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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Messengers, by Richard Harding Davis
+#23 in our series by Richard Harding Davis
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+The Messengers
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+by Richard Harding Davis
+
+July, 1999  [Etext #1819]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Messengers, by Richard Harding Davis
+******This file should be named msgrs10.txt or msgrs10.zip******
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+Prepared by Don Lainson
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+
+
+THE MESSENGERS
+
+
+When Ainsley first moved to Lone Lake Farm all of his friends asked
+him the same question.  They wanted to know, if the farmer who sold
+it to him had abandoned it as worthless, how one of the idle rich,
+who could not distinguish a plough from a harrow, hoped to make it
+pay?  His answer was that he had not purchased the farm as a means
+of getting richer by honest toil, but as a retreat from the world
+and as a test of true friendship.  He argued that the people he
+knew accepted his hospitality at Sherry's because, in any event,
+they themselves would be dining within a taxicab fare of the same
+place.  But if to see him they travelled all the way to Lone Lake
+Farm, he might feel assured that they were friends indeed.
+
+Lone Lake Farm was spread over many acres of rocky ravine and
+forest, at a point where Connecticut approaches New York, and
+between it and the nearest railroad station stretched six miles of
+an execrable wood road.  In this wilderness, directly upon the
+lonely lake, and at a spot equally distant from each of his
+boundary lines, Ainsley built himself a red brick house.  Here, in
+solitude, he exiled himself; ostensibly to become a gentleman
+farmer; in reality to wait until Polly Kirkland had made up her
+mind to marry him.
+
+Lone Lake, which gave the farm its name, was a pond hardly larger
+than a city block.  It was fed by hidden springs, and fringed about
+with reeds and cat-tails, stunted willows and shivering birch.
+From its surface jutted points of the same rock that had made
+farming unremunerative, and to these miniature promontories and
+islands Ainsley, in keeping with a fancied resemblance, gave such
+names as the Needles, St. Helena, the Isle of Pines.  From the edge
+of the pond that was farther from the house rose a high hill,
+heavily wooded.  At its base, oak and chestnut trees spread their
+branches over the water, and when the air was still were so clearly
+reflected in the pond that the leaves seemed to float upon the
+surface.  To the smiling expanse of the farm the lake was what the
+eye is to the human countenance.  The oaks were its eyebrows, the
+fringe of reeds its lashes, and, in changing mood, it flashed with
+happiness or brooded in sombre melancholy.  For Ainsley it held a
+deep attraction.  Through the summer evenings, as the sun set, he
+would sit on the brick terrace and watch the fish leaping, and
+listen to the venerable bull-frogs croaking false alarms of rain.
+Indeed, after he met Polly Kirkland, staring moodily at the lake
+became his favorite form of exercise.  With a number of other men,
+Ainsley was very much in love with Miss Kirkland, and unprejudiced
+friends thought that if she were to choose any of her devotees,
+Ainsley should be that one.  Ainsley heartily agreed in this
+opinion, but in persuading Miss Kirkland to share it he had not
+been successful.  This was partly his own fault; for when he dared
+to compare what she meant to him with what he had to offer her he
+became a mass of sodden humility.  Could he have known how much
+Polly Kirkland envied and admired his depth of feeling, entirely
+apart from the fact that she herself inspired that feeling, how
+greatly she wished to care for him in the way he cared for her,
+life, even alone in the silences of Lone Lake, would have been a
+beautiful and blessed thing.  But he was so sure she was the most
+charming and most wonderful girl in all the world, and he an
+unworthy and despicable being, that when the lady demurred, he
+faltered, and his pleading, at least to his own ears, carried no
+conviction.
+
+"When one thinks of being married," said Polly Kirkland gently, "it
+isn't a question of the man you can live with, but the man you
+can't live without.  And I am sorry, but I've not found that man."
+
+"I suppose," returned Ainsley gloomily, "that my not being able to
+live without you doesn't affect the question in the least?"
+
+"You HAVE lived without me," Miss Kirkland pointed out
+reproachfully, "for thirty years."
+
+"Lived!" almost shouted Ainsley.  "Do you call THAT living?  What
+was I before I met you?  I was an ignorant beast of the field.  I
+knew as much about living as one of the cows on my farm.  I could
+sleep twelve hours at a stretch, or, if I was in New York, I NEVER
+slept.  I was a Day and Night Bank of health and happiness, a
+great, big, useless puppy.  And now I can't sleep, can't eat, can't
+think--except of you.  I dream about you all night, think about you
+all day, go through the woods calling your name, cutting your
+initials in tree trunks, doing all the fool things a man does when
+he's in love, and I am the most miserable man in the world--and the
+happiest!"
+
+He finally succeeded in making Miss Kirkland so miserable also that
+she decided to run away.  Friends had planned to spend the early
+spring on the Nile and were eager that she should accompany them.
+To her the separation seemed to offer an excellent method of
+discovering whether or not Ainsley was the man she could not "live
+without."
+
+Ainsley saw in it only an act of torture, devised with devilish
+cruelty.
+
+"What will happen to me," he announced firmly, "is that I will
+plain DIE!  As long as I can see you, as long as I have the chance
+to try and make you understand that no one can possibly love you as
+I do, and as long as I know I am worrying you to death, and no one
+else is, I still hope.  I've no right to hope, still I do.  And
+that one little chance keeps me alive.  But Egypt!  If you escape
+to Egypt, what hold will I have on you?  You might as well be in
+the moon.  Can you imagine me writing love-letters to a woman in
+the moon?  Can I send American Beauty roses to the ruins of Karnak?
+Here I can telephone you; not that I ever have anything to say that
+you want to hear, but because I want to listen to your voice, and
+to have you ask, 'Oh! is that YOU?' as though you were glad it WAS
+me.  But Egypt!  Can I call up Egypt on the long-distance?  If you
+leave me now, you'll leave me forever, for I'll drown myself in
+Lone Lake."
+
+The day she sailed away he went to the steamer, and, separating her
+from her friends and family, drew her to the side of the ship
+farther from the wharf, and which for the moment, was deserted.
+Directly below a pile-driver, with rattling of chains and shrieks
+from her donkey-engine, was smashing great logs; on the deck above,
+the ship's band was braying forth fictitious gayety, and from every
+side they were assailed by the raucous whistles of ferry-boats.
+The surroundings were not conducive to sentiment, but for the first
+time Polly Kirkland seemed a little uncertain, a little frightened;
+almost on the verge of tears, almost persuaded to surrender.  For
+the first time she laid her hand on Ainsley's arm, and the shock
+sent the blood to his heart and held him breathless.  When the girl
+looked at him there was something in her eyes that neither he nor
+any other man had ever seen there.
+
+"The last thing I tell you," she said, "the thing I want you to
+remember, is this, that, though I do not care--I WANT to care.
+
+Ainsley caught at her hand and, to the delight of the crew of a
+passing tug-boat, kissed it rapturously.  His face was radiant.
+The fact of parting from her had caused him real suffering, had
+marked his face with hard lines.  Now, hope and happiness smoothed
+them away and his eyes shone with his love for her.  He was
+trembling, laughing, jubilant.
+
+"And if you should!" he begged.  "How soon will I know?  You will
+cable," he commanded.  "You will cable 'Come,' and the same hour
+I'll start toward you.  I'll go home now," he cried, "and pack!"
+
+The girl drew away.  Already she regretted the admission she had
+made.  In fairness and in kindness to him she tried to regain the
+position she had abandoned.
+
+"But a change like that," she pleaded, "might not come for years,
+may never come!"  To recover herself, to make the words she had
+uttered seem less serious, she spoke quickly and lightly.
+
+"And how could I CABLE such a thing!" she protested.  "It would be
+far too sacred, too precious.  You should be able to FEEL that the
+change has come."
+
+"I suppose I should," assented Ainsley, doubtfully; "but it's a
+long way across two oceans.  It would be safer if you'd promise to
+use the cable.  Just one word: 'Come.'"
+
+The girl shook her head and frowned.
+
+"If you can't feel that the woman you love loves you, even across
+the world, you cannot love her very deeply."
+
+"I don't have to answer that!" said Ainsley.
+
+"I will send you a sign," continued the girl, hastily; "a secret
+wireless message.  It shall be a test.  If you love me you will
+read it at once.  You will know the instant you see it that it
+comes from me.  No one else will be able to read it; but if you
+love me, you will know that I love you.
+
+Whether she spoke in metaphor or in fact, whether she was "playing
+for time," or whether in her heart she already intended to soon
+reward him with a message of glad tidings, Ainsley could not
+decide.  And even as he begged her to enlighten him the last
+whistle blew, and a determined officer ordered him to the ship's
+side.
+
+"Just as in everything that is beautiful," he whispered eagerly, "I
+always see something of you, so now in everything wonderful I will
+read your message.  But," he persisted, "how shall I be SURE?"
+
+The last bag of mail had shot into the hold, the most reluctant of
+the visitors were being hustled down the last remaining gangplank.
+Ainsley's state was desperate.
+
+"Will it be in symbol, or in cipher?" he demanded.  "Must I read it
+in the sky, or will you hide it in a letter, or--where?  Help me!
+Give me just a hint!"
+
+The girl shook her head.
+
+"You will read it--in your heart," she said.
+
+From the end of the wharf Ainsley watched the funnels of the ship
+disappear in the haze of the lower bay.  His heart was sore and
+heavy, but in it there was still room for righteous indignation.
+"Read it in my heart!" he protested.  "How the devil can I read it
+in my heart?  I want to read it PRINTED in a cablegram."
+
+Because he had always understood that young men in love found
+solace for their misery in solitude and in communion with nature,
+he at once drove his car to Lone Lake.  But his misery was quite
+genuine, and the emptiness of the brick house only served to
+increase his loneliness.  He had built the house for her, though
+she had never visited it, and was associated with it only through
+the somewhat indefinite medium of the telephone box.  But in New
+York they had been much together.  And Ainsley quickly decided that
+in revisiting those places where he had been happy in her company
+he would derive from the recollection some melancholy consolation.
+He accordingly raced back through the night to the city; nor did he
+halt until he was at the door of her house.  She had left it only
+that morning, and though it was locked in darkness, it still spoke
+of her.  At least it seemed to bring her nearer to him than when he
+was listening to the frogs in the lake, and crushing his way
+through the pines.
+
+He was not hungry, but he went to a restaurant where, when he was
+host, she had often been the honored guest, and he pretended they
+were at supper together and without a chaperon.  Either the
+illusion, or the supper cheered him, for he was encouraged to go on
+to his club.  There in the library, with the aid of an atlas, he
+worked out where, after thirteen hours of moving at the rate of
+twenty-two knots an hour, she should be at that moment.  Having
+determined that fact to his own satisfaction, he sent a wireless
+after the ship.  It read: "It is now midnight and you are in
+latitude 40 degrees north, longitude 68 degrees west, and I have
+grown old and gray waiting for the sign."
+
+The next morning, and for many days after, he was surprised to find
+that the city went on as though she still were in it.  With
+unfeeling regularity the sun rose out of the East River.  On
+Broadway electric-light signs flashed, street-cars pursued each
+other, taxicabs bumped and skidded, women, and even men, dared to
+look happy, and had apparently taken some thought to their attire.
+They did not respect even his widowerhood.  They smiled upon him,
+and asked him jocularly about the farm and his "crops," and what he
+was doing in New York.  He pitied them, for obviously they were
+ignorant of the fact that in New York there were art galleries,
+shops, restaurants of great interest, owing to the fact that Polly
+Kirkland had visited them.  They did not know that on upper Fifth
+Avenue were houses of which she had deigned to approve, or which
+she had destroyed with ridicule, and that to walk that avenue and
+halt before each of these houses was an inestimable privilege.
+
+Each day, with pathetic vigilance, Ainsley examined his heart for
+the promised sign.  But so far from telling him that the change he
+longed for had taken place, his heart grew heavier, and as weeks
+went by and no sign appeared, what little confidence he had once
+enjoyed passed with them.
+
+But before hope entirely died, several false alarms had thrilled
+him with happiness.  One was a cablegram from Gibraltar in which
+the only words that were intelligible were "congratulate" and
+"engagement."  This lifted him into an ecstasy of joy and
+excitement, until, on having the cable company repeat the message,
+he learned it was a request from Miss Kirkland to congratulate two
+mutual friends who had just announced their engagement, and of
+whose address she was uncertain.  He had hardly recovered from this
+disappointment than he was again thrown into a tumult by the
+receipt of a mysterious package from the custom-house containing an
+intaglio ring.  The ring came from Italy, and her ship had touched
+at Genoa.  The fact that it was addressed in an unknown handwriting
+did not disconcert him, for he argued that to make the test more
+difficult she might disguise the handwriting.  He at once carried
+the intaglio to an expert at the Metropolitan Museum, and when he
+was told that it represented Cupid feeding a fire upon an altar, he
+reserved a stateroom on the first steamer bound for the
+Mediterranean.  But before his ship sailed, a letter, also from
+Italy, from his aunt Maria, who was spending the winter in Rome,
+informed him that the ring was a Christmas gift from her.  In his
+rage he unjustly condemned Aunt Maria as a meddling old busybody,
+and gave her ring to the cook.
+
+After two months of pilgrimages to places sacred to the memory of
+Polly Kirkland, Ainsley found that feeding his love on post-mortems
+was poor fare, and, in surrender, determined to evacuate New York.
+Since her departure he had received from Miss Kirkland several
+letters, but they contained no hint of a change in her affections,
+and search them as he might, he could find no cipher or hidden
+message.  They were merely frank, friendly notes of travel; at
+first filled with gossip of the steamer, and later telling of
+excursions around Cairo.  If they held any touch of feeling they
+seemed to show that she was sorry for him, and as she could not
+regard him in any way more calculated to increase his
+discouragement, he, in utter hopelessness, retreated to the
+solitude of the farm.  In New York he left behind him two trunks
+filled with such garments as a man would need on board a steamer
+and in the early spring in Egypt.  They had been packed and in
+readiness since the day she sailed away, when she had told him of
+the possible sign.  But there had been no sign.  Nor did he longer
+believe in one.  So in the baggage-room of an hotel the trunks were
+abandoned, accumulating layers of dust and charges for storage.
+
+At the farm the snow still lay in the crevices of the rocks and
+beneath the branches of the evergreens, but under the wet, dead
+leaves little flowers had begun to show their faces.  The "backbone
+of the winter was broken" and spring was in the air.  But as
+Ainsley was certain that his heart also was broken, the signs of
+spring did not console him.  At each week-end he filled the house
+with people, but they found him gloomy and he found them dull.  He
+liked better the solitude of the midweek days.  Then for hours he
+would tramp through the woods, pretending she was at his side,
+pretending he was helping her across the streams swollen with
+winter rains and melted snow.  On these excursions he cut down
+trees that hid a view he thought she would have liked, he cut paths
+over which she might have walked.  Or he sat idly in a flat-
+bottomed scow in the lake and made a pretence of fishing.  The
+loneliness of the lake and the isolation of the boat suited his
+humor.  He did not find it true that misery loves company.  At
+least to human beings he preferred his companions of Lone Lake--the
+beaver building his home among the reeds, the kingfisher, the blue
+heron, the wild fowl that in their flight north rested for an hour
+or a day upon the peaceful waters.  He looked upon them as his
+guests, and when they spread their wings and left him again alone
+he felt he had been hardly used.
+
+It was while he was sunk in this state of melancholy, and some
+months after Miss Kirkland had sailed to Egypt, that hope returned.
+
+For a week-end he had invited Holden and Lowell, two former
+classmates, and Nelson Mortimer and his bride.  They were all old
+friends of their host and well acquainted with the cause of his
+discouragement.  So they did not ask to be entertained, but,
+disregarding him, amused themselves after their own fashion.  It
+was late Friday afternoon.  The members of the house-party had just
+returned from a tramp through the woods and had joined Ainsley on
+the terrace, where he stood watching the last rays of the sun leave
+the lake in darkness.  All through the day there had been sharp
+splashes of rain with the clouds dull and forbidding, but now the
+sun was sinking in a sky of crimson, and for the morrow a faint
+moon held out a promise of fair weather.
+
+Elsie Mortimer gave a sudden exclamation, and pointed to the east.
+"Look!" she said.
+
+The men turned and followed the direction of her hand.  In the
+fading light, against a background of sombre clouds that the sun
+could not reach, they saw, moving slowly toward them and descending
+as they moved, six great white birds.  When they were above the
+tops of the trees that edged the lake, the birds halted and hovered
+uncertainly, their wings lifting and falling, their bodies slanting
+and sweeping slowly, in short circles.
+
+The suddenness of their approach, their presence so far inland,
+something unfamiliar and foreign in the way they had winged their
+progress, for a moment held the group upon the terrace silent.
+
+"They are gulls from the Sound," said Lowell.
+
+"They are too large for gulls," returned Mortimer.  "They might be
+wild geese, but," he answered himself, in a puzzled voice, "it is
+too late; and wild geese follow a leader."
+
+As though they feared the birds might hear them and take alarm, the
+men, unconsciously, had spoken in low tones.
+
+"They move as though they were very tired," whispered Elsie
+Mortimer.
+
+"I think," said Ainsley, "they have lost their way."
+
+But even as he spoke, the birds, as though they had reached their
+goal, spread their wings to the full length and sank to the shallow
+water at the farthest margin of the lake.
+
+As they fell the sun struck full upon them, turning their great
+pinions into flashing white and silver.
+
+"Oh!" cried the girl, "but they are beautiful!"
+
+Between the house and the lake there was a ridge of rock higher
+than the head of a man, and to this Ainsley and his guests ran for
+cover.  On hands and knees, like hunters stalking game, they
+scrambled up the face of the rock and peered cautiously into the
+pond.  Below them, less than one hundred yards away, on a tiny
+promontory, the six white birds stood motionless.  They showed no
+sign of fear.  They could not but know that beyond the lonely
+circle of the pond were the haunts of men.  From the farm came the
+tinkle of a cow-bell, the bark of a dog, and in the valley, six
+miles distant, rose faintly upon the stillness of the sunset hour
+the rumble of a passing train.  But if these sounds carried, the
+birds gave no heed.  In each drooping head and dragging wing, in
+the forward stoop of each white body, weighing heavily on the slim,
+black legs, was written utter weariness, abject fatigue.  To each
+even to lower his bill and sip from the cool waters was a supreme
+effort.  And in their exhaustion so complete was something humanly
+helpless and pathetic.
+
+To Ainsley the mysterious visitors made a direct appeal.  He felt
+as though they had thrown themselves upon his hospitality.  That
+they showed such confidence that the sanctuary would be kept sacred
+touched him.  And while his friends spoke eagerly, he remained
+silent, watching the drooping, ghost-like figures, his eyes filled
+with pity.
+
+"I have seen birds like those in Florida," Mortimer was whispering,
+"but they were not migratory birds."
+
+"And I've seen white cranes in the Adirondacks," said Lowell, "but
+never six at one time."
+
+"They're like no bird I ever saw out of a zoo," declared Elsie
+Mortimer.  "Maybe they ARE from the Zoo?  Maybe they escaped from
+the Bronx?"
+
+"The Bronx is too near," objected Lowell.  "These birds have come a
+great distance.  They move as though they had been flying for many
+days."
+
+As though the absurdity of his own thought amused him, Mortimer
+laughed softly.
+
+"I'll tell you what they DO look like," he said.  "They look like
+that bird you see on the Nile, the sacred Ibis, they--"
+
+Something between a gasp and a cry startled him into silence.  He
+found his host staring wildly, his lips parted, his eyes open wide.
+
+"Where?" demanded Ainsley.  "Where did you say?"  His voice was so
+hoarse, so strange, that they all turned and looked.
+
+"On the Nile," repeated Mortimer.  "All over Egypt.  Why?"
+
+Ainsley made no answer.  Unclasping his hold, he suddenly slid down
+the face of the rock, and with a bump lit on his hands and knees.
+With one bound he had cleared a flower-bed.  In two more he had
+mounted the steps to the terrace, and in another instant had
+disappeared into the house.
+
+"What happened to him?" demanded Elsie Mortimer.
+
+"He's gone to get a gun!" exclaimed Mortimer.  "But he mustn't!
+How can he think of shooting them?" he cried indignantly.  "I'll
+put a stop to that!"
+
+In the hall he found Ainsley surrounded by a group of startled
+servants.
+
+"You get that car at the door in five minutes!" he was shouting,
+"and YOU telephone the hotel to have my trunks out of the cellar
+and on board the Kron Prinz Albert by midnight.  Then you telephone
+Hoboken that I want a cabin, and if they haven't got a cabin I want
+the captain's.  And tell them anyway I'm coming on board to-night,
+and I'm going with them if I have to sleep on deck.  And YOU," he
+cried, turning to Mortimer, "take a shotgun and guard that lake,
+and if anybody tries to molest those birds--shoot him!  They've
+come from Egypt!  From Polly Kirkland!  She sent them!  They're a
+sign!"
+
+"Are you going mad?" cried Mortimer.
+
+"No!" roared Ainsley.  "I'm going to Egypt, and I'm going NOW!"
+
+Polly Kirkland and her friends were travelling slowly up the Nile,
+and had reached Luxor.  A few hundred yards below the village their
+dahabiyeh was moored to the bank, and, on the deck, Miss Kirkland
+was watching a scarlet sun sink behind two palm-trees.  By the
+grace of that special Providence that cares for drunken men,
+citizens of the United States, and lovers, her friends were on
+shore, and she was alone.  For this she was grateful, for her
+thoughts were of a melancholy and tender nature and she had no wish
+for any companion save one.  In consequence, when a steam-launch,
+approaching at full speed with the rattle of a quick-firing gun,
+broke upon her meditations, she was distinctly annoyed.
+
+But when, with much ringing of bells and shouting of orders, the
+steam-launch rammed the paint off her dahabiyeh, and a young man
+flung himself over the rail and ran toward her, her annoyance
+passed, and with a sigh she sank into his outstretched, eager arms.
+
+Half an hour later Ainsley laughed proudly and happily.
+
+"Well!" he exclaimed, "you can never say I kept YOU waiting.  I
+didn't lose much time, did I?  Ten minutes after I got your C. Q.
+D. signal I was going down the Boston Post Road at seventy miles an
+hour."
+
+"My what?" said the girl.
+
+"The sign!" explained Ainsley.  "The sign you were to send me to
+tell me"--he bent over her hands and added gently--"that you cared
+for me."
+
+"Oh, I remember," laughed Polly Kirkland.  "I was to send you a
+sign, wasn't I?  You were to 'read it in your heart'," she quoted.
+
+"And I did," returned Ainsley complacently.  "There were several
+false alarms, and I'd almost lost hope, but when the messengers
+came I knew them."
+
+With puzzled eyes the girl frowned and raised her head.
+
+"Messengers?" she repeated.  "I sent no message.  Of course," she
+went on, "when I said you would 'read it in your heart' I meant
+that if you REALLY loved me you would not wait for a sign, but you
+would just COME!"  She sighed proudly and contentedly.  "And you
+came.  You understood that, didn't you?" she asked anxiously.
+
+For an instant Ainsley stared blankly, and then to hide his guilty
+countenance drew her toward him and kissed her.
+
+"Of course," he stammered--"of course I understood.  That was why I
+came.  I just couldn't stand it any longer."
+
+Breathing heavily at the thought of the blunder he had so narrowly
+avoided, Ainsley turned his head toward the great red disk that was
+disappearing into the sands of the desert.  He was so long silent
+that the girl lifted her eyes, and found that already he had
+forgotten her presence and, transfixed, was staring at the sky.  On
+his face was bewilderment and wonder and a touch of awe.  The girl
+followed the direction of his eyes, and in the swiftly gathering
+darkness saw coming slowly toward them, and descending as they
+came, six great white birds.
+
+They moved with the last effort of complete exhaustion.  In the
+drooping head and dragging wings of each was written utter
+weariness, abject fatigue.  For a moment they hovered over the
+dahabiyeh and above the two young lovers, and then, like tired
+travellers who had reached their journey's end, they spread their
+wings and sank to the muddy waters of the Nile and into the
+enveloping night.
+
+"Some day," said Ainsley, "I have a confession to make to you."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Messengers, by Richard Harding Davis
+
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