The Seventh Noon

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"It is n't that there is anything to be afraid of here," she protested,
to ward off any suspicions that might be lurking in his mind. "It is
n't that. I 'm perfectly safe."

He nodded, though he by no means agreed with her.

"It would be just the same," she insisted with almost too much
emphasis, "if Ben were well. I think I must have become panic stricken
with myself."

He frowned. Then he broke out fiercely,

"It's the feel of all the silent people in the city around you,
perhaps. They are ghosts, these strangers,--human ghosts with fingers
which clutch your throat if you are n't careful. You sense them in New
York as nowhere else."

She glanced up quickly,

"That's an odd idea," she replied. "The loneliness comes then because
you are n't really alone."

"Yes--here in New York."

"But that is n't true of the woods," she asserted.

"You have been much among the trees?" he asked quickly, his voice
softening.

"Not very much. But enough to learn to love them. Especially the
inner woods."

He knew what she meant--the forests where things still grow for the sky
and the beasts and not for man; where man may come as guest but not as
master.

"No," he answered, "one never feels alone there."

"In there," she faltered, trying to express vague thoughts which yet
were most real to her, "everything seems to be normal."

He studied her with increasing interest and a growing sense of
comradeship. Her eyes were wonderful as she sat chin in hands, gazing
into the fire, lost in some pleasant picture of the past. When he
looked into them, they caught him up again as they had done in the
cafe. They swept him to the rhythm of some haunting music back to the
days when his blood had run strong--back to the beauty of the hills at
twenty when he had not felt big enough by himself to absorb their full
marvel. In a dim mystical way he had realized even then that the
keenest edge of their meaning was escaping him. The blue sky above the
trees had seemed like the laughing eyes of a woman and the rustle of
leaves like the whisper of her skirt. He had laughed back boldly then,
feeling in the pride of his strength little need of them.

Now the eyes of this girl, and the soft modeling of every line of her,
filled him with an infinite tenderness for those forgotten hours. It
was as though she cleared away the intervening years and made him face
the fragrant Spring again. Without diminishing one whit of his
vigorous enjoyment of life, she added an element of refinement to it.

Half in fear of what this might mean, he shook himself free of the
mood, and moving a chair to the other side of the fire sat down.
Behind her the old clock still ticked as though in malicious
appreciation of the situation.

She clung to the subject of the woods as though in it she found relief.
She wished to hear more of it from him. It made him appear less a
stranger. When he spoke of these things he went back into her own
past--into the most beautiful, intimate part of it. He was the only
man other than Mr. Arsdale that she could have endured to associate
with those days. She felt at ease with him there, and this made her
feel that he had more right to be here now. His eager face softened
when he spoke of those things. There was in it then none of that
fierceness which had for a moment startled her when he spoke of the
loneliness he had found here in New York. At that moment he had looked
like a man at bay. He had challenged life bitterly. It was not in
keeping with the kindly generous strength of his mouth and chin.

"Tell me," she asked him, "of some of your days in the woods."

Yesterday he could not have complied. Those days had seemed dead and
buried. Now he was in the mood for it. He found it pleasant, sitting
here, to go back.

Each hour stood out as bright with sunshine as a Sorolla. It was as
though they had sprung to life at a call from her--had come to bring
her ease. He talked at random of brooks that start nowhere and go
nowhere, save over white stones and past watercress; of thin ribbed
ferns and of scarlet bunchberries. He told her of a stream he knew,
where, if you lie very quiet in the moss, you see speckled trout dart
over white pebbles into the darker water beneath the lichened rocks.
He told her of the shallows, and pools, and falls you find if you keep
to its banks for the miles it sings by the grave trees. He told her of
mountain tops where he had lain near the stars and watched the noon
clouds sweep half a county with their big shadows. He told her of old
wood roads he had followed through the young maples and birches and
evergreens and pines--roads which lay silent all day long and all night
long, month after month, ready for the feet which might tread it once
in a year.

So she took him back again to the redolent shadows, back to the
silences where dreams are born. Here he came upon other things--the
old path gay flowered with illusions which led him toward that future--

A future? What had he to do with a future? Was he rushing headlong
thus soon into another pit as bad as that from which he had just
escaped? The Future was Now--not one minute, not one second beyond.
He was here before an open fire, with this girl in the background, with
beautiful rugs and pictures about him, with a great seething,
struggling, future-chained horde outside, and the eternal stars
overhead. In the midst of it he was free, and this was enough for him
to know. Now! Now! The girl was now and her eyes were now and the
flush of her velvet cheek was now!

CHAPTER VI

_The Shadow on the Portraits_

He was roused by the sound of her voice and the single stroke of the
clock back of her. It was one, and he could have sworn that they had
been sitting here less than fifteen minutes.

"I must go to Ben now," she said. "It is time to give him more
medicine."

"I will go with you."

"No," she decided, "I think I had better go alone. A stranger might
frighten him."

He hesitated with an uneasy sense of foreboding, but she moved past him
determinedly and went up the stairs, leaving him alone with the
haunting picture upon the wall. He moved nearer to study it more in
detail. He caught a trace of resemblance to the boy but none to the
girl. The features were more rugged than those of young Arsdale, and
the forehead was broader and higher, but the mouth was the same--thin,
tense, and yet with no strength of jaw behind it. The cheek bones were
rather high and the eyes set deep but over-close together. It was a
face, thought Donaldson, of which great things might be expected, but
upon which nothing could be depended. The man would move eratically
but brilliantly, like those aquatic fireworks which dart in burning
angles along the face of the water--scarlet serpents shooting to the
right, the left, in their gorgeous irresponsible course towards the
dark.

As he stood there Donaldson thought he heard the soft tread of feet in
the hall and the click of the outside door as it was opened. He
listened intently, but he heard nothing further. He crossed the
library and looked out. The door was ajar. He flung it open and
peered down the driveway; there was nothing to be seen but the dark
mass of hedge bounding the yard. He went to the foot of the stairs and
listened; there was no sound above.

The wind may have blown open the door if it had been unlatched, and the
imagined footsteps in the hall may have been nothing but the rustling
of the hangings, but still he was not satisfied. He ventured up the
first flight and paused to listen. He thought he heard a movement
above, but was not quite sure. He neither wished to intrude nor to
frighten her unnecessarily, but he called her name. At first he
received no response, and then, with a sense of relief that made him
realize how deep his fear had been, he saw her come to the head of the
stairs. The light came only from the sick room, so that he could not
see her very clearly. She took a step towards them, and then he
noticed that she swayed and clutched the banister. He was at her side
in three bounds.

"What is the trouble?" he demanded.

"If you will steady me a bit," she answered.

"Are you hurt?"

"Just dazed a little. Did you stop him?"

"Stop him? Then some one did go out?"

"As I opened the door Ben rushed by me and--I fell down. I hoped you
might see him and hold him!"

"I was at the other end of the library. He must have stolen out on
tiptoe. But you are faint."

"I am stronger now."

She started down the stairs with the help of the banister, holding
herself together with remarkable self control. As they came into the
light he saw that she was very pale, but she insisted that she needed
nothing but a breath of cool air. He helped her to the door and here
she sat down for a moment upon the step.

"I might take a look around the grounds," Donaldson suggested.

"It is quite useless. He is not here."

"Then you have an idea where he has gone!"

She hesitated a moment.

"Yes," she answered.

He waited, but she ventured nothing further.

"I want you to feel," he said quietly, "that you may call upon me for
anything you wish done. My time is my own--quite my own. I place it
at your service."

She turned to study his face a moment. It was clean and earnest. It
bade her trust. Yet to ask him to do what lay before her was to bring
him, a stranger, into the heart of her family affairs. It was to
involve her in an intimacy from which instinctively she shrank. But
pressing her close was the realization of the imminent danger
threatening the boy. This was no time for quibbling--no time for nice
shadings of propriety. Even if this meant a sacrifice of something of
herself, she must cling to the one spar that promised a chance for her
brother's safety. As Donaldson's eyes met hers, she felt ashamed that
she had hesitated even long enough for these thoughts to flash through
her brain.

"The boy uses opium," she said without equivocation.

The bare naming of the drug rolled up the curtain before the whole
tragedy which had been suggested by the portrait in the library; it
explained every detail of this wild night except her presence here
practically alone with the crazed young man. It accounted for her
objection to waiting in the drugstore; it solved the mystery of her
fear of the city shadows. Had he suspected this, he would no more have
allowed her to go up those stairs alone than he would have permitted
her to go unescorted into the cell of a madman.

"I 'm sorry for him," he murmured. "Then he has gone straight to Mott
Street?"

"I 'm afraid so. He has been there once before."

"The habit has been long upon him?"

"It is inherited. This is the third generation," she admitted, turning
her head aside in shame.

"But he himself--"

"Only after his father's death. The father feared this and watched him
every minute. He died thinking the danger was passed, but he left me a
prescription which had been of help to him. It was given him by our
old family physician who has since died. Mr. Barstow knew Dr. Emory
and so has always prepared it for me."

"How long this last time did he go without the drug?"

"It is three months since the first attack. This medicine tided him
over five days. He was nervous to-night and begged me to go out to
dinner with him. I 'm afraid it was unwise--the lights and the music
excited him."

"But you have n't been here alone with him?"

"There is Marie."

"Two women alone with a man in that condition--it is n't safe."

"You don't understand how good he has been. He has struggled hard. He
has allowed me to lock him up--to do everything to help him. He has
never been like this before."

"It is n't safe for you," he repeated. "Are there no relatives I may
summon?"

"None," she answered. "I am his cousin--his sister by adoption. There
are no other relatives."

"No friends?"

"I would rather fight it out alone," she answered firmly. "I don't
wish my friends to know about this," she added hastily, as though to
avoid further discussion along this line.

"It was careless of me to leave the door open as I went in."

"It was lucky for you. He might have--"

"Don't!" she shuddered.

He waited a moment.

"You are brave," he declared, "but this is too big a problem for you to
manage. He should have been placed in the hands of a physician."

"No," she interrupted. "No one must know of this. I trust you to tell
no one of this."

He thought a moment.

"Very well. But in order to locate him now, it will be necessary to
call in the help of the police."

"The police!" she exclaimed in horror. "No! You must promise me you
will not do that."

She rose to her feet all excitement.

"They would not arrest him," he assured her. "They would simply hold
him until we came for him."

"I would rather not. I would rather wait until he comes back himself
than do that."

He could not understand her fear, but he was bound to respect it.

"Very well," he answered quietly. "But I have a friend whom I can
trust. You do not mind if I enlist his help?"

"He is of the police?" she asked suspiciously.

"He is a friend," he replied. "It is as a friend he will do this for
me."

"Oh," she answered confused, "I don't know what to do! But I feel that
I can trust you--I _will_ trust you."

"Thank you. Then I must begin work at once. There is a telephone in
the house?"

Her face brightened instantly. He seemed so decisive and sure. The
fact that he was so immediately active, that he did not wait until
daylight, when conditions would be best, but began the search in the
face of apparent impossibility, brought her immediate confidence. She
liked a man who would, without quoting the old saw, hunt for a needle
in a haystack.

She directed him to the telephone, and he summoned a cab. He returned
with the question,

"Do you know how much money he had?"

"Money? He had none."

"Then," said Donaldson, "won't he come back of himself? Opium is one
thing for which there is no credit."

"I 'm afraid not. He has been away before without money, and--"

She stopped as abruptly as though a hand had been placed over her
mouth. Her face clouded as though from some new and half forgotten
fear. She glanced swiftly at Donaldson, as though to see if he had
read the ellipsis.

When she spoke again it was slowly, each word with an effort.

"My pocket-book was upstairs. It is possible that he borrowed."

Donaldson knew the meaning of that. Kleptomania was a characteristic
symptom. Victims of this habit had gone even further in their hot
necessity for money.

"Perhaps," she suggested hesitatingly, "perhaps this search to-night
may inconvenience you financially. I wish you to feel free to spend
without limit whatever you may find helpful. We have more than ample
funds. Unfortunately I have on hand only a little money, but as soon
as I can get to my bank--"

"I have enough." He smiled as a new meaning to the phrase came to him.
"More than enough."

He glanced at the clock. Over half of his first day already gone. He
heard the crunching wheels of the taxicab on the graveled road outside.
Hurrying into the hall he took one of Arsdale's hats--he had lost his
own in the machine--and slipped into his overcoat. Still he paused,
curiously reluctant to leave her. He did not feel that there was very
much waiting for him outside, and here--he would have been content to
live his week in this old library. He had glimpsed a dozen volumes
that he would have enjoyed handling. He would like to spread them out
upon his knee before the fire and read to her at random from them.
Yes, she must be there to complete the library. He was getting loose
again in his thoughts.

She was looking at him anxiously.

"I think we shall find him," he said confidently. "At any rate I shall
come back in the morning and report."

"This seems such an imposition--" she faltered.

"Please don't look at it in that light," he pleaded earnestly. "I feel
as though I were doing this for an old friend."

"You are kind to consider it so."

"You see we have been in the inner woods together."

She smiled courageously.

"Good night. I wish you were better guarded here," he added.

He held out his hand quite frankly. She put her own within it for a
moment. He grew dizzy at the mere touch of it. It was as though his
Lady of the Mountains had suddenly become a living, tangible reality.
The light touch of her fingers was as wine to him. They made the task
before him seem an easy one. They made it a privilege. She thought
that he was making a sacrifice in doing this for her when she was
granting him the boon of returning upon the morrow.

"Good night," he said again.

He turned abruptly and opening the door stepped out into the cab
without daring to look back.

CHAPTER VII

_The Arsdales_

Miss Arsdale hurried upstairs to where in a rear room Marie, with a
candle burning beside her, lay in bed done up like a mummy.

"Par Di', Mam'selle Elaine," exclaimed the old housekeeper, her eyes
growing brighter at sight of her. "I had a dream about a black horse.
Is anything wrong with you?"

"Nothing. And your poor lame knees, Marie--they are better?"

"N'importe," she grunted, "but I do not like the feel of the night.
Was M'sieur Ben down there with you?"

"Yes."

"You should be in bed by now. You must go at once."

"I think I shall sleep in the little room off yours to-night."

"Bien. Then if you need anything in the night, you can call me."

Marie was scarcely able to turn herself in her bed, but, she still felt
the responsibility of the house.

"Very well, Marie. Good night."

She kissed the old housekeeper upon the forehead and was going out when
she heard the latter murmur as though to herself,

"The black horse may mean Jacques."

"Have you heard nothing from him in his new position?" she asked,
turning at the door.

"Non," she answered sharply. "Go to bed."

So the girl went on into a darkness that she, too, found ridden by
black horses.

For three generations the Arsdales had been a family of whom those who
claim New York as their inheritance had known both much and little. It
was impossible to ignore the silent part Horace Arsdale, the
grandfather, had played in the New York business world or the quiet
influence he had exerted in such musical and literary centres as
existed in his day. Any one who knew anybody would answer an inquiry
as to who they might be with a surprised lift of the eyebrows.

"The Arsdales? Why they are--the Arsdales."

"But what--"

"Oh, they are a queer lot. But they have brains and--money."

Horace Arsdale died in an asylum, and there were the usual ugly rumors
as to what brought him there. He left a son Benjamin, and Benjamin
built the present Arsdale house at a time when it was like building in
the wilderness. Here he shut himself up with his bride, a French girl
he had met on his travels. Ask any one who Benjamin Arsdale was and
they would be apt to answer,

"Benjamin Arsdale? Oh, he is Benjamin Arsdale. They say he has a
great deal of talent and--money."

The first statement seemed to be proven by some very delicate lyrical
verse which appeared from time to time in the magazines. Though a
member of the best half dozen New York clubs, not a dozen men out of
the hundreds who knew his name had ever seen him.

His wife died within three years, some say from a broken heart, some
say from homesickness, leaving a boy child six months old. At this
point Benjamin Arsdale's name disappeared even from the magazines, and
save to a very few people he was as though dead and buried beneath his
odd house. An old Frenchman, his wife, and his son Jacques Moisson
seemed content to live there and look after the household duties. Some
ten years later a little girl of nine appeared, a niece of Arsdale's,
it was said, and this completed the household, though old Pere Moisson
died in the course of time, leaving his wife and Jacques as a sort of
legacy to his old master, for a body-guard. The only reports of the
inmates to the outside world came through the other servants who were
employed here from time to time, and the most they had to say was that
Arsdale was "queer," and they did n't think it was the place to bring
up young children, though the master did adore the very ground they
walked on. When the children were older, Arsdale was seen at concerts
and the theatre with them, but seemed to resent any attempt on the part
of well meaning acquaintances to renew social ties. People remarked
upon how old for his age he had grown, and some spoke in a whisper of
the spirituality of his features.

So much every one knew and that was nothing. What Elaine Arsdale, whom
he had legally adopted, knew, was what caused the white light about the
bowed head of the man. When she first learned she could not tell, but
as a very young girl she remembered days when he came to her with his
face very white and tense, and in his eyes the terror of one in great
pain, and said to her,

"Little girl, will you sit with me a bit?"

So she would take a seat by the window in the library and he would face
her very quietly with his long fingers twined around the chair arms.
He would not speak and she knew that he did not wish her to speak. He
wished for her only to sit there where he could see her. She was never
afraid, but at times there came into his eyes a look that tempted her
to cry. Sometimes an hour, sometimes two hours passed, and then he
would rise to his feet and walk unsteadily towards her and say,

"Now I may kiss your forehead, Elaine."

He would kiss her, and shortly after fall into a deep sleep of
exhaustion.

Between these periods, which she did not understand save that in some
way he suffered a great deal, he was to her the gentlest and kindest
guardian that ever a girl had. He personally superintended her studies
and those of Ben, her only other playmate. The day was divided into
regular hours for work and play. In the morning at nine he met them in
the library and heard their lessons and gave them their tasks for the
next day. He seemed to know everything and had a way of making one
understand very difficult matters such as fractions and irregular
French verbs. In the afternoon came the music lessons. He was anxious
for them both to play well upon the violin, for he said that it had
been to him one of the greatest joys of his life. Each night before
bedtime he used to play for them himself and make her see finer
pictures than even those she found in her fairy tales. But there were
other times when he could make his violin terrible. He used to punish
Ben in this way. When the latter had been over wilful, he made the boy
stand before him. Then taking a position in front of him, he played
things so wild, so fearful, that the boy would beg for mercy.

"Do you wish your soul to be like that?" he would demand sternly.

"So, father, no," Ben would whimper.

"Then you must control yourself. If ever you lose a grip upon yourself
in temper or anything else, it will be like that."

But the music even at such times never frightened her, though it
sounded very savage, like the wind through the trees in a thunder storm.

The only time that he had ever seemed the slightest bit angry at her
was once during that wonderful summer when he had taken them abroad.
She was seventeen, and on the boat she met a man with whom she fell in
love. He was very much older than she, and possessed a glorious
mustache which turned up at the corners. He helped her up and down the
deck one day when the wind was blowing, and that night she lay awake
thinking about him. When she appeared in the morning with her eyes
heavy and her thoughts far away, the father put his arm about her and
escorted her to the stern of the boat. Then sitting down beside her,
he said,

"Tell me what is on your mind, little girl."

She told him quite simply, and had been surprised to see his face grow
white and terrible.

"He put those thoughts into your heart?"

He rose to his feet and started towards the saloon. She knew what he
was about to do. She flung her arms around his knees and, sobbing,
pleaded with him until he stayed. Then after she had calmed a little,
he talked to her and she listened as though to a stranger.

"Little girl," he cried fiercely, "there is much that you do not
understand, and much that I pray God you never will understand. One of
these things is the nature of man. If it were not for all the other
fair things there are in life I would place you in a convent, for the
best man who ever lived, little girl, is not good enough to take into
his keeping the worst woman. They break their hearts with their
weaknesses--they break their hearts."

"But you, dear Dada--"

"I did it! God forgive me, I did it, too!"

At this point he gained control of himself and his wild speech, but the
words remained forever an echo in her heart.

They passed the next summer in the Adirondacks, and here in the deep
woods she spent the pleasantest period of her life. She was strangely
atune with the big pines and the fragrant shadows which lay beneath
them. Arsdale used to sit beside her in these solitudes and read aloud
by the hour from the poets in his sweet musical voice. At such times
she wondered more than ever what he had meant in that outburst on the
steamer. Here, too, he told her more of her mother who had died at
almost the same time that Ben's mother had died. But of the father all
he ever told her was,

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