THE STORY VINTON HEARD
AT MALLORIE (1918)
By KATHARINE PRESCOTT MOSELEY
from The best short stories of
1918,
edited by Edward J. O'Brien: Small, Maynard & Co.,
Boston.
originally from Scribner's Magazine
Copyright, 1918, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1919, by Katharine Prescott Moseley.
"THERE is only one letter for you," said Ware's
sister, and she turned the handle of the coffee-urn as she
watched him slit the envelope, for Ware had exclaimed:
"By Jove! It's from Vinton." And then,
after a moment: "That's a nice thing. Roberts posted this
last night instead of telephoning it up directly it came. He's on
the ---nia, due in New York--let me see--you have the
Herald there--look in the shipping, will you? Are
they sighted?"
Abigail took up the paper. "Docked last night
at nine," she said.
"Then he'll have caught the midnight from New
York. If he's not stopping in Boston he'll be on the eight
fifty-eight."
"Is he coming here?
"Yes, be says so. He'll have quite a bit to
tell if I know him." And an hour or so later Abigail Ware
saw Vinton lift his eyes to the columns of the white porch
glistening in the morning sun behind her, and as he sprang out of
the motor and took her hand: "My foot is on my native heath
and my name is MacGregor!" he cried.
Abigail led the way into the dining-room.
"Come in by the fire; I've kept some coffee hot," she
said.
Vinton approached the warmth of the pine logs that
were sending out sparks against the screen of the Franklin stove.
"There's something fearfully penetrating about the air over
here at this time of year," he began. "Open fires are
its saving complement."
Abigail held out his cup.
"Warm as toast in England; perfect English
spring this year."
"Oh, no doubt of it; spring's the time for
England," Ware asserted.
"Fall for New England," said Ware's
sister. "But tell me," she went on, "you were
talking of saving complements. What are the saving complements
over there just now?"
"There aren't any." Vinton's voice was
suddenly sombre.
"I should think not!" It came from
brother and sister at once.
A moment passed before Vinton turned from the fire
and let his eyes wander from the pale yellow heads of the
daffodils nodding in the easterly May air outside to the cool
tints of the Lowestoft bowl on which some Chinese artisan a
century before had picked out the initials of a merchant-sailor
grandfather in pale tints of blue and gold and which now stood in
the centre of the table filled with sprays of the rhodora.
"Yes," he said slowly, "I suppose there are saving
complements of a sort, if one is heroic enough to find them,
but--well, one can hardly--What shall I say? Everything over there--I
mean all sorts of what you'd call merely material objects—is
being charged, I believe, with some kind of spiritual essence
that is going to be indefinitely active to future contact."
He looked across the table to where Ware sat with
his chair a little pushed back, and laughed. "The intolerant
old Puritan thinks I'm off again, doesn't he?" he said
almost archly. Then he glanced about the room once more. "I
think," he continued, "that there is an extraordinary
beauty of a kind about our old houses over here--a charm, too,
although I've never been able to analyze it, for, after all, you
know, there's nothing in them!"
"The Puritan," he began to explain,
"belonged peculiarly to the race that in England had always
opposed all of what one may call the sensory elements that were
of such immense appeal to the race of the Cavaliers, for I
believe that the two did spring from essentially different roots.
"'A
primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose
was to him,
And it was nothing more.'"
"What more does it need to be?" Ware
protested, and "Ah! there you are," Vinton responded.
"But don't you see, after all, such negation never
created"--he laughed a little again. "Never created
an--an----"
"An eschatology?" supplemented Ware.
"A what? What on earth's an
eschatology?" gasped Ware's sister.
"Say, for brevity, the material manifestation
of spiritual things; not quite theological, but 'twill
serve," Vinton returned, and was silent; and after a time
Abigail asked him what he thought of the legend of the Angel of
Mons. Then it was that Vinton began to be truly cryptic.
"What's the use," he said genially, "of talking
about these things to two people who are made of stuff as
splendidly solid and insensitive to the vibrations of what they'd
call fantasy as their colonial pieces themselves."
Abigail sighed. "I'm sorry that I'm too
insensitive to hear of these saving complements of horror,"
she said. "As for Billy, I suppose he wants the facts."
"The horror," returned Vinton, "for
the facts are all horror. If it had n't been for the story that
the Marquis of Mallorie's daughter told me I should bring home
nothing else."
"Is this one of those manifestations you
refuse to reveal to us?"
"It is the only one. It's no use before Ware;
perhaps some time--if you will listen."
"Go on," said Ware; "'si non e
vero, e ben trovato.'"
"Oh, I'm not making it up."
"Well, what do they say about the Russian
advance, over there? Did you see any of the big German guns in
action?"
For days after this the conversation turned on the technical
questions of war, with which Vinton's opportunities as a war
correspondent had made him familiar.
Then one night Vinton had come down from Boston on a late
afternoon train. He had been lunching at one of the clubs with
friends who had listed him to speak at two or three houses in aid
of emergency funds. It was tea-time and suddenly he rose, with
his cup and saucer in hand, and went over to one of the
dining-room windows.
"Hello," he said. "We're going to
get a northeaster, I'll be bound."
"The sheep-shearer's due," said Ware
from his desk.
And it was that very night, when the great
easterly gale was enveloping the whole New England coast and was
sending showers of sparks down the big fire-place before which
they sat, in a low-ceiled room which had been the kitchen in
colonial days, that Vinton told the story as he had heard it from
the Marquis of Mallorie's daughter.
"It seems," he began, "that the
Mallories are of an immensely ancient family in the southwest of
England; the title is one of the oldest in the realm, and one of
the poorest. Away back in the time of the Tudor they became
Protestant under protest, and have remained so under protest;
only their chapel, like the worshipping places of the early
Christians, was taken down into the bosom of the earth and there
it rested, exhaling strange virtues over all the land above, and,
as many thought, harboring much of good that the newer order of
things had cast out. And so the Mallories are High-Church and
when the Puseyites began their revolt they were only approaching
what the Mallories had been for centuries. And about these
delightful people there is none of the
fanaticism of the convert.
"When war broke out there were two beautiful
daughters living most of their time, down there at Mallorie
Abbey, and a son who went over with the expeditionary force as
soon as war was declared. This young man was killed in action,
under the most heroic circumstances. He was, apparently, the type
of young soldier who might have been one of Arthur's men, and I
believe the clerical incumbent there used to quote the lines of
the Puritan Milton: 'Arthur stirring wars under the earth that
hides him,' or 'Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
unseen,' as having a kind of ironic application to the whole
Mallorie domain. When I came back from France I was pretty well
used up, and Carteret Lyon asked me down to his place, which
stands within four or five miles of Mallorie, in the south. They
are, of course, in mourning and fearfully sad, but I met the
eldest daughter at tea one afternoon, and, being the most natural
people on earth, and as I could tell her some things she wished
to hear about France, we became almost friends at once. After
that they made me welcome at Mallorie whenever I dropped in at
tea-time, and one day Lady Maurya took me over the abbey, telling
me as we went through the dim old place with its stained and
mullioned windows a lot of its curious, almost supernatural,
history. Suddenly she broke off from the narrative, on which it
had seemed to me that her mind had been only lightly fixed, and,
sinking down on a window-seat in the low, long hall we had been
passing through, she looked up at me and said: 'Ah, this is
nothing to something that has really happened here within the
year.'
"I asked her if she could tell me, and she
answered that she wished to, but that it was all so very
extraordinary that she feared I would be unable to believe it,
and she felt that she could not hear it doubted.
"I said to her that I was the most believing
man since the Dark Ages, and so she told me.
"It was the anniversary of her brother's
death, and a quarter to three in the morning had just struck from
the clock on a kind of tower that rises over the chapel and which
has a circular stairway running down into the middle of a small
lady-chapel where her brother's body (which had finally been
found after the engagement in which he had been killed) had been
buried. She and the other members of her family were keeping
vigil beside the tomb by turns while masses were being said,
during the twelve hours that were passing, and she was just
mounting the stairs to go to her room for a little rest, being
nearly exhausted with fatigue and emotion, when suddenly the
tower and stairway, which had been in inky darkness before,
became as light as day. She knew in an instant what it was, and,
looking up, straight over her head she saw a Zeppelin hovering
exactly above where she stood and so low that it seemed to her
that she could see the crew and their preparations for the
hideous work afoot. Then she looked down and a single shaft of
the search-light fell directly on the heads of those who were
gathered on their knees about the tomb. They were praying, with
their heads bent and their eyes closed, for not one of them
seemed to be aware of it, and the priests, whose chanting came up
to her fearfully from the altar, were protected from it by the
high reredos. There was something so dreadful and so uncanny
about it all that she was petrified, for she knew that
annihilation was hanging over her and all her family, without the
shadow of a doubt, for the aim was at the tower--which was a
landmark for miles around--and that it would fall before she
could warn one of her people to safety, when, as in a flash from
nowhere, flying at a most terrific rate of speed yet without a
sound and straight at the Zeppelin, there appeared an aeroplane.
It approached almost within hailing distance of the great thing
without firing, and then, as the Zeppelin started a little, the
aeroplane began swirling about it. She could not tell how long a
battle went on between them without a single shot from either. It
seemed as if the aeroplane was winding the monster in some
intangible net, in which it turned and twisted and writhed,
trying to get away into the free air; and then, again without a
single shot, it fell to earth.
"Every one of the crew had been killed when
the men went out to it, and while she and her sister watched from
the top of the tower they saw the aeroplane skim down and land
just below them. Hastening below she threw back a little door
that opened to the ground, and there she came face to face with
the aeronaut. He wore no helmet, and, in this very early light,
for it was in the first days of the year, he looked as if he
stood in a shining black armor. His hair was golden, and the
rising sun touched it, and he was the most beautiful creature
that she had ever seen--so beautiful that she fell back against
the wall behind her.
"Then the others came and showered him with
thanks and insisted that he should be their guest at Mallorie,
and, to every one's astonishment, Lady Maurya's mother called the
man who had served her son for many years and directed him to
take the stranger to her son's rooms, that had not been open
since the day he fell in battle, and also she said that as they
were of about the same height his wardrobe should be at the
stranger's disposal. He accepted their invitation and stayed at
Mallorie Abbey for nearly a week, saying that there were a few
things he must do about his machine. And yet, during his whole
stay, no one ever saw him at work on it. In fact, although the
Mallories never mentioned it to him, they knew that there was
much excitement, not only among their own people but in the
countryside, because since the moment he had come to earth no one
had been able to find the aeroplane. He would sometimes play
tennis with Lady Maurya and her sister the whole morning or
afternoon, and at sight of him in their brother's flannels and
with his gayest kummerbunds and ties they felt no pangs, only a
great comfort in his presence, not exactly as if their brother
was really back with them, but as if he had power to fill them
with the same sort of happiness they had always felt when the
young soldier was at home with them on leave.
"One night during that week a general officer
back from France on an important mission dined at the abbey.
After dinner, something calling the marquis out, the officer and
the aeronaut, Lieutenant Templar, as he called himself, were left
alone. As the officer was bidding Lady Maurya good-by, two hours
later, he said: 'This evening has been worth twenty trips from
France. I have learned that which may be of such value to us that
it will turn the tide of war. This young saviour of Mallorie
Abbey may be the saviour of Europe. But how does he know?'
"Then it was that Lady Maurya took Lieutenant
Templar by himself, and she brought him into the very hall where
she told me the story, and she said to him (and how could any
creature of earth or heaven have reisted her, for she has all the
beauty and all the allurements of both?): 'Why were your wings
all purple and
gold when you came flying to save us that morning?'
"And he answered her: 'The shadow of the
earth upon the skies, and a touch of dawn.'
"'But there was no dawn,' she said. 'And when
you came to the great monster why did your wings change to
flaming scarlet, so bright that no eyes could rest upon them?'
"'The rising sun,' he said.
"And she answered: 'But there was no rising
sun.'
"And then he looked at her for a long time
while neither spoke, and at last: 'How could you send the thing
to earth without a single shot?' she asked.
"And he answered, after a moment: 'Because in
me is all the strength of that bright ardor which has led young
warriors to die in battle for the right since earth began. And
now my strength is most mightily renewed with the strength of all
the lads who were the first to die for England. Was not your
brother one of these? Such souls are the stuff of which are made
the angels and archangels and all the heavenly host.'
"And as she looked at him, standing before
her, it seemed to her, in the dim light, that instead of the
evening clothes he had been wearing she saw again a glint of
black armor as on the morning when he had first come to them, and
then, like Elsa, she asked him who he was, and he, like
Lohengrin, was gone.
"But from that day to this there has been no
more sorrowing at Mallorie Abbey."
The great northeaster had stopped its wild howling
at the very moment that Vinton was adding: "They have never
known which of them it was--whether it was Michael or Gabriel--or
Raphael!"
Ware poked the fire and said nothing.
"Do you believe it?" asked Ware's
sister.
"What an impossible word that word 'believe'
is! What does it mean?"
"And do you like the idea--the idea of losing
one's identity in one great superlative being like that?"
Vinton thought a moment, and then he said:
"When I remember that all the trouble on this earth comes in
the train of that infernal thing we call the ego it seems to me
that the heavenly things must indeed arise from its complete
surrender. Yes," he continued more slowly, "yes, I
think I like it very much."
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