“THE WHITE PETAL”

There never lived another man so utterly unreliable as Albert Wilbur. If he promised to be at a certain place at a certain time one could count definitely on his absence. But I never thought he would overlook an appointment as important as that which he had made to meet me at his country house on the night of August 3, 1919.

The two Wilbur boys—John and his adopted brother, Albert—were from childhood my most intimate friends, and I often found it necessary to help Albert out of serious difficulties.

As a boy he was exceptionally handsome and promising, but the vices to which he succumbed in later years not only robbed him of his good qualities, but also brought upon his friends lasting sorrow; for when I last saw him his indulgence in depravities had nearly approached a continuous performance.

John, my real chum, was the embodiment of manhood—the only thing I had against him was that he married my childhood sweetheart. Her name was Ellen. My love for her was real, it was deep, and it was earnest. Let me say it was no passing fancy, for there had never been anything to approach it until now. However, I was not blind to John’s qualities, and was compelled to admit to myself on more than one occasion that in selecting a husband Ellen had only shown her usual good judgment.

Since this catastrophe in my life I had retired into myself, determined to live a life of single blessedness. I resolved to consign to oblivion this period of my existence—existence I say, because this word most nearly describes my life at this time. I first tried hard work as a means to aid me in my purpose. This helped, but did not entirely fulfill the essentials. I discovered that what I needed was a change, a new environment: so I pulled up stakes, hard as it was to leave my three friends—for their little girl was just eleven, and had become my closest companion—and spent the next seven years roaming about the world, finding my pleasures in nature, books, new scenes and old cathedrals.

I had heard regularly from the Wilburs since my departure, but my sudden return was due to the last letter—it was written by a friend of the family. She informed me of a fatal automobile accident in which both John and Ellen had lost their lives. In sequence to this was a telegram from Albert. On my arrival in New York more letters from him awaited me. It was at least a week, however, before I started South for my ultimate destination. I gathered all my belongings—for something told me I would not soon return—and prepared for a rapid departure.

The night was cold for mid-summer, and I remember distinctly how I drew my raincoat about me as I walked from the gate across the lawn to where a dim light glowed through the trees. I had dismissed the carriage which had brought me from the lonely station, as our business was of a somewhat secret nature, and so much had been exchanged between us in regard to it that I counted on finding my friend waiting. As I brushed through the mist-laden shrubbery, I thought how welcome would be the grasp of his hand after so many years of separation, and how quickly the warmth of his presence would dispel the strange uncanny loneliness which had crept upon me during my long ride through the woods, with never a sound except the gentle patter of water dropping from the trees and the slop—slop of the horse’s hoofs in the mud of the road.

So I was more than annoyed, in fact, I was hurt and disgusted when the decrepit old fellow who had always been a part of the Wilbur household informed me that “Mister Albert” had wired that he would not be there until the morning. “Very sorry,” the wire ran, “impossible to keep appointment with Constable. Make him comfortable for night. Will be on in morning. ‘For Constable: Do forgive me, old fellow, and make yourself at home. You have the place to yourself. Guarantee no ghosts.’”

“Small comfort,” I murmured to myself, not being able to repress a sneer—the note was so characteristic of its author.

“Very good, sir,” said the spectre beside me, whose presence I had almost forgotten. “I have moved your bed into the library here, where there is an open fire. You’ll find whiskey and soda right on the table, and I’ll put your bag close by the bed. Anything else you’d like, sir?”

“No thanks, Watkins,” I said, recovering the old fellow’s name from some recess in my memory. “I shall do very well, no doubt. But I’m disappointed.”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir,” and with these words Watkins disappeared.

“I’ll be damned,” I muttered. “This is getting positively spooky.”

I looked down—a big mastiff pup, overgrown and generally loppy in appearance, evidently thinking himself addressed, arose slowly from the hearth rug and came towards me, wagging the entire rear end of his body in a gesture which seemed exaggerated at the time, though I have no doubt now that even that did not convey the real extent of his pleasure in having company.

“Well, old man,” I said, stroking his head, “it doesn’t seem so bad here, after all. Here’s looking at you,” and I sipped the glass of warming spirits that Watkins had poured for me. After the last drop had been swallowed I seemed to remember that Watkins had cast some apprehensive glances at this very glass before he left the room.

“Nonsense,” said I to myself, “it’s all imagination,” and I continued, “with a good fire, a good drink, and a good book, what more does man want, unless it be a dog? That’s where you come in, old chap,” and I reached down and patted him. “Let’s see what there is to read,” I continued, still addressing the dog for the sake of company.

Albert had one peculiar trait; he always took an austere pride in being a man of few books, and those such as no one else could understand. So I found little help in the scattered but much-thumbed volumes lying in odd corners about the room. Psychology, metaphysics, and a few seventeenth century works on alchemy made up the entire collection.

I was beginning to feel sleepy, so I chose the book with the largest print, and sat down before the blazing fire to while away the hours until slumber overtook me.

The inevitable happened: I fell asleep in about five minutes.

I awoke with a feeling of suffocation. The clock on the mantle was chiming twelve, and I counted the strokes, which seemed to be a continuation of something I had been dreaming. Ten, eleven, twelve, I said aloud dreamily, like a child repeating a lesson. And then a strange thing happened. The clock struck, most distinctly, thirteen, and with a whirring sound stopped dead, the second hand resting exactly in line with the hands of the dial, which pointed to midnight.

“Are we asleep or awake, old man?” I again addressed the dog, trying to pass the thing off as a joke, and stretched out my hand to pat his head. A low growl startled me. The pup was standing erect, every muscle tense, his ears cocked forward, and the hair on the back of his neck bristling. The growl continued for a moment; then a change gradually came over him. The growls became a kind of pitiful whine, his head fell with drooping ears, his tail dropped between his legs, and trembling in every limb he crept to my feet and reached his nose up between my knees, while in his poor dumb eyes, pleading with me as only a dog’s eyes can plead, were registered the terror that I suddenly realized I was sharing with him. Strange unspoken communion of man and beast.

At that moment the seeming impenetrable silence of the night was rent, like a flash of lightning across a pitch-black sky, by a woman’s shriek. No, not a shriek, but a wail, a piercing appeal that nothing could describe. It had all the lure of the Lorelei and the despair of the Siren spurned, and yet all the sweet timbre of a child’s instinctive call to a sleeping mother. Then silence, the absolute and unbounded silence of the grave.

Quivering in every nerve, scarcely able to stand as it seemed at the time, yet impelled by some unknown force, I found myself running through strange passages, wrestling with the darkness, on and on, guided I know not how straight to her whose appeal had come to me—to me of all the people in the world—this night of August 3, sharp on the stroke of—thirteen! Then I was battling with some unknown, unseen opponent, lunging forward wildly, whirling, heaving; and finally with a terrific wrench, which exhausted the last ounce of strength in my body, I threw off my foe, threw him off with such force that he seemed to be shattered in the darkness beyond, and the air that I drew into my lungs in gasping gulps was pure of the evil of his breath.

Silence again, as I stood leaning against the balustrade trying to regain my senses. What had happened; was it all a bad dream? Then slowly I became conscious of a weight against my knees, of two clinging arms about my waist, of a sweet perfume like that of an old-fashioned garden in the dewy twilight; and a soft childlike voice was saying:

“O, please, what is it; what has happened, oh, please——”

The soft voice trailed off into a sob, and the arms tightened about me. I reached down and picked her up, a clinging trembling little form, its gentle curves rounding into womanhood. How she clung to me, poor frightened little soul, her arms tight about me and her cold little face buried against my neck. Then, as I made my way back to the library, she rested quietly, like a white petal blown from the garden and storm-tossed, but at last at peace. I could feel her warm tears and the fresh moist little spot that was her mouth. She seemed to be murmuring something; or did her lips move gently in a kiss?

I slowly regained my senses, which seemed to be numbed and deadened but a short time before. My body felt as though pins and needles were sticking me. My breath came more evenly. I held her lithe, supple little form at arm’s length and scanned the features carefully. I could not believe my eyes—was it little Ellen? Could it really be? Yes, the features were almost the exact reproduction of her mother’s. The straight nose, the well formed lips and the appealing grey eyes, fringed with straight, long lashes—all of these I took in at a glance. I was still too weak to drag ourselves far from the assailant, but her weak little voice whispered, “Run, Don Compie! Run!” The frightened look in her eyes and the commanding appeal of the words served to restore my senses.

Was it a blow from the opponent that had deadened me or was it the whiskey and soda that had done the trick? It was the dose, because I remembered with what difficulty I aroused myself from the drowsy sleep that was about to overtake me. I held Ellen closer to me and made off as fast as my clumsy feet would move. We were well into the cold woods, through which I had ridden but a few hours before, when she said, “I can walk now, please put me down.” I slid her gently to her feet, she slipped her hand into mine, and we fled as though savages were pursuing us. As we ran she murmured between breaths, “Watkins told me he had seen Uncle Albert put something in the whiskey that was on the table. I was trying to reach you when he seized me. He has kept me a prisoner since I refused to marry him. Today is my birthday and the day you were to become my guardian.”

“Yes,” I answered, “but he wrote me you had disappeared—had eloped, been kidnapped or something.”

“It wasn’t true—I’ll tell you all about it when we are safe—safe and far from this dreadful place.”

We traveled hours before we were on the highway. The damp but invigorating air had restored me and the child seemed possessed of unusual endurance. I espied in the distance a small farm house. A light was shining through a window on the side. The thought came to me that, although it was still dark, perhaps they were preparing breakfast. “Ellen,” I said, “before we go further we must have something to eat.”

“Bread and milk will do,” she answered.

“Let us inquire here,” I rejoined.

“But suppose Uncle Albert should follow us?”

“Now that we are out of that hornet’s nest I rather wish he would. I must meet him face to face and have this out!”

“No, Don Compie, please! please! he might get me again,” she pleaded. “I would much rather die.” She clung to my arm tightly as we made our way to the farm house. I knocked, the door was opened by a kindly faced, stooped-shouldered old man in his shirt sleeves. I told him my daughter and I had met with an accident about five miles back in the country, and were walking to the nearest garage—would he accommodate us with a little breakfast. He looked at me long and searchingly—I say long, perhaps it was only a second; then as if satisfied with the examination, he said yes, if we didn’t mind cooking the bacon, he could give us some bread, milk and apple-butter. But his wife had died two months ago, and his boys had already gone to the field to plough and were waiting for him; so there was no one to wait on us. “But just make yourselves at home,” he added, as he shuffled about in thick soled boots, pouring what was left from a can of milk into an earthen pitcher, and placing a large loaf of bread before us. “Them automobiles,” and he shook his head disgustedly, “when they make up their minds to stop, thir’s just no way setten thim up again, is thir? No, sir, gimme a pair of mules any day, they’re stidier.”

“My engine went wrong this time, and I simply can’t get the thing started. I’ll have to be towed in, I’m afraid.”

“Just shut the door when you get done, and if you want water you can fetch it from the pump yonder.”

I took pains to thank him and pay him for his hospitality, and promised to close up carefully.

Ellen, minus a hat, sat with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, while the old man moved about putting things a bit in order, as he called it, before he left. “Since the missus died, I have to look after everything inside and outside.” This he said as he brushed the crumbs from the preceding breakfast on to the floor, and then swept crumbs, dirt and all out of the door.

After he disappeared down the hill, behind the pump, Ellen raised her eyes appealingly to mine. “What am I to do, Don Compie?” This was the name she had given me when she was a baby and could not say John Constable. Her mother, too, had called me by it in later years, to distinguish me from her husband.

As I have said, it was seven years since I left for Europe in one last effort to forget her, whom fortune decreed I could not possess. When I left little Ellen was just a child, almost a baby. But now she was blooming into womanhood.

“Ellen, dear,” I asked sympathetically, “do you feel strong enough to tell me of the death of mother and daddy? Were you in the motor with them at the time of the accident, or just how did it happen?”

“No,” she answered slowly, and unrestrained tears flowed freely down the pale cheeks, “they were alone with Peter the chauffeur, returning from Upper Falls. Peter turned into the railing of the bridge to avoid another machine, which was coming very fast—the railing gave way, Peter jumped and escaped injury, but mother and daddy were caught under the car. Daddy was dead when they found him, but mother lived almost a day.”

I had grown callous to suffering and trouble as I approached middle age, but my heart was touched as it never had been before. I slowly patted the white hand in an effort to disclose my feelings, but I’m afraid the child has never known the depth of them to this day.

“You see,” she continued bravely, “it was because daddy died first that mother’s will and not his became valid, and in it she left everything, including the home at Pine Grove where Uncle Albert lives, to me. Daddy bought it in just recently, because Uncle Albert had mortgaged it so heavily that it was to be sold and daddy wanted to keep it in the family.

“Uncle Albert was furious when he heard mother had made you my guardian. He begged and begged me to marry him. I was raging, and threatened to write you all about it. Then he lured me to the country. He wrote that he was very ill, and I believed him. Watkins told me everything immediately. He said Uncle Albert had sent you a fake telegram, and he had seen him put something in the whiskey, but he, Watkins, had filled it with water, so it would not hurt you. I was frantic—every exit in the wing of the house where I was imprisoned was locked. Dear, dear, I was frantic—about midnight I seemed to feel mother’s presence beside me impelling me to go to your assistance. I heard something that sounded like a pebble hit the glass in my window. At first I was afraid to look out. It was Watkins, and he threw me a rope. I quickly tied one end to the radiator, and made my escape. As I flew through the corridor I felt a hand clutch me. It was Uncle Albert. He told me he would kill me if I let you know we were in the house. Then—in this terrible second of desperation you found me.”

“The brute,” I muttered between my teeth. “He wired me to come and help search for you—that you had eloped with a man who wanted your fortune, but that he had a clue and wanted me to help solve it.”

“Don’t you see,” she replied, “he had carefully planned to poison you, and then he was going to force me to marry him, for without father he had absolutely no means of support.”

“And he was taking the line of least resistance,” I thought—“the line that leads to nowhere.”

“Heavens, what do you think he was going to do with me, Don Compie?”

I never recall having seen such a look of appeal and terror registered upon the face of any other person in my life.

“My little Ellen,” said I, holding the two hands firmly in my own, “do you know I loved your mother very dearly? I always wanted the right to protect her, but it was denied me—your daddy won out. She is gone, but you are left. Will you trust yourself to my care?”

She answered with a look that meant more than words—a look that I would have given my soul to have had from another twenty years before.

We washed the dishes, closed the old man’s door and started toward our destination, for I had resolved to find Ellen comfortable quarters with a companion before I finished the affair with Albert.

The rain had ceased and there was a peculiarly clear, cool freshness in the atmosphere for a day in August. The hills that surrounded the farm house made clear scallops of green against a pure blue background, and it was hard to believe that turmoil and trouble could exist in such quiet, pleasant surroundings.

We were commenting upon the peacefulness of the scene when an ambulance approached over the hill before us. The road was unusually rough and narrow, a typical country road edged with chinquapin bushes and dogwood trees, whose leaves had already started to turn scarlet, hiding clusters of berries beneath them.

The ambulance swayed from side to side and heeded not the ruts or stones in its wake. As “coming events cast their shadows before,” I was quite confident of its destination. I motioned to the driver who gave me a sharp glance and held the horses in a walk just long enough to inform me quickly of their errand.

“To Mr. Albert Wilbur’s,” was the answer to my question.

“Dead?” I asked.

“Don’t know, a servant ’phoned that he had tried to commit suicide.”

“Take us back, we’re related,” I said.

We returned to the house from which we had fled—to find that the two shots, which the misguided man had fired, had done their work only too well. There remained but the frame of him who had given nothing and taken all.

As for myself, I was left alone in the world with this gentle, naïve child, and I prayed each day that she would be more generous with her love than her mother had been—and she was.

It was like a gift from heaven sent to heal a wounded and longing heart.