_ CHAPTER XX. THE GUITAR AND THE CASEMENT
"A parcel for you, sir!"
Sergeant Archelaus had spied the Commandant coming up the hill, and met him on the barrack doorstep with the news.
"A parcel?" The Commandant had walked straight from the bank to Mr. Tregaskis' shop, and there paid his account; but he had made no purchases. "There must be some mistake, Archelaus; I have ordered nothing in the town."
"From the mainland, sir."
"God bless my soul!"
"Yes, sir, and marked 'Fragile'; a good-sized box, but uncommon light to handle. The steamer brought it across this morning, and I've carried it into the office and placed hammer and chisel handy."
"Now what in the world can this mean?" asked the Commandant, a minute later, after studying the box and its label. He turned to Archelaus, who had followed him into the office in a state of suppressed excitement. "It is certainly addressed to me; and yet--It must be half-a-dozen years, Archelaus, since anyone sent me a parcel from the mainland."
"There's but one way to discover," said Archelaus, picking up the chisel. "Shall I open it, sir?"
"No; give it to me." The Commandant took the tools from him and easily pried open the lid, for the scantling was light, almost flimsy. Within lay an object in an oilskin case, by the shape of it, apparently a violin; and yet somewhat larger than a violin.
Yes, certainly it was a musical instrument; and the Commandant had no sooner made sure of this than with his hand on the string that tied the wrapper, he paused.
"It is evident, Archelaus"--his tone betrayed some disappointment--"that this parcel belongs to Miss Cara. Having no address of her own that could be given with safety, she has ordered it to be sent to me."
"Ben't you even going to open and take a look at it?" asked Archelaus, as his master slowly replaced it in the box.
"I think not.... Miss Cara will call for it, no doubt, since no doubt she has been watching for the steamer's arrival."
Archelaus withdrew, reluctantly, not without a sense of expectation cheated. Nor, as it proved, was his grievance altogether groundless. The Commandant stood for a minute or so in a brown study, eyeing the box. Then, his curiosity overmastering him, he reached out and drew the parcel forth again; turned it over in his hands, and very slowly undid the strings, which were of green ribbon.
The wrapper fell apart, disclosing a guitar.
The instrument was clearly an old one, and, as clearly of considerable value, being inlaid with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl in delicate arabesques that must have cost its unknown maker many months, if not whole years, of patient labour. Its varnish, smooth and transparent as finest glass, belonged to the same date, and had been laid on, if not by the same hand, by one no less careful. Something more than a craftsman's pride had surely inspired the exquisite workmanship, the deft and joyous pattern that chased itself in and out as though smiling at its own intricacy. A gift for the artist's mistress, perhaps? Or a toy for some dead and gone princess?... Yet it had been played upon, and recently. One or two of its relaxed strings showed evidences of fraying; and the sender had tied a small packet of new strings around the neck.
The Commandant, after peering into its pattern for a while, held the guitar out at arm's length; and, holding it so, broke into a short laugh--at the thought that this thing had been sent to him.
Yet, here it was. Undoubtedly it belonged to Vashti, and his heart leapt at the thought that she would be coming to fetch it. For three days he had been missing her. It seemed that she had chosen to pass out of his life as suddenly, as waywardly, as she had invaded it; that, crossing the threshold of Saaron Farm, she had closed its door upon him and upon a brief episode to be remembered by him henceforth as a dream only--a too happy dream.
"Ah, had we never met--or, having met,
Had I been wiser or thy heart less wild!"
He had pulled home that Sunday night, to brood alone over a half-dead fire; and, brooding there, had surmised what the morrow made certain--that she had taken with her yet more than she had even brought; that even what colour, what small interest, had formerly cheered the daily round on Garrison Hill and made it tolerable, was now gone out of it forever.
Well, for good or ill, this, at all events, would need to be endured but a little while longer. His discharge was in sight. He had posted his letter.
He did not tell himself that but for Vashti it had never been written. Or, if this crossed his mind, it suggested no more than gratitude. Quite unwittingly she had helped him play the man. He had done the right thing, let follow what might.
He could not force his mind upon possible consequences, to face them or to fret over them. Between this present hour and then, one thought, like a bright angel, stood in the way. Vashti was coming!
Ah, but when? Would she come openly, by day, as she had invaded Inniscaw?... He spent the afternoon in his office, sorting out useless correspondence, clearing desks, drawers, pigeon-holes of the accumulations of years, unconsciously preparing for the day of his discharge. It kept his thoughts employed, and he worked hard--reading through the dusty papers, tearing them up, consigning some to the waste-paper basket others to the fire, which by-and-by grew sullen under its task. Twilight fell.... She would come, then, after dusk, and secretly--mooring her boat in the hiding-place under the Keg of Butter Battery, away from inquisitive eyes. At half-past five Archelaus brought him his tea. At six, having washed and refreshed himself, the Commandant fell to work again more doggedly. Only now and again he broke off for a few moments to listen. But Vashti did not come.
He worked until half-past nine. He heard the clock strike the half-hour from the chimney-piece, and looked up almost in dismay. It was certain now that she would not come. Of a sudden, as though to hide from him the full measure of his disappointment, as he had been hiding from himself the full eagerness of his hopes, a loathing took him--a savage scorn of his useless labour. He stared at his grimed hands with a shiver of disgust, and, rising impatiently, swept together the fragments of paper strewn about the floor, tossed them upon the dying fire, and went off to his room for another wash.
She would not come; and there remained yet an hour between him and his usual bed-time. Returning to his office, he met Archelaus on the stairs.
"Going to bed, eh?" asked the Commandant.
"Ay, sir," Archelaus answered, and paused for that remark on the weather which, in the Islands, always goes with "Good morning" or "Good night." "Glass don't vary very much, and wind don't vary, though seemin' to me it's risin' a little. Still in the nor'west it is; and here ends another day."
The Commandant looked at him sharply, but passed downstairs with no more than a "Good night." So Archelaus, too, was feeling life to be empty?... Archelaus had bewailed the past before now, and the vanished glories of the garrison, but never the tedium of his present lot.
The Commandant, on re-entering his office, did a very unusual thing. It has been said that he could no longer afford himself tobacco. But an old briar pipe lay on the chimney-piece among a litter of notes and memoranda that had escaped the afternoon's holocaust. He took it up wistfully, and, searching in a jar, at the end of the shelf, found a few crumbs of tobacco. Scraped together with care, they all but filled the bowl. He lit the dry stuff from a spill--the last scrap of paper to be sacrificed--and sank, puffing, into his worn arm-chair.
It was in his mind to map out his domestic expenditure for the coming month; for the settlement with Mr. Tregaskis had made a desperate inroad upon his funds in hand, and he gravely doubted that even with the severest pinching he would be able to remit the usual allowance to his sister-in-law. The question had to be faced ... he was not afraid of it ... and yet his thoughts shirked it and wandered away, despite all effort to rally them. "Old enough to be her father...." He had foreseen that these words would awake to torment him; but he was not prepared for the insistency with which the pain stirred, now when long toil should have deadened it--now when, as the clock told him that his hopes for to-day were vain, he realised how fondly all the while he had been building on them.
"Old enough to be her father."--For distraction from the maddening refrain he rose up, drew the guitar again from its box, unwrapped it, and took it back to his chair for another examination. He noticed the wrapper as he laid it aside. It was new; the material new, the stitching new. She had sent for the instrument with a purpose, and the oilskin case had been made with a purpose.... How went the old song?--
"Were I but young for thee, as I haz been,
We should have been gallopin' down in your green.
And linkin' it owre the lily-white lea;
And ah, gin I were but young for thee!"
Of a sudden he sat up stiffly, at the sound of a tap-tap on the window-pane behind him.
Yes, decidedly the sound came from the window. The wind--as Archelaus had said--was rising; but this was no wind. Someone stood outside there in the darkness. He sprang up, stepped to the casement and threw it open. For a moment his eyes distinguished nothing. He peered again and drew back a little as a figure stepped close to the sill, out of the night.
"You!"
"Who else?" answered Vashti, with a little laugh. "Give me your hand, please." He stretched it out obediently, and she took it and clambered in over the sill.
"It is cold outside," she announced, looking around her with something between a shiver and a deliberate shake of her cloak. It was the same furred cloak in which she had come ashore from the _Milo_. Spray clung to it; and there was spray, too, on her hair. It shone in the lamplight.
"The wind has been getting up ever since sundown," she announced. "I have had a pretty stiff crossing; but the boat is all right, under the Keg of Butter." Then, as he still stared at her, "You don't keep too warm a fire, my friend."
"I had given you up, and was getting ready for bed."
"Then you expected me? The guitar has come?"
Before he could answer she had caught sight of it, and picking it up from the arm-chair where the Commandant had dropped it, settled herself and laid the instrument across her lap.
"Also," she went on, throwing back her cloak, while she examined and tightened the strings, "I will confess that your guest is hungry." She looked up with a laugh. "In fact I came not only to fetch my guitar, but to sup with you and tell you of my doings."
The Commandant turned to the door. His face had suddenly grown gray and desperate.
"Ah, yes--supper, to be sure!" he said, and strode from the room.
As the latch fell behind him, Vashti glanced over her shoulder, put the guitar aside, and arose to stir the fire. The poker plunged into a heap of flaked ashes. "Paper? But the whole grate is choked with it. And, what is more, the whole room smells of burnt paper."
She turned about, and, with her back to the hearth, surveyed the room suspiciously. Her gaze fell upon the waste-paper basket, heaped high and brimming over with torn documents. This puzzled her again, and her brow contracted in a frown. But just then she caught the sound of the Commandant's footsteps returning along the flagged passage, and bent anew over the fire.
The Commandant appeared in the doorway with a plate of ship's biscuit in his hand, and on his face a flush of extreme embarrassment.
"Do you know, I really am ashamed of myself," he began with a stammer, holding out the plate. "But Archelaus has gone to bed, and--and this is all I can find."
"Capital!" she answered gaily. "Let us break into the back premises and forage. After my burglarious entry that will just suit my mood."
"I'm afraid--" he began, and hesitated. "I am very much afraid--" There was unmistakable trouble in his voice, and again he came to a halt.
Vashti straightened herself up. Her eyes were on him as he set the plate down on the table, but he avoided them, attempting a small forced laugh. The laugh was a dead failure. Silence followed it, and in the silence he felt horribly aware that she was grasping the truth--the humiliating truth; that moment by moment the scales were falling from her eyes that still persistently sought his.
The silence was broken by the noise of a poker falling against the fender. He started, met her gaze for a moment, and again averted his.
"You don't mean to say----"
Her voice trailed off, in pitiful surmise. Silence again; and in the silence he heard her sink back into the arm chair--and knew no more until, at the sound of one strangling sob, terrible to hear, he found himself standing at the arm of her chair and bending over her.
"My dear!" He used the familiar Island speech. "My dear, you must not--please!"
"And I have been living on you, ruining you!"
"My dear ... it is all paid for. It was paid for to-day. If ever a man was glad of his guest, I am he."
But she bent her head over the arm of the chair, sobbing silently. He saw the heave of her shoulders, and it afflicted him beyond words. But, though he longed, he dared not put out a hand to comfort her.
"You mistake--yes, you mistake.... It has been nothing.... I was only too glad," he kept stammering weakly.
She pulled herself together and sat upright. A moment her tear-stained eyes met his, then turned to the fire, which had begun to dance again on its small heap of coals.
"Now I see," said she, resting an elbow on the arm of the chair and so supporting her chin, while she stared resolutely into the blaze. She had resumed command of her voice. "Ah, pardon me, now I understand many things that puzzled me at first.... I--I am not a fool in money matters." She hesitated.
"I know you are not," he assured her gently. "And that, if you will understand, increased the small difficulty."
"Yes, I understand. But somehow--it was a long time since I had been acquainted with--with----"
"Want," he suggested. "Since you know the worst, do not hurt me more than you are obliged."
"God knows," she said, after an interval of musing, "I would hurt you last of all living men. Will you be kind to me, and trust me?"
"On conditions."
"Yes?" She glanced up with a strange eagerness in her eyes. "What conditions?"
"That you do not pity me at all; that you believe I have suffered nothing, or only such pain as has edged the joy of serving you."
She looked away and into the fire. "You make me very proud," she said. "Yes. I can easily grant your conditions. I could not pity a man who practised so noble a courtesy."
The Commandant shook his head with a whimsical smile. "My dear," he answered, "it's undeniably pleasant to stand well in your opinion, but I am not used to compliments, and you run some risk of making me a vain fellow. You asked me to trust you. With what?"
"With the reason why you are poor."
"That," said he, "can be very simply told," and, briefly, in the simplest possible style, he told her of his brother's death, and how his sister-in-law and her family had been left in destitution. "You see," he wound up, "it's just an ordinary sad little tale. Cases of that kind happen daily, all the world over. One must be thankful when they happen within reach of help."
"Is your sister-in-law thankful?" asked Vashti, sharply. "But there!" she added, as he stared at her obviously at a loss to find the question relevant. "You are quite right. It really does not matter two pins whether she is thankful or not." She turned her eyes to the fire again and sat musing. "But I am glad to have heard the story," she went on after a while. "It explains--oh, many things! I have been blind, inconsiderate; but I am seeing light at last. Do you know, my friend, that at first I found a great change in you?"
"Why--bless me!--you had only seen me once before in your life, and then for two minutes!"
"Listen, please, and don't interrupt. I found a great change in you, and the reason of it seemed to lie all on the surface. You had brought ambitions to the Islands, but you had forgotten them. You kept your kindness, your good nature, but you had forgotten all purpose in life. In all, except a few personal habits, you were neglecting yourself; and this neglect came of your being content to live purposeless in this forgotten hole, and draw your pay without asking questions. Forgive me, but I seemed to see all this, and it drove me half wild."
He bowed his head. "I know it did," he answered very slowly, "and that is how you came to save me."
"Is--is this another story?" she asked, after eyeing him a moment or two in bewilderment.
"If you will listen to it." He drew his writing chair over to the fireside, and then, facing her across the hearth he told her the second story as simply as he had told the first, but more nervously, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, now and again spreading out his hands to the fire on which he kept his eyes bent during most of the recital. Vashti, too, leaned forward, intent on his face. One hand gripped the arm of her chair--so tightly that its pressure drove the blood from the finger tips, while the wonder in her eyes changed to something like awe. "And so," the commandant concluded, "the letter has gone. I posted it to-day."
"What will happen?"
"I really cannot tell." Without lifting his gaze from the fire he shook his head dubiously. "But at the worst, the girls are grown into women now. They have been excellently well educated--their mother saw to that and made a great point of it from the first--and by this time they should be able to help, if not support her entirely."
"Man! Man! Will you drive me mad?"
Vashti sprang from the chair.
"I have been unjust. I have been worse than a fool!" She flung back her cloak, and, clasping her hands behind her, man-fashion, fell to pacing the room to and fro. The Commandant stood and stared. Something in her voice puzzled him completely. In its tone, though she accused herself, there vibrated a low note of triumph. She was genuinely remorseful--why, he could not guess. Yet, when she halted before him, he saw that her eyes were glad as well as dim. She held out a hand.
"Forgive me, my friend!"
"Do you know," stammered the Commandant, as he took it, "I should esteem it a favour to be told whether I am standing on my head or my heels!"
How long he held her hand he was never afterwards able to tell; for at its electric touch the room began to swim around him. But this could not have lasted for long; because, as he looked into her eyes, still seeking an explanation, she broke off the half-hysterical laugh that answered him, and pulled her hand away sharply at a sound behind them.
Someone was throwing gravel against the window.
"Commandant!" a voice hailed from the darkness without.
For an instant the two stood as if petrified. Then with a second glance at the window, to make sure that the curtain was drawn, Vashti tip-toed swiftly to the door, catching up the guitar on her way.
"Hi! Commandant! Are you waking or sleeping in there?"
The Commandant stepped to the curtain. Vashti opened the door and slipped out into the passage. The door closed upon her as he pulled the curtain aside for a second time that night and opened the casement.
"Who's there?"
"So you _are_ awake?" answered the voice of Mr. Rogers. "May I come in?" And, silence being apparently taken for consent, a foot and leg followed the voice across the window-sill. _