Books: Love, The Fiddler
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Lloyd Osbourne >> Love, The Fiddler
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"Too bad!" ejaculated Raymond.
"I call it deuced hard luck," said Quintan. "My mother really
neglected us shamefully, and it was Aunt Christine who brought us
up and blew our noses and rubbed us with goose-grease when we had
croup, and all that kind of thing. Then, when we grew up, my
mother suddenly discovered her long-lost children and began to
think a heap of us--after having scamped the whole business for
fifteen years--and my aunt, who was the real nigger in the hedge,
got kind of let out, you see."
Raymond did not see, and he was indignant, besides, at the
coarseness of his companion's expressions. So he walked along and
said nothing.
"And, as I said before, it's now too late," said Quintan.
"Too late for what?" demanded Raymond, who was deeply interested.
"For her to take up with anybody else," said Quintan. "To marry,
you know. She sacrificed all her opportunities for us; and now, in
the inevitable course of things, we are kind of abandoning her
when she is old and faded and lonely."
"I consider your aunt one of the most beautiful women in the
world," protested Raymond.
"But you can't put back the clock, old fellow," said Quintan.
"What has the world to offer to an old maid of forty-two? There
she is in the empty nest, and not her own nest at that, with all
her little nestlings flying over the hills and far away, and the
genuine mother-bird varying the monotony by occasionally pecking
her eyes out."
Raymond did not know what to answer. He could not be so rude as to
make any reflection on Mrs. Quintan, though he was stirred with
resentment against her. This noble, angelic, saintly woman, who in
every gesture reminded him of dead queens and historic personages!
It went to his heart to think of her, bereft and lonely, in that
splendid house he had so lately quitted. He recognised, in the
unmistakable accord between him and her, the fellowship of a pair
who, in different ways and in different stations, had yet fought
and suffered and endured for what they judged their duty. Forty-
two years old! Singular coincidence, in itself almost a bond
between them, that he, too, was of an identical age. Forty-two!
Why, it was called the prime of life. He inhaled a deep breath of
air; it was the prime of life; until then no one had really begun
to live!
"Why don't you say something?" said Quintan.
"I was just thinking how mistaken you were," returned Raymond.
"There must be hundreds of men who would be proud to win her
slightest regard; who, instead of considering her faded or old,
would choose her out of a thousand of younger women and would be
happy for ever if she would take--" He was going to say them, but
that sounded improper, and he changed it, at the cost of grammar,
to "him."
Quintan laughed at his companion's vehemence, and the subject
passed and gave way to another about shrapnel. But he did not
fail, later on, to carry a humorous report of the conversation to
his aunt.
"What have you been doing to my old quartermaster?" he said.
"Hasn't the poor fellow enough troubles as it is, without falling
in love with you! He can't talk of anything else, and blushes like
a girl when he mentions your name. He told me yesterday he was
willing to die for a woman like you."
"I think he's a dear, nice fellow," said Miss Latimer, "and if he
wants to love me he can. It will keep him out of mischief!"
Raymond saw a great deal of Miss Latimer in the month before they
sailed south. Quintan took him constantly to the house, where, in
his capacity of humble and devoted comrade, the tall quartermaster
was always welcome and made much of. Mrs. Quintan was alive to the
value of this attached follower, who might be trusted to guard her
son in the perils that lay before him. She treated him as a sort
of combination of valet, nurse, and poor relation, asking him all
sorts of intimate questions about Howard's socks and
underclothing, and holding him altogether responsible for the
boy's welfare. Her tone was one of anxious patronage, touching at
times on a deeper emotion when she often broke down and cried. The
quartermaster was greatly moved by her trust in him. The tears
would come to his own eyes, and he would try in his clumsy way to
comfort her, promising that, so far as it lay with him, Howard
should return safe and sound. In his self-abnegation it never
occurred to him that his own life was as valuable as Howard
Quintan's. He acquiesced in the understanding that it was his
business to get Howard through the war unscratched, at whatever
risk or jeopardy to himself.
Those were wonderful days for him. To be an intimate of that
splendid household, to drive behind spanking bays with Miss
Latimer by his side, to take tea at the Waldorf with her and other
semi-divine beings--what a dazzling experience for the ex-clerk,
whose lines so recently had lain in such different places.
Innately a gentleman, he bore himself with dignity in this new
position, with a fine simplicity and self-effacement that was not
lost on some of his friends. His respect for them all was
unbounded. For the mother, so majestic, so awe-inspiring; for
Howard, that handsome boy whose exuberant Americanism was
untouched by any feeling of caste; for Melton and Hubert Henry,
his brothers, those lordly striplings of a lordly race; for Miss
Latimer, who in his heart of hearts he dared not call Christine,
and who to him was the embodiment of everything adorable in women.
Yes, he loved her; confessed to himself that he loved her; humbly
and without hope, with no anticipation of anything more between
them, overcome indeed that his presumption should go thus far.
He did not attempt to hide his feelings for her, and though too
shy for any expression of it, and withheld besides by the utter
impossibility of such a suit, he betrayed himself to her in a
thousand artless ways. He asked for no higher happiness than to
sit by her side, looking into her face and listening to her mellow
voice. He was thrice happy were he privileged to touch her hand in
passing a teacup. Her gentleness and courtesy, her evident
consideration, the little peeps she gave him into a nature
gracious and refined beyond anything he had ever known, all
transported him with unreasoning delight. She, on her part, so
accustomed to play a minor role herself in her sister's
household, was yet too much a woman not to like an admirer of her
own. She took more pains with her dress, looked at herself more
often in the glass than she had done in years. It was laughable;
it was absurd; and she joined as readily as anyone in the mirth
that Raymond's devotion excited in the family, but, deep down
within her, she was pleased. At the least it showed she had not
grown too old to make men love her; it was the vindication of the
mounting years; the time, then, had not yet come when she had
ceased altogether to count. She had lost her nephews, who were
growing to be men; the love she put by so readily when it was in
her reach seemed now more precious as she beheld her faded and
diminished beauty, the crow's-feet about her eyes, her hair
turning from brown to grey. A smothered voice within her said:
"Why not?"
She analysed Raymond narrowly in the long tete-a-tetes they had
together. She drew him out, encouraging and pressing him to tell
her everything about himself. She was always apprehending a
jarring note, the inevitable sign of the man's coarser clay, of
his commoner upbringing, the clash of his caste on hers. But she
was struck instead by his inherent refinement, by his unformulated
instincts of well-doing and honour. He was hazy about the use of
oyster-forks, had never seen a finger-bowl, committed to her eyes
a dozen little solecisms which he hastened to correct by frankly
asking her assistance; but in the true essentials she never had to
feel any shame for him. Clumsy, grotesquely ignorant of the social
amenities, he was yet a gentleman.
The night before they were to sail, he came to say good-bye. The
war had at last begun in earnest; men were falling, and the
Spaniards were expected to make a desperate and bloody resistance.
It was a sobering moment for everyone, and, in all voices, however
hard they tried to make them brave and gay, there ran an
undercurrent of solemnity. Howard and Raymond were to be actors in
that terrible drama not yet played; stripped and powder-blackened
at their guns, they were perhaps doomed to go down with their ship
and find their graves in the Caribbean. Before them lay untold
possibilities of wounds and mutilation, of disease, suffering, and
horror. What woman that knew them could look on unmoved at the
sight of these men, so grave and earnest, so quietly resolute, so
deprecatory of anything like braggadocio or over-confidence? It
filled Christine Latimer with a fierce pride in herself and them;
in a race that could breed men so gentle and so brave; in a
country that was founded so surely on the devoted hearts of its
citizens.
She was crying as Raymond came to her later on the same evening,
and found her sitting in the far end of the drawing-room with the
lights turned low. They were alone together, for the quartermaster
had left Howard with his mother and his brothers gathered in a
farewell group about the library fire. Miss Latimer took both of
Raymond's hands, and, with no attempt to disguise her sorrow, drew
him close beside her on the divan. She was overflowing with pity
for this poor fellow, whose life had been so hard, in which until
now there had neither been love nor friends, whose only human tie
was to his mother and to her. Had he known it, he might have put
his arms about her and kissed her tear-swollen eyes and drawn her
head against his breast. She was filled with a pent-up tenderness
for him; a word, and she would have discovered what was until then
inarticulate in her bosom. But the tall quartermaster was withheld
from such incredible presumption. Her beautiful gown against his
common serge typified, as it were, the gulf between them. Her
distress, her agitation, were in his mind due to her concern for
Howard Quintan; and he told her again and again, with manly
sincerity, that he would take good care of her boy.
She knew he loved her. It had been plain to her for weeks past.
She knew every thought in his head as he sat there beside her,
thrilled with the touch of her hands, and in the throes of a
respectful rapture. Again and again the avowal was on his lips; he
longed to tell her how dear she was to him; it would be hard to
die with that unsaid, were he to be amongst those who never
returned. It never occurred to him that she might return his love.
A woman like her! A queen!
She could easily have helped him out. More than once she was on
the point of doing so. But the woman in her rebelled at the
thought of taking what was the man's place. She had something of
the exaggerated delicacy of an old maid. It was for him to ask,
for her to answer; and the precious moments slipped away. At last,
greatly daring, he managed to blurt out the fact that he wanted to
ask a favour.
"A favour?" she said.
"Won't you give me something," he said timidly, "some little thing
to take with me to remember you by?"
She replied she would with pleasure. She wanted him to remember
her. What was it that he would like?
"There is nothing I could refuse you," she said, smiling.
Raymond was overcome with embarrassment. She saw him looking at
her hair; her hair which was her greatest beauty, and which when
undone was luxuriant enough to reach below her waist. He had often
expressed his admiration for it.
"What would you like?" she asked again.
"Oh, anything," he faltered. "A--a book!"
She could not restrain her laughter. A book! She laughed and
laughed. She seemed carried away by an extraordinary merriment.
Raymond thought he had never heard a woman laugh like that before.
It made him feel very badly. He wondered what it was that had made
his request so ridiculous. He thanked his stars that he had held
his tongue about the other thing. Ah, what a fool he had been! He
could not have borne it, had the other been received with the same
derision.
"I shall give you my prayer-book," she said at last, wiping her
eyes and looking less amused than he had expected. "I've had it
many years and value it dearly. It is prettily bound in Russia,
and if you carry it on the proper place romance will see that it
stops a bullet--though a Bible, I believe, is the more correct."
Somehow her tone sounded less cordial. She had withdrawn her
hands, and her humour, at such a moment, jarred on him. In spite
of his good resolutions he had managed to put his foot into it
after all. Perhaps she had begun to suspect his secret and was
displeased. He departed feeling utterly wretched and out of heart,
and got very scant comfort from his book, for it only reminded him
of how seriously he had compromised himself. He was in two minds
whether or not to send it back, but decided not to do so in fear
lest he might give fresh offence. The next day at dawn the Dixie
sailed for the scene of war.
III
Then followed the historic days of the blockade; the first landing
on Cuba; the suspense and triumph attending Cervera's capture; El
Caney; San Juan Hill; Santiago; and the end of the war. Howard
Quintan fell ill with fever and was early invalided home; but
Raymond stayed to the finish, an obscure spectator, often an
obscure actor, in that world-drama of fleets and armies. Tried in
the fire, his character underwent some noted changes. He developed
unexpected aptitudes, became a marksman of big guns, showed
resource and skill in boat-work, earned the repeated commendations
of his superiors. He put his resolutions to the test, and emerged,
surprised, thankful, and satisfied, to find that he was a brave
man. He rose in his own esteem; it was borne in on him that he had
qualities that others often lacked; it was inspiriting to win a
reputation for daring, fearlessness, and responsibility.
He wrote when he could to his mother and Miss Latimer, and at rare
intervals was sometimes fortunate enough to hear in turn from
them. His mother was ill; the strain of his absence and danger was
telling on her enfeebled constitution; she said she could not have
got along at all had it not been for Miss Latimer's great
kindness. It seemed that the old maid was her constant visitor,
bringing her flowers, taking her drives, comforting her in the
dark hours when her courage was nigh spent. "A good and noble
woman," wrote the old lady, "and very much in love with my boy."
That line rang in Raymond's head long afterwards. He read it
again and again, bewildered, tempted and yet afraid to believe it
true, moved to the depths of his nature, at once happy and unhappy
in the gamut of his doubts. It could not be possible. No, it could
not be possible. Standing at the breech of his gun, his eyes on a
Spanish gunboat they had driven under the shelter of a fort, he
found himself repeating: "And very much in love with my boy. And
very much in love with my boy." And then, suddenly becoming intent
again on the matter in hand, he slammed the breech-mechanism shut
and gave the enemy a six-inch shell.
Then there came the news of his mother's death. As much a victim
of the war as any stricken soldier or sailor at the front, she was
numbered on the roll of the fallen. The war had killed her as
certainly, as surely, as any Mauser bullet sped from a tropic
thicket. Raymond had only the consolation of knowing that Miss
Latimer had been with her at the last and that she had followed
his mother to the grave. Her letter, tender and pitiful, filled
him with an inexpressible emotion. His little world now held but
her.
This was the last letter he was destined to receive from her. The
others, if there were others, all went astray in the chaotic
confusion attendant on active service. The poor quartermaster,
when the ship was so lucky as to take a mail aboard, grew
accustomed to be told that there was nothing for him. He lost
heart and stopped writing himself. What was the use, he asked
himself? Had she not abandoned him? The critical days of the war
were over; peace was assured; the victory won, the country was
already growing forgetful of the victors. Such were his moody
reflections as he paced the deck, hungry for the word that never
came. Yes, he was forgotten. There could be no other explanation
of that long silence. He was forgotten!
He returned in due course to New York and was paid off and
mustered out of the service. It was dusk when he boarded an uptown
car and stood holding to a strap, jostled and pushed about by the
unheeding crowd. Already jealous of his uniform, he felt a little
bitterness to see it regarded with such scant respect. He looked
out of the windows at the lighted streets and wondered whether any
of those hurrying thousands cared a jot for the men that had
fought and died for them. The air, so sharp and chill after the
tropics, served still further to dispirit him and add the
concluding note of depression to his home-coming. He got off the
car and walked down to Fifth Avenue, holding his breath as he drew
near the Quintans' house. He rang the bell: waited and rang again.
Then at last the door was unlocked and opened by an old woman.
"Is Miss--Mrs. Quintan at home?" he asked.
"Gone to Europe," said the old woman.
"But Miss Latimer?" he persisted.
"Gone to Europe," said the old woman.
"Mr. Howard Quintan?"
"Gone to Europe!"
He walked slowly down the steps, not even waiting to ask for their
address abroad nor when they might be expected to return. They had
faded into the immeasurable distance. What more was there to be
said or hoped, and his dejected heart gave back the answer:
nothing. He slept that night in a cheap hotel. The next day he
bought a suit of civilian clothes and sought the office of the
auditor's department. Here he received something more like a
welcome. Many of the clerks, with whom he had scarcely been on
nodding terms, now came up and shook him warmly by the hand. The
superintendent sent for him and told him that his place had been
held open, hinting, in the exuberance of the moment, at a slight
increase of salary. The assistant superintendent made much of him
and invited him out to lunch. The old darkey door-keeper greeted
him like a long-lost parent. Raymond went back to his desk, and
resumed with a sort of melancholy satisfaction the interrupted
routine of twenty years. In a week he could hardly believe he had
ever quitted his desk. He would shut his eyes and wonder whether
the war had not been all a dream. He looked at his hands and asked
himself whether they indeed had pulled the lanyards of cannon,
lifted loaded projectiles, had held the spokes of the leaping
wheel. His eyes, now intent on figures, had they in truth ever
searched the manned decks of the enemy or trained the sights that
had blown Spanish blockhouses to the four winds of heaven? Had it
been he or his ghost who had stood behind the Nordenfeldt shields
with the bullets pattering against the steel and stinging the air
overhead? He or his ghost, barefoot in the sand that sopped the
blood of fallen comrades, the ship shaking with the detonation of
her guns, the hoarse cheering of her crew re-echoing in his half-
deafened ears? A dream, yes; tragic and wonderful in the
retrospect, filled with wild, bright pictures; incredible, yet
true!
He was restless and lonely. He dreaded his evenings, which he knew
not how to spend; dreaded the recurring Sunday, interminable in
duration, whose leaden hours seemed never to reach their end. His
only solace was in his work, which took him out of himself and
prevented him from thinking. He made a weekly pilgrimage past the
Quintans' house. The blinds were always drawn. It was as dead as
one of those Cuban mills, standing in the desolation of burned
fields. Once, greatly daring, and impelled by a sudden impulse, he
went to the door and requested the address of his vanished
friends:
"Grand Hotel, Vevey, Switzerland." He repeated the words to
himself as he went back to his boarding-house, repeated them again
and again like a child going on an errand, "Grand Hotel, Vevey,
Switzerland," in a sort of panic lest he might forget them. He
tossed that night in his bed in a torment of indecision. Ought he
to write? Ought he to take the risk of a reply, courteous and
cold, that he felt himself without the courage to endure? Or was
it not better to put an end to it altogether and accept like a man
the inevitable "no" of her decision.
He rose at dawn, and, lighting the gas, went back to bed with what
paper he could lay his hands on. He had no pen, no ink, only the
stub of a pencil he carried in his pocket. How it flew over the
ragged sheets under the fierce spell of his determination! All the
misery and longing of months went out in that letter. Inarticulate
no longer, he found the expression of a passionate and despairing
eloquence. He could not live without her; he loved her; he had
always loved her; before he had been daunted by the inequality
between them, but now he must speak or die. At the end he asked
her, in set old-fashioned terms, whether or not she would marry
him.
He mailed it as it was, in odd sheets and under the cover of an
official envelope of the railroad company. He dropped it into the
box and walked away, wondering whether he wasn't the biggest fool
on earth and the most audacious, and yet stirred and trembling
with a strange satisfaction. After all he was a man; he had lived
as a man should, honorably and straightforwardly; he had the
right to ask such a question of any woman and the right to an
honest and considerate answer. Be it yes or no, he could reproach
himself no longer with perhaps having let his happiness slip past
him. The matter would be put beyond a doubt for ever, and if it
went against him, as in the bottom of his heart he felt assured it
would, he would try to bear it with what fortitude he might. She
would know that he loved her. There was always that to comfort
him. She would know that he loved her.
He got a postal guide and studied out the mails. He learned the
names of the various steamers, the date of their sailing and
arriving, the distance of Vevey from the sea. Were she to write on
the same day she received his letter, he might hear from her by
the Touraine. Were she to wait a day, her answer would be delayed
for the Normandie. All this, if the schedule was followed to the
letter and bad weather or accident did not intervene. The shipping
page of the New York Herald became the only part of it he read. He
scanned it daily with anxiety. Did it not tell him of his letter
speeding over seas? For him no news was good news, telling him
that all was well. He kept himself informed of the temperature of
Paris, the temperature of Nice, and worried over the floods in
Belgium. From the gloomy offices of the railroad he held all
Europe under the closest scrutiny.
Then came the time when his letter was calculated to arrive. In
his mind's eye he saw the Grand Hotel at Vevey, a Waldorf-Astoria
set in snowy mountains with attendant Swiss yodelling on
inaccessible summits, or getting marvels of melody out of little
hand-bells, or making cuckoo clocks in top-swollen chalets. The
letter would be brought to her on a silver salver, exciting
perhaps the stately curiosity of Mrs. Quintan and questions
embarrassing to answer. It was a pity he used that railroad
envelope! Or would it lie beside her plate at breakfast, as clumsy
and unrefined as himself, amid a heap of scented notes from
members of the nobility? Ah, if he could but see her face and read
his fate in her blue eyes!
When he returned home that night there was a singular-looking
telegram awaiting him on the hall table. His hands shook as he
took it up for it suddenly came over him that it was a cable. It
had never occurred to him that she might do that; that there was
anything more expeditious than the mail.
"Sailing by Touraine arriving sixth Christine Latimer."
He read and re-read it until the type grew blurred. What did it
mean? He asked himself that a thousand times. What did it mean? He
sought his room and locked the door, striding up and down with
agitation, the cablegram clenched in his hand. He was beside
himself, triumphant and yet in a fever of misgiving. Was it not
perhaps a coincidence--not an answer to his own letter, but one of
those extraordinary instances of what is called telepathy? Her
words would bear either interpretation. Possibly the whole family
was returning with her. Possibly she had never seen his letter at
all. Possibly it was following her back to America, unopened and
undelivered.
"Sailing by Touraine arriving sixth." Was that an answer? Perhaps
indeed it was. Perhaps it was a woman's way of saying "yes"; it
might even be, in her surpassing kindness, that she was coming to
break her refusal as gently as she might, too considerate of his
feelings to write it baldly on paper. At least, amid all these
doubts, it assured him of one thing, her regard; that he was not
forgotten; that he had been mistaken in thinking himself ignored.
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