A grain of madness : a romance

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Shooting Stars y

II. A Parting of Ways 19

I. Shooting Stars

How the world is made for each of us!

How all we perceive and know in it Tends to some moment’s product thus,

When a soul declare itself — to-wit By its fruit, the thing it does.

— Browning.

‘‘How many women are in the world, Father Alpheus T'

‘Two; two women,’’ answered the priest absently, as he shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out to where the White Heron, a mere speck in the distance, was dipping her bows rather deeply in the high running waves.

“Two!” exclaimed the boy. “Why, I know more than two. There’s Hetty, and Phyllis, and Jetsam — though Jetsam’s only a play-woman yet — and Miss Trescott ”

“Peace, boy,” said Father Alpheus, lowering his hand. “Did I say two? How should I know how many women are in the world ? You are a strange lad, and your questions are strange.”

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‘'Two. He spoke like an inamorito with a pair of sweethearts/’ said Vancourt, one hand holding his hat, the other thrust into the pocket of his gray woolen trousers.

“Mr. Vancourt, what is an inamorito?” asked Flotsam, looking up into the face of the artist.

“An inamorito,” replied Vancourt, “is a lunatic who thinks he is happy a quarter of the time, and knows he is miserable the other three-quarters.”

“Then why is one ever that kind of a thing at all ?” gravely queried the lad.

“Ah, that’s a question I have never been able to answer,” was Vancourt’s reply.

But Flotsam seemed to have lost interest in the subject and remarked, as he still gazed into the face of the artist :

“My grandpa and I are reading something called evolution; how folks sprang from the lower animals, and, do you know, I think you were a lion one time? You look ever so much like one, and your voice is big, and heavy, and growly.”

Vancourt laughed in a way that certainly might have suggested a roar, and said :

/'You reading evolution! Such stuff! You should have Mother Goose and the Arabian Nights for literary food. What is Herr Lessing thinking of, I wonder ?”

“O, of so many things !” said the boy. “And I like to talk with him of most of them, but I like best to hear him read about the gods and the fairies and nymphs. The world must have been so interesting once.'’

But now the White Heron was nearing the tiny wharf, and Vancourt did not answer.

The boat was brought close to the landing, and Father Alpheus and the boy stood by while the artist assisted Miss Trescott to alight.

The young woman went straight to the priest and greeted him warmly.

''You are kind to come so often to meet me," she said.

"I thought the storm of last night might prevent your putting off," said Father Alpheus. "I knew there would be a heavy sea this morning. If you did make an attempt to come I wished to see you safely on shore."

"So good of you," said Miss Trescott. "And you. Flotsam. I wonder if the grotto will be too cool for your thin dress now that the air has been made so much keener by the storm."

"Ah, no," replied the lad. "It has been so warm, you know, even in the shade. I shall be sure to like the coolness."

Father Alpheus said good morning and turned away, and his three companions set out for the woods.

It would be hard to select four people more dissimilar in appearance than those who met on the sands that summer morning.

Father Alpheus, priest in three straggling hamlets which adjoined each other, tall and ascetic looking, with piercing hazel eyes, and hair of that drab hue lO

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produced by the union of black and gray, his manner nervously grave, his look intent, his mouth thin-lipped and sensitive. His voice was low and vibrant, and one accustomed to analyze voices would have detected in it a passionate note. Perhaps no single word would have so accurately described this man and his manner as the adjective intense.

Looking at Allan Vancourt one could but acknowledge the truth of the statement that he resembled a lion. Broad of shoulder, massive of frame, his heavy, straggling hair a dusky red, his thick, full beard a lighter shade of red, his face broad, his mouth straightlined and firm, his eyes nearer yellow than blue; the whole massive countenance being capable of hardening into a cold sternness, or breaking into a slow, spreading smile. The lad had not erred in pronouncing his voice big and heavy and growly.

An English artist hiding from his honors was Allan Vancourt. He had produced several pictures which were pronounced masterpieces. All London united in declaring that this young man would add one more name to the long list of England’s geniuses, and the proudest and most exclusive flung open their doors and bade him enter. But having no affinity with the things of society, he one day tossed the numerous cards of invitation which lay on his table — many of them unread — into the waste basket, packed a few articles and his painting materials, and took passage on the next American-bound steamer. After landing he wandered about until on the coast of New England he found a little hidden village, ocean-washed on one side, on the

II Shooting Stars

other stretching away into a lovely desolation of forests and glens — a place of flashing brooks and woodland retreats where the trees met overhead, and the squirrels and birds were too unaccustomed to man to fear him.

''Surely one may reasonably hope to be left alone here,’' ruminated the artist, and forthwith engaged board at a farmhouse on the outskirts of the little village. Day after day he sketched and painted, or sat for hours upon the grass or some fallen tree, smoking, dreaming and thanking his stars that his lines had fallen in pleasant places.

There was one person, however, who was welcomed by Vancourt during his ramblings or restings.

One day after a heavy storm he had wandered down to the shore. Just as a huge wave had broken on the sand, there started up at his feet, as though washed ashore by the plunging breaker, a boy and a girl. Vancourt’s surprised eyes rested on the two, and his artist judgment could not but be favorable unto them.

From one of the most beautiful faces ever bestowed by the gods upon a favorite, the boy pushed back a mass of silky brown curls which the breeze had blown wildly about, and looked at the stranger with eyes of the loveliest blue. His forehead and throat, as well as the feet and ankles, which showed so fair against the wet sand, were white as pure ivory. His form was slim and erect, and shapely as a chiseled thing. He wore short blue trousers, fastened at the knee, and a loose tunic of the same texture and color.

The girl, though far less beautiful, was still attrac-

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tive, with her olive skin, black hair, and dusky, brooding eyes. Her bare brown limbs were somewhat less graceful than were the lad's, and her gaze less open than his.

She wore the same blue cloth fashioned into a short skirt, and a sort of blouse.

The two were drenched and a little frightened. They had raced in before the high wave, but not fast enough to prevent their being generously splashed by it.

''Will you specimens of human driftwood explain from what shore you were washed into the sea?” asked Vancourt.

"It was swifter than we thought,” said the boy with a little shiver, glancing at the water, without answering Vancourt.

"Have you sea children names?” was the artist's next inquiry.

"Ah, yes,” said the boy. "Mine is Franqois Ernest ”

Vancourt interrupted by a wave of the hand.

"Don’t tell me. I am not good at remembering names. You will be simply Flotsam and Jetsam to me if we meet again, as I hope we shall, for I like you well.”

"But we were not washed in by the sea,” said the girl soberly. "We live with Herr Lessing, in the cottage yonder. He is our grandfather. He says that my brother is French, like our father, but that I am German, as our mother was, though somehow we have changed complexions. The brother knows much.

and studies well, but he is light of heart and of tongue, grandpa says, and his fancies make havoc with facts/’

The artist met the children several times, and between him and the lad there grew up a close intimacy ; an intimacy which the sister did not share, being more than half afraid of Vancourt. At almost any hour of the day when the boy’s study hours were over, or had not begun, the curiously contrasted pair might be seen together.

A kind of intimacy had also sprung up between Father Alpheus and the artist. The former had been kind to Vancourt in the way which a resident member of a place may be to a transient sojourner, sometimes lending him books, directing him to places where good sketches could be obtained, and occasionally inviting him to a meal at his house.

It was not a pleasant communication nor a welcome request that the priest made to him one evening after the two had taken tea together. Father Alpheus explained that he had arranged for the daughter of an old and valued friend to board on the island two miles away, with some parishioners of his, and to come over to the mainland to sketch. Would it be asking too much of Vancourt, who knew all the latest methods in painting, that he would give Miss Trescott an occasional word of advice concerning her work ? She possessed a strong artistic temperament, but had, with the exception of the last year, when she had been studying in New York, lived in the West, away from artists and works of art. She would not intrude upon him. She was wholly devoted to, absorbed in, her art.

Vancourt resisted the temptation to say that he never

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wished to meet the young woman, and should probably not remain long after her advent, and replied courteously that if, in return for all the kindnesses he had received at the hands of the priest, he could give Miss Trescott a word of counsel now and then, he should be glad to do so.

Father Alpheus had introduced the young man and woman to each other ten days before the morning meeting on the sands.

They had not seen much of each other during those ten days. They had sought different places in which to sketch, and as yet Vancourt had not been afforded an opportunity to speak a word of that counsel which the priest had solicited.

They had come together accidentally two days before our introduction of the group, and Miss Trescott, who had seen and admired Flotsam, had declared that she would like to paint him as Cupid among the ferns if she could find the right setting for the picture. Vancourt knew just the spot for such a sketch, and had conducted her and the boy to it. He had assisted in placing the model, and had wandered about within easy distance while the less experienced artist had made her first sketch. On their way back to the village the two had contrived another way in which the lad, who delighted to be used as a model, might be posed, and on the morning on which we first meet them Vancourt and the boy were waiting to accompany Miss Trescott to the woods.

Among a group of ordinary girls Helen Trescott would have appeared as a rose among dandelions.

Frank, generous, impulsive, she yet never lost an air of aloofness. With a pride too genuine to become haughtiness, too really aristocratic to be obliged to assume exclusiveness, she created for herself a select atmosphere in which only congenial souls could freely breathe. Those who understood her knew that her inherent fineness would ever be a shield against the world's rudeness or humiliations. Coarseness found no way of approach to her. One could imagine the fine fervor with which she would love or hate, and feel that her tenderness would be of a more exquisite flavor than that of one whose nature was keyed to more neutral tones. Those who pronounced her face, with its irregular features and imperfect contour, beautiful, seldom knew the reason Tor their verdict, but others, wiser in finding causes for their preferences, were aware that the swift play and expression, the instantaneous illuminations and changes of the countenance, lent it charm. Her hair was yellow, her blue eyes wide open and eager, her figure slight with a swaying sort of grace, her step springy and light.

‘Why did I come to New York?" she was saying to Vancourt in her finely modulated voice as the trio went up the pebbly path and along the upland meadows. ‘T think it was the shooting stars that determined my course. You know the superstition that if one wishes while a star is falling he will get his wish. Perhaps you remember what showers of stars fell some year and a half ago? Why, it appeared to rain stars. It seemed as though the sky must miss them, so many deserted it. Night after night I i6

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watched them, and repeated over and over my wish; the wish that I might be shown where and how to begin to do with some degree of intelligence the work which was set for me. Somehow the meteors all seemed to shoot eastward, and just then, as though in answer to my wishes — which were really importunate prayers — came a New York paper to my mother in which a well known artist was spoken of as being willing to receive a few pupils. I decided to follow the direction of the shooting stars, and to put myself under his tuition.

‘^My mother, with Auntie for companion, and her books and flowers, can live in our drowsy western home, but I was always like the starling which wanted to ‘get out.’ Mother was a little frightened at the thought of my going so far away, but I obtained her consent to visit New York, and finally to remain there and study. And so I have been there for a year, and now, by the advice of Father Alpheus, I am here.”

“There to what purpose? Here to what end?” growled Vancourt. “Are you a painter or a dauber, I wonder. What did you want? What would you sacrifice for Art?”

He stopped as he ceased speaking, and fixed his eyes upon Miss Trescott. Also standing still, and looking her questioner in the face, Helen Trescott said :

“I was obliged to come away. I had to find out whether I was a dauber or a painter. The voice which called me was as real as that which spoke to Samuel. What would I sacrifice for Art? Sometimes I could not sacrifice anything, for all I could bring, life, liberty.

Shooting Stars.

joy, love, would be a free and grateful offering of thanksgiving that she had elected me among her votaries. I cannot tell anyone — I never tried before — what I feel when this mania is upon me. I do not long for fame, for money, for place, but just to feel that I have created a picture which shall be to me a supreme Utterance. If ever beneath my brush there shall appear that of which I can say. This is I ; my Life is on the canvas; my Soul has portrayed itself, those who will may commend, and those who will may withhold their praise; I shall be satisfied.’’

Allan Vancourt lifted his hat in his left hand and held out his right to Miss Trescott.

“I understand,” he said. ''You have entered with reverent feet the Holy of Holies. Art has elected you one of the Inner Circle. You are among the Inspired.”

Miss Trescott did not take the outstretched hand.

"Not yet,” she said somewhat sadly. "Having told you so much I must tell you more. It is a strange fact” — as she spoke she lifted her eyes which had dropped, with a half appealing look to his face — "that I go out from the Holy of Holies; that I sometimes actually recoil from the idea of being an artist. At such times I long to do anything rather than to handle a brush. I cannot explain this feeling, or tell you how it troubles me. Sometimes it seems to me that I am not a horn painter, for until I was fourteen I never thought about doing anything but a little sketching and occasional flower painting. It was Father Alpheus, who stopped on his way from Denver to pay my mother a brief i8

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visit, who first fired my imagination about painting. From that time there grew to be two Helen Trescotts; Helen Trescott the artist, alone with her soul and her work, earnest, aspiring, absorbed, and the woman who would fling aside all absorption in anything, all restraint, and be free as air, en rapport with all the gay, glad things of the world. But the artist is the woman that remains. It is her life I live. You are one of the people whom I should not wish to deceive. I could not let you think me reverent towards, and worthy of, Art all the time.”

Vancourt again put out his hand.

‘‘With Helen Trescott, the artist,” he said. “With the woman that remains/^

A Parting of Ways.

A PARTING OF WAYS.

Take heed lest passion sway Thy judgment to do aught which else free will Would not admit.

— Milton.

A carnival of color; a reign of crimson and gold. Flash upon flash of quivering light, and then a swift decline into ashy grayness which becomes a dense, angry purple.

The sun had set.

Two people had watched its going down with never a word. When the purple had complete sway the girl turned to her companion, and said, as though resuming an interrupted conversation :

‘'To what profit could this knowledge be bruited abroad? For my sake? What could it gain for me? Love ? I have it already. Marriage ? Marriage with a man who would turn from his nobler instincts, and trail his lifelong purpose, a dishonored thing, in the dust. And for what? Will men understand? Will they seek for motives, allow for temptations, weigh principles? Never! They will point to you as one who has proved that man’s vows go for little ; that the virtue of a priest is inviolate only so long as it is not

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combated by desire ; that his robe is a cloak of sin, his surplice the garment of a sensualist.

‘'And as for me? Shall I be honored, or at least spoken of as one who for love’s sake forgot all but love, but who for constancy’s sake may still be called a pure woman? Has the world changed in a few short months ? Changed because we have come to be among those who might wish to count upon its justice and lean upon its mercy ? The answer is too certain. You would be the priest who dishonored yourself and your order, and added to the dishonor of the whole world; withal, one who would put aside his panoply of character, his real vocation in life, for that which could never satisfy him or the one for whose sake the sacrifice would be chiefly made. Nothing would be adjusted. A wrong would be done.

“But the constantly lived lie! The eating of the bread to my sure damnation, the drinking of the wine to my everlasting shame !”

“And who formed the creed, and fixed the decree which would make your priest’s life a lie? God, or man? Would it not be a greater lie for you to declare by a hampered life and hindered usefulness that you were no longer fit for the work whereunto you were sent ? It is not God’s law, but man’s rule, which would set between you and your heaven-appointed life-work a moment of hated passion, an hour of loathed sin. You can by a life of toil with the weapons which you best know how to use, atone for that which was evil. Tell the world of that madness which overtook you like a whirlwind, and bore you down as the wind bears

A Parting of Ways.

down the tall grain, and man’s hand will wrench from you your weapons, man’s decree forbid God’s dictates, and you will turn your back on your Maker that you may honor the commands of His creature. Broken on the wheel of circumstance, wrecked by a decision ready-made and forced to fit all cases, but utterly unad justable to your own, you will make your life a useless thing, disobey the instinct which is the voice of heaven, and die as the fool dieth.”

The man would have spoken, but she silenced him with a gesture, and went on :

'Tf any human will but your own should dictate to you, any human decision sway you, mine should be that will, that decision. By the most sacred thing vouchsafed to woman I have bought your obedience. I have given you too abundantly of that which is above price. I have paid heavily for the right to be your judge. I claim that right. Hear, and understand me. Cast aside your priest’s robe to-morrow ; proclaim to all the world our sin, and I will still refuse to marry you. I will never bear your name ; your child shall never bear your name. God will not hold you in disgrace. He wipes out the sins of other men as he did those of David, who was once a criminal. I bid you be silent. Silence is sometimes heaven’s speech. If there is sin in this be it upon my soul, for I will have all things as I have said.”

'‘And I,” groaned the man, "on whom the retribution should fall, must be free to carry out my desire, to walk in my chosen way, leaving you to bear alone the pain, the burden, the disgrace which must result

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from my act! This you command. How can. I obey you ?”

‘To bear the thing I choose to bear, to walk in my elected way. The thing I could not bear would be your disgrace, your humiliation. Every taunt against you would sting me like a point of flame, every jeer hurled after you drive me mad. I can suffer for one ; I could not suffer for two if you were one of the two.”

“Ah, but how surely is God not mocked! The disgrace, the humiliation, the eternal jeer which you refuse for me from the world must come from within, lashing and torturing me forever. No confession to man, no absolution; nothing but remorse; if possible expiation by penance and good deeds.”

“Cast no remorseful looks behind you,” cried the woman. “Heaven forgives and makes new beginnings. It is man who remembers to torture. Work is sacrament, service religion. You shall know of me and that which betides me. I shall write when I am away from here ; write under another name. Remember I am not sorry that I loved you. I shall always love you. Good-bye.”

It was quite dark. The man put out his hand as though he would place it upon her head in priestly blessing, and let his last act, at least, be free from passion, but the raised hand clenched itself, then the fingers unclosed, and with a swift, strong movement the girl was gathered to his heart, with a burning vehemence his kisses fell on her lips, her forehead, her eyes, her hair, and with a groan she was released.

With a staggering motion the man went down the

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hill, and the woman, pausing a moment as though to gather strength, walked rapidly along the path to a small house in the valley.

Sitting alone in the darkness the man knew that he had pleaded to bear a thing which he never could have borne. He had, nevertheless, been sincere in his pleading. He had wished to pit his strength of character against a world’s strength of scorn; he had meant to prove his nobility by acknowledging that which would brand him as ignoble ; but now that the striving of the spirit of self-sacrifice was removed, now that honor instead of bidding him speak commanded him to be silent, he knew that the fight into which he would have entered would have demanded stronger weapons than he could have mustered, an endurance which he could not bring to it. His whole frame trembled as he thought of the finger-pointing of men ; the perspiration stood upon his forehead when imagination showed him looks of curiosity and the smile which was half a sneer on the lips of those who wholly despised him while half condoning his weakness. Had pointed bayonets flashed in front of him, and the thunder of cannon deafened him, he could sooner have faced the one and stood unshrinkingly before the expected balls of the other than have moved among those who pitied or thought ill of him. He would have attempted the latter course for honor’s sake; he would have played his part miserably, and he knew it, and the knowledge was a sharp reproach. She could bear so much for him! He could bear nothing for her. And yet he would have gone

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down to the dust trying for her sake, for love’s sake, for honor’s sake.

This was his consolation.

His sense of justice was at war with his knowledge of his weakness. He bitterly blamed himself for not possessing that which had never been given him.

The dark hours went by. The gray dawn broke and found him still on the hillside. He had planned his expiation. His feet should be turned in a direction in which those of an erring man should go. His silence should indeed be heaven’s speech.

It was a matter of great surprise to the diocese when the young aspirant for holy orders whose intellect most quickly grasped and readily formulated abstruse subjects, whose towering ambition had been a source of anxiety to his confessors, asked to be sent to the humblest field which could be given him, to work among people too poor to give gifts or to afford aught save the barest pittance, where hard work and much care might be expected; but the young priest gave no reason for his' change of mind and choice of work, and his devout friends thanked heaven for the evident change in a heart which they could not know was well nigh breaking, and gave him his way*

Fool or Philosopher?

III. Fool, Or Philosopher ?

My life is for itself, and not for a spectacle. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

— Emerson.

Robert Trescott smiled at the remark, which was frequently made, that his little daughter was like him ; that the hair of father and child must have been spun from the same thread.

'‘Ay, spun from the same thread likely enough,’’ he would answer, "though perhaps not woven by the same loom. The right things get together. They cannot help it. It is spiritual magnetism. People are not obliged to have the same blood in their veins to be related. Many who are born of the same parents are strangers. My own are those to whom I am divinely related ; whom I claim by inevitable laws.”

No one of his simple-minded neighbors pretended to understand the young man who talked in riddles, and each one shared the opinion of the village post master, who declared that "Mr. Trescott was either mighty foolish or mighty deep.”

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But it was a pleasant thing, that smile of Robert Trescott's, and people liked to call it forth, and the resemblance between himself and wee Helen was often remarked. The speaker of riddles was glad for the words and for the facts which made them possible ; glad for the yellow hair which grew alike on the head of the child and his own; glad for the blue in both his own eyes and hers; glad that people noticed and commented upon tricks of manner and peculiarities of speech, which, without reasoning of resemblances which association may produce, they pronounced like his.

‘'Her father's own child," the frequent observation ran.

“Truly, her father'^s own child," young Trescott would agree, while his smile would deepen a little, and his voice sink into a low tone as he added :

“That is ours which we receive as a gift equally with that which we create. Her father's own child, in very truth."

The thoughts and beliefs of this tiller of the soil refused to run in accustomed channels. He seemed one of Nature's negative poles. That which people in general attracted to themselves, he, for the most part, repelled. He set up between himself and many sorrows and annoyances which men make vital unto themselves by appropriating them, a reasoning which by the few who grasped it at all, was branded as imbecility or praised as philosophy, according to the understanding or misunderstanding of those who listened to it.