Debris by Madge Morris Wagner (best detective novels of all time TXT) 📖

PREFACE

The waif is born of emergency, and timidly launched on the rough sea of opinion. Critic, touch it gently; it assumes nothing--has
nothing to assume; and your scalpel can only pain its
AUTHOR


CONTENTS

Mystery of Carmel
Wasted Hours
Rocking the Baby
"I Don't Care"
A Stained Lily
A Valentine
Which One
Life's Way
Uncle Sam's Soliloquy
Nay, Do Not Ask
A Picture
Hang Up Your Stocking
Opening the Gate for Papa
White Honeysuckle
Estrangement
Bring Flowers
Good-Bye
In the Twilight
Home
Why?
Out in the Cold
To Jennie
Watching the Shadows
I Give Thee Back Thy Heart
Light Beyond
A Neglected "Woman's Right"
Would You Care?
A Thought of Heaven
Consolance
When the Roses Go
The Difference
Beware
A Regret
"It is Life to Die"
O, Speak it Not
A Shattered Idol
Poor Little Joe
Fate
The Ghosts in the Heart
Only a Tramp
Put Flowers on My Grave
Old Aunt Lucy
Unspoken Words
O! Take Away Your Flowers
Rain
I love Him for His Eyes
Only
Somebody's Baby's Dead
The Withered Rosebud
My Ships Have Come From Sea


MYSTERY OF CARMEL.

The Mission floor was with weeds o'ergrown,
And crumbling and shaky its walls of stone;
Its roof of tiles, in tiers and tiers,
Had stood the storms of a hundred years.
An olden, weird, medieval style
Clung to the mouldering, gloomy pile,
And the rhythmic voice of the breaking waves
Sang a lonesome dirge in its land of graves.
As I walked in the Mission old and gray--
The Mission Carmel at Monterey.

An ancient owl went fluttering by,
Scared from his haunt. His mournful cry
Wakened the echoes, till roof and wall
Caught and re-echoed the dismal call
Again and again, till it seemed to me
Some Jesuit soul, in mockery--
Stripped of rosary, gown, and cowl--
Haunted the place, in this dreary owl.
Surely I shivered with fright that day,
Alone in the Mission, old and gray--
The Mission Carmel at Monterey.


Near the chapel vault was a dungeon grim,
And they say that many a chanted hymn
Has rung a knell on the moldy air
For luckless errant prisoned there,
As kneeling monk and pious nun
Sang orison at set of sun.
A single window, dark and small,
Showed opening in the heavy wall,
Nor other entrance seemed attained
That erst had human footstep gained.
I paused before the uncanny place
And peered me into its darksome space.
Had it of secret aught to tell,
That locked up darkness kept it well.
I turned, and lo! by my side there stood
A being of strangest naturehood.
Startled, I glanced him o'er and o'er,
Wondering I noted him not before.
His form was stooped with the weight of years,
And on his cheek was a trace of tears;
Over all his face a shade of pain
That deepened and vanished, and came again.
Fixed he his woeful eyes on me--
Through my very soul they seemed to see.
And lightly he laid his hand on mine--
His hand was cold as the vestal shrine.
"'Tis haunted," he said, "haunted, and he
Who dares at night-noon go with me
To this cursed place, by phantoms trod,
Must fear not devil, man, nor God."
"Tell me the story," I cried, "tell me!"
And frightened was I at my bravery.
A curious smile his thin lips curved,
That well had my bravery unnerved.
And this is the story he told that day
To me in the Mission old and gray--
The Mission Carmel at Monterey.

"Each midnight, since have seventy years
Begun their cycle around the spheres,
Two faces have looked from that window there.
One is a woman's, young and fair,
With tender eyes and floating hair.
Love, and regret, and dumb despair,
Are told in each tint of the fair sweet face.
The other is crowned with a courtly grace,
Gazing, with all a lover's pride,
On the beautiful woman by his side.
Anon! a change flits o'er his mien,
And baffled rage in his glance is seen.
Paler they grow as the hours go by,
With the pallor that comes with the summons to die.
Slowly fading, and shrinking away,
Clutched in the grasp of a gaunt decay,
Till the herald of morn on the sky is thrown;
Then a shriek, a curse, and a dying moan,
Comes from that death-black window there.
A mocking laugh rings out on the air,
From that darkful place, in the nascent dawn,
And the faces that looked from the window are gone.
Seventy years, when the Spanish flag
Floated above yon beetling crag,
And this dearthful mission place was rife
With the panoply of busy life;
Hard by, where yon canyon, deep and wide,
Sweeps it adown the mountain side,
A cavalier dwelt with his beautiful bride.
Oft to the priestal shrive went she;
As often, stealthily, followed he.
The padre Sanson absolved and blessed
The penitent, and the sin-distressed,
Nor ever before won devotee
So wondrous a reverence as he.
A-night, when the winds played wild and high,
And the ocean rocked it to the sky,
An earthquake trembled the shore along,
Hushing on lip of praise its song,
And jarred to its center this Mission strong.
When the morning broke with a summer sun,
The earth was at rest, the storm was done.
Still the Mission tower'd in its stately pride;
Still the cottage smiled by the canyon-side;
But never the priest was there to bless,
And the cottage roof was tenantless.
Vainly they sought for the padre, dead,
For the cottage dwellers; amazed, they said
'Twas a miracle; but since that day
There's a ghost in the Mission old and gray--
The Mission Carmel of Monterey

"A sequel there is to that tale," said he,
"Of the way and the truth I hold the key."
"Show me the way," I cried, "Show me
To the depth of this curious mystery!"
He waved me to follow; my heart stood still
Under the ban of a mightier will
Than mine. A terror of icy chill
O'er-shivered my being from hand to brain,
Freezing the blood in each pulsing vein,
As I followed this most mysterious guide
Through the solid floor at the chancel side,
Into a passage whose stifling breath
Reeked with the pestilence of death.
Down through a subterranean vault,
Over broken steps with never a halt,
Till we stood in the midst of a spacious room,
A charnel-house in its shroud of gloom.
Only a window, narrow and small,
Left in the build of the heavy wall,
Through which the flickering sunbeams died,
Showed passway to the world outside.
Slowly my eyes to the darkness grew,
And I saw in the gloom, or rather knew,
That my feet had touched two skeleton forms,
One closely clasped in the other's arms.
Recoiling, I shuddered and turned my face
From the fleshless mockery of embrace.
Again o'er a heap of rubbish and rust,
I stumbled and caught in the moth and dust
What hardly a sense of my soul believes--
A mold-stained package of parchment leaves!
A hideous bat flapped into my face!
O'ercome with horror, I fled the place,
And stood again with my curious guide
On the solid floor, at the chancel's side.
But, lo! in a moment the age-bowed seer
Was a darkly frowning cavalier,
Gazing no longer in woeful trance,
Vengeance blazed in his every glance.
Then a mocking laugh rang the Mission o'er,
And I stood alone by the chapel door;
And, save for the mold-stained parchment leaves,
I had thought it the vision that night-mare weaves.
Hardly a sense of my soul believes,
Yet I held in my hand the parchment leaves.
Careful I noted them, one by one,
Each was a letter in rhyming run,
Written over and over, in tenderest strain,
By fingers that never will write again.
I strung them together, a tale to tell,
And named it "The Mystery of Carmel."
And these are the letters I found that day,
In the mission ruin, old and gray--
The Mission Carmel of Monterey:


TO THE HOLY FATHER SANSON

Oh, holy father, list thee to my prayer!
I may not kneel to thee as others kneel,
And tell my heart-aches with the suppliant's air,
But fiercer burns the fire I must conceal.

My soul is groping in the mists of doubt,
The sunlight and the shadows all are gone,
Only a cold, gray cloud my life's about,
Nor ever vision of a fairer dawn.

A father ne'er my brow in loving smoothed,
Nor taught my baby tongue to lisp his name;
No mother's voice my childish sorrows soothed,
Nor sought my wild, imperious will to tame.

Yet ran my life, like some bright bubbling spring,
Too full of thoughtless happiness to care
If that the future might more gladness bring,
Or might its skies be clouded or be fair.

Afar upon the purple hills of Spain--
Since waned the moons of half a year ago--
I sported, reckless as the laughing main,
Nor dreamed in life a thought of grief to know.

To-day I pine here in a chain whose gall
Is bitterer than drop of wormwood brought
From that salt sea where nothing lives, and all
The recompense my willfulness has brought.

Oh, holy father, list thee to my prayer!
And though I may not kneel as others kneel,
And tell my heart-aches with a suppliant air,
I crave they grace a sickened soul to heal.

Here, close beside this sacred font of gold,
My humble prayer, oh, father, I will lay,
With all its weight of misery untold;
And wait impatient that which thou wilt say
REVENITA.


TO REVENITA

When to the font, this morn, my lips I pressed,
A fairy's gift my fingers trembled o'er;
A sweeter prayer ne'er smile of angel blessed,
Nor gemmed a tiar that