True and Other Stories Part 9

But then, on the other hand, the thing was so unlikely, and the positions of the two women were so far apart, that no one here would be apt to notice or for a moment consider such a supposition.

It was not until they were once more, at Fairleigh Park that he looked a second time at the belt which they had bought From Adela. Sitting with Jessie and her father, in the evening, when they were talking over the experience on the rail and at the races, he glanced over the various purchases which had been made, most of them of a more ambitious sort; but when they came to the belt, he studied it with a good deal of care, feeling an interest both in its novelty and in the maker.

Did he dream, or was this another illusion? The angular pattern in the midst of the design, which he had before noticed, unexpectedly a.s.sumed a meaning to his eyes. The more sharply he scanned it, the less he doubted his senses, for the beaded lines took with increasing clearness the forms of letters; and, on tracing these out, one after another, he saw that they composed a series of words arranged in coherent order--briefly, a motto.

I am not afraid of being old-fas.h.i.+oned. Therefore I shall ask my reader if he ever came upon any sight--ever was smitten, either in thought or in reading, by any feeling that set a thousand flame-points tingling around his brain, and sent irresistible waves of cold, nervous thrill down his spine. By this I do not mean a thrill of horror, but of supreme and overwhelming emotion that instantly suggests your being in the grasp of some more than human power--the power of endless, ideal forces, directed upon the human organism from without, as the harper's hand is directed with omnipotent sweep upon the strings of his instrument. If my reader, as aforesaid, has had such experience, he will understand the strange, exalting shock of wonder and awe that vibrated through Lance's system when he discerned in the wording on the belt:

"I journey whither I cannot see.

'Tis strange that I can merry be."

The old motto of Wharton Hall, in Surrey, England, was perfectly familiar to him, because he had visited the place with his father, on one of their journeys abroad, and having noted down the lines, which still remained engraven on the wall, he had committed them to memory.

And here was the last half of that quatrain, obscurely inscribed--as if the embroiderer had hardly understood their full significance--on the handiwork of Adela Reefe. Could there be anything more astounding than this? Did Adela know the origin of those verses? And if she did, what momentous secret did the fact involve?

The next moment, naturally enough, a simple and matter-of-fact solution occurred to him. Adela might have learned the motto from the Floyds.

"Do you see how it reads?" he asked, holding up the bead-work so that Jessie could survey the whole pattern.

"No," said she.

He pointed out the letters with his finger, and gradually spelled the inscription through, until she caught its purport.

"How very odd!" she exclaimed, at the end. But the look with which she accompanied the remark showed that the verses touched no chord of memory or knowledge in her mind. "Where do you suppose the girl got the idea?"

she concluded.

The quivering sensation which Lance had felt, at first, renewed itself.

He laid the belt down, and, as he did so, his hands trembled.

"Do _you_ know anything about this motto?" he said, appealing to the colonel.

But the colonel was also a blank on the subject.

Lance, therefore, was reduced to telling them where he had seen it. In doing this he was quite methodical, but he could not conceal the peculiar agitation which affected him.

Both the colonel and his daughter were much impressed by his strange disclosure, and were utterly at a loss to account for the reappearance of the traditional rhymes in a way so unlooked for; but they did not take the mystery so much to heart as Lance did.

"It's not only extraordinary, but incredible," he affirmed. "I must see that girl and ask her about it."

CHAPTER VIII.

ADELA'S LEGEND.

Jessie was not much inclined to give heed to her lover's curiosity about Adela, and his desire to consult her respecting the enigma which had so piqued him. But he continued so persistent, that she was obliged to humor him; and before a week pa.s.sed he persuaded her to ride with him to Hunting Quarters and search out the mysterious maiden.

Both Adela and her father were at home, the latter being engaged, when the visitors entered, with some jugs and bottles, in which were stored his marvellous decoctions. Promptly desisting from his work, he invited the young pair to seat themselves; and Adela, who was just then st.i.tching at some of her semi-savage contrivances, also rose to offer welcome.

The interior of the house at Hunting Quarters was rude enough. The room in which these four people met was badly lighted from two small windows facing toward Core Sound, one of which was open, so that the dull booming of the sea continually entered, supplying an uncouth refrain to their conversation. On one side was a large hearth; on the other, a door leading to the remaining part of the house--what there was of it. The furniture was scanty: a table, a bench, a couple of stools, some shelves holding bottles, boxes, a few books and various cooking utensils as well as dishes. The lack of sufficient seats for guests was supplied by several blocks of wood sawed off from the stumps of trees; and to these primitive perches old Reefe and his daughter resorted, in order to make room for their callers.

Jessie presented an excuse for coming, to the effect that Aunt Sally was desirous of having a bottle of Doctor Reefe's famous specific; but, when this business was over, she turned the conversation to Adela's work.

"Mr. Lance is ever so much pleased with those things you let us have,"

she said. "And I can a.s.sure you he takes the greatest interest in some of them. I think he wants to ask you how you sew the beads, and how you make those moss-boxes."

Adela laughed. "I don't know," she said. "I've done it so long--ever since I was a tiny girl. Ain't it so, dad?"

Old Reefe, thus referred to, gave a nod, without saying anything. But Lance took advantage of the cue Jessie had given him to go into particulars with Adela as to her mode of manufacture and the several beauties of the articles she produced. Finally he came around to the subject of the belt and the pattern woven upon it. "Have you got any more of those?" he asked.

"No," said Adela; "it was the last--the one you took. I can make another, if you want. I've got it all in my head."

"And the rhyme, too?" Lance inquired, eagerly.

"What? What's that?" Adela appeared a little dazed.

"I mean the words," he explained. "Didn't you know there were words in it?"

"Oh, that part along the middle," said the girl. Her gray eyes took on a far-off, dreamy expression. "Yes; they are words."

Lance controlled his excitement, which still seemed to him causeless and rather annoying. "I wonder if I read them right?" he hazarded. "Would you like to see how they looked to me?"

He drew out a bit of paper on which he had written them, and showed it to her. The action seemed to rouse her taciturn father slightly. But Adela gazed at the paper, and said, with an incredulous laugh: "Oh, no, they don't look like that!"

"Can you read?" Lance demanded.

"Yes, a little; but they don't look like that."

"Well, at any rate, they mean something," he retorted; "and this is what they mean."

He read the rhyme aloud, and their eyes met.

"Yes," she admitted; "I suppose that's how it goes;" and she crooned the distich over, as if singing to herself.

"But what I want to know," he continued, "is how you got it. How did you come to know it?"

Adela remained silent; but her father spoke, after a pause, in a serious, hollow voice. "It is very old," he said. "It is a great charm.

We have always known it."

"How do you mean--'you'?"

"Our people," replied the old man, gravely.

"But not all the people around here," Lance interposed. "Miss Jessie doesn't know it."

Reefe made a gesture of dissent that approached the disdainful. "No," he exclaimed, with a sort of gutteral grunt after the word; "_she_ don't know--of course."

"But _I_ have known it well," Lance said. "I saw it years ago in England."