CHAPTER XXIII

EMOLYN’S WEIRD

We maun a’dree our weird.—MEG MERRILES.

They entered the beautiful white hall, with its rainbow windows, around on which Susan Palmer stared with open-eyed admiration and wonder.

“Mrs. Palmer!” exclaimed the page, throwing wide open a door leading into an elegant little parlor on the right-hand side of the hall, opposite the grand saloon.

A lady dressed in gray rose from a sofa and advanced to meet the visitors.

“Oh, Miss Emolyn!” exclaimed Mrs. Palmer, so overcome with emotion at the very sight of the lady that she sank down at once into the arm-chair which Em. quick as thought wheeled to her side.

Meantime Mrs. Lynn took the girl by the hand and kissed her before turning attention to Susan.

“Oh, Miss Emolyn! That I should live to see you again! Thank Heaven! Oh, thank Heaven! And you are not changed so much! Oh, no, indeed!” exclaimed Susan Palmer in almost hysterical excitement.

“Nor are you changed much in all these years, dear old friend, or, indeed, changed at all, except for the better! You are plumper and rosier than you used to be, Mrs. Palmer,” said Emolyn, as she stood by her chair, took her hand and kissed her gently.

“It is the good living, my dear young lady. It is the pure air and fresh water and abundant food. It is the good living that has given us all new life, which we owe to your sweet, kind heart, Miss Emolyn!” said Susan Palmer, weeping for joy while she covered the hands of her benefactress with kisses.

“It makes me so happy to see you so well and prosperous,” said the lady, as she gently withdrew her hands from Susan’s clasps and kisses, and seated herself in the nearest chair.

“Em. has told me all you told her, but, oh, my dear young lady——”

“I am not a young lady any longer, Susan,” said Emolyn, smiling sadly. “I am thirty-two and a half years old.”

“That don’t seem possible, to look at you, Miss Emolyn, yet it must be so. You must be thirty-two, for you were sixteen when I saw you last, and that was nearly seventeen years ago! La! Em. was a baby then, and now she’s a young woman. And, Miss Emolyn, do you know we all think Em. the very print of you, as why wouldn’t she be when for months and months before she was born I did nothing but think of you and your troubles in your tyrant’s house, my poor, dear young lady, and your image was never out of my mind. But, oh, my dear child, where have you been all these years when we thought you in heaven?”

“Oh, Susan Palmer, it is a long story! When I left the city after passing through that ordeal of fire and water, my guardian, dear Uncle Lewis Berners, took me to Dranesville for a few days. Then, when Pony came out to me, he wished to take us home with him to Virginia; but I could not bear to go. So he took me to Europe. But lay off your bonnet and shawl, dear old friend, for if I tell you all you wish to know, it will be some time before I get through.”

“I am very much obleeged to you, Miss Emolyn, but I left my old man down in the boat, so it ain’t worth while to take off my things.”

“Oh, why did he not come up?”

“Well, honey, he thought we’d like to have a little talk by ourselves first.”

“And he was right, ma’am, wasn’t he? And, mother, don’t be troubled. Father’ll fasten the boat and take a walk around the island, where he will see enough to interest him for hours yet,” said Em., as she took off her own hat and shawl and went up to Mrs. Palmer to take hers.

“Now do you see the cool manner in which that girl takes her own way?” said Susan, as she gave Em. her bonnet and wraps.

“Give them to the boy in the hall, my dear; he will put them away for you. And now, Susan Palmer, be easy until lunch time, which is not far off, and then I will send your daughter to fetch her father, and by the time he comes we will have got through all our confidential talk.”

“Well, my dear young lady—for I shall call you my young lady until I see some signs of middle age come over you—my dear young lady, have your own way! You can do just as you please with me! And why not, seeing how heavenly good you have been to me! I’ll stay, ma’am, and very glad to stay, I don’t deny it,” said Susan with a sigh of satisfaction as she sank back comfortably in the most luxurious arm-chair she had ever sat in during her life.

“Draw your chair near me, little namesake, so that I can hold your hand in mine while I talk,” said Emolyn, as she turned a glance full of tenderness on Em.’s sympathetic face.

The young girl did as she was requested, and then, with Em.’s hand clasped closely in hers upon her lap, Emolyn began the story of her exile.

“I say, after I had passed through that fiery trial my guardian took me out of the city secretly and hid me at Dranesville, an obscure hamlet, where I remained in my room at the quiet little hotel, unknown, until the arrival of Pony with my trunk. Then my guardian wished to take me home with him to Blackville. But I could not bear the thought of remaining in my native country, or seeing any one whom I had ever known before.”

“I don’t wonder, my dear! I don’t wonder, indeed!” sighed Susan Palmer, half weeping.

“My guardian was very tolerant of my weakness—very tender of my suffering. He had retired from the practice of law, and having no family but his aged sisters, he found it easy to go abroad. So after a little delay necessary to the arrangement of his affairs he took me to New York and thence to Liverpool. We were attended only by my nurse, Pony, and his man-servant, Prince, who, coming from Blackville, knew nothing of the ordeal through which I had just passed.”

Here Emolyn’s glance falling on the upturned face of Em., she said:

“You are looking at me with eyes full of wonder and pity, my child! Well, let it be so for awhile. You are too young even to _hear_ the horrors through which I _had to pass_ when I was younger than you are now. Yet I feel sure, Em., that some day I shall tell you all.”

A convulsive clasp of her hand by the girl’s fingers was her only answer.

The lady resumed her story.

“It was near the last of July when we landed in Liverpool. It was perhaps the very best season in which to see England. Better even than the spring, for midsummer is never intolerably hot and dry there as it is here. Well, we spent two months in traveling through England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. In the latter part of September we went to France, where we also spent two months in traveling. We did not stop in the cities nor enter any society. Early in December we went to Italy, spent six weeks in traveling through that loveliest of lands, and then we settled down in Rome for the winter.”

“Oh! Oh! And did you see the Pope? And does he really wear three crowns on his head, one upon top of the other?” eagerly interrupted Susan Palmer.

“I did not see the Pope. We never tried to see anybody. But I saw the Vatican—the palace where he lives, and I also saw many grand cathedrals and palaces.”

Here again Susan Palmer interrupted the narrator with a number of questions that compelled Emolyn to describe the Vatican, the other palaces, cathedrals and churches at some length.

“In the spring, just before Lent, we saw the carnival in Rome.”

“Yes! I have heard mention made about that. It is something like a circus and a panorama and a procession, isn’t it?” inquired Susan.

“Like all of them together, with a great many other spectacles, all on a tremendous scale.”

“Oh, please tell me all about it,” exclaimed Susan.

So Mrs. Lynn had to recall and describe all the grotesque and gorgeous phantasmagoria of the carnival at Rome before her hearer could be satisfied.

“Dear, dear me, what it is to be a traveler!” said Susan.

“As the month of May approached I became very nervous and filled with a horrible despair that threatened my reason. You know it was the anniversary of my great agony, Mrs. Palmer. Why, even after all these years I cannot pass it calmly. And _that_ was the first anniversary.”

“I know, and I do not wonder at anything, my dear child, except that you were ever able to live over it at all.”

“My guardian was very good to me; may Heaven bless him! He took me to Venice, the most beautiful and wonderful city in the world, where there are canals instead of streets and gondolas instead of carriages.”

“Lord bless my soul, Miss Emolyn, how was that?” cried Susan.

Emolyn explained as briefly as she could the building of Venice upon its cluster of small islands, and then continued:

“We left Italy about the first of June. We spent the summer in traveling through Russia, Germany, Sweden, Norway and the Shetland and Orkney Islands. On the first of September we took a steamer from Glasgow to Constantinople——”

“Constantinople!” eagerly interrupted Susan. “Constantinople! Oh, my goodness gracious me alive! That’s better than the city of the Pope, or the city built on the sea, either! It is the city of the Grand Turk! Did you see the Grand Turk? And does he always sit cross-legged on a gold-fringed rug, with a long shawl rolled around his head for a turban, and smoking a long pipe, with a golden bowl and a room full of beautiful girls dancing before him? And has he really a thousand wives?”

“I don’t know. I did not see him, but I think it quite likely,” said Emolyn, with a slight smile.

“Think of _that_ now! The pagan Turk to have a thousand wives, more or less, and the Pope—the poor Pope—to have not one. The laws ought to be changed! But tell me what you did see in the city of the Grand Turk. Though it do seem to me, my dear, that in all your travels you saw nothing but places and things, not people.”

“I did not want to see people,” sighed Emolyn.

“Ah, I know. How thoughtless I am. Go on, my dear young lady.”

Emolyn described Constantinople, with its splendid seraglio, its magnificent mosques, its squalid streets and mean dwellings.

“Seems to me there’s as much dif’rence between the rich and the poor in pagan cities as there be in Christian towns.”

“Just as much,” said Emolyn with a sigh; and then she continued—“From Turkey we went to Greece and to the Ionian Islands, where we spent the second winter of our travels. In the spring we returned to the United States because I had come of age and it was necessary for certain legal forms to be observed by my guardian in turning over my estates to me. We reached New York about the middle of May, and went down to Wynde Slopes in Maryland. But, oh, my dear friend, I was scarcely put in possession of my property before I lost my beloved guardian and last remaining friend. He passed away at Wynde Slopes after a short and painless illness, and it is my comfort to think he entered at once into his eternal rest. You know, by the terms of my father’s will, I was to be considered of age at eighteen. I was but a few weeks over that age when my dear guardian left me.”

“Oh, Miss Emolyn! He was a good man. I heard from Pony of all his devotion to you while you were in your trouble. Do go on, Miss Emolyn, and excuse my interrupting of you.”

“Well, my dear Susan, what I have to tell you now cannot be dwelt upon in detail. I sold Wynde Slopes, for I could not bear that my name, all blurred as it was with falsehood and wrong, should remain connected with my father’s old ancestral home.”

“But however came you to find out about this beautiful island, honey?”

Emolyn smiled.

“It was not a beautiful island when I found it, Susan; but the way was this: In my restlessness I was a rambler. I had besides a feeling of affectionate curiosity to see the old Wilderness manor-house, in which my mother had been born and been brought up. I came to Greyrock, accompanied by Pony, and rode over to the Wilderness. I saw the house. It had long been vacant, the master being then in Europe. I did not divulge my name to the old servants, nor my relationship to their master; yet, with the courtesy they always show to strangers, they took me all over the premises, showed me all I wished to see, told me all I wished to hear. I returned to Greyrock that night. I had intended to leave the place early the next morning; but both in going to and coming from the Wilderness I had taken the river road, and seen from its banks the desolate, rocky island. It took my fancy and haunted me even after I had gone home to Greyrock and gone to bed.”

“And so you thought you would like to make that desert bloom and blossom as the rose, Miss Emolyn?”

“Yes, Susan; and I thought I would like to make a home there, where I and Pony could come and rest sometimes, ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot.’ In a word, before I left the neighborhood I had purchased the barren island for a mere trifle, but all that it was worth at the time. It would never have paid as a plantation, Susan; but it was well adapted to the metamorphosis I made of it, by the three potent genii—Labor, Time and Money. Fifteen years ago it was a barren rock. You see what it is now.”

“It is a paradise now,” said Susan with enthusiasm.

“Yet a paradise that could not hold my restless spirit long. After spending one year here I left it in careful hands and resumed my travels, this second time accompanied only by Pony and such stranger guides and couriers as I could pick up _en route_.”

Emolyn here paused so long that Susan Palmer inquired:

“And where did you go, Miss Emolyn? Seems to me as you had seen all the world before.”

“Not a hundredth part of it, Susan. But I did not go over the same ground. I sailed for Glasgow and then, without even landing, took ship for Christiana, Norway, and traveled over the extreme northern part of Europe, dwelling in the huts of the Lapps and Finns and making reindeer journeys from place to place. I saw the midnight sun.”

“THE MIDNIGHT SUN, MISS EMOLYN!” exclaimed Susan in open-mouthed amazement.

“Yes, Susan—it is a sublime and wonderful sight in those regions of eternal snow.”

“Oome, I feared the poor lady was just a little demented, and now I know it,” thought Susan mournfully.

“I passed through Russia and into Siberia, a voluntary exile. I spent a long summer on those savage steppes——”

“Steps!” muttered Susan to herself with a sigh.

“And then I moved southward without stopping until we reached Alexandria, in Egypt.”

“‘Alexandria, in Egypt!’ Ah, dear, dear, how her mind wanders. Everybody knows Alexandria is in old Virginy,” moaned Susan to herself.

“I am fatiguing you,” said Mrs. Lynn, perceiving her companion’s uneasiness. “I must be brief, Susan, and tell you in a few words that since that time, with the exception of an occasional summer of rest on the island here, I have spent all my days in travel. I have been all over the civilized and uncivilized world. I have been where few men and no women have ever gone before me—from Greenland to Terra del Fuego; from Behring Straits to Bermuda Isles on this hemisphere; from Cape North to Cape Colony, and from the coast of Guinea to the Sea of Kamtschatka on the other.”

“What a life!” exclaimed Susan with a great sigh. “But of all the countries and the people that you saw, which did you like the best, Miss Emolyn?”

“You will be surprised when you hear—I liked best to dwell among the Lapps and Finns!”

Susan was not surprised, for she had got so “mixed in her mind,” as she said, that she really did not know but that the Lapps and Finns were the most enlightened of European people instead of being northern barbarians.

“I have been to this island more regularly to spend the summers for the last few years until this year, when business connected with my inheritance of the Wilderness Manor detained me elsewhere until the first of October.”

“And to think, Miss Emolyn, that the very first thing you did after entering upon that inheritance was to think of us in our poverty, that poor, squalid Laundry Lane, and to bring us to this beautiful, wholesome country,” said Susan Palmer gratefully.

“It is true that my very first thought _was_ of you,” admitted Emolyn.

At that moment a distant clock chimed out musically the hour of noon.

“Now, my little namesake, go find your father and bring him to the house to lunch with us,” said the lady.

Em. immediately arose and left the room to do this errand. She went into the hall, where she found her hat and shawl hung on an artistic tree carved out of malachite. She put them on hastily, and ran out to seek her father, whom she expected to find near the boat-landing.

Meantime the two women, left alone together, looked into each other’s faces as if each expected a confidence from the other.

Susan was the first to speak.

“Now, Miss Emolyn, that she is gone and we are by ourselves, tell me why you have never been able to get over your trouble during all these long years?”

Emolyn shuddered and covered her eyes with her hands.

“Oh, I have hurt you, Miss Emolyn. I am so sorry. I beg you to forgive me. I ought not to have asked you a question. But, dear Miss Emolyn, still you ought not to take that old sorrow so much to heart, innocent as I know you to be.”

“Oh, Susan, Susan! No one could ever entirely recover from such a blasting affliction as mine was!” cried the unhappy lady.

“Not even when you know you was innocent, Miss Emolyn?”

“No—not even then! But, Susan, there is the horror of it. I do not know that I am innocent!” exclaimed Emolyn, with a low moan of anguish.

“Oh, my dear young lady, what_ever_ do you mean?”

“Oh, Susan, Susan! After all I may have—_hurt my child_!”

“Oh, Miss Emolyn, you never, never did! I would stake _my soul_ that you never did. (This is an awful symptom of derangement.) You never did, Miss Emolyn. You have thought about it so much that you have got heartsick and brainsick, and ready to accuse yourself. Don’t think about it any more, Miss Emolyn. You were right to travel, after all. Oh, pray don’t let your thoughts dwell upon it any longer, Miss Emolyn. Put it out of your mind!”

“But, Susan, I cannot. It is a haunting horror. I could—I think I could get over even the diabolical memory of my trial if only I were quite sure I never harmed my child. But oh, Susan—on that awful night when she was born there were hours of agony, followed by hours of unconsciousness! There may have been between the agony and the unconsciousness moments of delirium in which I might have harmed my innocent, helpless child! I do not remember. But then, you know, Susan, that people recovering from delirium never know or recollect what passed during the fit. _I might have killed my own child!_ Oh, Heaven! Oh, Heaven! What a haunting horror that thought is to all my days and nights!” moaned the miserable woman, swaying herself back and forth and covering her face with her hands.

“Miss Emolyn, my child, be comforted! You are clear of that sin! As sure as I am a living woman you have only brooded and brooded over this until you have got almost insane! Now think of this, Miss Emolyn! When you were first accused your mind was clear enough on the subject. You knew then that you had never hurt your child, and you affirmed it most positive and distinct to every one; and everybody believed you, too! Now this crazy notion of yours has only come of brooding over it.”

“Oh, Susan, is that possible?”

“Why, yes, ma’am! I have heard of such cases often and often! You aught to speak to a physician, Miss Emolyn. Here’s Dr. Willet quite convenient. Did you know he was in the neighborhood, Miss Emolyn?”

“Yes, I knew he was there. He has been to see me on this island.”

“Well, then, honey, speak to him.”

“Perhaps. But, oh, Susan, who can ‘minister to a mind diseased?’ And, Susan,” she continued, sinking her voice to a whisper, “if _I_ did not harm my child, _who did_? The child was strangled, Susan! _Who did it?_”

“Ah, dear knows, Miss Emolyn, honey!” sighed the woman. “You must pray!”

“I ‘must pray.’ Perhaps some late remorse—some deathbed confession—may bring out the truth and give me peace!”