A Fool There Was

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A FOOL THERE WAS

BY

PORTER EMERSON BROWNE

"A Fool there was and he made his prayer--
(Even as you and I.)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair--
( We called her the woman who did not care)
But the fool he called her his lady fair--
(Even as you and I.)"

ILLUSTRATED BY
EDMUND MAGRATH
AND
W. W. FAWCETT

1909

TO
ROBERT HILLIARD.

CONTENTS

Chapter.

I. Of Certain People
II. Of Certain Other People
III. Two Boys and a Girl
IV. The Child and the Stranger
V. As Time Passes
VI. An Accident
VII. An Incident
VIII. Of Certain Goings
IX. Of Certain Other Goings
X. Two Boys and a Doctor
XI. A Proposal
XII. A Foreign Mission
XIII. The Going
XIV. Parmalee--and The Woman
XV. A Warning
XVI. The Beginning
XVII. In The Night
XVIII. White Roses
XIX. Shadows
XX. A Fairy Story
XXI. A Letter
XXII. Again The Fairy Story
XXIII. Aid
XXIV. The Rescue
XXV. The Return
XXVI. The Red Rose
XXVII. The Red Road
XXVIII. The Battle
XXIX. Defeat
XXX. And Its Consequences
XXXI. That Which Men Said
XXXII. In the Garden
XXXIII. Temptation
XXXIV. The Shroud of a Soul
XXXV. The Thing that was a Man
XXXVI. Again the Battle
XXXVII. The Pity of It All

ILLUSTRATIONS.

"Beautiful, gloriously beautiful in her strange,
weird dark beauty"

"Bye little sweetheart"

"I do forgive--forgive and understand"

"Can't you find in that dead thing you call a
heart just one shred of pity?"

CHAPTER ONE.

OF CERTAIN PEOPLE.

To begin a story of this kind at the beginning is hard; for when the
beginning may have been, no man knows. Perhaps it was a hundred years
ago--perhaps a thousand--perhaps ten thousand; and it may well be, yet
longer ago, even, than that. Yet it can be told that John Schuyler came
from a long line of clean-bodied, clean-souled, clear-eyed, clear-headed
ancestors; and from these he had inherited cleanness of body and of soul,
clearness of eye and of head. They had given him all that lay in their
power to give, had these honest, impassive Dutchmen and--women--these
broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped English; they had amalgamated for him
their virtues, and they had eradicated for him their vices; they had
cultivated for him those things of theirs that it were well to cultivate;
and they had plucked ruthlessly from the gardens of heredity the weeds
and tares that might have grown to check his growth. And, doing this,
they had died, one after another, knowing not what they had done--knowing
not why they had done it--knowing not what the result would be--doing
that which they did because it was in them to do it; and for no other
reason save that. For so it is of this world.

First, then, it is for you to know these things that I have told.
Secondly, it is for you to realize that there are things in this world of
which we know but little; that there are other things of which we may
sometime learn; that there are infinitely more things that not even the
wisest of us may ever begin to understand. God chooses to tell us nothing
of that which comes after; and of that which comes therein He lets us
learn just enough that we may know how much more there is.

And knowing and realizing these things, we may but go back as far toward
the beginning as it is in our power to see.

* * * * *

Before the restless, never-ebbing of the tides of business had
overwhelmed it with a seething flood of watered stocks and liquid
dollars, there stood on a corner of Fifth Avenue and one of its lower
tributaries, a stern, heavy-portalled mansion of brownstone. It was a
house not forbidding, but dignified. Its broad, plate-glass windows gazed
out in silent, impassive tolerance upon the streams of social life that
passed it of pleasant afternoons in Spring and Fall--on sleet-swept
nights of winter when 'bus and brougham brought from theatre and opera
their little groups and pairs of fur-clad women and high-hatted men. It
was a big house--big in size--big in atmosphere--big in manner.

At its left there was another big house, much like the one that I have
already described. It was possibly a bit more homelike--a bit less
dignified; for, possibly, its windows were a trifle more narrow, and its
portal a little less imposing. And across from that there lay a smaller
house--a house of brick; and this was much more inviting than either of
the others; for one might step from the very sidewalk within the broad
hall, hung with two very, very old portraits and lighted warmly with
shades of dull yellow, and of pink.

In the first of the big houses there lived a boy; and in the second there
lived another boy; and across, in the little house of brick, there lived
a girl. Of course, in these houses there dwelt, as well, other people.

Of these was John Stuyvesant Schuyler, who, with his wife Gretchen, lived
in the big house on the corner, was a man silent, serious. He lived
intent, honest, upright. He seldom laughed; though when he did, there
came at the corners of mouth and eye, tiny, tell-tale lines which showed
that beneath seriousness and silence, lay a fund of humor unharmed by
continual drain. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, straight-backed.
And to that which had been left him, he added, in health, in mind, and in
money, and he added wisely and well, and never at unjust expense to
anyone.

His wife was much as he in trait and habit. She, too, was silent,
serious, intent. Of her time, of her effort, of herself, she gave freely
wherein it were well to give. In her youth, she had been a beautiful
girl; as a woman, she was still beautiful; and her husband and her son
were very proud of her, though the one was fifty-five, and the other but
twelve.

In the big house next door, there lived Thomas Cathcart Blake. He, too,
had a wife, and one child--a boy. And of John Stuyvesant Schuyler he was
very fond--even as Mrs. Thomas Cathcart Blake was fond of Mrs. John
Stuyvesant Schuyler; and even as Tom Blake, the son of the one, was fond
of Jack Schuyler, the son of the other. Blake, the elder, was a man
rotund of figure, ruddy of complexion, great of heart. He laughed much;
for he enjoyed much. He gave away much more than he could make; and he
laughed about it. His wife laughed with him. And really it made no
difference; for they had more for themselves than they could ever use. Of
course, you know, it is true that many people have more than they can
ever use; but few ever think so.

In the little, warm house of red brick, across the street, lived Kathryn
Blair, and with her another Kathryn Blair, who was as much like the other
as it is possible for six to be like thirty. They both had wide, violet
eyes and sensitive, red lips, and very white teeth and lithe, slender
bodies. And they were both loved very much by everyone; and everyone said
what a shame it was that he or she hadn't put his or her foot down
_hard_ and made Jimmy Blair stay at home instead of letting him go
down into that unpronounceable Central American place and get killed in
an opera bouffe revolution with which he had absolutely nothing to do
except that he couldn't stand idly by and see women and little children
shot. Still, it was such a blessing to Kate that she had little Kate to
help her bear it all. And she had enough money, too; no one seemed to
know how; for Jimmy Blair was a reckless giver and a poor business men.
But John Stuyvesant Schuyler and Thomas Cathcart Blake had been
executors. And that explained much to those who knew; for once every two
or three months, these two men, so different and yet so alike, would
stalk solemnly, side by side, across the street and, still solemnly,
still side by side, would inform the violet-eyed widow of Jimmy Blair
that the investments that her husband had made for her had been very
fortunate and that there was in the bank for her the sum of many more
hundreds of dollars than poor Jimmy himself could have made in as many
years. And she, deifying the man who had been her husband, endowing him
with the abilities of a Morgan, a Root and a Rothschild, would believe
all that they said; and she would tell the neighbors; and they, being
good neighbors, would nod, seriously, unsmilingly. "Jimmy Blair was a
wonderful, wonderful man," they would say. And the violet eyes would grow
soft and dim, and the sensitive lips tremble a little, and the prettily-
poised head would sink forward upon the rounded breast. And she was less
unhappy; for when others love the one you love, even though that one be
gone, it makes the pain far, far less. Also, it is a great blessing to
have about one those who know enough not to know too much.

So it was of the three houses, and of those who lived therein.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER TWO.

OF CERTAIN OTHER PEOPLE.

In the littleness of things, it so happened that at a time when John
Stuyvesant Schuyler and Thomas Cathcart Blake, serious, solemn, side-by-
side, were telling the widow of Jimmy Blair that the Tidewater Southern
Railroad, in which her husband had largely interested himself before his
death, had declared an extra dividend that had enabled them that day to
deposit to her credit in the bank the sum of four thousand two hundred
and eighty-one dollars and seventy-three cents, in a little hut on the
black Breton coast a woman lay dying.

It was a bare hut, and noisome. In it it were perhaps better to die than
to live; and yet that one might not say. From before it one might gaze
upon league upon league of sullen sea, stretching to where, far in the
dim distance, lay the curve of the horizon upbearing the gray dome of the
sky.

Inside the hovel there was a smoke-stained fireplace beside which was
strewn an armful of faggots. There was before it a number of broken and
greasy dishes, filled with fragments of food. And all about on the floor
lay the litter of the sick-room.

The dying woman was stretched inert, moveless, upon a rough bed of rope
and rush. Perhaps she had been pretty once, in an animal way. She was not
now. Lips that doubtless had been red were white and drawn in pain; and
there was blood upon them, where white, even teeth had bitten in the way
that those who suffer have of trying to hide a greater suffering beneath
a lesser. The eyes, deep and dark, were dull and half-hidden by their
blue, transparent lids. And the cheeks were sunken, and ghastly--touched
by the hand of death.

A heavy, course-featured woman, thin hair streaked with gray, flat-
backed, flat-breasted, sat beside the rude bed, silent, motionless,
awaiting an end that she had so often watched in the sullen ferocity that
is of beast rather than of man. And on her lap lay a little, pink, puling
thing that whimpered and twisted weakly--a little, naked, thing half
covered by roughly-cast sacking.

The tiny, twisting thing whimpered. The woman beside the bed held it,
waiting. The woman on the bed moaned a little, and the glaze upon the
eyes grew more thick. And that was all.

There came to the ears that were not too new come or too far gone to
hear, the sound of hoof beats upon the turf. They came nearer.... They
stopped. Came the sound of spurred heels striking upon the trodden dirt
without the door.... There stood in the opening the figure of a man. He
was tall, and well-proportioned, though if anything a bit too slender--a
bit too graceful; and he was, if anything, a bit too well groomed. He had
light hair, and moustache. He had cold eyes that smiled; cold lips that
smiled. He stood in the doorway, trying to accustom his eyes to the gloom
within, the while playing a deft tattoo upon his booted calf with light
crop that he carried in his right hand.

"Well?" he said, at length, in the French that is of Paris. "Well? ...
What is all this?"

The tiny thing whimpered. The woman upon the bed moaned a little, weakly.
She, who sat beside it, looked up, eyes aflame. She said no word.

The man in the doorway took a step forward, entering. He was still
smiling. He looked about him; and then he continued:

"Sick, eh? ... Dying? ... And that thing that you have in your--_Ma
foi_! A baby, eh?" He laughed, aloud. The broken peals came back to
him from the sodden, smoke-stained rafters. "Strange that I should have
come to-day.... A baby!" He laughed again, modulatedly. And then, with an
air of sympathetic commiseration he said to the gray-haired old woman
with the eyes of fire:

"Too bad that your daughter is not married--since she, I presume, is the
mother! ... And the happy father?--he is--?" He stopped, waiting,
smilingly.

The fierce, blazing eyes were set full upon his own. She said, in the
patois that was of her and hers:

"You ask that? ... You?"

He answered, evenly.

"Yes. I ask that. Even I."

Quickly, with the agility of the brute, she thrust toward him the little,
puling thing that lay upon her lap.

"Look, then," she said, in deep, grating tones.

He leaned forward, crossing his hands behind him, and looked. The crop,
held in his right hand, tapped lightly against his booted left leg. The
woman waited. At length he stood erect. He shook his head and smiled.

"Babies are all alike," he remarked, easily. "Red, dirty, unformed, no
hair.... This is a little redder, a little more dirty, a little more
unformed; it has a little less hair.... Beyond that, _quoi_?"

The shrunken lips of the old woman set tightly; the eyes flared.

"You dare--!" she began. And then: "It is your mouth--your chin. The nose
is yours. The eyes they shall be hers." She nodded her head in the
direction of the dying mother upon the bed. "And perhaps, some day--" She
did not finish. She settled the baby back again upon her knees and sat,
waiting.

The man, still smiling, gazed up the woman on the bed.

"Dead?" he queried, with a lift of the brows.

She did not answer. He bent over the prostrate form; then again stood
erect. He shrugged his shoulders.

He turned again to the shrivelled woman on the chair.

"You have named it?" he asked. "You have named--our child?"

Still she did not answer.

"It were not improper," he continued, smilingly, half-musingly, "for a
father to venture a suggestion anent a name.... _Eh bien_, then. I
should wish that the baby be known as" he stopped for a moment, thinking,
the while lightly tapping booted leg with the tip of his crop. "I should
suggest," he repeated, "calling her Rien. It is an appropriate name,
Rien. It is not a bad name; in fact, it is rather a pretty name....
Rien.... Rien.... Rien...." He repeated it several times. "Yes, it seems
to me that that is an excellent name.... We will, then, consider her name
Rien." He laughed once more.

"Because of certain reasons," he went on, "I'm afraid that my paternal
duties must cease with the naming of our child."

He turned to the dying woman upon the bed.

"Bon voyage, mam'selle--eh, pardon, madame," he said. He lifted his hat,
bowing. To the old woman he turned.

"To you--" he began; she interrupted.

"Her eyes, they will be her mother's," she mumbled, sullenly.

"Which will be well," he smiled. "Her mother had beautiful eyes--
wonderful eyes."

"More wonderful than you knew," muttered the old woman. "Had you come a
day sooner--"

Still he smiled.

"But I didn't," he replied; and then nodding toward the whimpering thing
that the woman held:

"You should guard it well. There is of the best blood of France in its
veins." His lips curled, whimsically. "'Tis strange, that, _n'es-ce
pas_? In that small piece of carrion which you hold there upon your
knees runs the blood of three kings." Again he laughed, musically. He
turned.

He had not seen her stoop. The long-bladed knife struck him in the arm,
piercing flesh and vein and sinew, sticking there. Slowly he plucked it
forth, and turned to her, still smiling.

"You are old, madame. Do not apologize; it was not your fault."

He took the knife delicately by the tip and with a little flip sent it
spinning through the air and over the edge of the cliff. And he was gone.

The woman, shrivelled, gray-haired, sinking back in her chair, sat
silent. The puling thing upon her knees whimpered. The dying woman upon
the rude bed of rope and rush moaned. And that was all.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER THREE.

TWO BOYS AND A GIRL.

To the budding mind of young Jack Schuyler, life was a very pleasant
affair. It began each morning at six thirty; and from then on until eight
at night, there was something to fill each moment. He didn't care for
school, particularly; still, it wasn't difficult enough to cause much
discomfort. The natal pains of study were not by any means unbearable
inasmuch as he was quick to see and to understand; and furthermore, he
was possessed of a retentive memory. In his classes he assumed a position
of about eighth from the fore; and he maintained it with but little
fluctuation. In the out-of-door sports of small boys, he was usually
first--that is, when Tom Blake wasn't. When Tom Blake was, Jack Schuyler
was second.

He was a sturdy boy, active, quick, strong of limb and of body. He had
earnest, serious eyes of gray-blue, like those of his father. His mouth
and chin were delicate, like his mother's. And he was thoughtful, rather
than impulsive.

Tom Blake, on the other hand, was impulsive rather than thoughtful. He
had dark eyes and ruddy cheeks; and, at the age of nine, he had learned
to walk on his hands in a manner that caused acute envy to rankle in the
bosom of every boy in the neighborhood. Also, as is most unusual among
boys of whatever station, color or instinct, he was self-sacrificing, and
more than generous, and loyal to a fault.

Kathryn Blair was all that might have been expected of a daughter of her
father and mother. Had you known them, it were difficult to describe
further. You have been told that she was lithe, and dainty and very
pretty. And she was feminine, very, and yet not unhoydenish; for she
played much with Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake. She was natural, and
unaffected, and whole-souled and buoyant, quick to laughter, quick to
tears, with an inexhaustible fund of merriment, and of sympathy.

Of an afternoon, in early December, they lay, these three young animals,
sprawling upon the great room in Blake's house--the room that had been
made for play. The gentle rays of the early-setting sun streamed in
through the broad windows upon a tumbled heap of discarded playthings,
and upon a floor strewn with that which might have appeared to be
drifting snow but which in reality was feathers; for there had been a
fierce pillow fight; and one of the pillows, under the pressure of
rolling little bodies, had burst. Its shrunken shape lay in a far corner
of the room, rumpled, empty, a husk of the plump thing that it had been
but a short time before.

Kathryn Blair, with slender, stockinged legs thrust out before her, was
picking from the tangled masses of her gold-brown hair little clinging
bits of down. Tom Blake, beside her lay flat upon his back; and by him,
was Jack Schuyler, his head resting upon the heaving diaphragm of the
other.

At length Jack Schuyler sat up, looking about him.

"Phew!" he whistled. "It looks like a snowslide.... We'll catch it now!"

Tom Blake rolled over on his stomach. He shook his head.

"Don't worry about that," he said. "Dad won't care, nor mother....
Besides, you're my guests, you know.... What shall we do now?"

Kathryn Blair said:

"I want to get these feathers off first. They stick terribly.... Every
time I think I've got hold of one, I find it's a hair." She shifted, so
that her back was toward Tom Blake. "Help me, Tom," she commanded.

Obediently he rose to his knees. Resting his left hand upon her shoulder,
he plucked, with clumsy masculine fingers at the bits of white that
nestled in her hair.... She gave a little cry.

"Ouch! That hurts, Tom! I guess I'd better wait until I get home and have
Harris do it. Harris isn't pretty, but she's awfully good; and she
doesn't fuss a bit" ... She turned around, suddenly, violet eyes wide
with excitement. "Oh! I forgot to tell you!" she cried. "Doctor DeLancey
said that maybe he'd bring me a baby brother today!"

Tom Blake and Jack Schuyler both turned to her.

"He did!" they cried almost together.

She nodded, profoundly.

"Yes," she said. "That's why they sent me over here to get all mussed up
with feathers. You know baby brothers are bashful. Dr. DeLancey told me
all about it. They like to be all alone in the house with their mothers,
so that they can get acquainted."

Jack Schuyler rose up on his elbows.

"I know a boy," he said, "that was promised a baby brother and all he got
was a sister.... I don't think that was square, do you?"

Tom Blake looked out the window, thoughtfully.

"I don't know," he remarked at length, judicially. "It might not have
been the doctor's fault. Sometimes they get 'em mixed, I guess.... And
anyhow, sisters aren't so bad. I wish I had one right now--one like you,
Kathryn." He turned on her eyes in which were the frank liking and
admiration of boyhood.

She tossed the tumbled braids of her hair back over her shoulders.

"I'd rather be a boy, myself," she said. "They don't have to wear dresses
and things. And people don't give them dolls when they'd rather have
rocking horses.... I wish they'd hurry and bring that brother. I'm just
wild to see it!"

Jack Schuyler sat up.

"Well," he assured her, "They'll send over for you when it comes.... What
shall we do now?"

He waited patiently for suggestions. Tom Blake and Kathryn Blair sat,
foreheads grooved in thought. At length Jack Schuyler cried suddenly:

"I know! Let's play leopard shooting! I saw a picture of one in the
geography. It looked just like Fiddles." Fiddles was the plethoric
Maltese member of the Blake family. "We've got those tin guns, and we can
stalk it. What do you say?"

That which they said was later evidenced; for when Thomas Cathcart Blake
entered the front door of his residence that night and started up the
stairs, he was met by an excited feline, followed by three equally
excited children. And the cat, on seeing him, its cosmogony disrupted to
such an extent that it felt itself no longer able to distinguish friend
from foe, tried to turn back with the result that its first pursuer fell
over it. There was the added result that the next two pursuers tripped
upon the sprawling form of the first. And Thomas Cathcart Blake had great
difficulty in preventing himself from joining the sprawling parade that
tumbled past him to the foot of the stairs, and lay at the bottom, a heap
of tossing legs and arms and ribbons and fur.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE CHILD AND THE STRANGER.

It is of necessity that a story such as this should be episodical,
lapsical, disconnected. Its inception lies in two countries, and of
different people. And it is, in its beginnings, a story of contrasts. So
one may be permitted again to say: At a time when pompous, ponderous,
white-whiskered, black-suited old Dr. DeLancey was engaged in bringing to
the daughter of Kathryn Blair a posthumous baby brother that, in the
mystery of things, turned out after all to be a sister, a stranger
chanced to be riding at dusk through the deep shades of the Bois du Nord,
in Brittany. The path was overhung with spreading boughs; it was tumbled
with the wood-litter of a decade. His horse went slowly, lifting each
forefoot daintily and placing it carefully. And the stranger permitted
the animal to take its own time.

At length he came to a turning. The huge bole of a great oak was at his
left. He rounded it. His horse raised its head, nostrils distended, eyes
alert, and stopped.

The stranger looked up. It was a strange picture that met his eyes....

At first he did not believe that that which he saw was human. It seemed
like some nymph of the wood; for there are nymphs in the Bois du Nord,
you know, many of them. Anyone who lives there will tell you that.

But then his eyes fell upon a tumbled heap of clothing; and he knew that
it was not a nymph, after all. For nymphs do not wear clothing.

There was a little woodland pool before him. The sun, straining through
the great, heavy-leafed boughs, specked it with blots and blotches of
gold. Beside it there sat the figure of a girl, naked. She sat there, her
slender legs beneath her, her slender body leaning upon one rounded,
white arm. Great masses of dead-black hair fell about her glowing
shoulders, half covering the arm which supported her. Her other hand
clasped her knee. Her dark eyes were gazing before her toward the trunk
of the oak. The stranger felt that she knew that he was there; and yet
she had not looked at him.

On the bole of the oak was a squirrel. It was motionless, as though
carved out of the trunk itself. Beneath it lay coiled a snake. Its eyes
were fastened upon those of the squirrel and its flat, ugly head was
moving gently to and fro--to and fro--the while its forked tongue played
back and forth between its fangs.

They waited there, the stranger and the naked girl. They waited for a
long, long time....

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