THE MELANCHOLY OF MR. GILLESPIE
I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects; and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.—As You Like It.
I laughed a moment ago when, in looking over my notes of these affairs, I marked the swift transition from those peaceful days to others of renewed suspicions and strange events. I had begun to yield myself to blandishments and to feel that there could be no further interruption of the idyllic hours I was spending in Helen Holbrook's company. I still maintained, to be sure, the guard as it had been established; and many pipes I smoked on St. Agatha's pier, in the fond belief that I was merely fulfilling my office as protector of Miss Pat, whereas I had reached a point where the very walls that held Helen Holbrook were of such stuff as dreams are made of. My days were keyed to a mood that was impatient of questions and intolerant of doubts. I was glad to take the hours as they came, so long as they brought her. I did not refer to her appearance in the parade of canoes, nor did Miss Pat mention it to me again. It was a part of the summer's enchantment, and it was not for me to knock at doors to which Helen Holbrook held the golden keys.
The only lingering blot in the bright calendar of those days was her meeting with Gillespie on the pier, and the fact that she had accepted money from him for her rascally father. But even this I excused. It was no easy thing for a girl of her high spirits to be placed in a position of antagonism to her own father; and as for Gillespie, he was at least a friend, abundantly able to help her in her difficult position; and if, through his aid, she had been able to get rid of her father, the end had certainly justified the means. I reasoned that an educated man of good antecedents who was desperate enough to attempt murder for profit in this enlightened twentieth century was cheaply got rid of at any price, and it was extremely decent of Gillespie—so I argued—to have taken himself away after providing the means of the girl's release. I persuaded myself eloquently on these lines while I exhausted the resources of Glenarm in providing entertainment for both ladies. There had been other breakfasts on the terrace at Glenarm, and tea almost every day in the shadow of St. Agatha's, and one dinner of state in the great Glenarm dining-room; but more blessed were those hours in which we rode, Helen and I, through the sunset into dusk, or drove a canoe over the quiet lake by night. Miss Pat, I felt sure, in so often leaving me alone with Helen, was favoring my attentions; and thus the days passed, like bubbles on flowing water.
She was in my thoughts as I rode into Annandale to post some letters, and I was about to remount at the postoffice door when I saw a crowd gathered in front of the village inn and walked along the street to learn the cause of it. And there, calmly seated on a soap-box, was Gillespie, clad in amazing checks, engaged in the delectable occupation of teaching a stray village mongrel to jump a stick. The loungers seemed highly entertained, and testified their appreciation in loud guffaws. I watched the performance for several minutes, Gillespie meanwhile laboring patiently with the dull dog, until finally it leaped the stick amid the applause of the crowd. Gillespie patted the dog and rose, bowing with exaggerated gravity.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I thank you for your kind attention. Let my slight success with that poor cur teach you the lesson that we may turn the idlest moment to some noble use. The education of the lower animals is something to which too little attention is paid by those who, through the processes of evolution, have risen to a higher species. I am grateful, gentlemen, for your forbearance, and trust we may meet again under circumstances more creditable to us all—including the dog."
The crowd turned away mystified, while Gillespie, feeling in his pocket for his pipe, caught my eye and winked.
"Ah, Donovan," he said coolly, "and so you were among the admiring spectators. I hope you have formed a high opinion of my skill as a dog trainer. Once, I would have you know, I taught a Plymouth Rock rooster to turn a summersault. Are you quite alone?"
"You seem to be as big a fool as ever!" I grumbled in disgust, vexed at finding him in the neighborhood.
"Gallantly spoken, my dear fellow! You are an honor to the Irish race and mankind. Our meeting, however, is not inopportune, as they say in books; and I would have speech with you, gentle knight. The inn, though humble, is still not without decent comforts. Will you honor me?"
He turned abruptly and led the way through the office and up the stairway, babbling nonsense less for my entertainment, I imagined, than for the befuddlement of the landlord, who leaned heavily upon his scant desk and watched our ascent.
He opened a door, and lighted several oil lamps, which disclosed three connecting rooms.
"You see, I got tired of living in the woods, and the farmer I boarded with did not understand my complex character. The absurd fellow thought me insane—can you imagine it?"
"It's a pity he didn't turn you over to the sheriff," I growled.
"Generously spoken! But I came here and hired most of this inn to be near the telegraph office. Though as big a fool as you care to call me I nevertheless look to my buttons. The hook-and-eye people are formidable competitors, and the button may in time become obsolete—stranger things have happened. I keep in touch with our main office, and when I don't feel very good I fire somebody. Only this morning I bounced our general manager by wire for sending me a letter in purple type-writing; I had warned him, you understand, that he was to write to me in black. But it was only a matter of time with that fellow. He entered a bull pup against mine in the Westchester Bench Show last spring and took the ribbon away from me. I really couldn't stand for that. In spite of my glassy splash in the asparagus bed, I'm a man who looks to his dignity, Donovan. Will you smoke?"
I lighted my pipe and encouraged him to go on.
"How long have you been in this bake-oven?"
"I moved in this morning—you are my first pilgrim. I have spent the long hot day in getting settled. I had to throw out the furniture and buy new stuff of the local emporium, where, it depressed me to learn, furniture for the dead is supplied even as for the living. That chair, which I beg you to accept, stood next in the shop to a coffin suitable for a carcass of about your build, old man. But don't let the suggestion annoy you! I read your book on tiger hunting a few years ago with pleasure, and I'm sure you enjoy a charmed life.
"I myself," he continued, taking a chair near me and placing his feet in an open window, "am cursed with rugged health. I have quite recovered from those unkind cuts at the nunnery—thanks to your ministrations—and am willing to put on the gloves with you at any time."
"You do me great honor; but the affair must wait for a lower temperature."
"As you will! It is not like my great and gracious ways to force a fight. Pardon me, but may I inquire for the health of the ladies at Saint What's-her-name's?"
"They are quite well, thank you."
"I am glad to know it;"—and his tone lost for the moment its jauntiness. "Henry Holbrook has gone to New York."
"Good riddance!" I exclaimed heartily. "And now—"
"—And now if I would only follow suit, everything would be joy plus for you!"
He laughed and slapped his knees at my discomfiture, for he had read my thoughts exactly.
"You certainly are the only blot on the landscape!"
"Quite so. And if I would only go hence the pretty little idyl that is being enacted in the delightful garden, under the eye of a friendly chaperon, would go forward without interruption."
He spoke soberly, and I had observed that when he dropped his chaff a note of melancholy crept into his talk. He folded his arms and went on: "She's a wonderful girl, Donovan. There's no other girl like her in all the wide world. I tell you it's hard for a girl like that to be in her position—the whole family broken up, and that contemptible father of hers hanging about with his schemes of plunder. It's pitiful, Donovan; it's pitiful!"
"It's a cheerless mess. It all came after the bank failure, I suppose."
"Practically, though the brothers never got on. You see my governor was bit by their bank failure; and Miss Pat resented the fact that he backed off when stung. But the Gillespies take their medicine; father never squealed, which makes me sore that your Aunt Pat gives me the icy eye."
"Their affairs are certainly mixed," I remarked non-committally.
"They are indeed; and I have studied the whole business until my near mind is mussed up, like scrambled eggs. Your own pretty idyl of the nunnery garden adds the note piquante. Cross my palm with gold and I'll tell you of strange things that lie in the future. I have an idea, Donovan; singular though it seem, I've a notion in my head."
"Keep it," I retorted, "to prevent a cranial vacuum."
"Crushed! Absolutely crushed!" he replied gloomily. "Kick me. I'm only the host."
We were silent while the few sounds of the village street droned in. He rose and paced the floor to shake off his mood, and when he sat down he seemed in better spirits.
"Holbrook will undoubtedly return," I said.
"Yes; there's no manner of doubt about that!"
"And then there will be more trouble."
"Of course."
"But I suppose there's no guessing when he will come back."
"He will come back as soon as he's spent his money."
I felt a delicacy about referring to that transaction on the pier. It was a wretched business, and I now realized that the shame of it was not lost on Gillespie.
"How does Henry come to have that Italian scoundrel with him?" I asked after a pause.
"He's the skipper of the Stiletto," Gillespie replied readily.
"He's a long way from tide-water," I remarked. "A blackguard of just his sort once sailed me around the Italian peninsula in a felucca, and saved me from drowning on the way. His heroism was not, however, wholly disinterested. When we got back to Naples he robbed me of my watch and money-belt and I profited by the transaction, having intended to give him double their value. But there are plenty of farm-boys around the lake who could handle the Stiletto. Henry didn't need a dago expert."
The mention of the Italian clearly troubled Gillespie. After a moment he said:
"He may be holding on to Henry instead of Henry's holding on to him. Do you see?"
"No; I don't."
"Well, I have an idea that the dago knows something that's valuable. Last summer Henry went cruising in the Sound with a pretty rotten crowd, poker being the chief diversion. A man died on the boat before they got back to New York. The report was that he fell down a hatchway when he was drunk, but there were some ugly stories in the papers about it. That Italian sailor was one of the crew."
"Where is he now?"
"Over at Battle Orchard. He knows his man and knows he'll be back. I'm waiting for Henry, too. Helen gave him twenty thousand dollars. The way the market is running he's likely to go broke any day. He plays stocks like a crazy man, and after he's busted he'll be back on our hands."
"It's hard on Miss Pat."
"And it's harder on Helen. She's in terror all the time for fear her father will go up against the law and bring further disgrace on the family. There's her Uncle Arthur, a wanderer on the face of the earth for his sins. That was bad enough without the rest of it."
"That was greed, too, wasn't it?"
"No, just general cussedness. He blew in the Holbrook bank and skipped."
These facts I had gathered before, but they seemed of darker significance now, as we spoke of them in the dimly lighted room of the squalid inn. I recalled a circumstance that had bothered me earlier, but which I had never satisfactorily explained, and I determined to sound Gillespie in regard to it.
"You told me that Henry Holbrook found his way here ahead of you. How do you account for that?"
He looked at me quickly, and rose, again pacing the narrow room.
"I don't! I wish I could!"
"It's about the last place in the world to attract him. Port Annandale is a quiet resort frequented by western people only. There's neither hunting nor fishing worth mentioning; and a man doesn't come from New York to Indiana to sail a boat on a thimbleful of water like this lake."
"You are quite right."
"If Helen Holbrook gave him warning that they were coming here—"
He wheeled on me fiercely, and laid his hand roughly on my shoulder.
"Don't you dare say it! She couldn't have done it! She wouldn't have done it! I tell you I know, independently of her, that he was here before Father Stoddard ever suggested this place to Miss Pat."
"Well, you needn't get so hot about it."
"And you needn't insinuate that she is not acting honorably in this affair! I should think that after making love to her, as you have been doing, and playing the role of comforter to Miss Pat, you would have the decency not to accuse her of connivance with Henry Holbrook."
"You let your jealousy get the better of your good sense. I have not been making love to Miss Holbrook!" I declared angrily and knew in my heart that I lied.
"Well, Irishman," he exclaimed with entire good humor; "let us not bring up mine host to find us locked in mortal combat."
"What the devil did you bring me up here for?" I demanded.
"Oh, just to enjoy your society. I get lonesome sometimes. I tell you a man does get lonesome in this world, when he has nothing to lean on but a blooming button factory and a stepmother who flits among the world's expensive sanatoria. I know you have never had 'Button, button, who's got the button?' chanted in your ears, but may I ask whether you have ever known the joy of a stepmother? I can see that your answer will be an unregretful negative."
He was quite the fool again, and stared at me vacuously.
"My stepmother is not the common type of juvenile fiction. She has never attempted during her widowhood to rob the orphan or to poison him. Bless your Irish heart, no! She's a good woman, and rich in her own right, but I couldn't stand her dietary. She's afraid I'm going to die, Donovan! She thinks everybody's going to die. Father died of pneumonia and she said ice-water in the finger-bowl did it, and she wanted to have the butler arrested for murder. She had a new disease for me every morning. It was worse than being left with a button-works to draw a stepmother like that. She ate nothing but hot water and zweibach herself, and shuddered when I demanded sausage and buckwheat cakes every day. She wept and talked of the duty she owed to my poor dead father; she had promised him, she said, to safeguard my health; and there I was, as strong as an infant industry, weighed a hundred and seventy-six pounds when I was eighteen, and had broken all the prep school records. She made me so nervous talking about her symptoms, and mine—that I didn't have!—that I began taking my real meals in the gardener's house. But to save her feelings I munched a little toast with her. She caught me one day clearing up a couple of chickens and a mug of bass with the gardener, and it was all over. She had noticed, she said, that I had been coughing of late—I was doing a few cigarettes too many, that was all—and wired to New York for doctors. She had all sorts, Donovan—alienists and pneumogastric specialists and lung experts.
"The people on Strawberry Hill thought there was a medical convention in town. I was kidnapped on the golf course, where I was about to win the eastern Connecticut long-drive cup, and locked up in a dark room at home for two days while they tested me. They made all the known tests, Donovan. They tested me for diseases that haven't been discovered yet, and for some that have been extinct since the days of Noah. You can see where that put me. I was afraid to fight or sulk for fear the alienists would send me to the madhouse. I was afraid to eat for fear they would think that was a symptom, and every time I asked for food the tape-worm man looked intelligent and began prescribing, while the rest of them were terribly chagrined because they hadn't scored first. The only joy I got out of the rumpus was in hitting one of those alienists a damned hard clip in the ribs, and I'm glad I did it. He was feeling my medulla oblongata at the moment, and as I resent being man-handled I pasted him one—he was a young chap, and fair game—I pasted him one, and then grabbed a suit-case and slid. I stole away in a clam-boat for New Haven, and kept right on up into northern Maine, where I stayed with the Indians until my father's relict went off broken-hearted to Bad Neuheim to drink the waters. And here I am, by the grace of God, in perfect health and in full control of the button market of the world."
"You have undoubtedly been sorely tried," I said as he broke off mournfully. In spite of myself I had been entertained. He was undeniably a fellow of curious humor and with unusual experience of life. He followed me to the street, and as I rode away he called me back as though to impart something of moment.
"Did you ever meet Charles Darwin?"
"He didn't need me for proof, Buttons."
"I wish I might have had one word with him. It's on my mind that he put the monkeys back too far. I should be happier if he had brought them a little nearer up to date. I should feel less lonesome, Irishman."
He stopped me again.
"Once I had an ambition to find an honest man, Donovan, but I gave it up—it's easier to be an honest man than to find one. I give you peace!"
I had learned some things from the young button king, but much was still opaque in the affairs of the Holbrooks. The Italian's presence assumed a new significance from Gillespie's story. He had been party to a conspiracy to kill Holbrook, alias Hartridge, on the night of my adventure at the house-boat, and I fell to wondering who had been the shadowy director of that enterprise—the coward who had hung off in the creek, and waited for the evil deed to be done.