Chapter 4

Lord Harrow's daughter leaned over the rail. She had a very white face and very wonderful red hair. Her way of speaking always reminded the Poor Boy of pearls falling from a string one by one.

"Joy Grey's just come," she said. "She's changing into outdoor things. Do you mind waiting?"

"How is she?" asked the Poor Boy eagerly.

"Oh, she's white and tired after all she's been through, poor duck; don't let her overdo at first. Where are you going to take her?"

"Aren't you coming with us?"

Three pearls fell.

"How--you--talk!"

"But--but--"

"Nonsense," exclaimed Lord Harrow's daughter. "You're head over ears in love with her, and she with you."

"What!" exclaimed the Poor Boy. "Do you mean that!"

"Mean it? Of course I do. And everybody knows it--except you two. I was in the village yesterday, and the people had heard that she was coming--to you--_to you_--and they were hanging wreaths in the windows as if for Christmas. When we drove through the village on our way here they lined the main street and cheered her."

"What did she do?"

"She was delighted. She thought they were cheering my father and me, and she said she was so glad that she had been asked to visit such wonderful distinguished people. The little duck!"

"The little _goat_," cried the Poor Boy. "The darling little goat!"

"Only call her that to her face--and she's yours."

"I daren't," said the Poor Boy, "now that I know that I love her--"

"Lucky I told you!" This with pearly sarcasm.

"Now that I know--I'm afraid--I'm afraid.... But I've always loved her. It began in Arcadia, that is, Central Park. You roller-skate there when you are little. She was knee-high to a grasshopper, and I was shoulder-high. She wore a coat of gosling-green with facings of primrose-yellow, and when she fell and barked the knee of one stocking I took her to old Martha, and old Martha mended her. Her knee itself wasn't really hurt, but it was all rough and gritty from the asphalt. She didn't cry. And so I loved her. Why is she so long changing into outdoor things?"

"Hush!" pearled Lord Harrow's daughter. "She's coming."

And the Poor Boy's heart echoed: "She's coming--she's coming."

At the last moment reason and experience whispered in his ear: "_Don't_ be a fool--_don't_ spoil everything. If you tell her you love her and she says she loves you, why the least you can do is to kiss her, and you know as well as I do that _if you touch them they vanish_."

So the Poor Boy walked with Joy that day and the next and the next, and they were never very far apart, and he got to love her more and more. And the more he loved her the more dangerous was it to tell her so, for things got to such a point that if she had suddenly vanished, the blow would almost have broken his heart.

X

But it was the heart of winter, not the Poor Boy's that was to be broken. March came, and a wind from the south. Snow melted in sunny corners, to freeze again at night, and melted and froze; and April came, and wherever the Poor Boy went with his love there was a sound of water falling, running, and roaring. The ice in lakes and streams wore thin along the shores, broke, lost its grip, tinkled in the brooks, clashed and cracked in the river. In the lakes the margin of water between the ice islands and the shore grew wider and wider. In open spaces, faced south, the snow melted and thinned until black soil showed in patches. Rain came, more and more frequently, until no day passed without rain, and the land was washed clean of winter, and rinsed, and became deep mud, that oozed and gasped under foot.

The Poor Boy had been happier than he had ever hoped to be again. And since Joy's coming (she still stopped with Lord Harrow's daughter, who conversed pearls) there had been an ecstasy in his happiness and a thrilling quality of romance. No man who has not endured solitude in long doses knows how vivid, real, and necessary people and things of the imagination may become. Sometimes the Poor Boy laughed at himself, but more often he surrendered to his inventions, his people, his dams, powerhouses, and schemes of amelioration, as you surrender to an opiate.

His valley from his own house to the sea was a thriving and virtuous state; on terms with other governments. Ships came and went; there were exports and imports, newspapers, news. News of inventions, of romances, of misunderstandings righted by Solomonian judgments; of successes, promotions; and almost every day in the foreign columns were to be found reversals of those judgments by which his friends and the citizens of his little state had been convicted of sins and crimes of which they had never been guilty.

But daily and sometimes nightly through the complex evolutions of his dreams the Poor Boy never lost grip upon his own personal love-affair. It had become more real, and with the bursting of woods and meadows into carpets of spring flowers more necessary to him than anything in life. It was joy for him, and rapture--a dizzy path into unknown lands where only the footprints of the "True Romance" marked the way. But suddenly sometimes in the very heyday of his ecstasy the tragedy of it smote him, you may say, between the eyes--so that villages vanished, homes, institutions, and all the creatures of his brain, and he saw himself, as another might have seen him, a very young man, all alone, thrust out forever and ever.

The thought that all unknown to him the real Miss Grey might love another, belong to another, tortured him. Tortured him, too, the knowledge that if this was so he had no right to entertain that beloved phantom that he had made of her in his North Woods. Or it tortured him to remember that his love for her could come to nothing--nothing. He must not tell her that he loved her; he must not, upon a night flooded with moonlight and the odor of flowers, so much as touch her hand, because he knew too well--too well--that "when you touch them they vanish."

Old Martha and Joy will never forget a certain June night. The Poor Boy did not come home for his dinner; supper of the most tempting nature and variety did not tempt him. He was drunk, ethereally drunk with the beauty of the night and with love. He opened many windows, and sat at his piano in the moonlight. The two women drew as near as they dared, to listen, while the Poor Boy's tantalized soul went out in splendid, beseeching singing. Until after midnight Schubert and Schumann and other lovers sang through the Poor Boy to their loves, and the women listened and cried and trembled, or were carried upward as it were upon angel wings into regions of pure and disembodied bliss.

At last there fell a long silence.

It was now the Poor Boy who listened. He had sent forth his questing, questioning soul, and he waited for an answer. But in those regions, that night, all things were still; and not so much as the hoot of an owl answered him nor the chirp of a cricket.

"Oh," he thought, "there is no answer for me in all the world, no answer. I have said all that I can say. And she--she doesn't hear--she will not hear--she can not hear."

His fingers found their way once more to the keys, and for a while harmonies rose in slow, quiet succession like a meditation, and took more shape presently as if something had been decided on, and began to follow an air that flowed with eternal sadness like blood from a broken heart ... and then once more the Poor Boy was singing:

"Let us go hence, my songs, she will not hear, Let us go hence, together, without fear. Keep silence now, for singing time is over, And over all things old, and all things dear. She loves not you nor me, as all we love her. Yea! Though we sang as angels in her ear, She would not hear."

He broke off abruptly. The knob had rattled in a door!--a door had opened, and been swiftly closed. The Poor Boy leapt to his feet. He thought he had heard _her_ voice.

He stood, and trembled....

* * * * *

That "Yea! though we sang as angels in her ear, she would not hear," had been too much for Joy. She had sobbed and said things, and had tried to go to him. It was her voice that he had heard.

Martha had dragged her out of danger and sent her to bed with a scolding. "The conceit of some people!" she had exclaimed. "To be always thinking it's themselves as is grouped in the lime-light of another's thoughts!"

XI

"You can get away from people, but you can't get away from moths."

It was Martha herself, carrying a great paper bag of camphor-balls and a great roll of tarred paper, who announced this truth.

Rain was falling in torrents. Even the Poor Boy did not feel like going out. He looked with a certain longing at the bag of camphor balls.

"Going to put the furs away?"

Martha said that she was.

Time was hanging heavily that morning. There was neither music in the Poor Boy nor desire to read.

"I think--" he began, and was ashamed.

"You think?"

"Nothing."

"Out with it."

"Just that--well, you see, I've never done it--always had you. But I'm thinking it must be rather fun to fold things carefully, and put them in cedar chests, and sprinkle moth-balls over them, and tuck them in with tar-paper."

"And you think wrong," said Martha. "It is no fun at all."

"Oh!" said the Poor Boy. "You're used to it. You've always done it. But I haven't."

"No more," said Martha, "have you ever knit a comforter."

"I think that would be fun too," twinkled the Poor Boy; "a very little comforter. I should use very thick worsted and make very big, loopy, spready stitches. I think, if you don't mind, I'll put my own things away for the summer."

Martha clutched the bag and the roll of paper tighter. Her jaws set.

"Don't be selfish, Martha."

Her jaws relaxed.

"What do I do first, Martha?"

"First you get all your things in one place. Then you brush them and fold them. Then you lay them away in the chests."

The Poor Boy, in shirt-sleeves, was soon busily employed, making in the centre of the living-room an enormous pile of winter furs and woolens--coonskin coats, Shetland socks, stockings, oily Norfolk coats and mackintoshes, sweaters, mittens, fur gloves, fur robes, steamer rugs, toques, and mackinaws.

The great pile finished, he sorted his things into smaller piles: a pile to be thrown away, a pile to be given away, a pile to be kept.

A doubtful garment was a mackinaw of dark gray splashed with blood-color and black. It had seen better days, on the one hand; on the other, it was sound, and he had always liked the coloring. He carried it to the light and looked it over carefully.

What was there about an old lumberman's coat to bring a look of bewildered wonder into the Poor Boy's eyes? And what particular memories did he associate with the last time of wearing it?

He closed his eyes, frowned, thought, remembered.

"I wore this," he said to himself, "the time I went down to the sea, and nearly died getting back. Then it was mislaid, when I wanted to wear it again. Then spring came.... When I got back from the sea I thought I saw Joy. I thought she ran, and that I ran after her. Then that she turned and caught me as I fell.... I was wearing this coat. I haven't worn it since."

With fingers that shook he unwound from the top button of the coat a long, entangled hair, the color of old Domingo mahogany, which is either more brown than red, or more red than brown. Nobody can swear which.

When Martha came to see how the Poor Boy was getting on with his packing she was amused to find that he had tired of it. That his things were all in a mess, nothing packed or protected from moths, and that he himself was standing at a window looking out into the dark torrents of rain. At his feet was an old mackinaw. Martha picked it up and folded it.

"Shall I _resoom_ where you've left off?" she asked.

"Please! But be careful of that coat."

She began to bring order swiftly out of chaos.

"Martha!"

"Don't be stopping me now."

"What would you do if you knew that something that couldn't possibly be true absolutely was true?"

"For that," said Martha bluntly, "I'd take two tablespoonfuls of castor-oil."

"It is true," said the Poor Boy, "and it can't be."

He passed one hand in front of his face as if brushing a cobweb or--a hair.

"A hot-water bag at the feet," Martha continued impetuously, "and another on the pit of the stomick is a favored remedy with some."

"Martha...."

"What else?"

"Has your helper got reddish-brownish, brownish-reddish hair--the color of the sideboards in the dining-room?"

"Well," said Martha, "she has and she hasn't. The first of every month 'tis that color or thereabouts; but be the twenty-ninth or thirtieth 'tis back to a good workin' gray."

"The day I got back from the sea," said the Poor Boy to himself, "was about the twenty-ninth or the thirtieth. But still if I'm going to believe what can't be true--I say, Martha, lend me a saucer of alcohol, will you?"

Old Martha bustled off and returned with what he required. The Poor Boy carried his chemical into the book-room and closed the door firmly, and much to Martha's disappointment, she being anxious to know what was toward in her darling's mind.

The Poor Boy placed the saucer of alcohol in the light, and dropped into it the mahogany-colored hair; nothing happened. The hair itself appeared brighter perhaps, but the crystal liquid was not discolored. The Poor Boy devoted half an hour to the experiment. There was no development.

"Not Ed Pinaud," he then said reverently, "dyed this hair, but the Lord God."

He put it away in a safe place, just over his heart.

"Not," he said, "because it is hers, but because it is the same color. And because there are stranger things in heaven and earth than ever any man wotted of in his philosophy."

Martha knocked on the door.

"Come in, Martha."

"Just to tell you that it's stopped raining, and if ye'll not take oil nor hot-water bags, the next best remedy for cobwebs in the brain is exercise."

The Poor Boy was glad to get out.

He went straight to Lord Harrow's house and walked with Joy for hours--up and down between the glorious roses on the terrace. The path was wide. They could walk side by side without danger of touching each other.

She was very grave that afternoon. So was he. It was hard that they should love each other so much and not be allowed to talk about it or hold hands. But the Poor Boy knew mighty well that if he touched her she would vanish.

"There's comfort," thought the Poor Boy, "in loving a spirit--even if it can never be quite the real thing. She will always be just as I see her now, no older, untroubled, gentle, and dear."

He said poetry to her, and hummed songs. She dropped a rose that she was carrying. He stooped to pick it up, remembered, and let it lie. They looked into each other's eyes, very sadly.

He saw her mistily through tears. She vanished. Vanished the rose garden, vanished Lord Harrow's house. And remained only a wild lake, an open space in which he stood, and wild-woods, and beyond more woods and hills and mountains.

To the west the forest was intolerably bright, as if it was burning. The sun was going down.

XII

Old Martha and Joy were bending over a tremendous pile of newspapers, cables, and telegrams that had just been brought in by special messenger from the nearest village in the outside world.

The messenger, a rosy old man, kept explaining why he had come.

"I know it's not my day to come in and that he don't want us hangin' about where he can see us, but the missus, she says, don't you dare to keep back this news from him even if he shoots you down in your tracks."

The newspapers said that the Poor Boy had been wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted, wrongfully imprisoned, and that his 'scutcheon was clear in the eyes of all men.

Martha took it upon herself to open some of the telegrams. They were from old friends who wished to be the first, etc., etc.

"Oh!" cried Martha, "the bastes. Why couldn't they have come forward with their great hearts when his trouble was heavy upon him, when a word of belief would have strengthened him for what he had to go through?"

She wept. She raved. She talked pure Irish, and there was no one present who could understand her, and there were only seven people in Ireland who could have understood.

"Please!" said Miss Joy to the messenger, "God bless you, and go away."

He went slowly, his fingers inching their way continually around the battered circumference of the straw hat. He drove off, after a while, as one in a trance. The last thing that would have occurred to him was that his good-hearted impulse had made a rich man of him.

"We must find him," said Miss Joy, "and tell him--at once. You must find him. It's your duty and your privilege. He must hear the good news from you."

But Martha shook her head, and talked through her apron which she had thrown over it. When sense began to mingle with her words she pulled down this flag of distress, and showed a face red with emotion and tears.

"Full well I know his heart," she said. "'Tis an open book to me."

Then she laughed aloud.

"'Tis better than an open book, for I read like a snail and cannot write at all.... 'Tis you must bear him the glad tidings--you alone--with your bright hair the color of the old sideboards in the dining-room. Take the front page of a newspaper and run to him. 'Tis for you to do."

There was a wonderful light in Miss Joy's eyes. Martha mocked it: "Yea,'" said she, "'Tho' we sang as angels in her ear, she would not hear!' Be off!"

"How shall I find him?"

"If you don't know that then I am wrong. And it's me that should go. If your heart cannot take you to him, 'tis not the heart I've thought it."

But Miss Joy, clutching the front page of a newspaper, was gone, bareheaded, running, in the dusk.

As for old Martha, she wailed all alone in the kitchen. No one would ever know what it had cost her to send forth another on that errand of glad tidings.

* * * * *

The Poor Boy looked up calmly. What was possible in broad sunlight was no matter even of difficulty in the dusk. And yet it seemed to him that even for a creature of _his_ brain she was preternaturally natural and solid-looking. Nor was he in the habit of letting her look quite so pale or breathe so hard. But when she spoke he was troubled; not because the sound of her voice was an unusual sound for him to hear, but because in the present instance it was accompanied with distinct vibrations. And that had never happened since she came to stay with Lord Harrow's daughter.

"Balking," she said, "has confessed!"

"Yes--yes," said the Poor Boy, "I always knew he _did it_. But I couldn't very well say so, _could_ I? I had to take the _gaff_."

"There are telegrams and cables from all your friends to say how glad they are."

A shadow of bitterness came over the Poor Boy's face, but went swiftly.

"It can never be the same about _them_," he said. "They all believed. But now they are sorry."

He sighed deeply, and then smiled like sunshine.

"It was like you to bring me the news. Dear child, where is your hat, and why did you run so fast? You might have fallen and hurt yourself. Do you remember the day you turned your ankle and wouldn't let me carry you?"

"I'm not such a little fool as I used to be," she said. Her face was getting whiter and whiter.

"You _are_ hurt!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," she said, "it's that same blessed ankle. I was so excited over the good news that I didn't mind at first, but now--I--I think I'll have to sit down and rest it."

The Poor Boy knew better than to give her a helping hand. _When you touch them, they vanish._

She sank down with a little moan.

"How am I going to get back to the house?" she said. "I'm sure I don't know."

"I'll send for a motor."

A motor? Was he crazy?

"A motor couldn't get in here," she said; "the trees are too close together."

"I'll have them down," said the Poor Boy; "it's only a matter of instants," and he smiled gently. "But you know as well as I do how these things are done."

"Here's the paper," she said. "Don't you want to read for yourself?" She held it out to him. But he shook his head.

"I can see the headlines from here," he said. "_Balking confesses_--yes, it's all there."

And then suddenly the Poor Boy turned his face heavenward and cried with a great bitterness:

"Oh, God! oh, God!--if it only was true!"

She thought he was mad. But she was not afraid. She wanted to go to him, to comfort him, to share with him her own fine, young sanity. But the turned ankle would not do any work, and she could not get up. He heard her moan. And looked at her once more, his eyes round with wonder.

"But I have just taken you to Lord Harrow's in a motor," he said; "and yet here you are--and in pain."

"I think I can walk," she said. "If you don't mind helping me a little."

"Of course I don't mind," said the Poor Boy cautiously. "But you know as well as I do that when you touch them,--they vanish."

There was a pained silence. She was bitterly disappointed. The Poor Boy was thoroughly bewildered. His imagination was playing him an extraordinary trick.

"That's the reason," he went on, "that we can never tell each other that we love each other, you know. 'Cause if we did, we'd have to kiss and hold hands--and that would be the end of everything--better you this way--than the other way and _no you_."

Her pain was becoming greater than she could bear.

"_Any_ man would help me," she began; and then came the tears in a torrent.

The Poor Boy could not stand it.

"It is better," he said, "that she should vanish!"

He stepped swiftly forward.

The realness of her almost dazed him. In his happiest day-dreams in Lord Harrow's rose-garden by the lake there had never been quite so vivid a materialization. Furthermore, she had violets in her dress, and as he bent to lift her (and resolve her into the stuff o' dreams) the sweetness of them was strong in his nostrils.

"Well--well," he thought, "people with too much imagination always do end by going mad. And now it's happened to me."

And it was just what did happen to him a moment later, only he was to go mad with a different kind of madness--a sane and wonderful madness.

He touched her and she did not vanish.

He made a sound that was half moan, half pity, and he lifted her in his strong arms. And then carrying her swiftly home, he proceeded, as I have forewarned the reader, to go quite mad. So did she, bless her, until there was no longer any pain in her ankle or in her heart.

"Well--well," said old Martha; "what's all this?"

She stood in the door of the house lighting them with a lamp.

"This," said the Poor Boy in his ecstasy, "is a new and wonderful thing."

He laughed aloud for joy.

"And the more you kiss her--the less she vanishes!"

End of Project Gutenberg's If You Touch Them They Vanish, by Gouverneur Morris