The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories

"Now, Mrs. Caswell," continued Dr. Harford, still addressing that lady directly and drawing nearer to her by a foot or two, "I will begin with you. Last week when you were in my office I asked you to tell me just what stories were being circulated about me in West Arlington, and after some demur you told me. Do you mind repeating them?"

Mrs. Caswell was scornful. "I have nothing to say," she exclaimed. "I think it better to hush the whole affair."

"Then, my dear madam, I am forced to repeat to my guests what you told me. You said, you will recollect, that one resident had accused me of having cheated at cards, and that another party had called me a 'tooth butcher,' and had declared I could not fix the teeth of her little dog. Was not that it?"

It was Mrs. Caswell's turn to rise. "This is a contemptible outrage," she cried. "I demand that it stop."

"No more contemptible than the injury you have done us," spiritedly said Mrs. Harford, speaking for the first time.

"Have I not quoted you right?" asked Dr. Harford of Mrs. Caswell.

"I shall say nothing," returned she. "You have cooked up a vile plot to trap us here."

"Then, my dear Mrs. Caswell, if you will affirm nothing, I have a way to make you speak." He stepped inside his hallway for an instant, while the others, all except his wife, watched him with great curiosity and some alarm. When he reappeared he was carrying a table on which was some large, heavy article hidden under a tablecloth. "There's a little surprise coming to you and the rest," he resumed. "You did not know, madame, that when I was pressing you with questions as you sat in my dental chair a phonograph was making a record of your answers." He whipped off the cover of the talking machine and busied himself with preparing it for action.

Consternation was writ large upon the countenances of those who could be seen in the stray beams of light that countered through the porch. But Mrs. Caswell's was the only voice heard. Again she protested against having been trapped.

"Silence," said Dr. Harford, and he started the machine to whirring. Everybody bent forward so as to miss nothing. But there was no need, for the familiar tones of Mrs. Caswell had been well recorded by the Edison invention and floated out in full and plain confirmation of the charges Dr. Harford had so carefully repeated.

Fremont's "Thunderation!" was the only audible one of several exclamations that were murmured as the quoted phrases died away. Dr. Harford raised a warning finger.

"Wait," he said; "there's more."

And as the machine kept revolving they heard his own voice say:

"And who was it, Mrs. Caswell, who told you that I had cheated at cards?"

There came a sharp interruption.

"Stop!" cried Mrs. Caswell, as in sheer desperation she bounced from her chair and made a vicious dive toward the tell-tale recording angel, only to be blocked by the watchful Dr. Harford. "Let go of me," she cried, as she shook off his restraining hand in furious anger. "I insist that you stop this outrage. Joseph, how can you stand idly by and see me so grossly insulted?"

There was no answer to the summons from Caswell. His wife evidently expected none, for she continued right along in wrathful denunciations of Harford, threatening law suits and other means of dire vengeance. "I declare she frightens me," whispered timid Mrs. Fremont, as she drew her chair closer to that of her husband.

The phonograph was pursuing the even tenor of its paraffine way. Those who could hearken to it above the irate tones of Mrs. Caswell heard her refuse several times to name her informant; heard the Doctor's earnest pleading for no concealment, and finally heard her say:

"Well, if you really must know, Doctor, who it was who said you cheated at cards, it was Mrs. Fremont."

Dr. Harford quickly shut off the record and turned to face the others. Mrs. Fremont had risen from her chair and leveled her finger at Mrs. Caswell. She was timid no longer.

"How dared you tell such a lie about me, Irene Caswell?" she gasped.

"You know you said it, Mary Fremont."

"I did not. She is telling what is not true, Dr. Harford. She came to me when we were re-forming the club and said she would not join this year if you were to be a member. She uttered a lot of things against you, and finally she said she was sure you would not hesitate to cheat at cards, and she only wished she could catch you once. And then I reminded her – perhaps I was wrong to do it – of the time when I was your partner and you sprouted an extra point and presently we got into a dispute about the score."

"You mean the night at Mrs. Parkin's?"

"Yes; don't you remember you were the first one to call attention to it and wanted to take off the point, but after some time it was shown that we had the right number? That's honestly all I said to her about you and the cards."

"I believe you, Mrs. Fremont."

From the chair into which Mrs. Caswell had subsided there came a snort. "Go ahead," she sneered. "Play out your little comedy. You're all in it together. Nobody will believe me."

"We take you at your word, Mrs. Caswell," rejoined Dr. Harford. "There is more of the truth to be got at."

Again the phonograph was in motion, and the listeners heard these questions and answers:

"And who was it, Mrs. Caswell, who told you I was a 'tooth butcher' and could not fix the teeth of her little dog?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, Doctor, it was Mrs. Parkin who said her husband had called you a 'tooth butcher,' and it was Mrs. Somerset who said you could not fix the teeth of her little dog."

Both the Parkins rose from their place in the hammock. The husband was so angry that he moved toward Mrs. Caswell with upraised hand until he recollected himself and halted with a muttered exclamation. The wife, a tall, graceful blonde, who had made herself well liked since they had moved out to West Arlington, chose to ignore the woman who had involved her, and so addressed herself directly to the host.

"My husband and I," she began, coolly and cuttingly, "are very much indebted to you, Dr. Harford, for so cleverly unmasking the traitor in our midst. This woman has called it a miserable trap, and I want to say that I feel that only by such a contrived plot has it been possible to uncover the truth and lay the trouble at the door of the right scandal-monger.

"Of course, it is unnecessary to say to you," and she pulled herself up to her full queenly height and spoke with most dignified impressiveness, "that my husband did not call you a 'tooth butcher' and that I did not tell her he had said so. What he did say was merely to repeat jokingly that old jest about a dentist being a 'tooth carpenter.' I forget the way he put it, but it sounded funny to me at the time, and when I was out with Mrs. Caswell in her auto that very afternoon I told her. She laughed, but Mrs. Somerset, who was with us, thought the expression horrid, and said if she were to think of you as a 'tooth carpenter' and not as a good, careful dentist, she would not let you attend her dog. Thus, you see, Doctor, how two harmless little expressions have been perverted into nasty gossip against you.

"I cannot tell you of the things that she alleged against you that afternoon or at other times. I did not give heed to them, and I have too much respect for you to repeat them here just now. I am only sorry that we yielded to Mrs. Caswell's insistent urging that we exclude you from the card club this summer. I am sure it was only done because we felt there had been ill feeling between you and her and because she had been the one to start the club and lead it each year."

"And I want to add, Harford," said Parkin, heartily, "that you will either be in the club henceforth or there will be no club. Am I not right?" he queried, turning to the Fremonts.

The prompt assent from both must have settled Mrs. Caswell's last hope of appeal from a unanimous verdict. She rose and made a sign to her husband. Her blazing anger had given way to a chilly hauteur that showed that, although beaten, she had not hauled down the flag. "I hope your little farce has quite ended," she remarked to Dr. Harford, with exaggerated dignity.

"Quite," he replied, with sweet acquiescence.

"Then I suppose I will be allowed to go?"

"As soon as convenient."

"I leave you," she pursued, "in the hands of your friends. Oh! if you only knew the things they have said about you! And now they honey you!"

"I am willing to trust them," he said, equably.

For the life of her, Mrs. Caswell could think of no other biting thing to say, so she took her departure.

"Come, Joseph," she ordered, as she passed down the steps to the hedge-bordered walk.

Caswell stopped for an instant to hold out his hand to the dentist.

"Sorry, immensely sorry, old chap. Awful mess she's made. If there's any way I can" —

"Joseph!" reiterated Mrs. Caswell from the gateway.

And Joseph obeyed.

"Have a fresh cigar, Parkin. And you, Fremont," said Dr. Harford, as the six left behind settled back in their chairs and hammock for a good half-hour review of Mrs. Caswell and her mischief-making.

"By George! this was an original plan of yours, Harford," exclaimed Fremont.

"Indeed it was," murmured little Mrs. Fremont.

"It was not my idea at all. I got it from Shakespeare. Do you not recall a scene in 'Timon of Athens' where Timon invites his false friends to a banquet to show them up?"

"Well, you worked it neatly, anyhow," said Parkin, who had never read Shakespeare in his life.

"I had one great advantage over 'old Bill,'" continued Dr. Harford.

"In what way?" asked Mrs. Parkin, smiling at him.

"I had the phonograph."

The Night That Patti Sang

When I moved there 10 years ago that Franklin-street block just west of Charles was even then known as "Doctors' Row," though there was by no means the number of professional men the street now has. From Dr. Osler's at the Charles-street corner of the south side – in the old Colonial mansion where now the Rochambeau apartments stand – to Dr. Alan P. Smith's on the north side next to the old Maryland Club building at Cathedral street, there were in all five doctors. And my own shingle – newly painted in gilt letters as befitted a specialist freshly returned from the Vienna hospitals – made the sixth sign of the kind.

On the south side not far from Dr. Osler's, the front of one of those fine old houses erected in the thirties, and the homes of the elite of Baltimore for many years before Mount Vernon place was built up, bore the announcement of:

JAMES COURSEY DUNTON, M. D

The sign was of a very old pattern, and was so rain-washed that the name could scarcely be deciphered. This, too, was the case with a frosted pane in the front window, on which – perhaps 40 years ago – Dr. Dunton had had his name painted in black letters. The house, too, showed the same lack of paint and care.

In my student days at the Johns Hopkins Medical School I had never heard the name of Dr. Dunton, and this led me to make inquiries of a professional neighbor. I learned that Dunton was in effect an elderly hermit, that for years he had abandoned his practice and had declined to respond to calls. His self-enforced isolation had grown to such a degree that he was rarely seen on the street and made all his household purchases through notes stuck in his vestibule door for "order boys". "I have seen Dunton only once in eight years," said my informant. "They say, too, he used to be an excellent practitioner, an Edinburgh graduate, with a patronage of the best classes – a courtly gentleman who was well liked by his patients."

"What was the cause for the change?" I asked.

"A love tragedy of some kind, they told me, though I never got the details."

I developed a lively curiosity in the elderly recluse, and nearly every time I moved in or out of my own residence, or passed my front windows, I glanced at Dr. Dunton's house in hopes of seeing him. My first glimpse was, perhaps, a month after I had been told about him. The sun had gone down, save where I could see the gilded tops of the Cathedral with a red glint upon them. In the half-light Dr. Dunton came to his second-story window – I knew it must be he – a tall, slender figure, somewhat bent, garbed in unrelieved black, save for the open white collar of ante-bellum style. Scant white hair extended from his temples back over his ears and framed a face that seemed, in the dusk, refined and kindly, though seared with many wrinkles. I watched the silent figure at the window unnoticed by him, for he gazed with intentness at the vine-adorned front of the old Unitarian Church at the corner, until the real darkness came upon us both.

It was, I think, about a week later when I again encountered Dr. Dunton. The Edmondson-avenue trolley line had just been completed up Charles street, and for the first time this old residential section resounded with the clangor that betokened rapid transit. About 9 one night I observed Dr. Dunton stepping down from the pavement of the Athenaeum Club to cross the street. A trolley car was coming rapidly, but the old gentleman, his head bent in thought and unused as he was to modern inventions and modern bursts of speed, paid no attention and moved in front of it. The motorman threw off his current, tried to reverse, and rang his gong furiously, but saw that he could not stop in time to avoid hitting the Doctor. I had bounded into the street, and when the car was only half a dozen feet off I was fortunately able to draw the old chap back and hold him clear of the Juggernaut that had so nearly wrought his destruction.

His first impulse, as he turned toward me, was one of anger that I had presumed to intrude so violently upon his thoughts. Then he saw what a narrow escape he had had, and anger gave place to a courtly smile and a slight twinkle in his sunken eyes.

"We young fellows are not so careful as we ought to be," he said. "I owe you my life."

I hastened to assure him that my act was one of simple kindness, but he renewed his expressions of thanks in even more polished phrases. The car had gone on and we had crossed to the church corner.

"I am Dr. Dunton," he said. "My house is yonder and, though I dwell alone, and with little ceremony, I will be pleased to have you partake of such hospitality as I can offer."

I accepted with alacrity. "I am Dr. Seaman," I responded. "I have just moved into the block." And I indicated my own home.

We crossed Franklin street to Dr. Dunton's house. He opened the heavy door with a latch-key, but before I could enter it was necessary for him to go ahead and light up. He was profuse in his apologies for the disorder of everything as he led me into the room behind the parlor, but beyond a thick coating of dust the dark mahogany furniture showed no signs of the absence of servants.

"I suppose you younger men might call this your 'den,'" he said as he applied a match to the centre chandelier, "but I prefer to name it my study." There were rows upon rows of medical works of a past generation on the shelves around the room, a familiar bust of Esculapius, a skull or two, some assorted bones and other signs of my host's former profession. A worn leather arm-chair sat behind the table under the chandelier, another arm-chair on the right. Dr. Dunton drew the latter forward for me and dropped into the other one. As the light fell full upon him I noted that he was not only thin, but gaunt, and that his face, which interested me strangely, was marked by hollow places that gave him an almost uncanny appearance, despite its refinement and intellectuality. His eyes had a haunting expression, as if at times he suffered much physical pain, and there was a sadness in them that quickened my sympathies.

For a minute or so there was silence. I felt that he was at a loss for topics upon which to converse on common ground. Finally he said:

"You are the first visitor I have had here since poor Wallis sat in that chair a dozen years ago."

"You mean Mr. Wallis the lawyer?" I asked.

"He was my good friend in many dark days," he answered gently. I felt that he was slipping away from me into the past.

"You must have it lonely here," I remarked.

"Not lonely," was the response. "I live with my memories."

The shadow on his face grew deeper.

"Why not practice your profession," I hazarded, "and forget some part of your past sorrows in a busy life?"

He leaned forward, looking intently at me and yet beyond. "Ah! lad," he said, as he laid a thin hand upon my wrist, "if you but knew, if you but knew! I tried hard, and then I found I couldn't, and then I gave up trying. There are griefs so great that one cannot lose them until the last sleep. I am not lonely, for I have Her always with me here."

It was best for me to remain silent. He was almost unaware of my presence. I felt he would go on if I did not divert his train of thought.

"Night after night She sits here with me," he pursued; "day after day She is by my side. In spirit the loving companionship I sought is ever mine, and yet, great God, how different!" His face he buried in his hands. In my eyes the tears could not be kept back.

Presently he rose from his seat and moved to the wall next to the parlor. To my surprise, the pressure of his finger against a spot in the wooden door pillar opened up a secret cupboard in the partition. The Doctor reached in and lifted out an arm chair of the same pattern as that upon which I was seated. It was heavy and I jumped to aid him, but he negatived me with a short, sharp twist of his head. As he came into the full light I saw that the chair contained a woman's cloak, one of shimmery gray satin, but now sadly faded and time-stained. Reverently he lifted the cloak and laid it across the back of the chair.

"That's as it was the night she sat there and passed away," said the Doctor.

For several minutes there was no word between us. The Doctor, his mouth twitching, his thoughts far from me, stared intently at the old cloak.

"How I loved her, how I loved her!" he finally murmured. Again he was becoming aware of my presence. "You can't understand, sir, the depth of my devotion. It stood the test of years – it stood even her marriage to another."

Another pause.

"She was the prettiest and merriest child you ever saw," he finally went on. "Had she been an Indian maid they would have called her 'Dancing Sunshine.' But being just a Baltimore girl, with her parents more fond of reading Scott than of any other literature save the Bible, she was named Geraldine. You remember that line in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel':

The fair and lovely form, the Lady Geraldine.

"That's where she got her romantic and historic name. To us boys – my brother Tom and myself – she was always Dina. She was our cousin. Her father had died when she was but a babe. So had my mother, and Aunt Patty thenceforth was the housewife with us. Father was one of those merchants and ship owners who have long passed away in Baltimore. No firm was better known around the Basin than that of Dunton & Jameson, and no clipper ships were faster than those with the Dunton signal.

"Dina was Tom's age, some years younger than I, but both of us made her our playmate. We didn't have the hundred and one diversions and sports that young people seem to have nowadays – no suburban clubs, no motoring, little driving. We roamed through Howard's woods around and beyond the Washington Monument, and we strolled the banks of the 'canal' that used to parallel Jones' Falls down there above Centre street. And in all our rambles and excursions Dina was our joyous, care-free companion. I can see her now, as she was at 14, a simply dressed school girl, with her olive complexion, her clear, trustful gray eyes, her trim, petite, lissom figure and her rosebud mouth, ready ever to kiss either of us in fond sisterly affection.

"She was 16 when I was sent to Edinburgh on one of father's ships, to become a doctor. For once her laughter deserted her, and the last picture I had of her as our boat headed down the Patapsco on a bright, blue morning was of a tearful miss on Bowly's wharf, waving a bedewed handkerchief and watching through misty eyes the going of Cousin Jim across the water. There had been a tender farewell between us, and though no word of love was spoken, I tell you, lad, I knew I was leaving my heart behind.

"My three years in Scotland were ones of hard work, and the chief joy I knew came with Dina's letters. The mails were slow in those days, and they came too uncertainly for me, you may be sure. But each brought me, in addition to a budget of news, just a bit of Dina's lovely personality. I saw her, in her letters, growing into sweet womanhood, and, as I sometimes stretched myself in meditation on Arthur's Seat, far above old Edinburgh, my thoughts were not of the city, nor of my own lifework, but of the little girl at home.

"I was just completing my course, when there came my first terrible blow. A letter came from Dina, the first in two months, and it brought me word, lad, that she was married! Married! Just think of it! And to Tom. He had been with Watson and Ringgold in the Mexican War, and clippings they sent me had recounted the bravery of young Captain Dunton. I confess to you, sir, that for days I had murder in my heart, and against my own brother. I went off on a walking trip in the Trossachs, and a savage time I had of it with myself; I had schemes of petty revenge; I abused Dina; I vowed she could not love Tom; that she must have been swept off her feet by the brass buttons and the war glamour about him.

"By the time I came back to Baltimore I had regained self-control, and when I met Tom and his wife it was with the determination to do everything for Dina's happiness, even though she were another's. I was not wrong in my prophecy that she would develop into sweet womanhood, only I underestimated it. In all our circle of acquaintances in Baltimore there was no more beautiful young matron than Mrs. Dunton; no more sprightly and piquant bride; no hostess more gracious, as she presided over the dinners and 'small and early' affairs that were given at our home here.

"But, alas! it was not long before sorrows came to her. Tom began to drink heavily. He got in with a gay set at Barnum's Hotel, his hours grew irregular, his absences from home more numerous and more prolonged. Father and I remonstrated ineffectually, at first pleadingly and then in anger. We did our best to keep Dina ignorant of some of the worst stories out concerning Tom's dissipation, but she knew. And though she loyally never criticised him in talking to us, we saw the joy fade out of her heart and lips, and the glint of ineffaceable sadness come into those pure gray eyes. God only knows what she suffered in the nine years before death, invited by alcohol, came and took Tom.

"It may sound brutal, but I was glad when besotted Tom was gone. It ended Dina's terrible worry, it relieved father and myself of unexplainable trouble, expense and annoyance, it laid to rest a family skeleton of whose existence all Baltimore seemed to know. And deep down in my heart, I confess it, there was a thrill that the woman I loved above all was free.

"Of course, being a true woman, and a tender-hearted one, Dina grieved long over Tom's death. She had loved him sincerely despite his grievous faults, and ours was a melancholy household for another year. In those days our women wore deep black mourning and veils, and sombre, indeed, was Dina as she went out to church, to Tom's grave, or to half a dozen poor households she had taken under her wing. But most of the time she was at home ministering to father, whose declining health was a cause of alarm to both of us.

"Presently I began to urge her to go about with me. At first she said no, then with her characteristic considerateness she seemed unwilling to hurt me by refusing further. I took her to the homes of our friends for an evening of music or whist, or to an occasional public concert. The color began to come back into the cheeks whence it had been so long absent, and that glint of grief in the gray eyes grew dimmer. I spoke no word of love, but unobtrusively carried on a campaign to let her see how badly I yearned for her. The new books, the best sweets, the prettiest flowers, such delicate compliments as sincerity could dictate – all these I gave her and watched patiently to see the dawning of love on her part. I had always had her fond affection, but I wanted more and strove in every way to gain it.