Allan-a-Dale

“ He impatiently descended the door-steps, and stopped on the drive, considering, by which direction he should leave the park for the country beyond. If he followed the road taken by the carriage, he might risk unsettling Allan by accidentally meeting him in the town. If he went out by the back gate, he knew his own nature well enough to doubt his ability to pass the room of the dream without entering it again. But one other way remained: the way which he had taken, and then abandoned again, in the morning. There was no fear of disturbing Allan and the major's daughter now. ”

“ He brushed webs and dust from the remaining panes, and together they peered out over the orchard, out across the river, now a broad sheet of molten gold. His arm went about her; he drew her head against his heart, fast-beating; and silence fell.
“Come, Allan,” said the girl at length, calmer than he. “Let's see what we've got here to do with. Oh, I tell you to begin with,” and she smiled up frankly at him, “I'm a tremendously practical sort of woman. You may be an engineer, and know how to build wireless telegraphs and bridges and--and things ”

“ No man shall be chief who does not take a wife from out our people! None who weds one of the Lanskaarn, the island folk, or the yellow-haired Skeri beyond the Vortex, none such shall ever rule us. Yet this man, this stranger who speaks such great things very hard to be believed, scorns our custom. No woman from among us he has taken, but instead, that vuedma of his own kind! What? Will ye--”
He spoke no further, for Allan was upon him with one leap. At sound of that word, the most injurious in their tongue, the fires of Hell burst loose in Stern. ”

“ Had he—as his knowledge of his friend’s facile character bound him to do—warned Allan to distrust his own hasty impulses, and to test himself by time and absence, before he made sure that the happiness of his whole life was bound up in Miss Gwilt? No. The bare doubt whether, in speaking of these things, he could feel that he was speaking disinterestedly, had closed his lips, and would close his lips for the future, till the time for speaking had gone by. Was the right man to restrain Allan the man who would have given the world, if he had it, to stand in Allan’s place? ”

“ When I have spoken with him on the subject, he has always said, “It is my gift, Allan. It never comes at call, and I am glad it does not, but it always comes for good. I thank God for it, and I am sure you do, Allan, for had you not cause?” ”

“ At the memorable instant when he had opened the door of the summer-house, no confusing influence troubled his faculties. In all that related to his position toward his friend, he had reached an absolutely definite conclusion by an absolutely definite process of thought. The whole strength of the motive which had driven him into the resolution to part from Allan rooted itself in the belief that he had seen at Hurle Mere the fatal fulfillment of the first Vision of the Dream. ”

“ She said absolutely nothing; she never so much as looked at Allan when he took his place in the boat. There she sat, with her eyes and her complexion both much brighter than usual, taking the deepest interest in the curate’s progress toward recovery; in the state of Mrs. Pentecost’s spirits; in Pedgift Junior (for whom she ostentatiously made room enough to let him sit beside her) ; in the scenery and the reed-cutter’s cottage; in everybody and everything but Allan—whom she would have married with the greatest pleasure five minutes since. “I’ll never forgive him,” thought the major’s daughter. ”

“ Allan alone was wide-awake; his eyes would not close. And he knew of a certainty that he was the most fortunate lad in all the world. When he should become a man, he would be--well, he was not certain whether he would be like unto the King, Sir Percival or Sir Launcelot. ”

“ Nay, Allan, it is possible enough, like to many other things of which you do not dream to-day that will be common to the eyes of those who follow after you. Mayhap you think it impossible that I should speak with and learn of you from yonder old black wizard who dwells in the country whence you came. And yet whenever I will I do so in the night because he is in tune with me, and what I do shall be done by all men in the years unborn. Yes, they shall talk together across the wide spaces of the earth, and the lover shall hear her lover's voice although great seas roll between them. ”

“ Wherewith he went back to Beatrice.
He found her, awake at last, sitting on the beach under the shadow of the fern-tree branch, shaking out her hair and braiding it in two thick plaits. He brought her water in a cup deftly fashioned from a huge leaf; and when she had drunk and eaten some of the fruit they sat and talked a while in the grateful warmth of the sun.
She seemed depressed and disheartened, at last, as they discussed what had happened and spoke of the future.
“This last misfortune, Allan,” said she, “is too much. There's nothing now except life--”
“Which is everything!” ”

“ He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night’s imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship!
Toward ten o’clock the well-remembered sound of Allan’s voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning’s search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman’s children. ”

“ Everything that he had noticed below stairs suggested that there was some secret purpose to be answered by getting Allan to sleep in the Sanitarium. Everything that he had noticed above stairs associated the lurking-place in which the danger lay hid with Allan's room. To reach this conclusion, and to decide on baffling the conspiracy, whatever it might be, by taking Allan's place, was with Midwinter the work of an instant. Confronted by actual peril, the great nature of the man intuitively freed itself from the weaknesses that had beset it in happier and safer times. ”

“ But when we hear, then the riddle is answered and the gates of our heart are opened, and, Allan, we see the way that wends through death to heaven, and is lost in the glory of which our love is but a shadow. ”

“ There is a curse on our lives! there is a fatality in our footsteps! Allan’s future depends on his separation from us at once and forever. Drive him from the place we live in, and the air we breathe. Force him among strangers—the worst and wickedest of them will be more harmless to him than we are! Let his yacht sail, though he goes on his knees to ask us, without you and without me ”

“ Allan made none; he taught with conscientiousness thirty tow-headed youngsters, read what books he could get, and worked in the tollgate keeper's small, bright garden. He had a passion for flowers. He loved, too, to sit with his pipe upon the rude porch of the toll-house, fanned by the marvellous mountain air, and look down over ridges of chestnut and oak to the mighty valley below, and across to the far blue wall of the Alleghenies.
The one-roomed, log-built schoolhouse stood a mile from the road across the mountains, upon a higher level, in a fairy meadow below the mountain clearings. ”

“ He was still sleeping when his friend looked in on him, having sat late into the night writing his letter to Mr. Brock. Allan went on to the end of the first corridor, turned at right angles into a second, and, that passed, gained the head of the great staircase. "No romance here," he said to himself, looking down the handsomely carpeted stone stairs into the bright modern hall. "Nothing to startle Midwinter's fidgety nerves in this house." There was nothing, indeed; Allan's essentially superficial observation had not misled him for once. ”

“ From that moment Allan believed his rule established now by stronger bonds of love than any force could be. And through all the intoxication of success and consummated power he felt a love for Beatrice, who had rendered all this possible, such as no human words could ever say.
Allan, Junior, grew lustily, waxed strong, and filled the colony with joy. A new spirit pervaded Settlement Cliffs. The vital fact of new life born there, an augury of strength and increase and world-dominance once more, cemented all the social bonds. ”

“ One question settled, mighty quick; and H'yemba won't have much to say for a few weeks at least. Not till his jawbone knits again, anyhow!”
Upon his arm he felt a hand. Turning, he saw Vreenya, the aged counselor.
“Surely, O master, he shall not live, now you have conquered him? The boiling pit awaits. It is our custom--if you will!”
Allan only shook his head.
“All customs change, these times,” he answered. “I am your law! This man's life is needed, for he has good skill with metals. He shall live, but never shall he speak before the Folk again. ”

“ My dear Allan, don't be down-hearted. I am resigned to the worst that can happen. I won't say I am glad that the end is near. That would be base ingratitude to the best of wives, to the dearest of sons, and to Providence which has given me so many good things. This world and this life have been pleasant to me, Allan; and it does seem hard to be called away from such peaceful surroundings, from the home where love is, even though through all that life there has run a dark thread. I think you have known that, Allan. ”

“ Moreover, I understand it not; what meanest thou by the words?"
"I know not, Your Majesty," said Allan, shaking his head, "for ofttimes I sing that which I do not clearly understand mine own self."
"Well, well," quoth the King, "let it pass; only I tell thee this, Allan, thou shouldst turn thy songs to such matters as I spoke of, to wit, love or war; for in sooth thou hast a sweeter voice than Blondell, and methought he was the best minstrel that ever I heard." ”

“ The plane had borne its riders onward and away from the range of vision. Again only dense forest lay below, while to eastward sparkled the broad reach where, in the first days of their happiness at Hope Villa, the girl and Allan had fished and bathed.
Her tears were unrestrained at last; but Allan, steadying the wheel with one hand, drew an arm about her and kissed and comforted her.
“There, there, little girl! The world's not ended yet, even if they have burned up our home-made mission furniture! Come, Beatrice, no tears--we've other things to think of now!” ”

“ All sounds do not reach thine ears; all sights are not open to thine eyes and therefore thou art both half deaf and blind. Perchance now that her shrines are dust and her worship is forgot, some spark of the spirit of that immortal Lady whose chariot was the moon, lingers on the earth in this woman's shape of mine, though her essence dwells afar, and perchance her other name is Nature, my mother and thine, O Allan. At the least hath not the World a soul—and of that soul am I not mayhap a part, aye, and thou also? ”

“ After reading the narrative attentively to the last line (under which appeared Allan's signature) , the doctor looked across the breakfast-table at Midwinter, and tapped his fingers on the manuscript with a satirical smile.
"Many men, many opinions," he said. "I don't agree with either of you about this dream. Your theory," he added, looking at Allan, with a smile, "we have disposed of already: the supper that you can't digest is a supper which has yet to be discovered. My theory we will come to presently; your friend's theory claims attention first." ”

“ Before the sun was up, Allan rose from the sand and looked about him. Under the starlight the Highland bivouac—for camp it was not—presented a curious sight, as the men lay in ranks, each rolled in his blanket, beside the piles of arms; the sentinels of the out-piquets on the way to Tel-el-Mahuta standing dark and motionless against the blue of the sky, looking in kilt and helmet like the statues of ancient Romans. ”

“ After whiling away an hour, during the interval of his pupil's absence, by a walk in the streets, the rector returned to his hotel, and, finding the newspaper disengaged in the coffee-room, sat down absently to look over it. His eye, resting idly on the title-page, was startled into instant attention by the very first advertisement that it chanced to light on at the head of the column. There was Allan's mysterious namesake again, figuring in capital letters, and associated this time (in the character of a dead man) with the offer of a pecuniary reward. ”

“ Do so once more, Allan, and I swear I'll bring thee to grovel on the ground and kiss my foot and babble nonsense to a woman sworn to another man, such as never for all thy days thou shalt think of without a blush of shame. ”

“ The change had diverted Allan, but had not altered him in the least. He was as impenetrably superior to all worldly ambition as Diogenes himself. "Which is best," asked this unconscious philosopher, "to find out the way to be happy for yourself, or to let other people try if they can find it out for you?" From that moment Mr. Brock permitted his pupil's character to grow at its own rate of development, and Allan went on uninterruptedly with the work of his yacht. ”

“ Allan's the hardest man in the north—not even excepting John Kars, who's got you women-folk mesmerized. Allan's been traipsing this land since two years before you were born, and that is more than twenty years ago. There's not a hill, or valley, or river he don't know like a school kid knows its alphabet. Not an inch of this devil's playground for nigh a range of three hundred miles. There isn't a trouble on the trail he's not been up against, and beat every time. And now—why, now he's got a right outfit with him, same as always, you're worrying. ”