_ CHAPTER XI. The Empress and Sir John Meet Again
The company emerged from the tent into the enchanted outdoors of the star-dotted valley. The moon rode high, and flooded the glades with silvery effulgency. The heat of the day had bred a summer storm-cloud, which, all quivery with lightning, seemed sweeping around from the northwest to the north, giving us the delicious experience of enjoying calm, in view of storm.
The music of the orchestra soon told that the pavilion had been cleared for dancing. I heard Giddings urging upon Miss Addison that it would be much better for them to walk in the moonlight than to encourage by their presence such a worldly amusement, and one in which he had never been able to do anything better than fail, anyhow. Sighing her pain at the frivolity of the world, she took his arm and strolled away. I noticed that she clung closely to him, frightened, I suppose, at the mysterious rustlings in the trees, or something.
They made up the dances in such a way as to leave me out. I rather wanted to dance with Antonia; but Mr. Cecil was just leaving her in disappointment, in the possession of Mr. Elkins, when I went for her. I decided that a cigar and solitude were rather to be chosen than anything else which presented itself, and accordingly I took possession of one of the hammocks, in which I lay and smoked, and watched the towering thunder-head, as it stood like a mighty and marvelous mountain in the northern sky, its rounded and convoluted summits serenely white in the moonlight, its mysterious caves palpitant with incessant lightning. The soothing of the cigar; the new-made lake reflecting the gleam of hundreds of lanterns; the illuminated pavilion, its whirling company of dancers seen under the uprolled walls; the night, with its strange contrast of a calm southern sky on the one hand pouring down its flood of moonlight, and in the north the great mother-of-pearl dome with its core of vibrant fire; the dance-music throbbing through the lindens; and all this growing out of the unwonted and curious life of the past few months, bore to me again that feeling of being yoked with some thaumaturge of wondrous power for the working of enchantments. Again I seemed in a partnership with Aladdin; and fairy pavilions, sylvan paradises, bevies of dancing girls, and princes bearing gifts of gold and jewels, had all obeyed our conjuration. I could have walked down to the naphtha pleasure-boat and bidden the engineer put me down at Khorassan, or some dreamful port of far Cathay, with no sense of incongruity.
Two figures came from the tent and walked toward me. As I looked at them, myself in darkness, they in the light, I had again that feeling of having seen them in some similar way before. That same old sensation, thought I, that the analytic novelist made trite ages ago. Then I saw that it was Mr. Cornish and Miss Trescott. I could hear them talking; but lay still, because I was loth to have my reveries disturbed. And besides, to speak would seem an unwarranted assumption of confidential relations on their part. They stopped near me.
"Your memory is not so good as mine," said he. "I knew you at once. Knew you! Why--"
"I'm not very good at keeping names and faces in mind," she replied, "unless they belong to people I have known very well."
"Indeed!" his voice dropped to the 'cello-like undertone now; "isn't that a little unkind? I fancied that
we knew each other very well! My conceit is not to be pandered to, I perceive."
"Ye-e-s--does it seem that way?" said she, ignoring the last remark. "Well, you know it was only for a few days, and you kept calling yourself by some ridiculous alias, and scarcely used your surname at all, and I believe they called you Johnny--and you can't think what a disguise such a beard is! But I remember you now perfectly. It quite brings back those short months, when I was so young--and was finding things out! I can see the vine-covered porch, and Madame Lamoreaux's boarding-house on the South Side--"
"And the old art gallery?"
"Why, there was one, wasn't there?" said she, "somewhere along the lake front, wasn't it?... Such a pleasant meeting, and so odd!"
I sat up in the hammock, and stared at them as they went on their promenade. The old art gallery, the vine-covered porch, the young man with the smooth-shaven dark face and the thrilling, vibrant voice, and the young, young girl with the ruddy hair, and the little, round form! She seemed taller now, and there was more of maturity in the figure; but it was the same lissome waist and petite gracefulness which had so fully explained to me the avid eyes of her lover on that day when I had fled from the report of the Committee on Permanent Organization. It was the Empress Josephine, I had known that--and her Sir John!
Then I thought of her flying from him into the street, and the little bowed head on the street-car; and the old pity for her, the old bitterness toward him, returned upon me. I wondered how he could speak to her in this nonchalant way; what they were saying to each other; whether they would ever refer to that night at Auriccio's; what Alice would think of him if she ever found it out; whether he was a villain, or only erred passionately; what was actually said in that palm alcove that night so long ago; whether this man, with the eyes and voice so fascinating to women, would renew his suit in this new life of ours; what Jim would think about it; and, more than all, how Josie herself would regard him.
"She ought never to have spoken to him again!" I hear some one say.
Ah, Madam, very true. But do you remember any authentic case of a woman who failed to forgive the man whose error or offense had for its excuse the irresistible attraction of her own charms?
They were coming back now, still talking.
"You dropped out of sight, like a partridge into a thicket," said he. "Some of them said you had gone back to--to--"
"To the farm," she prompted.
"Well, yes," he conceded; "and others said you had left Chicago for New York; and some, even Paris."
"I fail to see the warrant," said Josie, as they approached the limit of earshot, "for any of the people at Madame Lamoreux's giving themselves the trouble to investigate."
"So far as that is concerned," said he, "I should think that I--" and his voice quite lost intelligibility.
My cigar had gone out, and the cessation of the music ought to have apprised me of the breaking up of the dance, and still I lay looking at the sky and filled with my thoughts.
"Here he is," said Alice, "asleep in the hammock! For shame, Albert! This would not have occurred, once!"
"I am free to admit that," said I, "but why am I now disturbed?"
"We're going on a cruise in the gondola," said Antonia, "and Mr. Elkins says you are lieutenant, and we can't sail without you. Come, it's perfectly beautiful out there."
"We're going to the head of navigation and back," said Jim, "and then our revels will be ended. --Hang it!" to me, "they left the skull and crossbones off all the flags!"
Mr. Barr-Smith at once engaged the engineer in conversation, and seemed worming from him all his knowledge of the construction of the boat. The rest of us lounged on cushions and seats. We threaded our way up the new pond, winding between clumps of trees, now in broad moonlight, now in deepest shade. The shower had swept over to the northeast, just one dark flounce of its skirt reaching to the zenith. A cool breeze suddenly sprang up from the west, stirred by the suction of the receding storm, and a roar came from the trees on the hilltops.
"Better run for port," said Jim; "I'd hate to have Mr. Barr-Smith suffer shipwreck where the charts don't show any water!"
As we ran down the open way, the remark seemed less and less of a joke. The gale poured over the hills, and struck the boat like the buffet of a great hand. She heeled over alarmingly, bumped upon a submerged stump, righted, heeled again, this time shipping a little sea, and then the sharp end of a hidden oak-limb thrust up through the bottom, and ripped its way out again, leaving us afloat in the deepest part of the lake, with a spouting fountain in the middle of the vessel, and the chopping waves breaking over the gunwale. All at once, I noticed Cecil Barr-Smith, with his coat off, standing near Antonia, who sat as cool as if she had been out on some quiet road driving her pacers. The boat sank lower in the water, and I had no doubt that she was sinking. Antonia rose, and stretched her hands towards Jim. I do not see how he could avoid seeing this; but he did, and, as if abandoning her to her fate, he leaped to Josie's side. Cornish had seized
her by the arm, and seemed about to devote himself to her safety, when Jim, without a word, lifted her in his arms, and leaped lightly upon the forward deck, the highest and driest place on the sinking craft. Then, as everything pointed to a speedy baptism in the lake for all of us, we saw that the very speed of the wind had saved us, and felt the gondola bump broadside upon the dam. Jim sprang to the abutment with Josie, and Cecil Barr-Smith half carried and half led Antonia to the shore. Alice and I sat calmly on the windward rail; and Barr-Smith, laughing with delight, helped us across, one at a time, to the masonry.
"I'm glad it turned out no worse," said Jim. "I hope you will all excuse me if I leave you now. I must see Miss Trescott to a safe and dry place. Here's the carriage, Josie!"
"Are you quite uninjured?" said Cecil to Antonia, as Mr. Elkins and Josie drove away.
"Oh, quite so!" said Antonia, unwittingly adopting Barr-Smith's phrase. "But for a moment I was awfully frightened!"
"It looked a little damp, at one time, for farce-comedy," said Cornish. "I wonder how deep it was out there!"
"Miss Trescott was quite drenched," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as we got into the carriages. "Too bad, by Jove!"
"You may write home," said Antonia, "an account of being shipwrecked in the top of a tree!"
"Good, good!" said Cecil, and we all joined in the laugh, until we were suddenly sobered by the fact that Antonia had bowed her head on Alice's lap, and was sobbing as if her heart was broken. _