LX

BOOKS AND OTHER THINGS

For those to whom the purple-and-gold filigreed covers of Florence L. Barclay’s books bring a stirring of the sap and a fluttering of the susceptible heart, “Returned Empty” comes as a languorous relief from the stolid realism of most present-day writing.  One reads it and swoons.  And on opening one’s eyes again, one hears old family retainers murmuring in soft retentive accents:  “Here, sip some of this, my lord; ’twill bring the roses back to those cheeks and the strength to those poor limbs.”  It’s elegant, that’s all there is to it, elegant.

“Returned Empty” was the inscription on the wrappings which enfolded the tiny but aristocratic form of a man-child left on the steps of the Foundlings Institution one moonless October night.  There was also some reference to Luke, xii., 6, which in return refers to five sparrows sold for two farthings.  What more natural, then, than for the matron to name the little one Luke Sparrow?

Luke was an odd boy but refined.  So odd that he used to go about looking in at people’s windows when they forgot to pull down the shades, and so refined that he never wished to be inside with them.

But one night, when he was thirty years old, he looked in at the window of a very refined and elegant mansion and saw a woman.  In the simple words of the author, “in court or cottage alike she would be queen.”  That’s the kind of woman she was.

And what do you think?  She saw Luke looking in.  Not only saw him but came over to the window and told him that she had been expecting him.  Well, you could have knocked Luke over with a feather.  However, he allowed himself to be ushered in by the butler (everything in the house was elegant like that) and up to a room where he found evening clothes, bath-salts and grand things of that nature.  On passing a box of books which stood in the hall he read the name on it “before he realized what he was doing.”  Of course the minute he thought what an unrefined thing it was to do he stopped, but it was too late.  He had already seen that his hostess’s name was “Lady Tintagel.”

When later he met her down in the luxurious dining-room she was just as refined as ever.  And so was he.  They both were so refined that she had to tell the butler to “serve the fruit in the Oak Room, Thomas.”

* * * * *

Once in the Oak Room she told him her strange tale.  It seemed that he was her husband.  He didn’t remember it, but he was.  He had been drowned some years before and she had wished so hard that he might come back to life that finally he had been born again in the body of Luke Sparrow.  It’s funny how things work out like that sometimes.