The Seventh Noon Part 9

"But what--"

"Oh, they are a queer lot. But they have brains and--money."

Horace Arsdale died in an asylum, and there were the usual ugly rumors as to what brought him there. He left a son Benjamin, and Benjamin built the present Arsdale house at a time when it was like building in the wilderness. Here he shut himself up with his bride, a French girl he had met on his travels. Ask any one who Benjamin Arsdale was and they would be apt to answer,

"Benjamin Arsdale? Oh, he is Benjamin Arsdale. They say he has a great deal of talent and--money."

The first statement seemed to be proven by some very delicate lyrical verse which appeared from time to time in the magazines. Though a member of the best half dozen New York clubs, not a dozen men out of the hundreds who knew his name had ever seen him.

His wife died within three years, some say from a broken heart, some say from homesickness, leaving a boy child six months old. At this point Benjamin Arsdale's name disappeared even from the magazines, and save to a very few people he was as though dead and buried beneath his odd house. An old Frenchman, his wife, and his son Jacques Moisson seemed content to live there and look after the household duties. Some ten years later a little girl of nine appeared, a niece of Arsdale's, it was said, and this completed the household, though old Pere Moisson died in the course of time, leaving his wife and Jacques as a sort of legacy to his old master, for a body-guard. The only reports of the inmates to the outside world came through the other servants who were employed here from time to time, and the most they had to say was that Arsdale was "queer," and they did n't think it was the place to bring up young children, though the master did adore the very ground they walked on. When the children were older, Arsdale was seen at concerts and the theatre with them, but seemed to resent any attempt on the part of well meaning acquaintances to renew social ties. People remarked upon how old for his age he had grown, and some spoke in a whisper of the spirituality of his features.

So much every one knew and that was nothing. What Elaine Arsdale, whom he had legally adopted, knew, was what caused the white light about the bowed head of the man. When she first learned she could not tell, but as a very young girl she remembered days when he came to her with his face very white and tense, and in his eyes the terror of one in great pain, and said to her,

"Little girl, will you sit with me a bit?"

So she would take a seat by the window in the library and he would face her very quietly with his long fingers twined around the chair arms.

He would not speak and she knew that he did not wish her to speak. He wished for her only to sit there where he could see her. She was never afraid, but at times there came into his eyes a look that tempted her to cry. Sometimes an hour, sometimes two hours pa.s.sed, and then he would rise to his feet and walk unsteadily towards her and say,

"Now I may kiss your forehead, Elaine."

He would kiss her, and shortly after fall into a deep sleep of exhaustion.

Between these periods, which she did not understand save that in some way he suffered a great deal, he was to her the gentlest and kindest guardian that ever a girl had. He personally superintended her studies and those of Ben, her only other playmate. The day was divided into regular hours for work and play. In the morning at nine he met them in the library and heard their lessons and gave them their tasks for the next day. He seemed to know everything and had a way of making one understand very difficult matters such as fractions and irregular French verbs. In the afternoon came the music lessons. He was anxious for them both to play well upon the violin, for he said that it had been to him one of the greatest joys of his life. Each night before bedtime he used to play for them himself and make her see finer pictures than even those she found in her fairy tales. But there were other times when he could make his violin terrible. He used to punish Ben in this way. When the latter had been over wilful, he made the boy stand before him. Then taking a position in front of him, he played things so wild, so fearful, that the boy would beg for mercy.

"Do you wish your soul to be like that?" he would demand sternly.

"No, father, no," Ben would whimper.

"Then you must control yourself. If ever you lose a grip upon yourself in temper or anything else, it will be like that."

But the music even at such times never frightened her, though it sounded very savage, like the wind through the trees in a thunder storm.

The only time that he had ever seemed the slightest bit angry at her was once during that wonderful summer when he had taken them abroad.

She was seventeen, and on the boat she met a man with whom she fell in love. He was very much older than she, and possessed a glorious mustache which turned up at the corners. He helped her up and down the deck one day when the wind was blowing, and that night she lay awake thinking about him. When she appeared in the morning with her eyes heavy and her thoughts far away, the father put his arm about her and escorted her to the stern of the boat. Then sitting down beside her, he said,

"Tell me what is on your mind, little girl."

She told him quite simply, and had been surprised to see his face grow white and terrible.

"He put those thoughts into your heart?"

He rose to his feet and started towards the saloon. She knew what he was about to do. She flung her arms around his knees and, sobbing, pleaded with him until he stayed. Then after she had calmed a little, he talked to her and she listened as though to a stranger.

"Little girl," he cried fiercely, "there is much that you do not understand, and much that I pray G.o.d you never will understand. One of these things is the nature of man. If it were not for all the other fair things there are in life I would place you in a convent, for the best man who ever lived, little girl, is not good enough to take into his keeping the worst woman. They break their hearts with their weaknesses--they break their hearts."

"But you, dear Dada--"

"I did it! G.o.d forgive me, I did it, too!"

At this point he gained control of himself and his wild speech, but the words remained forever an echo in her heart.

They pa.s.sed the next summer in the Adirondacks, and here in the deep woods she spent the pleasantest period of her life. She was strangely atune with the big pines and the fragrant shadows which lay beneath them. Arsdale used to sit beside her in these solitudes and read aloud by the hour from the poets in his sweet musical voice. At such times she wondered more than ever what he had meant in that outburst on the steamer. Here, too, he told her more of her mother who had died at almost the same time that Ben's mother had died. But of the father all he ever told her was,

"My brother was an Arsdale--like the rest of us."

So she lived her peaceful life and was conscious of missing nothing, save at odd moments the man with the beautiful mustache. Marie, the old housekeeper, was as careful of her as Jacques was of her father.

Ben was kind to her, though during the latter years he had grown a bit out of her life. This had worried the father--this and other things.

One day he had called her into the library, and though he was greatly agitated she saw that it was not in the usual way.

"Little girl," he said, "if it should so happen that you are ever left alone here with Ben and he--he does not seem to act quite himself, I want you to promise me that you will go to this address which I shall leave for you."

She had promised, knowing well to what he referred.

Then his face had hardened.

"There is still another thing you must promise; if at the end of six months he is no better I wish you to promise that you will not live in this house with him or anywhere near him--that you will cut off your life utterly from his life."

"But, Dada--"

"Promise."

She promised again, little thinking that the crisis of which he seemed to have a foreboding was so near at hand. A dark day came within two months when her soul was rent with the knowledge that he lay stark and cold in that very library where so much of his life had been lived.

Marie gathered her into her arms and held her tight. She stared aghast at a world which frightened her by its emptiness. At her side stood Ben, his lips twitching, and in his eyes that haunting fear which always foreran the father's struggles. A month later the boy did not come home one night, but came after three days, a feeble wreck of a man. She tore open the letter the father had left, and this took her to Barstow, with whom he had evidently left instructions. That was five months ago, and in the meanwhile she had grown from a very young girl into a woman.

This was the sombre background to her frightened thoughts as she lay in her bed next to Marie. In the midst of all the figures which haunted her, there stood now one alone who offered her anything but fearful things--and he was a stranger. Out of the infinite mult.i.tude of the indifferent who surrounded her, he had leaped and within these few hours made her debtor to him for her life, and now for partial relief from a strain which was worse than sudden death might have been. In spite of other torments it was like a cool hand upon her brow to know that out in that chaos into which the boy had plunged, this other had followed. She had perfect confidence in him. After all, it is as easy in a crisis to pick a friend from among strangers as from among friends.

CHAPTER VIII

_The Man Who Knew_

There are several members of the New York police force who think they know their Chinatown; there are several slum workers who think they do; there are many ugly guides, real guides, who think they do, but Beefy Saul, ex-newspaper man, ex-United States Chinese immigration inspector, and finally of the Secret Service, really does. This is because Beefy Saul knows not only the bad, but the good Chinamen; because he knows not only the ins and outs of Chinatown, but the ins and outs of New York; because he knows not only the wiles and weaknesses of Chinamen, the wiles and weaknesses of ugly souled guides (and of slum workers), but best of all, because he knows the several members of the New York police department who think they know their Chinatown. But like men who know less, Beefy Saul enjoys his sleep and naturally objects to being roused at three o'clock in the morning, even though in the east the silver is showing through the black, as Donaldson pointed out, like the eyes of a certain lady when she smiles (as Donaldson did not point out). Beefy came down in answer to the insistent bell which connected with his modest flat--it ought to be called a suite, for the lower hall boasted only six speaking tubes--and he swore like a pirate as he came.

Finally the broad shoulders, which gave him his name, filled the door frame.

"I don't give a tinker's dam who you are," he growled before he had made out the features before him, "it's a blasted outrage! h.e.l.lo, Don, what in thunder brings you out at this time of night? You look white, man, what's the trouble?"

Saul hitched up his trousers, his round sleepy face that of a good-natured farmer.

"I want you to do me a favor if you will, Beefy. I know it 's a darned shame to get you out at this hour."

"Tut, tut, man. If a friend can't get up for another friend, he ain't much of a friend. Tell your troubles."

"I 'm looking for a man, Beefy, who 's down there somewhere among your c.h.i.n.ks."

"Hitting the pipe?"

"I 'm afraid so."