I went down to the draper's and
tried to buy a new set out. But as they had nothing except cheap
tripper suits for pigmies (I stood six feet in my stockings and
had played full back at college) and fishermen's clothes of an
ancient Dutch design, I forebore to waste my good dollars in
making a guy of myself, and decided to remain as I was.
Then, as I was sitting in the bar and asking the potman the best
way to get to Castle Fyles, it suddenly came over me that it was
the Fourth of July, and that, recreant as I was, I had come near
forgetting the event altogether. I started off again down the main
street to discover some means of raising a noise, and after a good
deal of searching I managed to procure several handfuls of strange
whitey fire-crackers the size of cigars and a peculiar red package
that the shopkeeper called a "Haetna Volcano." He said that for
four and eightpence one couldn't find its match in Lunnon itself,
and obligingly took off twopence when I pointed out Vesuvius
hadn't a fuse. With the crackers in my pocket and the volcano
under my arm I set forth in the pleasant summer morning to walk to
Castle Fyles, having an idea to rest by the way and celebrate the
Fourth in the very heart of the hereditary enemy.
The road, as is so often the case in England, ran between high
stone walls and restrained the wayfarer from straying into the
gentlemen's parks on either hand. The sun shone overhead with the
fierce heat of a British July; and to make matters worse in my
case, I seemed to be the loadstone of what traffic was in progress
on the highway. A load of hay stuck to me with obstinate
determination; if I walked slowly, the hay lagged beside me; if I
quickened my pace, the hay whipped up his horses; when I rested
and mopped my brow, the hay rested and mopped ITS brow. Then there
were tramps of various kinds: a Punch and Judy show on the march;
swift silent bicyclists who sped past in a flurry of dust; local
gentry riding cock-horses (no doubt to Banbury Crosses); local
gentry in dogcarts; local gentry in closed carriages going to a
funeral, and apparently (as seen through the windows) very hot and
mournful and perspiring; an antique clergyman in an antique gig
who gave me a tract and warned me against drink; a char-a-bancs
filled to bursting with the True Blue Constitutional Club of East
Pigley--such at least was the inscription on a streaming banner--
who swung past waving their hats and singing "Our Boarder's such a
Nice Young Man"; then some pale aristocratic children in a sort of
perambulating clothes-basket drawn by a hairy mite of a pony, who
looked at me disapprovingly, as though I hadn't honestly come by
the volcano; then--but why go on with the never-ending procession
of British pilgrims who straggled out at just sufficient intervals
to keep between them a perpetual eye on my movements and prevent
me from celebrating the birth of freedom in any kind of privacy.
At last, getting desperate at this espionage and thinking besides
I could make a shorter cut towards Castle Fyles, I clambered over
an easy place in the left-hand wall and dropped into the shade of
a magnificent park. Here, at least, whatever the risk of an
outraged law (which I had been patronisingly told was even
stricter than that of the Medes and Persians), I seemed free to
wander unseen and undetected, and accordingly struck a course
under the oaks that promised in time to bring me out somewhere
near the sea.
Dipping into a little dell, where in the perfection of its English
woodland one might have thought to meet Robin Hood himself, or
startle Little John beside a fallen deer, I looked carefully
about, got out my pale crackers, and wondered whether I dared
begin. It is always an eerie sensation to be alone in the forest,
what with the whispering leaves overhead, the stir and hum of
insects, the rustle of ghostly foot-falls, and (in my case) the
uneasy sense of green-liveried keepers sneaking up at one through
the clumps of gorse. However, I was not the man to belie the blood
of Revolutionary heroes and meanly carry my unexploded crackers
beyond the scene of danger, so I remembered the brave days of old
and touched a whitey off. It burst with the roar of a cannon and
reverberated through the glades like the broadside of a man-of-
war. It took me a good five minutes before I had the courage to
detonate another, which, for better security, I did this time
under my hat. I am not saying it did the hat any good, but it
seemed safer and less deafening, and I accordingly went on in this
manner until there were only about three whiteys left between me
and Vesuvius, which I kept back, in accordance with tradition, for
one big triumphant bang at the end.
I was in the act of touching my cigar to whitey number three,--on
my knees, I remember; and trying to arrange my hat so as to get
the most muffling for the least outlay of burned felt, when the
branches in front of me parted and I looked up to see--well,
simply the most beautiful woman in the world, regarding me with
astonishment and anger. She was about twenty, somewhat above the
medium height, and her eyes were of a lovely flashing blue that
seemed in the intensity of her indignation to positively emit
sparks--altogether the most exquisitely radiant and glorious
creature that man was ever privileged to gaze upon.
"How dare you let off fireworks in this park?" she said, in a
voice like clotted cream.
I rose in some confusion.
"Go directly," she said, "or I'll report you and have you
summonsed!"
"I have only two more crackers and this volcano," I said
protestingly. "Surely you would not mind----"
"Don't be insolent," she said, "or I shall have no compunction in
setting my dog on you."
I looked down, and there, sure enough, rolling a yellow eye and
showing his fangs at me, was a sort of Uncle Tom's Cabin
bloodhound only waiting to begin.
"The fact is," I said, speaking slowly, so as to emphasise the
fact that I was a gentleman, "I am an American; to-day is our
national holiday; and we make it everywhere our practice to
celebrate it with fireworks. I would have done so in the road, but
the island seemed so crowded this morning I couldn't find an
undisturbed place outside the park."
Beauty was obviously mollified by my tone and respectful address.
"Please leave the park directly," she said.
I put the crackers in my pocket, took up my hat, placed the Haetna
Volcano under my arm, and stood there, ready to go.
"Accept my apologies," I said. "Whatever my fault, at least no
discourtesy was intended."
We looked at each other, and Beauty's face relaxed into something
like a smile.
"Just give me one more minute for my volcano," I pleaded.
"You seem very polite," she returned. "Yes, you can set it off, if
that will be any satisfaction to you."
"It'll be a whole lot," I said, "and since you're so kind perhaps
you'll let me include the crackers as well?"
Then she began to laugh, and the sweetest thing about it was that
she didn't want to laugh a bit and blushed the most lovely pink,
as she broke out again and again until the woods fairly rang. And
as I laughed too--for really it was most absurd--it was as good as
a scene in a play. And so, while she held Legree's dog, whom the
sound inflamed to frenzy, I popped off the crackers and dropped my
cigar into Vesuvius. I tell you he was worth four and eightpence,
and the man was right when he said there wasn't his match in
London. I doubt if there was his match anywhere for being plumb-
full of red balls and green balls and blue balls and crimson stars
and fizzlegigs and whole torrents of tiny crackers and chase-me-
quicks, and when you about thought he was never going to stop he
shot up a silver spray and a gold spray and wound up with a very
considerable decent-sized bust.
"I must thank you for your good nature," I said to the young lady.
"Are you a typical American?" she asked. "Oh, so-so," I returned.
"There are heaps like me in New York."
"And do they all do this on the Fourth of July?" she asked.
"Every last one!" I said.
"Fancy!" she said.
"In America," I said, "when a man has received one favour he is
certain to make it the stepping-stone for another. Won't you
permit me to walk across the park to Castle Fyles?"
"Castle Fyles?" she repeated, with a little note of curiosity in
her girlish voice. "Then don't you know that this is Fyles Park?"
"Can't say I did," I returned. "But I am delighted to hear it."
"Why are you delighted to hear it?" she asked, making me feel more
than ever like an escaped lunatic.
"This is the home of my ancestors," I said, "and it makes me glad
to think they amount to something--own real estate--and keep their
venerable heads above water."
"So this is the home of your ancestors," she said.
"It's holy ground to me," I said.
"Fancy!" she exclaimed.
"At least I think it is," I went on, "though we haven't any proofs
beyond the fact that Fyles has always been a family name with us
back to the Colonial days. I'm named Fyles myself--Fyles ffrench--
and we, like the Castle people--have managed to retain our little
f throughout the ages."
She looked at me so incredulously that I handed her my card.
Mr. Fyles ffrench,
Knickerbocker Club.
She turned it over in her fingers, regarding me at the same time
with flattering curiosity.
"How do you do, kinsman?" she said, holding out her hand. "Welcome
to old England!"
I took her little hand and pressed it.
"I am the daughter of the house," she explained, "and I'm named
Fyles too, though they usually call me Verna."
"And the little f, of course," I said.
"Just like yours," she returned. "There may be some capital F's in
the family, but we wouldn't acknowledge them!"
"What a fellow-feeling that gives one!" I said. "At school, at
college, in business, in the war with Spain when I served on the
Dixie, my life has been one long struggle to preserve that little
f against a capital F world. I remember saying that to a chum the
day we sank Cervera, 'If I am killed, Bill,' I said, 'see that
they don't capital F me on the scroll of fame!'"
"A true ffrench!" exclaimed Beauty with approval.
"As true as yourself," I said.
"Do you know that I'm the last of them?" she said.
"You!" I exclaimed. "The last!"
"Yes," she said, "when my father dies the estates will pass to my
second cousin, Lord George Willoughby, and our branch of the
family will become extinct."
"You fill me with despair," I said.
"My father never can forgive me for being a girl," she said.
"I can," I remarked, "even at the risk of appearing disloyal to
the race."
"Fyles," she said, addressing me straight out by my first name,
and with a little air that told me plainly I had made good my
footing in the fold, "Fyles, what a pity you aren't the rightful
heir, come from overseas with parchments and parish registers, to
make good your claim before the House of Lords."
"Wouldn't that be rather hard on you?" I asked.
"I'd rather give up everything than see the old place pass to
strangers," she said.
"But I'm a stranger," I said.
"You're Fyles ffrench," she exclaimed, "and a man, and you'd hand
the old name down and keep the estate together."
"And guard the little f with the last drop of my blood," I said.
"Ah, well!" she said, with a little sigh, "the world's a
disappointing place at best, and I suppose it serves us right for
centuries of conceit about ourselves."
"That at least will never die," I observed. "The American branch
will see to that part of it."
"It's a pity, though, isn't it?" she said.
"Well," I said, "when a family has been carrying so much dog for a
thousand years, I suppose in common fairness it's time to give way
for another."
"What is carrying dog?" she said.
"It's American," I returned, "for thinking yourself better than
anybody else!"
"Fancy!" she said, and then with a beautiful smile she took my
hand and rubbed it against the hound's muzzle.
"You mustn't growl at him, Olaf," she said. "He's a ffrench; he's
one of us; and he has come from over the sea to make friends."
"You can't turn me out of the park after that," I said, in spite
of a very dubious lick from the noble animal, who, possibly
because he couldn't read and hadn't seen my card, was still a prey
to suspicion.
"I am going to take you back to the castle myself," she said, "and
we'll spend the day going all over it, and I shall introduce you
to my father--Sir Fyles--when he returns at five from Ascot."
"I could ask for nothing better," I said, "though I don't want to
make myself a burden to you. And then," I went on, a little
uncertain how best to express myself, "you are so queer in England
about--about----"
"Proprieties," she said, giving the word which I hesitated to use.
"Oh, yes! I suppose I oughtn't to; indeed, it's awful, and
there'll be lunch too, Fyles, which makes it twice as bad. But to-
day I'm going to be American and do just what I like."
"I thought I ought to mention it," I said.
"Objection overruled," she returned. "That's what they used to say
in court when my father had his famous right-of-way case with Lord
Piffle of Doom; and from what I remember there didn't seem any
repartee to it."
"There certainly isn't one from me," I said.
"Let's go," she said.
There didn't seem any end to that park, and we walked and walked
and rested once or twice under the deep shade, and took in a
mouldy pavilion in white marble with broken windows, and a Temple
of Love that dated back to the sixteenth century, and rowed on an
ornamental water in a real gondola that leaked like sixty, and
landed on a rushy island where there was a sun-dial and a stone
seat that the Druids or somebody had considerately placed there in
the year one, and talked of course, and grew confidential, until
finally I was calling her Verna (which was her pet name) and
telling her how the other fellow had married my best girl, while
she spoke most beautifully and sensibly about love, and the way
the old families were dying out because they had set greater store
on their lands than on their hearts, and altogether with what she
said and what I said, and what was understood, we passed from
acquaintance to friendship, and from friendship to the verge of
something even nearer. Even the Uncle Tom hound fell under the
spell of our new-found intimacy and condescended to lick my hand
of his own volition, which Verna said he had never done before
except to the butcher, and winked a bloodshot eye when I remarked
he was too big for the island and ought to go back with me to a
country nearer his size.
By the time we had reached the cliffs and began to perceive the
high grey walls of the castle in the distance, Verna and I were
faster friends than ever, and anyone seeing us together would have
thought we had known each other all our lives. I felt more and
more happy to think I had met her first in this unconventional
way, for as the castle loomed up closer and we passed gardeners
and keepers and jockeys with a string of race-horses out for
exercise, I felt that my pretty companion was constrained by the
sight of these obsequious faces and changing by gradations into
what she really was, the daughter of the castle and by right of
blood one of the great ladies of the countryside.
The castle itself was a tremendous old pile, built on a rocky
peninsula and surrounded on three sides by the waters of Appledore
Harbour, It lay so as to face the entrance, which Verna told me
was commanded--or rather had been in years past--by the guns of a
half-moon battery that stood planted on a sort of third-story
terrace. It was all towers and donjons and ramparts, and might, in
its mediaeval perfection, have been taken bodily out of one of Sir
Walter Scott's novels. Verna and I had lunch together in a
perfectly gorgeous old hall, with beams and carved panelling and
antlers, and a fireplace you could have roasted an ox in, and rows
of glistening suits of armour which the original ffrenches had
worn when they had first started the family in life--and all this,
if you please, tete-a-tete with a woman who seemed to get more
beautiful every minute I gazed at her, and who smiled back at me
and called me Fyles, to the stupefaction of three noiseless six-
footers in silk stockings. Disapproving six-footers, too, whose
gimlet eyes seemed to pierce my back as they sized up my clothes,
which, as I said before, had suffered not a little by my trip, and
my collar, which I'll admit straight out wasn't up to a castle
standard, and the undeniable stain of machine-oil on my cuffs
which I had got that morning in putting the machine to rights. You
ought to have seen the man that took my hat, which he did with the
air of a person receiving pearls and diamonds on a golden platter,
and smudged his lordly fingers with the grime of my Fourth of
July. And that darling of a girl, who never noticed my
discomfiture, but whose eyes sparkled at times with a hidden
merriment--shall I ever forget her as she sat there and helped me
to mutton-chops from simply priceless old Charles the First plate!
We had black coffee together in a window-seat overlooking the
harbour and the ships, and she asked me a lot of questions about
the war with Spain and my service in the Dixie. She never moved a
muscle when it came out I had been a quartermaster, though I could
feel she was astounded at my being but a shade above a common
seaman, and not, as she had taken it for granted, a commissioned
officer. I was too proud to explain over-much, or to tell her I
had gone in, as so many of my friends had done, from a strong
sense of duty and patriotism at the time of my country's need, and
consequently allowed her to get a very wrong idea, I suppose,
about my state in life and position in the world. Indeed, I was
just childish enough to get a trifle wounded, and let her add
misconception to misconception out of a silly obstinacy.
"But what do you do," she asked, "now that the war is over and
you've taken away everything from the poor Spaniards and left the
Navy?"
"Work," I said.
"What kind of work?" she asked.
"Oh, in an office!" I said. (I didn't tell her I was the Third
Vice President of the Amalgamated Copper Company, with a twenty-
story building on lower Broadway. Wild horses couldn't have wrung
it out of me then.)
"You're too nice for an office," she said, looking at me so
sweetly and sadly. "You ought to be a gentleman!"
"Oh, dear!" I exclaimed, "I hope I am that, even if I do grub
along in an office." I wish my partners could have heard me say
that. Why, I have a private elevator of my own and a squash-court
on the roof!
"Of course, I don't mean that," she went on quickly, "but like us,
I mean, with a castle and a place in society----"
"I have a sort of little picayune place in New York," I
interrupted. "I don't SLEEP in the office, you know. At night I go
out and see my friends and sometimes they invite me to dinner."
She looked at me more sadly than ever. I don't believe humour was
Verna's strong suit anyway,--not American humour, at least,--for
she not only believed what I said, but more too.
"I must speak to Papa about you," she said.
"What will he do?" I asked.
"Oh, help you along, you know," she said; "ffrenches always stand
together; it's a family trait, though it's dying out now for lack
of ffrenches. You know our family motto?" she went on.
"I'm afraid I don't," I said.
"'Ffrenches first!'" she returned.
I had to laugh.
"We've lived up to it in America," I said.
"Papa is quite a power in the City," she said.
"I thought he was a gentleman," I replied.
"Everybody dabbles in business nowadays," she returned, not
perceiving the innuendo. "I am sure Papa ought to know all about
it from the amount of money he has lost."
"Perhaps his was a case of ffrenches last!" I said.
"Still, he knows all the influential people," she continued, "and
it would be so easy for him to get you a position over here."
"That would be charming," I said.
"And then I might see you occasionally," she said, with such a
little ring of kindness in her voice that for a minute I felt a
perfect brute for deceiving her. "You could run down here from
Saturday to Monday, you know, and on Bank Holidays, and in the
season you would have the entree to our London house and the
chance of meeting nice people!"
"How jolly!" I said.
"I can't bear you to go back to America," she said. "Now that I've
found you, I'm going to keep you."
"I hate the thought of going back myself," I said, and so I did--
at the thought of leaving that angel!
"Then, you know," she went on, somewhat shyly and hesitatingly,
"you have such good manners and such a good air, and you're so----
"
"Don't mind saying handsome," I remarked.
"You really are very nice-looking," she said, with a seriousness
that made me acutely uncomfortable, "and what with our friendship
and our house open to you and the people you could invite down
here, because I know Papa is going to go out of his mind about
you--he and I are always crazy about the same people, you know--
not to speak of the little f, there is no reason, Fyles, why in
the end you shouldn't marry an awfully rich girl and set up for
yourself!"
"Thank you," I said, "but if it's all the same to you I don't
think I'd care to."
"I know awfully rich girls who are pretty too," she said, as
though forestalling an objection.
"I do too," I said, looking at her so earnestly that she coloured
up to the eyes.
"Oh, I am poor!" she said. "It's all we can do to keep the place
up. Besides--besides----" And then she stopped and looked out of
the window. I saw I had been a fool to be so personal, and I was
soon punished for my presumption, for she rose to her feet and
said in an altered voice that she would now show me the castle.
As I said before, it was a tremendous old place. It was a two-
hours' job to go through it even as we did, and then Verna said we
had skipped a whole raft of things she would let me see some other
time. There was a private theatre, a chapel with effigies of
cross-legged Crusaders, an armoury with a thousand stand of flint-
locks, a library, magnificent state apartments with wonderful
tapestries, a suite of rooms where they had confined a mad ffrench
in the fifteenth century, with the actual bloodstains on the floor
where he had dashed out his poor silly brains against the wall; a
magazine with a lot of empty powder-casks Cromwell had left there;
a vaulted chamber for the men of the half-moon battery; a well
which was said to have no bottom and which had remained unused for
a hundred years, because a wicked uncle had thrown the rightful
heir into it; and slimy, creepy-crawly dungeons with chains for
your hands and feet; and cachettes where they spilled you through
a hole in the floor, and let it go at that; and--but what wasn't
there, indeed, in that extraordinary old feudal citadel, which had
been in continuous human possession since the era of Hardicanute.
There seemed to be only one thing missing in the whole castle, and
that was a bath--though I dare say there was one in the private
apartments not shown to me. It was a regular dive into the last
five hundred years, and the fact that it wasn't a museum nor
exploited by a sing-song cicerone, helped to make it for me a
memorable and really thrilling experience. I conjured up my
forebears and could see them playing as children, growing to
manhood, passing into old age, and finally dying in the shadow of
those same massive walls. Verna said I was quite pale when we
emerged at last into the open air on the summit of the high square
tower; and no wonder that I was, for in a kind of way I had been
deeply impressed, and it seemed a solemn thing that I, like her,
should be a child of this castle, with roots deep cast in far-off
ages.
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