The Strollers

In nook and cranny, through the balustrades and woody screens of the ancient house, penetrated the wandering currents of air. The draperies waved mysteriously, as by a hidden hand, and, at nightfall, the floor of satin and rosewood creaked ominously as if beneath the restless footsteps of former inmates, moving from the somber hangings of the windows to the pearl-inlaid harpsichord whose melody was gone, and thence up the broad staircase, pausing naturally at the landing, beneath which had assembled gay gatherings in the colonial days. And such a heedless phantom group–fine gentlemen in embroidered coats, bright breeches, silk stockings and peruke, and, peeping through ethereal lace wristbands, a white hand fit for no sterner toil than to flourish with airy grace a gold-headed cane; ladies with gleaming bare shoulders, dressed in “cumbrous silk that with its rustling made proud the flesh that bore it!” The imaginative listener could almost distinguish these footfalls, as the blind will recognize the tread of an unseen person.

To further add to the land baron’s dissatisfaction over his heritage, “rent-day”–that all-important day in the olden times; when my lord’s door had been besieged by the willing lease-holders, cheerful in rendering unto Caesar what was due Caesar!–seemed to have been dropped from the modern calendar, as many an ancient holiday has gradually been lost in the whirligig of time. No long procession now awaited the patroon’s pleasure, when it should suit him to receive the tribute of guilders, corn or meal; the day might have been as obsolete as an Hellenic festival day to Zeus, for all the observance it was accorded.

“Your notices, Scroggs, were wasted on the desert air,” said the patroon, grimly, to that disappointed worthy. “What’s the use of tenants who don’t pay? Playing at feudal lord in modern times is a farce, Scroggs. I wish we had lived about four hundred years ago.”

“Yes, if four hundred years ago were now,” assented the parasite, “I’d begin with Dick, the tollman! He’s a regular Goliath and,”–his face becoming purple–“when I threatened him with the law, threw me out of the barn on an obnoxious heap of refuse.”

“You weren’t exactly a David, then?” laughed the patroon, in spite of his bad humor.

“I’ll throw the stone yet,” said the little man, viciously showing his yellow teeth. “The law’s the sling.”

That evening, when the broad meadows were inundated by the shadow of the forest that crept over it like an incoming tide, the land baron ordered lights for every room. The manor shone in isolated grandeur amid the gloomy fields, with the forest-wall around it; radiant as of old, when strains of music had been heard within and many figures passed the windows. But now there was light, and not life, and a solitary anti-renter on the lonely road regarded with surprise the unusual illumination.

“What does it mean?” asked Little Thunder–for it was he–waiting and watching, as without the gates of Paradise.

Well might he ask, for the late Mynheer, the Patroon, had been a veritable bat for darkness; a few candles answered his purpose in the spacious rooms; he played the prowler, not the grand lord; a recluse who hovered over his wine butts in the cellar and gloated over them, while he touched them not; a hermit who lived half his time in the kitchen, bending over the smoky fireplace, and not a lavender-scented gentleman who aired himself in the drawing-room, a fine fop with nothing but the mirrors to pay him homage. Little Thunder, standing with folded arms in the dark road, gloomy as Lucifer, almost expected to see the brilliant fabric vanish like one of those palaces of joy built by the poets.

Hour after hour passed, midnight had come and gone, and still the lights glowed. Seated in the library, with the curtains drawn, were the land baron and Scroggs, a surveyor’s map between them and a dozen bottles around them. Before Mauville stood several glasses, containing wines of various vintages which the land baron compared and sipped, held to the light and inhaled after the manner of a connoisseur sampling a cellar. He was unduly dignified and stately, but the attorney appeared decidedly groggy. The latter’s ideas clashed against one another like pebbles in a child’s rattle, and, if the round table may be supposed to represent the earth, as the ancient geographers imagined it, Scrogg’s face was surely the glowing moon shining upon it.

Readily had the attorney lent himself to the new order of procedure. With him it was: “The king is dead! Long live the king!” He, who had found but poor pickings under the former master–dry crust fees for pleadings, demurrers or rejoinders–now anticipated generous booty and spoil. Alert for such crumbs as might fall from a bountiful table; keen of scent for scraps and bits, but capable of a mighty mouthful, he paid a courtier’s price for it all; wheedling, pandering, ready for any service, ripe for any revelry. With an adulator’s tact, he still strove strenuously to hold the thread of his companion’s conversation, as Mauville said:

“Too old, Scroggs; too old!” Setting down a glass of burgundy in which fine particles floated through the magenta-hued liquid. “It has lost its luster, like a woman’s eyes when she has passed the meridian. Good wine, like a woman, has its life. First, sweetly innocent, delicately palatable, its blush like a maiden of sixteen; then glowing with a riper development, more passionate in hue, a siren vintage; finally, thin, waning and watery, with only memories of the deeper, rosy-hued days. Now here, my good, but muddled friend, is your youthful maiden!” Holding toward the lamp a glass, clear as crystal, with luster like a gem. “Dancing eyes; a figure upright as a reed; the bearing of a nymph; the soul of a water lily before it has opened its leaves to the wooing moonlight!”

“Lord! How you go on!” exclaimed Scroggs. “What with a sampling this and sampling that, my head’s going round like a top. If there’s anything in the cellar the old patroons put down we haven’t tried, sir, I beg to defer the sampling. I am of the sage’s mind–‘Of all men who take wine, the moderate only enjoy it,’ says Master Bacon, or some one else.”

“Pass the bottle!” answered the other. “Gently, man! Don’t disturb its repose, and remember it disdains the perpendicular.”

“So will I soon,” muttered Scroggs. “I hope you’ll excuse me, sir, but that last drop of Veuve Cliquot was the whip-cord that started the top going, and, on my word”–raising his hands to his head–“I feel like holding it on to keep it from spinning off.”

“Spinning or not, you shall try this vintage”–the young man’s eyes gleamed with such fire as shone in the glass–“and drink to Constance Carew!”

“Constance Carew!” stammered the other, desperately swallowing the toast.

Mauville slowly emptied the glass. “A balsamic taste, slightly piquant but agreeable,” he observed. “A dangerous wine, Scroggs! It carries no warning; your older kind is like a world-worn coquette whose glances at once place you on the defensive. This maiden vintage, just springing into glorious womanhood, comes over you like a springtime dream.”

“Who–who is she?” muttered Scroggs.

“She is not in the scroll you prepared for my lamented kinsman, eh? They are, for the most part, deep red, dark scarlet–that list of fair dames! She doesn’t belong to them–yet! No title, man; not even a society lady. A stroller, which is next door to a vagrant.”

“Well, sir, she’s a woman and that’s enough,” replied the lawyer. “And my opinion is, it’s better to have nothing to do with ’em.”

This sententious remark seemed to arouse Scroggs to momentary vivacity.

“Now there was my Lord Hamerton, whose picture is upstairs,” he went on quickly, like a man who is bent on grasping certain ideas before they escape him. “He brought a beautiful woman here–carried her off, they say from England–and installed her as mistress of the manor. I have heard my father say that his great-grandfather, who was my lord’s solicitor, said that before his death my lord desired to make her his wife, having been brought to a sense of the sinful life he had led by a Puritan preacher. But at that, this woman straightened herself up, surveyed him with scorn, and, laughing like a witch, answered: ‘They say marriages are made in heaven, my lord–and you are the devil!’ So my lord died without having atoned, and, as for my lady who refused to become an honest woman, I am sure she was damned!” concluded Scroggs triumphantly.

“No doubt! So this wicked lord abducted her, Scroggs?” he added thoughtfully. “A man of spirit, until the Puritans got after him and showed him the burning pit and frightened him to that virtue which was foreign to his inclinations. My lady was right in refusing to honor such a paltry scoundrel with her hand. But it takes courage, Scroggs, to face everlasting damnation.”

“They say, too, there was a spice of revenge about her unwillingness to give her hand to my lord,” resumed the narrator, unmindful of the interruption. “This Puritan father said nothing but marriage with her would save Hamerton from the sulphurous flames and so my lady refused to sanctify their relations and rescue her lord from perdition!”

“A pleasant revenge!” laughed the land baron. “He made life a hell for her and she gave him an eternity of it. But take a little of this white wine, man. We’ve drunk to the roses of desire, and now should drink to the sanctified lilies. Her neck, Scroggs, is like a lily, and her hand and her brow! Beneath that whiteness, her eyes shine with a tenderness inviting rays of passion to kindle them. Drink!”

But the other gave a sudden lurch forward. “My lady–refused–perdition!” he muttered, and his head dropped to the board.

“Wake up, man, and drink!” commanded the master.

“Jush same–they ought to have been married,” said his companion drowsily. “They lived together so–so ill!” And then to place himself beyond reach of further temptation from the bottle, he quietly and naturally slid under the table.

The patroon arose, strode to the window, which he lifted, and the night air entered, fanning his hot brow. The leaves, on high, rustled like falling rain. The elms tossed their branches, striking one another in blind confusion. The long grass whispered as the breeze stirred it like the surface of an inland lake. Withering flowers gave up their last perfume, while a storm-cloud fled wildly across the heavens. Some of the restlessness of the external world disturbed that silent dark figure at the window; within him, conflicting passions jarred like the boughs of the trees and his fancies surged like the eddying leaves.

“The roses of desire–the sanctified lilies!” he muttered.

As he stood there the stars grew pale; the sky trembled and quivered before the advent of morn. A heavy footstep fell behind him, and, turning, he beheld the care-taker.

“Not in bed yet, Oly-koeks?” cheerfully said the land baron.

“I am just up.”

“In that case, it is time for me to retire,” returned the master, with a yawn. “This is a dull place, Oly-koeks; no life; no variety. Nothing going on!”

The servant glanced at the formidable array of bottles. “And he calls this a quiet life!” thought the care-taker, losing his impassiveness and viewing the table with round-eyed wonder.

“Nothing going on?” he said aloud. “Mynheer, the Patroon, complained of too much life here, with people taking farms all around. But, if you are dull, a farmer told me last night there was a company of strolling players in Vanderdonkville–”

“Strollers!” exclaimed Mauville, wheeling around. “What are they called?”

“Lord; I don’t know, sir. They’re show-folks, and that’s all–”

“Do many strolling players come this way?”

“Not for weeks and months, sometimes! The old patroon ordered the schout to arrest them if they entered the wyck.”

“Is Vanderdonkville in the wyck?” asked the land baron quickly.

“No. It was separated from the wyck when Rickert Jacobus married–”

“Never mind the family genealogy! Have the coach ready at nine–”

“To-night?”

“This morning,” replied Mauville, lightly. “And, meanwhile, put this to bed,” indicating Scroggs, who was now snoring like a bag-pipe with one arm lovingly wound around a leg of the library table.

The care-taker hoisted the attorney on his broad shoulders, his burden still piping as they crossed the hall and mounted the stairway. Having deposited his load within the amazing depths of a Dutch feather mattress, where he lay well-nigh lost to sight, but not unheard, the wacht-meester of the steyn left him to well-earned slumber and descended to the kitchen.

At the appointed hour, the land baron, freshly shaven, not a jaded line in his face, and elastic in step, appeared on the front porch before which his carriage was waiting.

“When shall I expect you back?” asked Oly-koeks, who had reappeared at the sound of his master’s footsteps.

“Any time or never!” laughed the patroon, springing into the vehicle.