The Troll Garden and Selected Stories

was beginning to show gray about the ears, and his bronzed face was

  heavily lined. His square brown hands were locked behind him, and

  he held his shoulders like a man conscious of responsibilities;

  yet, as he turned to greet Everett, there was an incongruous

  diffidence in his address.

  "Good morning, Mr. Hilgarde," he said, extending his hand;

  "I found your name on the hotel register. My name is Gaylord.

  I'm afraid my sister startled you at the station last night, Mr.

  Hilgarde, and I've come around to apologize."

  "Ah! The young lady in the phaeton? I'm sure I didn't know

  whether I had anything to do with her alarm or not. If I did, it

  is I who owe the apology."

  The man colored a little under the dark brown of his face.

  "Oh, it's nothing you could help, sir, I fully understand

  that. You see, my sister used to be a pupil of your brother's,

  and it seems you favor him; and when the switch engine threw a

  light on your face it startled her."

  Everett wheeled about in his chair. "Oh! Katharine Gaylord!

  Is it possible! Now it's you who have given me a turn. Why, I

  used to know her when I was a boy. What on earth--"

  "Is she doing here?" said Gaylord, grimly filling out the

  pause. "You've got at the heart of the matter. You knew my

  sister had been in bad health for a long time?"

  "No, I had never heard a word of that. The last I knew of

  her she was singing in London. My brother and I correspond

  infrequently and seldom get beyond family matters. I am deeply

  sorry to hear this. There are more reasons why I am concerned

  than I can tell you."

  The lines in Charley Gaylord's brow relaxed a little.

  "What I'm trying to say, Mr. Hilgarde, is that she wants to see

  you. I hate to ask you, but she's so set on it. We live several

  miles out of town, but my rig's below, and I can take you out

  anytime you can go."

  "I can go now, and it will give me real pleasure to do so," said

  Everett, quickly. "I'll get my hat and be with you in a moment."

  When he came downstairs Everett found a cart at the door,

  and Charley Gaylord drew a long sigh of relief as he gathered up

  the reins and settled back into his own element.

  "You see, I think I'd better tell you something about my

  sister before you see her, and I don't know just where to begin.

  She traveled in Europe with your brother and his wife, and sang

  at a lot of his concerts; but I don't know just how much you know

  about her."

  "Very little, except that my brother always thought her the

  most gifted of his pupils, and that when I knew her she was very

  young and very beautiful and turned my head sadly for a while."

  Everett saw that Gaylord's mind was quite engrossed by his

  grief. He was wrought up to the point where his reserve and

  sense of proportion had quite left him, and his trouble was the

  one vital thing in the world. "That's the whole thing," he went

  on, flicking his horses with the whip.

  "She was a great woman, as you say, and she didn't come of a

  great family. She had to fight her own way from the first. She

  got to Chicago, and then to New York, and then to Europe, where

  she went up like lightning, and got a taste for it all; and now

  she's dying here like a rat in a hole, out of her own world, and

  she can't fall back into ours. We've grown apart, some way--

  miles and miles apart--and I'm afraid she's fearfully unhappy."

  "It's a very tragic story that you are telling me, Gaylord,"

  said Everett. They were well out into the country now, spinning

  along over the dusty plains of red grass, with the ragged-blue

  outline of the mountains before them.

  "Tragic!" cried Gaylord, starting up in his seat, "my God, man,

  nobody will ever know how tragic. It's a tragedy I live with and

  eat with and sleep with, until I've lost my grip on everything.

  You see she had made a good bit of money, but she spent it all

  going to health resorts. It's her lungs, you know. I've got money

  enough to send her anywhere, but the doctors all say it's no use.

  She hasn't the ghost of a chance. It's just getting through the

  days now. I had no notion she was half so bad before she came to

  me. She just wrote that she was all run down. Now that she's

  here, I think she'd be happier anywhere under the sun, but she

  won't leave. She says it's easier to let go of life here, and that

  to go East would be dying twice. There was a time when I was a

  brakeman with a run out of Bird City, Iowa, and she was a little

  thing I could carry on my shoulder, when I could get her everything

  on earth she wanted, and she hadn't a wish my $80 a month didn't

  cover; and now, when I've got a little property together, I can't

  buy her a night's sleep!"

  Everett saw that, whatever Charley Gaylord's present status

  in the world might be, he had brought the brakeman's heart up the

  ladder with him, and the brakeman's frank avowal of sentiment.

  Presently Gaylord went on:

  "You can understand how she has outgrown her family. We're

  all a pretty common sort, railroaders from away back. My father

  was a conductor. He died when we were kids. Maggie, my other

  sister, who lives with me, was a telegraph operator here while I

  was getting my grip on things. We had no education to speak of.

  I have to hire a stenographer because I can't spell straight--the

  Almighty couldn't teach me to spell. The things that make up

  life to Kate are all Greek to me, and there's scarcely a point

  where we touch any more, except in our recollections of the old

  times when we were all young and happy together, and Kate sang in

  a church choir in Bird City. But I believe, Mr. Hilgarde, that

  if she can see just one person like you, who knows about the

  things and people she's interested in, it will give her about the

  only comfort she can have now."

  The reins slackened in Charley Gaylord's hand as they drew

  up before a showily painted house with many gables and a round

  tower. "Here we are," he said, turning to Everett, "and I guess

  we understand each other."

  They were met at the door by a thin, colorless woman, whom

  Gaylord introduced as "my sister, Maggie." She asked her brother

  to show Mr. Hilgarde into the music room, where Katharine wished

  to see him alone.

  When Everett entered the music room he gave a little start

  of surprise, feeling that he had stepped from the glaring Wyoming

  sunlight into some New York studio that he had always known. He

  wondered which it was of those countless studios, high up under

  the roofs, over banks and shops and wholesale houses, that this

  room resembled, and he looked incredulously out of the window at

  the gray plain that ended in the great upheaval of the Rockies.

  The haunting air of familiarity about the room perplexed

  him. Was it a copy of some particular studio he knew, or was it

  merely the studio atmosphere that seemed so individual and

  poignantly reminiscent here in Wyoming? He sat down
in a reading

  chair and looked keenly about him. Suddenly his eye fell upon a

  large photograph of his brother above the piano. Then it all

  became clear to him: this was veritably his brother's room. If

  it were not an exact copy of one of the many studios that

  Adriance had fitted up in various parts of the world, wearying of

  them and leaving almost before the renovator's varnish had dried,

  it was at least in the same tone. In every detail Adriance's

  taste was so manifest that the room seemed to exhale his

  personality.

  Among the photographs on the wall there was one of Katharine

  Gaylord, taken in the days when Everett had known her, and when

  the flash of her eye or the flutter of her skirt was enough to

  set his boyish heart in a tumult. Even now, he stood before the

  portrait with a certain degree of embarrassment. It was the face

  of a woman already old in her first youth, thoroughly

  sophisticated and a trifle hard, and it told of what her brother

  had called her fight. The camaraderie of her frank, confident

  eyes was qualified by the deep lines about her mouth and the

  curve of the lips, which was both sad and cynical. Certainly she

  had more good will than confidence toward the world, and the

  bravado of her smile could not conceal the shadow of an unrest

  that was almost discontent. The chief charm of the woman, as

  Everett had known her, lay in her superb figure and in her eyes,

  which possessed a warm, lifegiving quality like the sunlight;

  eyes which glowed with a sort of perpetual salutat to the

  world. Her head, Everett remembered as peculiarly well-shaped and

  proudly poised. There had been always a little of the imperatrix

  about her, and her pose in the photograph revived all his old

  impressions of her unattachedness, of how absolutely and valiantly

  she stood alone.

  Everett was still standing before the picture, his hands behind him

  and his head inclined, when he heard the door open. A very tall

  woman advanced toward him, holding out her hand. As she started to

  speak, she coughed slightly; then, laughing, said, in a low, rich

  voice, a trifle husky: "You see I make the traditional Camille

  entrance--with the cough. How good of you to come, Mr. Hilgarde."

  Everett was acutely conscious that while addressing him she

  was not looking at him at all, and, as he assured her of his

  pleasure in coming, he was glad to have an opportunity to collect

  himself. He had not reckoned upon the ravages of a long illness.

  The long, loose folds of her white gown had been especially

  designed to conceal the sharp outlines of her emaciated body, but

  the stamp of her disease was there; simple and ugly and obtrusive,

  a pitiless fact that could not be disguised or evaded. The

  splendid shoulders were stooped, there was a swaying unevenness in

  her gait, her arms seemed disproportionately long, and her hands

  were transparently white and cold to the touch. The changes in her

  face were less obvious; the proud carriage of the head, the warm,

  clear eyes, even the delicate flush of color in her cheeks, all

  defiantly remained, though they were all in a lower key--older,

  sadder, softer.

  She sat down upon the divan and began nervously to arrange the

  pillows. "I know I'm not an inspiring object to look upon, but you

  must be quite frank and sensible about that and get used to it at

  once, for we've no time to lose. And if I'm a trifle irritable you

  won't mind?--for I'm more than usually nervous."

  "Don't bother with me this morning, if you are tired," urged

  Everett. "I can come quite as well tomorrow."

  "Gracious, no!" she protested, with a flash of that quick,

  keen humor that he remembered as a part of her. "It's solitude

  that I'm tired to death of--solitude and the wrong kind of people.

  You see, the minister, not content with reading the prayers for the

  sick, called on me this morning. He happened to be riding

  by on his bicycle and felt it his duty to stop. Of course, he

  disapproves of my profession, and I think he takes it for granted

  that I have a dark past. The funniest feature of his conversation

  is that he is always excusing my own vocation to me--condoning it,

  you know--and trying to patch up my peace with my conscience by

  suggesting possible noble uses for what he kindly calls my talent."

  Everett laughed. "Oh! I'm afraid I'm not the person to call

  after such a serious gentleman--I can't sustain the situation.

  At my best I don't reach higher than low comedy. Have you

  decided to which one of the noble uses you will devote yourself?"

  Katharine lifted her hands in a gesture of renunciation and

  exclaimed: "I'm not equal to any of them, not even the least

  noble. I didn't study that method."

  She laughed and went on nervously: "The parson's not so bad.

  His English never offends me, and he has read Gibbon's Decline

  and Fall, all five volumes, and that's something. Then, he has

  been to New York, and that's a great deal. But how we are losing

  time! Do tell me about New York; Charley says you're just on from

  there. How does it look and taste and smell just now? I think a

  whiff of the Jersey ferry would be as flagons of cod-liver oil to

  me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or

  she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have

  they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden

  Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating

  changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and

  what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries

  about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theaters,

  and what do they eat and drink there in the world nowadays? You

  see, I'm homesick for it all, from the Battery to Riverside. Oh,

  let me die in Harlem!" She was interrupted by a violent attack

  of coughing, and Everett, embarrassed by her discomfort, plunged

  into gossip about the professional people he had met in town

  during the summer and the musical outlook for the winter. He was

  diagraming with his pencil, on the back of an old envelope he

  found in his pocket, some new mechanical device to be

  used at the Metropolitan in the production of the Rheingold,

  when he became conscious that she was looking at him intently, and

  that he was talking to the four walls.

  Katharine was lying back among the pillows, watching him

  through half-closed eyes, as a painter looks at a picture. He

  finished his explanation vaguely enough and put the envelope back

  in his pocket. As he did so she said, quietly: "How wonderfully

  like Adriance you are!" and he felt as though a crisis of some

  sort had been met and tided over.

  He laughed, looking up at her with a touch of pride in his

  eyes that made them seem quite boyish. "Yes, isn't it absurd?

  It's almost as awkward as looking like Napoleon--but, after all,

  there are some advantages. It has made some of his friends like

  me, and I hope
it will make you."

  Katharine smiled and gave him a quick, meaning glance from

  under her lashes. "Oh, it did that long ago. What a haughty,

  reserved youth you were then, and how you used to stare at people

  and then blush and look cross if they paid you back in your own

  coin. Do you remember that night when you took me home from a

  rehearsal and scarcely spoke a word to me?"

  "It was the silence of admiration," protested Everett, "very

  crude and boyish, but very sincere and not a little painful.

  Perhaps you suspected something of the sort? I remember you saw

  fit to be very grown-up and worldly.

  "I believe I suspected a pose; the one that college boys

  usually affect with singers--'an earthen vessel in love with a

  star,' you know. But it rather surprised me in you, for you must

  have seen a good deal of your brother's pupils. Or had you an

  omnivorous capacity, and elasticity that always met the

  occasion?"

  "Don't ask a man to confess the follies of his youth," said

  Everett, smiling a little sadly; "I am sensitive about some of

  them even now. But I was not so sophisticated as you imagined.

  I saw my brother's pupils come and go, but that was about all.

  Sometimes I was called on to play accompaniments, or to fill out

  a vacancy at a rehearsal, or to order a carriage for an

  infuriated soprano who had thrown up her part. But they never

  spent any time on me, unless it was to notice the resemblance you

  speak of."

  "Yes", observed Katharine, thoughtfully, "I noticed it then,

  too; but it has grown as you have grown older. That is rather

  strange, when you have lived such different lives. It's not

  merely an ordinary family likeness of feature, you know, but a

  sort of interchangeable individuality; the suggestion of the

  other man's personality in your face like an air transposed to

  another key. But I'm not attempting to define it; it's beyond

  me; something altogether unusual and a trifle--well, uncanny,"

  she finished, laughing.

  "I remember," Everett said seriously, twirling the pencil

  between his fingers and looking, as he sat with his head thrown

  back, out under the red window blind which was raised just a

  little, and as it swung back and forth in the wind revealed the

  glaring panorama of the desert--a blinding stretch of yellow,

  flat as the sea in dead calm, splotched here and there with deep

  purple shadows; and, beyond, the ragged-blue outline of the

  mountains and the peaks of snow, white as the white clouds--"I

  remember, when I was a little fellow I used to be very sensitive

  about it. I don't think it exactly displeased me, or that I would

  have had it otherwise if I could, but it seemed to me like a

  birthmark, or something not to be lightly spoken of. People were

  naturally always fonder of Ad than of me, and I used to feel the

  chill of reflected light pretty often. It came into even my

  relations with my mother. Ad went abroad to study when he was

  absurdly young, you know, and mother was all broken up over it.

  She did her whole duty by each of us, but it was sort of

  generally understood among us that she'd have made burnt

  offerings of us all for Ad any day. I was a little fellow then,

  and when she sat alone on the porch in the summer dusk she used

  sometimes to call me to her and turn my face up in the light that

  streamed out through the shutters and kiss me, and then I always

  knew she was thinking of Adriance."

  "Poor little chap," said Katharine, and her tone was a

  trifle huskier than usual. "How fond people have always been of

  Adriance! Now tell me the latest news of him. I haven't heard,

  except through the press, for a year or more. He was in Algeria

  then, in the valley of the Chelif, riding horseback night and day

  in an Arabian costume, and in his usual enthusiastic fashion he

  had quite made up his mind to adopt the Mohammedan faith

  and become as nearly an Arab as possible. How many countries and

  faiths has be adopted, I wonder? Probably he was playing Arab to