The Boss of Little Arcady/Chapter 26
A little mystery is solved
The significance of Miss Lansdale's manner, rather than her words, ran through my darkened thoughts like a thread as I played the game that night. After a third defeat this thread seemed to guide me to daylight from a tortuously winding cavern. At first the thing was of an amazing simplicity.
In a far room was a chest filled with forgotten odds and ends that had come back with me years before. I ran to it, and from under bundles of letters, old family trinkets, a canteen, a pair of rusty pistols, and other such matters, I brought forth an ambrotype—the kind that was mounted in a black case of pressed rubber and closed with a spring.
But even as I held the thing, flushed with my discovery, another recollection cooled me, and the structure of my discovery tumbled as quickly as it had built itself. Little Miss had found her own picture when she found him. Her mother had told me this definitely. It had been clutched in his hands, and she, after a look, had tenderly replaced it to stay with his dust forever. This I had forgotten at first, in my eagerness for light.
I pressed the spring that brought the face to my eyes, knowing it would not be her face. Close to the light I studied it; the face of a girl, eighteen or so, with dreaming eyes that looked beyond me. It could not be Miss Lansdale, and yet it was strangely like her—like the Little Miss she must once have been.
But one mystery at least was now plain—the mystery of my own mind picture. I had not looked at this thing for ten years, but its lines had stayed with me, and this was the face of my dreaming, carried so long after its source had been forgotten. The face of this picture had naturally enough changed to seem like the face of Miss Lansdale after I had seen her.
Perhaps it was the face of a Peavey; there was at least a family resemblance; that would explain the likeness to Miss Kate. This was not much, but it was enough to sleep on.
As I left the house the following morning, Miss Lansdale, her skirts pinned up, was among her roses with a watering pot and a busy pair of scissors.
As I approached her I had something to say, but it was, for an interval, driven from my lips.
"Promise me," I said instead, "never to wear a common-sense shoe."
She stared at me with brows a trifle raised.
"Of course it will displease Mrs. Eubanks, but there is still a better reason for it."
The brows went farther up at this until they were hardly to be detected under the broad rim of her garden hat.
Her answer was icy, even for an "Indeed?"—quite in her best Lansdale manner.
"Yes, 'indeed!'" I retorted somewhat rudely, "but never mind—it's not of the least consequence. What I meant to say was this—about those pictures of people, you remember."
"I remember perfectly, and I've concluded that it's all nonsense—all of it, you understand."
"That's queer—so have I." Had I been a third person and an observer, I would doubtless have sworn that Miss Lansdale was more surprised than pleased by this remark of mine.
"I haven't had your picture at all," I went on; "it was a picture of some one else, and I hadn't thought to look at it for a long time—had forgotten it utterly, in fact. That's how I came to think I knew your face before I knew you."
"I told you it was nonsense!" and she snipped off a rose with a kind of miniature brusqueness.
"But you shall see that I had some reason. If you find time to-day, step into my library and look at the picture. It's on the mantel, and the door is open. It may be some one you know, though I doubt even that."
With this I brazenly snatched a pink rose from those within her arm.
"You see Fatty Budlow is coming on," I remarked of this bit of boldness.
"Let him come—he shan't find me in the way." This with an effort to seem significant.
"Oh, not at all!" I assured her politely, and with equal subtlety, I believe.
Had I known that this was the last time I should ever look upon Miss Katharine Lansdale, I might have looked longer. She was well worth seeing for sundry other reasons than her need for common-sense shoes. But those last times pass so often without our suspecting them! And it was, indeed, my good fortune never to see her again. For never again was she to rise, even at her highest, above Miss Kate.
She was even so low as Little Miss when I found her on my porch that afternoon—a troubled Little Miss, so drooping, so queerly drawn about the eyes, so weak of mouth, so altogether stricken that I was shot through at sight of her.
"I waited here—to speak alone—you are late to-day."
I was early, but if she had waited, she would of course not know this.
"What has happened, Miss Kate?"
"Come here."
Through my opened door I followed her quick step.
"You were jesting about that this morning,"—she pointed to the picture, propped open against a book on the mantel; and then, with an effort to steady her voice,—"you were jesting, and of course you didn't know—but you shouldn't have jested."
"Can it be you, Miss Kate—can it really be you?"
"It is, it is—couldn't you see? Tell me quickly—don't, don't jest again!"
"Be sure I shall not. Sit down."
But she stood still, with an arm extended to the picture, and again implored me: "See—I'm waiting. Where—how—did you get it?"
"Sit down," I said; and this time she obeyed with a little cry of impatience.
"I'll try to bring it back," I said. "It was that day Sheridan hurried back to find his army broken—all but beaten. Just at dark there was a last charge—a charge that was met. I went down in it, hearing yells and a spitting fire, but feeling only numbness. When I woke up the firing was far off. Near me I could hear a voice, the voice of a young man, I thought, wounded like myself. I first took him for one of our men. But his talk undeceived me. It was the talk of your men, and sorrowful talk. He was badly hurt; he knew that. But he was sure of life. He couldn't die there like a brute. He had to go back and he would go back alive and well; for God was a gentleman, whatever else He was, and above practical jokes of that sort. Then he seemed to know he was losing strength, and he cried out for a picture, as if he must at least have that before he went. Weak as he was, he tried to turn on his side to search for it. 'It was here a moment ago,' he would say; 'I had it once,' and he tried to turn again, still crying out for it,—he must not die without it. It hurt me to hear his voice break, and I made out to roll near him to help him search. 'We'll find it,' I told him, and he thanked me for my help. 'Look for a square hard case,' he said eagerly. 'It must be here; I had it after I fell down.' Together we searched the rough ground over in the dark as well as we could. I was glad enough to help him. I had a picture like that of my own that I shouldn't have liked to lose. But we were clumsy searchers, and he seemed to lose hope as he lost strength. Again he cried out for that picture, but now it was a despairing cry, and it hurt me. Under the darkness I reached my one good hand up and took my own picture from its place. So many of us carried pictures over our hearts in those days. I pretended then to search once more, telling him to have courage, and then I said, 'Is this it?' He fumbled for it, and his hand caught it quickly up under his chin. He was so glad. He thanked me for finding it, and then he lay still, panting. After a while—we both wanted water—I crawled away to where I heard a running stream. It must have been farther than I thought, and I couldn't be quick because so much of me was numb and had to be dragged. But I reached the water and filled a canteen I had found on the way. As soon as I could manage it I went back to him with the water, but I must have been gone a long time. He wasn't there. But as I crawled near where he had lain, I put my hand on a little square case such as I had given him. I thought it must be mine. I lost consciousness again. When I awoke two hospital stewards carried me on a stretcher, and a field surgeon walked beside us. I still had the picture, and not for many days did I know that it wasn't my own. After that I forgot it—but I've already told you of that."
Her eyes had not quitted my face while I spoke, though they were glistening; her mouth had weakened more than once, and a piteous little "Oh!" would come from her lips. When I had finished she looked away from me, dropping her eyes to the floor, leaning forward intently, her hands shut between her knees. For a long time she remained so, forgetting me. But at last I could hear her breathe and could see the increasing rise and fall of it, so that I feared a crisis. But none came. Again she mastered herself and even managed a smile for me, though it was a poor thing.
"I've told you all, Miss Kate."
"Yes—I'm unfair, but you have a right to know. I found that picture—your picture, when they brought him in. His hands were clenched about it. They said he had pleaded to hold it and made them promise not to take it from him—ever. I was left alone, and I dared to take it, just for a moment. Something in the design of the cover puzzled me. I had meant to put it right back, and after I had looked at it there was only one thing to do—to put it back."
"They said you found your own picture, or I might have suspected."
"They had reason to say it—I never told."
"Of course you never told, Miss Kate!" I seemed to learn a great deal of her from that. She had carried her wound secretly through all those years.
"Poor Little Miss!" I said in spite of myself, and at this quite unexpectedly there befell what I had hoped we might both be spared.
I might not soothe her as I would have wished, so I busied myself in the next room until she called to me. She was putting what touches she could to her eyes with a small and sadly bedraggled handkerchief.
"There is a better reason for telling no one now," she said, "so we must destroy this. Mother might see it."
My grate contained its summer accumulation of waste paper. She laid the picture on this and I lighted the pyre.
"Your mother will see your eyes," I said.
"She has seen them so before." And she gave me her hand, which I kissed.
"Poor Little Miss!" I said, still holding it.
"Not poor now—you have given me back so much. I can believe again—I can believe almost as much as Jim."
But I released her hand. Though her eyes had not quitted mine, their look was one of utter friendliness.