At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern Part 30

_"Your lords.h.i.+p," cried the fool, with a clear ring in his voice, "thou shall not speak so to the man who is to wed thy daughter. I had not thought to tell even her till after the priests had made us one, but for our own protection, I am stung into speech._

_"Know then, that I am no fool, but a Prince of the House of Bernard. My acres and my vineyards cover five times the s.p.a.ce of this little realm of thine. Chests of gold and jewels I have, storehouses overflowing with grain and fine fabrics, three castles and a royal retinue. Of a truth, thou art blind since thou canst see naught but the raiment. May not a Prince wear motley if he chooses, thus to find a maid who will love him for himself alone?"_

_"Prince Bernard," muttered the Lord of Content, "the son of my old friend, whom I have long dreamed in secret shouldst wed my dear daughter Elaine! Your Highness, I beg you to forgive me, and to take my hand."_

_But Prince Bernard did not hear, nor see the outstretched hand, for Elaine was in his arms for the first time, her sweet lips close on his.

"My Prince, oh my Prince," she murmured, when at length he set her free; "my eyes could not see, but my heart knew!"_

_So ended the Quest of the Lady Elaine._

With a sigh, Harlan wrote the last words and pushed the paper from him, staring blankly at the wall and seeing nothing. His labour was at an end, all save the final copying, and the painstaking daily revision which would take weeks longer. The exaltation he had expected to be conscious of was utterly absent; instead of it, he had a sense of loss, of change.

His surroundings seemed hopelessly sordid and ugly, now that the glow was gone. All unknowingly, when Harlan pencilled: "The End," in fanciful letters at the bottom of the last page, he had had practically his last joy of his book. The torturing process of revision was to take all the life out of it. Sentences born of surging emotion would seem vapid and foolish when subjected to the cold, critical eye of his reason, yet he knew, dimly, that he must not change it too much.

"I'll let it get cool," he thought, "before I do anything more to it."

Yet, now, it was difficult to stop working. The rented typewriter, with its enticing bank of keys, was close at hand. A thousand sheets of paper and a box of carbon waited in the drawer of Uncle Ebeneezer's desk. His worn _Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases_ was at his elbow. And they were poor. Then Harlan laughed, for they were no longer poor, and he had wholly forgotten it.

There was a step upon the porch outside, then Dorothy came into the hall.

She paused outside the library door for a moment, ostensibly to tie her shoe, but in reality to listen. A wave of remorseful tenderness overwhelmed Harlan and he unlocked the door. "Come in," he said, smiling.

"You needn't be afraid to come in any more. The book is all done."

"O Harlan, is it truly done?" There was no gladness in her voice, only relief. Doubt was in every intonation of her sentence; incredulity in every line of her body.

With this pitiless new insight of his, Harlan saw how she had felt for these last weeks and became very tenderly anxious not to hurt her; to s.h.i.+eld his transformed self from her quick understanding.

"Really," he answered. "Have I been a beast, Dorothy?"

The question was so like the boy she used to know that her heart leaped wildly, then became portentously still.

"Rather," she admitted, grudgingly, from the shelter of his arms.

"I'm sorry. If you say so, I'll burn it. Nothing is coming between you and me." The words sounded hollow and meaningless, as he knew they were.

She put her hand over his mouth. "You won't do any such thing," she said.

Dorothy had learned the bitterness of the woman's part, to stand by, utterly lonely, and dream, and wait, while men achieve.

"Can I read it now?" she asked, timidly.

"You couldn't make it out, Dorothy. When it's all done, and every word is just as I want it, I'll read it to you. That will be better, won't it?"

"Can d.i.c.k come, too?" She asked the question thoughtlessly, then flushed as Harlan took her face between his hands.

"Dorothy, did you know d.i.c.k before we were married?"

"Why, Harlan! I never saw him in all my life till the day he came here.

Did you think I had?"

Harlan only grunted, but she understood, and, in return, asked her question. "Did you write the book about Elaine?" she began, half ashamed.

"Dear little idiot," said Harlan, softly. "I'd begun the book before she came or before I knew she was coming. I never saw her till she came to live with us. You're foolish, dearest, don't you think you are?"

He was swiftly perceiving the necessity of creating a new harmony to take the place of that old one, now so strangely lost.

"There are two of us," returned Dorothy, with conviction, wiping her eyes.

"I wish you'd ask me things," said Harlan, a little later. "I'm no mind reader. And, besides, the seventh son of a seventh son, born with a caul, and having three trances regularly every day after meals, never could hope to understand a woman unless she was willing to help him out a little, occasionally."

Which, after all, was more or less true.

XVIII

Uncle Ebeneezer's Diary

Harlan had taken his work upstairs, that the ceaseless clatter of the typewriter might not add to the confusion which normally prevailed in the Jack-o'-Lantern. Thus it happened that Dorothy was able to begin her long-cherished project of dusting, rearranging, and cataloguing the books.

There is a fine spiritual essence which exhales from the covers of a book.

Shall one touch a copy of Shakespeare with other than reverent hands, or take up his Boswell without a smile? Through the worn covers and broken binding the master-spirit still speaks, no less than through the centuries which lie between. The man who had the wis.h.i.+ng carpet, upon which he sat and wished and was thence immediately transported to the ends of the earth, was not possessed of a finer magic than one who takes his Boswell in his hands and then, for a golden quarter of an hour, lives in a bygone London with Doctor Johnson.

When the book-lover enters his library, no matter what storm and tumult may be in his heart, he has come to the inmost chamber of Peace. The indescribable, musty odour which breathes from the printed page is fragrant incense to him who loves his books. In unseemly caskets his treasures may be hidden, yet, when the cover is reverently lifted, the jewels s.h.i.+ne with no fading light. The old, immortal beauty is still there, for any one who seeks it in the right way.

Dorothy had two willing a.s.sistants in d.i.c.k and Elaine. One morning, immediately after breakfast, the three went to the library and locked the door. Outside, the twins rioted unheeded and the perennially joyous Willie capered unceasingly. Mr. Perkins, gloomy and morose, wrote reams of poetry in his own room, distressed beyond measure by the rumble of the typewriter, but too much cast down to demand that it be stopped.

Mrs. Dodd and Mrs. Holmes, closely united through misfortune, were well-nigh inseparable now, while Mrs. Smithers, still sepulchral, sang continually in a loud, cracked voice, never by any chance happening upon the right note. As Dorothy said, when there are only eight tones in the octave, it would seem that sometime, somewhere, a warbler must coincide for a brief interval with the tune, but as d.i.c.k further commented, industry and patience can do wonders when rightly exercised.

Uncle Israel's midnight excursion to the orchard had given him a fresh attack of a familiar and distressing ailment to which he always alluded as "the brown kittys." Fortunately, however, the cure for asthma and bronchitis was contained in the same quart bottle, and needed only to be heated in order to work upon both diseases simultaneously.

Elaine rolled up the sleeves of her white s.h.i.+rt-waist, and turned in her collar, thereby producing an effect which d.i.c.k privately considered distractingly pretty. Dorothy was enveloped from head to foot in a voluminous blue gingham ap.r.o.n, and a dust cap, airily poised upon her smooth brown hair, completed a most becoming costume. d.i.c.k, having duly obtained permission, took off his coat and put on his hat, after which the library force was ready for action.

"First," said Dorothy, "we'll take down all the books." It sounded simple, but it took a good share of the day to do it, and the clouds of dust disturbed by the process produced sneezes which put Uncle Israel's feeble efforts to shame. When dusting the shelves, after they were empty, Elaine came upon a panel in the wall which slid back.

"Here's a secret drawer!" she cried, in wild delight. "How perfectly lovely! Do you suppose there's anything in it?"

Dorothy instantly thought of money and diamonds, but the concealed treasure proved to be merely a book. It was a respectable volume, however, at least as far as size was concerned, for Elaine and Dorothy together could scarcely lift it.

It was a leather-bound ledger, of the most ponderous kind, and was fastened with a lock and key. The key, of course, was missing, but d.i.c.k soon pried open the fastening.

All but the last few pages in the book were covered with fine writing, in ink which was brown and faded, but still legible. It was Uncle Ebeneezer's penmans.h.i.+p throughout, except for a few entries at the beginning, in a fine, flowing feminine hand, which Dorothy instantly knew was Aunt Rebecca's.

"On the night of our wedding," the book began, "we begin this record of our lives, for until to-day we have not truly lived." This was signed by both. Then, in the woman's hand, was written a description of her wedding-gown, which was a simple white muslin, made by herself. Her ornaments were set down briefly--only a wreath of roses in her hair, a string of coral beads, and the diamond brooch which was at that moment in Dorothy's jewel-box.

For three weeks there were alternate entries, then suddenly, without date, were two words so badly written as to be scarcely readable: "She died."

For days thereafter was only this: "I cannot write." These simple words were the key to a world of pain, for the pages were blistered with a man's hot tears.

Then came this: "She would want me to go on writing it, so I will, though I have no heart for it."