Amidon moved on in disgust. And the poor faithful fellow, that his spiritual tone might be restored, sat down and read once more his Bible--the letter superscribed in the large, scrawly hand, "To be Read En Route."

XXI

SOME ALTERNATIONS IN THE CURRENT

One made himself a name for skill to trace To its last hiding-place, Each secret Mother Earth engaged to save, Of jungle, sea or cave.

No path so devious but he mastered it; And, bit by bit, From off the face of mystery, he tore The veil she wore; Then, turning inward all his skill in seeing, To solve the knot of Being, In the deep crypts of Self fordone he lay, Quite cast away.

--_Adventures in Egoism_.

Every morning, now, a box of flowers went up to Elizabeth, at the house with the white columns; and every evening Mr. Amidon bravely followed.

The terror he felt of women was overpowered by the greater terror of losing this woman, and the fort.i.tude and resolution he possessed in all other fields of action were returning to him. His violets and carnations she always wore for him, and all the roses except the red ones, which she put in vases and kept near her, but did not wear. She was ineffably kind and sweet, in a high and pure and far-off way fit for Olympus, but all the intimate little coquetries and tricks of charm with which she had at first received and disconcerted him were gone.

She talked to him in that low voice of hers, but oftener she sat silent, and seemed to desire him to talk to her.

Since that first night, he could not bring himself to act a part, further than to a.s.sume the name and place of Eugene Bra.s.sfield. He stood afar off, looked at his divinity and worshiped. He read to her her favorite books, and ventured somewhat, out of his exceptional knowledge, to expound them--whereat she looked away and listened with something of the astonishment with which she had received his disquisitions on poetry and art on that first unlucky evening. For the most part, however, he, too, was inclined to silences, in which he looked at Elizabeth in the happiness of a lover's wretchedness. The love she had given to Bra.s.sfield seemed to him based on the deceitful pretensions of that wretch, and in any case it was not his, and he felt repelled from accepting it. He yearned to show her the soul of Florian Amidon, purified, adorned, and dedicated to her.

Once or twice she had hinted at something fateful which she wanted to say to him; but he had begged her to wait. After a few days of this slavish devotion of his, she seemed less aloof, not quite so much the unattainable G.o.ddess.

She gave him her hand, as usual, one evening at parting.

"I shall not expect to see you to-morrow," said she, "until we meet at the Pumphreys' reception. Until then, good-by."

"I thought," said he, "that if you would permit, I should like to call in the afternoon--say at three or four. May I?"

He looked so pleadingly at her, holding the little hand in both of his, that it is no wonder her color rose. It was like the worshipful inception of a new courtship.

"I shall be invisible," said she, "all day--so you must wait. You haven't any time to bother with me, anyhow. Haven't you your platform to complete? A public man must attend to public matters first, and, anyhow, I shall be denied to all my friends, and you must wait with the rest!"

"It is hard to wait," he answered, "when you are so near."

"I shall try to make amends," said she, "by endeavoring to be as beautiful as--as you used to describe me--at the reception. Good night! Good night!"

He once more violated the Bra.s.sfield traditions; he simply raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. To do more, he felt, would spoil all.

She went in, more nearly happy than at any time since his return, but sorely puzzled. "I shall never understand him," she thought.

Mrs. Major Pumphrey, standing in line with Miss Scarlett and Mrs.

Pumphrey's sister from Wisconsin; a procession of people coming in by twos and threes, and steered by attendants into rooms for doffing wraps; a chain of de-wrapped human beings circulating past the receiving line and listening to Mrs. Pumphrey's a.s.surances that she was delighted to welcome them that she might have the pleasure of introducing them to her sister--and of course they knew Miss Scarlett; an Italian harper who played ceaselessly among palms; a punch-bowl presided over by Flossie Smith and Mrs. Alvord; a melange of black coats, pretty frocks and white arms and shoulders; a glare of lights; a hum like a hive's--in short, a reception. Such was the function to which Florian made his way, waiting until he could arrive concomitantly with the Waldron carriage so that he might hand the ladies therefrom, and receive from his divinity a little, uncertain pressure of the hand.

Then came his respects to Mrs. Pumphrey. Amidon started as he recognized in the bright-haired second person in line his fairy of the bal.u.s.trade.

"So delighted to see you here, Mr. Bra.s.sfield!" said Mrs. Pumphrey.

"It gives me the opportunity of presenting you to--why, Daisy, where's your auntie gone? She was here just now!"

"She was called away for a few moments," said Miss Scarlett. "Yes, I believe Mr. Bra.s.sfield and I have met"--this with an icy bow--"and please, Mr. c.o.x, don't go, until I have told you the end of the story!"

And she went on vivaciously chatting to Billy c.o.x, who had moored himself as close to her as the tide of guests sweeping by her would permit. Which current swept Mr. Amidon onward as he was in the act of a.s.suring his hostess of his sense of loss in her sister's absence--until an eddy left him in a quiet corner, where he found absorbing occupation in trying to imagine again as vividly as possible that pressure of the hand. Was it meant as an evidence of affection?--or did her foot slip, so that she clung to his hand to prevent a fall? This question seemed of the most transcendent importance to him, and he debated it mentally all the evening, as he talked the set conversation of such an occasion. He knew no one; but every one knew him; yet he had no difficulty in getting on, because there was no sense in any of the conversation. He could answer all the remarks regarding his new role of political leader without committing himself to anything serious. Bright eyes flashed meaning and soulful glances into his, as sweet lips said things which he could answer quite as well as if the context of the conversation had been as familiar to him as it was supposed to be. Plat.i.tudes, generalities, inanities; and inanities, plat.i.tudes and generalities in reply. Amidon looked the part of Bra.s.sfield perfectly, and on occasions of this sort, to look the part is quite enough.

He found Elizabeth again, surrounded by a circle of admirers--men and women--an oasis of intelligence, it seemed to him as he listened, in a desert of twaddle. She smiled at him with her eyes, as he looked at her through the press, and just as he had won to a place by her side, the tide was sent flooding into a large room where, it was announced, Professor Blatherwick and Madame le Claire were doing feats of occultism.

"Laties ant shentlemen,"--it was the professor who spoke, "you are at liperty, of gourse, to adopt any t'eory vich seems to you goot to eggsblain dese phenomena. Madame le Claire offers none. Ven she ha.s.s broduced te phenomena, she iss--she iss all in! If dey seem to you to be de vork of tisempodied spirits, fery well--goot! Somedimes it seems so to her. If you rekard letchertemain as a sufficient vorking hypot'esis, vy, letchertemain goes, and upon dat hypot'esis ve vill gontinue to vork de miracles ant de public. Id iss kvite de same to Madame le Claire. It iss only fair to say, howefer, dat she ha.s.s nefer yet detected herself in any fraut. Bud she offers no eggsblanation; she chust gifes dese tests for your gonsiteration."

A ripple of laughter and a buzz of interested comment ran through the room.

"But how was it possible for her to get her hands loose?" said one.

"I a.s.sure you," said Mrs. Meyer, she of the _Parsifal_ impressions, and the wife of the Hebrew leader of the Gentile mob who went "down the line" for McCorkle the night before the caucuses, "I a.s.sure you that what she told me was unknown not only to every one else, but to me also; but it turned out true. It's uncanny!"

"It's humbug," said the ba.s.s voice of Doctor Brown, "and until you show me the source of this 'occult' energy, I shall so contend. Animal magnetism and sleight-of-hand! What do you think, Mrs. Hunter?"

Amidon looked across and saw--Mrs. Hunter, of Hazelhurst! It was she and her daughter from whom he had bashfully flown to the buffet, just before he alighted from the train at Elm Springs Junction. As he looked at her all the old life returned to him! He saw himself sitting with her and Minnie in the car, as she talked fashions to him and chattered her antic.i.p.ations of the lovely time Minnie was to have with the family of Senator Fowler on the Maine coast. He saw Blodgett come in, and himself seize the opportunity to escape with his lawyer to the buffet. Then he saw the rural railway platform, the fading glory of the west--and then the waking in the sleeping-car! Could it all be possible?

"Do you know the lady talking with Doctor Brown?" he asked of Miss Waldron.

"Mrs. Hunter?" said Elizabeth questioningly. "Why, didn't you meet her when you came in? She is Mrs. Pumphrey's sister, of Hazelhurst, Wisconsin. She receives with Mrs. Pumphrey to-night."

"I thought it was Mrs. Hunter, as soon as I saw her," answered Amidon; "she is an old acquaintance of mine."

And it was some little time, so far had he forgotten his peculiar position, before the baleful possibilities of this innocent and truthful remark occurred to him. When he thought of it, any observing friend might well have inquired after his health, so gray with pallor and moist with sweat had his face become. Not that he felt hanging over him any such danger as he had feared when he found himself in the shoes of another man, with that other man unaccounted for. He really cared very little about _that_, now. The people of Bellevale, and Hazelhurst, too, might think what they pleased about this mystery of disappearance and reappearance: he was independent of them all, and those he really cared about would understand.

But Elizabeth! Everything now revolved about her. Now that she had grown so dear--that she had come to smile on him in his new character--how could he let her know that this Eugene Bra.s.sfield whom she so admired and loved, was no more for ever; and that Florian Amidon had never seen her, never loved her, never wooed her until these past few days! Would she ever see him again? Could she regard him as anything else than an interloper and an impostor? His right to Bra.s.sfield's clothes and Bra.s.sfield's fortune might be as clear as Judge Blodgett said; but would not Elizabeth feel that as to her he had attempted the very deed of which he had first suspected himself--fraud and robbery? And her "perfect lover," whom Amidon habitually thought of as "that fellow Bra.s.sfield"--all the perfections which Elizabeth had learned to attribute to him, would no longer be credited to Amidon. It was tragic!

As a matter of fact, beloved, any man would have been a perfect lover, or none at all, to Elizabeth. A perfect lover is the n.o.blest work of woman.

"Te autience," went on the professor, "vill haf te eggstreme gourtesy to a.s.sist in a temonstration of Madame le Claire's power as a hypnotist. Not effery vun gan pe hypnoticed te fairst dime; bud ve vill try. Vill te autience bleace suchest te name of a laty or shentleman as a supchect?"

"Doctor Brown!" said many voices. "Alvord!" said others, but most of the votes appeared to be for Bra.s.sfield--a name which the professor hailed joyfully as insuring against failure. It is not often that the audience will hit on the only practised sensitive in the room.

Madame le Claire started, as there was thus presented to her the thought of bringing her power to bear on Amidon. The serious results of her last exercise of it came vividly to her mind. Yet, here she was openly hypnotizing him. Here she could keep him under control. She could limit his Bra.s.sfield state as to time, or she could keep him in a state of automatism.

"Mr. Bra.s.sfield vill greatly obliche by goming forvart," said the professor; and, as he had learned to do, Amidon obeyed his request.

Elizabeth, standing near Mrs. Hunter, heard an agitated exclamation from that lady as Mr. Amidon went forward.

"For heaven's sake," said she, "it's Florian Amidon!"

"Who?" inquired Mrs. Pumphrey, "that? Why, that's our chief citizen, soon to be our chief magistrate, Mr. Eugene Bra.s.sfield."

Elizabeth heard no more, but in spite of perplexity at what she regarded as Mrs. Hunter's recognition of her lover's face and forgetfulness of his name, she could not help noticing her excited talk to her sister, and the meaning glances finally directed toward her, Elizabeth. Whereat, to hide a little rosy flush, Miss Waldron turned more completely toward the place of the hypnotist.

Madame le Claire stood in the little curtained alcove, empty save for the great tiger-skin rug, the dais, and a chair or two. She was gowned once more in the yellow and black, and stood in tigrine splendor cap-a-pie. Amidon felt her old power over him, as he approached her and looked into those mysterious eyes, and knew that he should do her bidding. She looked at his troubled countenance, and pitied him for his long evening of mental strain. She had seen his devotion to Elizabeth, and, be it confessed, was jealous in spite of herself. Pity and jealousy inspired the resolution which now formed in her mind: she would for an interval--an interval definitely limited--restore Eugene Bra.s.sfield to this company in which he was so completely at home, and lay the troubled ghost, Amidon. He would appear to better advantage altogether and do himself more credit; he would, in fact, be more convincingly Bellevale's "chief citizen."

She bowed deeply and waved him to the chair. Then she performed the charm of "woven paces and of waving arms," and he slept, "lost to life and use and name and fame."

"When he opens his eyes," said she, "he will know nothing, think nothing, do nothing, except what I suggest."

"Make him dance with the broom," suggested c.o.x.

"Let's have his inaugural address," pet.i.tioned Edgington.