Mysterious Mr. Sabin Part 34

CHAPTER LII.

MRS. JAMES B. PETERSON, OF LENOX.

Mr. Sabin found himself late on the afternoon of the following day alone on the platform of a little wooden station, watching the train which had dropped him there a few minutes ago snorting away round a distant curve. Outside, the servant whom he had hired that morning in New York was busy endeavouring to arrange for a conveyance of some sort in which they might complete their journey. Mr. Sabin himself was well content to remain where he was. The primitiveness of the place itself and the magnificence of his surroundings had made a distinct and favourable impression upon him. Facing him was a chain of lofty hills whose foliage, luxuriant and brilliantly tinted, seemed almost like a long wave of rich deep colour, the country close at hand was black with pine trees, through which indeed a winding way for the railroad seemed to have been hewn. It was only a little clearing which had been made for the depot; a few yards down, the line seemed to vanish into a tunnel of black foliage, from amongst which the red barked tree trunks stood out with the regularity of a regiment of soldiers. The clear air was fragrant with a peculiar and aromatic perfume, so sweet and wholesome that Mr. Sabin held the cigarette which he had lighted at arm's length, that he might inhale this, the most fascinating odour in the world. He was at all times sensitive to the influence of scenery and natural perfumes, and the possibility of spending the rest of his days in this country had never seemed so little obnoxious as during those few moments. Then his eyes suddenly fell upon a large white house, magnificent, but evidently newly finished, gleaming forth from an opening in the woods, and his brows contracted. His former moodiness returned.

"It is not the country," he muttered to himself, "it is the people."

His servant came back presently, with explanations for his prolonged absence.

"I am sorry, sir," he said, "but I made a mistake in taking the tickets."

Mr. Sabin merely nodded. A little time ago a mistake on the part of a servant was a thing which he would not have tolerated. But those were days which seemed to him to lie very far back in the past.

"You ought to have alighted at the last station, sir," the man continued. "Stockbridge is eleven miles from here."

"What are we going to do?" Mr. Sabin asked.

"We must drive, sir. I have hired a conveyance, but the luggage will have to come later in the day by the cars. There will only be room for your dressing-bag in the buggy."

Mr. Sabin rose to his feet.

"The drive will be pleasant," he said, "especially if it is through such country as this. I am not sure that I regret your mistake, Harrison. You will remain and bring the baggage on, I suppose?"

"It will be best, sir," the man agreed. "There is a train in about an hour."

They walked out on to the road where a one-horse buggy was waiting. The driver took no more notice of them than to terminate, in a leisurely way, his conversation with a railway porter, and unhitch the horse.

Mr. Sabin took the seat by his side, and they drove off.

It was a very beautiful road, and Mr. Sabin was quite content to lean back in his not uncomfortable seat and admire the scenery. For the most part it was of a luxuriant and broken character. There were very few signs of agriculture, save in the immediate vicinity of the large newly-built houses which they pa.s.sed every now and then. At times they skirted the side of a mountain, and far below them in the valley the river Leine wound its way along like a broad silver band. Here and there the road pa.s.sed through a thick forest of closely-growing pines, and Mr. Sabin, holding his cigarette away from him, leaned back and took long draughts of the rosinous, piney odour. It was soon after emerging from the last of these that they suddenly came upon a house which moved Mr. Sabin almost to enthusiasm. It lay not far back from the road, a very long two-storied white building, free from the over-ornamentation which disfigured most of the surrounding mansions. White pillars in front, after the colonial fas.h.i.+on, supported a long sloping veranda roof, and the smooth trimly-kept lawns stretched almost to the terrace which bordered the piazza. There were sun blinds of striped holland to the southern windows, and about the whole place there was an air of simple and elegant refinement, which Mr. Sabin found curiously attractive. He broke for the first time the silence which had reigned between him and the driver.

"Do you know," he inquired, "whose house that is?"

The man flipped his horse's ears with the whip.

"I guess so," he answered. "That is the old Peterson House. Mrs. James B. Peterson lives there now."

Mr. Sabin felt in his breast pocket, and extracted therefrom a letter. It was a coincidence undoubtedly, but the fact was indisputable. The address scrawled thereon in Felix's sprawling hand was:-- "MRS. JAMES B. PETERSON, "Lenox.

"By favour of Mr. Sabin."

"I will make a call there," Mr. Sabin said to the man. "Drive me up to the house."

The man pulled up his horse.

"What, do you know her?" he asked.

Mr. Sabin affected to be deeply interested in a distant point of the landscape. The man muttered something to himself and turned up the drive.

"You have met her abroad, maybe?" he suggested.

Mr. Sabin took absolutely no notice of the question. The man's impertinence was too small a thing to annoy him, but it prevented his asking several questions which he would like to have had answered. The man muttered something about a civil answer to a civil question not being much to expect, and pulled up his horse in front of the great entrance porch.

Mr. Sabin, calmly ignoring him, descended and stepped through the wide open door into a beautiful square hall in the centre of which was a billiard table. A servant attired in unmistakably English livery, stepped forward to meet him.

"Is Mrs. Peterson at home?" Mr. Sabin inquired.

"We expect her in a very few minutes," the man answered. "She is out riding at present. May I inquire if you are Mr. Sabin, sir?"

Mr. Sabin admitted the fact with some surprise.

The man received the intimation with respect.

"Will you kindly walk this way, your Grace," he said.

Mr. Sabin followed him into a large and delightfully furnished library. Then he looked keenly at the servant.

"You know me," he remarked.

"Monsieur Le Duc Souspennier," the man answered with a bow. "I am an Englishman, but I was in the service of the Marquis de la Merle in Paris for ten years."

"Your face," Mr. Sabin said, "was familiar to me. You look like a man to be trusted. Will you be so good as to remember that the Duc is unfortunately dead, and I am Mr. Sabin."

"Most certainly, sir," the man answered. "Is there anything which I can bring you?"

"Nothing, thank you," Mr. Sabin answered.

The man withdrew with a low bow, and Mr. Sabin stood for a few minutes turning over magazines and journals which covered a large round table, and represented the ephemeral literature of nearly every country in Europe.

"Mrs. Peterson," he remarked to himself, "must be a woman of Catholic tastes. Here is the Le Pet.i.t Journal inside the pages of the English Contemporary Review."

He was turning the magazines over with interest, when he chanced to glance through the great south window a few feet away from him. Something he saw barely a hundred yards from the little iron fence which bordered the lawns, attracted his attention. He rubbed his eyes and looked at it again. He was puzzled, and was on the point of ringing the bell when the man who had admitted him entered, bearing a tray with liqueurs and cigarettes. Mr. Sabin beckoned him over to the window.

"What is that little flag?" he asked.

"It is connected, I believe, in some way," the man answered, "with a game of which Mrs. Peterson is very fond. I believe that it indicates the locality of a small hole."

"Golf?" Mr. Sabin exclaimed.

"That is the name of the game, sir," the man answered. "I had forgotten it for the moment."

Mr. Sabin tried the window.

"I want to get out," he said.

The man opened it.

"If you are going down there, sir," he said, "I will send James Green to meet you. Mrs. Peterson is so fond of the game that she keeps a Scotchman here to look after the links and instruct her."

"This," Mr. Sabin murmured, "is the most extraordinary thing in the world."

"If you would like to see your room, sir, before you go out," the man suggested, "it is quite ready. If you will give me your keys I will have your clothes laid out."

Mr. Sabin turned about in amazement.

"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "I have not come here to stay."

"I understood so, sir," the man answered. "Your room has been ready for three weeks."

Mr. Sabin was bewildered. Then he remembered the stories which he had heard of American hospitality, and concluded that this must be an instance of it.

"I had not the slightest intention of stopping here," he said to the man.

"Mrs. Peterson expected you to do so, sir, and we have sent your conveyance away. If it is inconvenient for you to remain now, it will be easy to send you anywhere you desire later."

"For the immediate present," Mr. Sabin said, "Mrs. Peterson not having arrived, I want to see that golf course."

"If you will permit me, sir," the man said, "I will show you the way."

They followed a winding footpath which brought them suddenly out on the border of a magnificent stretch of park-like country. Mr. Sabin, whose enthusiasms were rare, failed wholly to restrain a little exclamation of admiration. A few yards away was one of the largest and most magnificently kept putting-greens that he had ever seen in his life. By his side was a raised teeing-ground, well and solidly built. Far away down in the valley he could see the flag of the first hole just on the other side of a broad stream.

"The gentleman's a golf-player, maybe?" remarked a voice by his side, in familiar dialect. Mr. Sabin turned around to find himself confronted by a long, thin Scotchman, who had strolled out of a little shed close at hand.

"I am very fond of the game," Mr. Sabin admitted. "You appear to me to have a magnificent course here."

"It's none so bad," Mr. James Green admitted. "Maybe the gentleman would like a round."

"There is nothing in this wide world," Mr. Sabin answered truthfully, "that I should like so well. But I have no clubs or any shoes."

"Come this way, sir, come this way," was the prompt reply. "There's clubs here of all sorts such as none but Jimmy Green can make, ay, and shoes too. Mr. Wilson, will you be sending me two boys down from the house?"

In less than ten minutes Mr. Sabin was standing upon the first tee, a freshly lit cigarette in his mouth, and a new gleam of enthusiasm in his eyes. He modestly declined the honour, and Mr. Green forthwith drove a ball which he watched approvingly.

"That's no such a bad ball," he remarked.

Mr. Sabin watched the construction of his tee, and swung his club lightly. "Just a little sliced, wasn't it?" he said. "That will do, thanks." He addressed his ball with a confidence which savoured almost of carelessness, swung easily back and drove a clean, hard hit ball full seventy yards further than the professional. The man for a moment was speechless with surprise, and he gave a little gasp.

"Aye, mon," he exclaimed. "That was a fine drive. Might you be having a handicap, sir?"

"I am scratch at three clubs," Mr. Sabin answered quietly, "and plus four at one."

A gleam of delight mingled with respect at his opponent, shone in the Scotchman's face.

"Aye, but we will be having a fine game," he exclaimed. "Though I'm thinking you will down me. But it is grand good playing with a mon again."

The match was now at the fifteenth hole. Mr. Sabin, with a long and deadly putt--became four up and three to play. As the ball trickled into the hole the Scotchman drew a long breath.

"It's a fine match," he said, "and I'm properly downed. What's more, you're holding the record of the links up to this present. Fifteen holes for sixty-four is verra good--verra good indeed. There's no man in America to-day to beat it."

And then Mr. Sabin, who was on the point of making a genial reply, felt a sudden and very rare emotion stir his heart and blood, for almost in his ears there had sounded a very sweet and familiar voice, perhaps the voice above all others which he had least expected to hear again in this world.

"You have not then forgotten your golf, Mr. Sabin? What do you think of my little course?"

He turned slowly round and faced her. She was standing on the rising ground just above the putting-green, the skirt of her riding habit gathered up in her hand, her lithe, supple figure unchanged by time, the old bewitching smile still playing about her lips. She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Mr. Sabin, with his cap in his hand, moved slowly to her side, and bowed low over the hand which she extended to him.

"This is a happiness," he murmured, "for which I had never dared to hope. Are you, too, an alien?"

She shook her head.

"This," she said, "is the land of my adoption. Perhaps you did not know that I am Mrs. Peterson?"

"I did not know it," he answered, gravely, "for I never heard of your marriage."

They turned together toward the house. Mr. Sabin was amazed to find that the possibilities of emotion were still so great with him.

"I married," she said softly, "an American, six years ago. He was the son of the minister at Vienna. I have lived here mostly ever since."

"Do you know who it was that sent me to you?"

She a.s.sented quietly.

"It was Felix."

They drew nearer the house. Mr. Sabin looked around him. "It is very beautiful here," he said.

"It is very beautiful indeed," she said, "but it is very lonely."

"Your husband?" he inquired.

"He has been dead four years."

Mr. Sabin felt a ridiculous return of that emotion which had agitated him so much on her first appearance. He only steadied his voice with an effort.

"We are both aliens," he said quietly. "Perhaps you have heard that all things have gone ill with me. I am an exile and a failure. I have come here to end my days."

She flashed a sudden brilliant smile upon him. How little she had changed.