At last he rose and groped for his tobacco. A precious lot of good that would do him! It would have been a pity, too, because murder, even such justifiable murder, had not yet received the sanction of society as represented in the New York Department of Police. He paced the floor restlessly and brought up before his desk, where the janitor of the building had a few moments ago laid the morning mail. He took it up idly—and glanced over it—a note or two in the fashionable feminine scrawl about sittings, a letter from a framemaker, one from his Paris agent, and the usual litter of circulars. He took them up one by one, opened them, put some of them aside and consigned others to the paper basket. A small package lay at the bottom of the pile, an unobtrusive package neatly tied with string—evidently an advertisement of some sort—of a paint or of a canvas. He was about to drop it with the others when he was made aware that as he turned the small parcel over it emitted a tinkle as of two metal objects striking together. He turned it again and examined the address and stamp. His name was printed in ink as though with a bad pen and the stamp was French. Now really curious as to its contents and aware of its individuality, he cut the string and opened it. There was an inner wrapping of tissue paper containing a small white pasteboard box which bore the name of a fashionable New York jeweler, and inside the box the origin of the tinkle was revealed in a small brass bell.
He took the object out, his wonder growing, and held it suspended between his thumb and forefinger. A brass bell no larger than his thumbnail, a tarnished little trinket, no longer new, which tinkled merrily under his astonished gaze. He examined the thing more carefully, his bewilderment increasing, noting the curious construction, which was unlike that of the toy bells which had adorned the necks of the wooly beasts abroad at Christmas-time. It was heavy for its size, and when he moved it had a decisive and very mellow note. Who would send him a thing like this and why? There must have been a mistake. He took up the paper wrapper from the waste basket and examined it with renewed interest.
John Markham, Esquire,
—West—th Street,
New York City.
With a stamp of the French Republic and a postmark of—What were the postmarks? Paris. Of course. And the other? VAL-E—? Valence? Valence was in the South of France on the Rhone. He had never been there. No. That wouldn't do. VAL-L-E—Vallécy!
A brass bell from Vallécy! Still he did not understand. He took the object up again and scrutinized it, its meaning dawning slowly. Vallécy! That was the village where he and Hermia had stayed with Mère Guégou. There was the garden of the golden roses where—The bell! It was from Hermia's head-dress—the belled cap of the Femme Orchestre! He knew it now. It was a token. Hermia had sent it—from Vallécy. A token.
In high excitement he examined the obscure postmark again. The accent on the E, a little smudged, but quite legible. Hermia had sent the bell as a token from Vagabondia which meant that she was there in Père Guégou's garden, whither she had fled when her own world had renounced her. She was waiting for him. She needed him, and took this means of showing him that all things that had happened to them both since they had parted in the forest at Sées were to be forgotten—that they were both to take life up—from Vallécy. He stood a moment in joyous uncertainty, his glance on the clock, then, quickly wrapping the memento in its tissue paper, thrust it into his coat pocket and in a moment was striding like a madman down the street. At his apartment he rang for a taxicab, thrust a few things into a suitcase, wrote a note or two and in half an hour was on his way to the bank and then to the steamship wharf.
He had no definite plans except that he must take the first steamer which left New York for Europe. A brief glance at his morning paper advised him of two sailings this morning, one for Havre and the other for Cherbourg, and he had made up his mind to take one steamer or the other. The taxicab crawled, it seemed, and on the way downtown was caught in a block of traffic which delayed him for ten minutes, during which he fumed silently. But he reached the dock with scarcely a quarter of an hour to spare, and after a difficulty which was cleared away, found himself upon the deck of the Kaiserin Augusta, a somewhat flustered individual, with many loose ends dangling in retrospect, with no cabin as yet assigned to him, sober of face but inexpressibly happy.
It was really not until his ship was well out at sea and the voyage fairly begun that Markham had the opportunity to settle down comfortably and mediate upon the surprising events of the morning. He found a steamer chair in a quiet place and then gave himself up to his thoughts. He took the tiny object from his breast pocket and turned it over in his fingers. Of course it was Hermia's. The wonder was that he had not recognized it at first glance. This bell and its other small companions had tinkled their way into his heart at each step she had taken down the long road from Evreux to Alençon—tinkled merrily at Passy, joyously at Vallécy, disdainfully at Verneuil, and contentedly at La Mesle. Alençon had made them tragic so they had been packed in Hermia's bundle which went with her to Sées and were heard no more, except in a faint tinkle of protest as she was put aboard the train for Paris. Wonderful bells they were, tiny chimes that had rung in the season of their joy and lingered in their memory never to be forgotten. Tokens—Hermia had realized it—symbols of her greatest happiness and his, with life reduced to the simplest elements, in which there had been no place for the extravagant commonplaces of the other life which they both had lived and endured. Hermia had fled to Vallécy to the motherly breast of Mère Guégou, and there perhaps was weeping out her troubles. He took out the square of paper (he had clipped it with his penknife) which bore the address and examined it again. This and the bell were all he had had to start him off on his fateful pilgrimage. But they were enough. She could not have written him after her treatment of him in New York. She had thrown herself upon his mercy, given her message ambiguity that he might ignore it if he chose, or read, as she had hoped he would, the message of her heart, across the distances. It was the message of a vagabond like himself, as definite a message as the gypsy patteran which shows the way from one camp to another. His patteran pointed to Vallécy, that lovely village by the Arth where he had first told Hermia that he loved her. Beyond Vallécy had come misunderstanding, bitterness, misfortune. She had chosen that spot as though by instinct. She wanted him to remember her there where love had first been spoken. Alone and waiting for him among the roses of Père Guégou—
He started up from his chair in bewilderment, staring blankly at the sunlit sea, suddenly mindful of the fact that in the hurry of getting away he had not cabled her. He threw his rugs aside and made his way hastily to the office, to find unluckily that the wireless had gotten out of order, and that it might be several hours before it was repaired. He strolled on deck again, thoughtful, suddenly impressed with the potency of the charm that had called him. The thought of replying to her message had not until this moment entered his head. All that he had been able to think of was that he must get to her at once, follow the patteran at top speed. He had done so and now unhappily remembered a dozen neglected people who must wonder at his extraordinary disappearance. But he only smiled joyously. He had another engagement.
He took up his walk along the promenade deck, careless of the enemies he had made, careless of the friendships he might lose, all his thoughts of the small vagabond at Vallécy. His inability to communicate with her by wireless set him thinking. Wasn't that, too, a symbol? If he got a message over what would be its effect? Would she still wait for him, looking forward to the precious hour of their meeting? Or would her mind change at the last moment and send her flying from him again? This was more like Hermia, the real Hermia that he knew. He feared her moods still. And if he refused to cable her would her patience last until he got to France? He cast is memory over the months that had passed in New York. He guessed how much she had suffered. He had followed her social career through the newspapers and he knew now that she had gone gaily that she might hide her terror. She was tired—poor child—tired in body and spirit, and that was why she had not stayed in Paris among the fashionable people she knew there; that was why she had fled to Vallécy, where at least she might be at peace, unreminded by those of her own social sphere of the villainous story which pursued her. There at Vallécy she sat remote, with her own innocence for company, convalescent—amid these primitive surroundings—from the sickness that her world had given her. She would wait for him if she wasn't sure that he would come. He smiled. He would not send the wireless. Nor would he wire her from Cherbourg.