IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH.
The day after Justin's escape from the river, he went about with an unusually thoughtful face. There was something on his mind, and, with a variation of his usually methodical habits, he several times left his desk to go to the bank door and look up and down the street.
About the middle of the afternoon Miss Gastonguay came down Main Street with her usual gait, that aimed at being a stride but ended in a trot when she went quickly, on account of the shortness of her limbs. In the middle of the street, carefully keeping abreast of her, was the white pony, neither harnessed nor saddled, and following her about simply for purposes of entertainment.
When she stopped he stopped, when she hurried on he made haste to thread his way among the various vehicles in the street and catch up to her. Upon arriving in front of a green-grocer's, he took on an air of joyful assurance, and approached the curbstone.
"Piggy," said Miss Gastonguay, amiably; then calling for a handful of apples, she spread them in the gutter before him.
While he was eating them, she looked across at the bank. "If they haven't closed, I might go and get some money," she grumbled. "That girl Chelda spends it like water," and she hurriedly approached the brick building.
"So this is what you have been doing with my money," she said to the paying teller as she stood before his wicket and gazed about the freshly decorated bank.
The young man smiled respectfully, then, as he handed her a roll of bills, observed, "The cashier asked me to let him know if you came in. Would it be too much trouble for you to step in his office?"
Without saying a word she walked to the glass door beyond, and rapped briskly on it.
"Come in," said Justin; then seeing who it was he sprang up. "Miss Gastonguay, I have been wishing to see you."
"Indeed,—the road to French Cross is still open."
Justin's pale face grew red. "I should have considered it an honour to call, but there are certain reasons why I preferred seeing you here. Will you sit down?"
"Thanks, I had rather stand. I am in a hurry,—is your head better?"
"Yes, thank you."
"A great mistake to jump into the river for that beggar's child. Better to have let it drown."
"I scarcely think you would have approved of that,"—then he surveyed her earnestly. "What I have to say may take some time. You had better be seated."
She dropped into a chair, and, folding her hands before her on the table, stared out the window.
She did not like him. She was annoyed at being compelled to sit and listen to him, yet Justin was full of satisfaction, and there was even an expression of wistfulness about his thin lips as his next sentence fell from them.
"In the first place, I have to thank you for your kindness to my wife the other day."
"No kindness at all," she said, gruffly. "She can come again sometime, if she likes. I dare say it is dull at your house for her."
"Dull, yes,—poor child. Miss Gastonguay, I see you are impatient to be gone, and I will be brief. Long ago you had a brother—"
"A brother, yes,—what of it?" and Miss Gastonguay brought her eyes to bear sharply upon him.
Justin was leaning forward on the table now. He had become the strict man of business; he had a tale to unfold to her that she should hear even though he compelled her to it.
"I had a brother Charles," she snapped at him when he did not speak,—"Chelda's father, now dead."
"I refer to another brother," he said, calmly, "a younger brother."
Miss Gastonguay's face showed uncontrollable emotion. No one in Rossignol but this young man would have dared mention the name of this brother to her. Years ago he had been cast off by his family as an incorrigible black sheep. It was not known what had become of him. His name had been dropped, and even in gossiping Rossignol there were many people who did not know of his existence. She tried to rise and fling herself from the room, but she found herself trembling so violently that she was obliged to sit still to gather strength.
"Your brother Louis," pursued Justin, in measured tones, "named from the founder of the house."
"A villain,—a scoundrel," muttered Miss Gastonguay, flashing him a furious glance,—"a disgrace to the name, a boy that should have been strangled in his cradle."
"But never by the hand of his sister," murmured Justin, with a strange softening of his tone," his little sister Jane, whom he loved."
Miss Gastonguay turned fiercely on him. "Young man, what are you talking about? What do you know of this affair? Have some of your strict Puritans been telling you to discipline a victimmany years your senior, by tearing open this old sore?"
"No, no,—Miss Gastonguay, hear me patiently. I have a message to you from this brother."
"I will not hear it—" and her stern face grew sterner.
Justin sighed, and leaned back in his chair. "Let me recapitulate,—you remember my father, Sylvester Mercer—"
"Open that window, will you?" interrupted Miss Gastonguay, "this room is stifling."
Justin hastily threw up one of the glass sashes, and allowed the cool river wind to blow into the room. Was the stoical maiden lady about to faint? He judged not, and therefore continued his sentence. "My father, who was cashier of this bank before me—"
"And worth half a dozen young prigs like yourself," mumbled Miss Gastonguay, as she mopped her face with her handkerchief. "I liked him—"
"I know you do not care for me nor for my mother," said Justin, firmly, "yet I also know that, honest as you try to be, words are sometimes but disguises for your thoughts."
"Therefore, when I say I hate you, you know I love you," observed Miss Gastonguay, ironically. The fresh air had revived her, and she felt mistress of herself again.
Justin smiled. "No, I know better than that; however, let me proceed. When I was a lad, my father, finding that I did not care for study, had me enter this bank where I could be trained under his supervision."
"You'll never be as clever as he was," observed Miss Gastonguay, grimly.
"Granted," said Justin, with a slight inclination of his head. "You cannot say any good thing about my father that my heart will not echo. I loved him, and revere his memory. You will perhaps remember that, beside being a man of business, he was foremost in the charitable work of the town—"
"Yes, yes; I remember. What are you boring me with all this for?"
"Kindly have patience and you will see. One of his invariable habits was to visit every Sunday the old red prison in the woods beyond your house."
Miss Gastonguay's head suddenly became more erect, though her fingers trifled nervously with her handkerchief.
"I was often his companion. Among the prisoners I had many acquaintances. My father taught me not to despise these men whose unhappy lives had flung them for a time into such a place—"
"He was wrong," said Miss Gastonguay, angrily. "Wrong—wrong."
"Just before my father's death, he called me tohis bedside, and told me that in leaving the world he had a sacred trust to impose on me. I would in his place be entrusted with the custody, the loaning, exchange, or issue of money for a certain individual whom I might hear from or see only at long intervals. This person I was to serve faithfully, without curiosity or suspicion, except in the improbable event of my being required to do anything that would be against my conscience."
"Conscience!" ejaculated Miss Gastonguay. "You Puritans worship your consciences."
"I accepted the trust," said Justin, "and I have kept it."
"For some prison bird," she said, dilating her nostrils. "Your father always was soft-hearted. He believed a kind whisper in the ear would reform the prince of darkness himself."
"It was four years after my father's death," continued Justin, "before I saw this stranger for whom my father was a kind of agent—"
"I dare say," she said, sneeringly, "a wonder you ever saw him at all."
"And then he reminded me, strangely enough, of a man I had once seen for a brief space of time in—"
"The old prison, of course."
"Yes."
"And you told him of it," she said, tauntingly.
"No, I did not. The last time I saw that man was in California six weeks ago."
"An ill-starred journey. You had better have stayed at home."
"I married that man's daughter, Miss Gastonguay."
She paused for a moment, and caught her breath with a choking sound. Then she exclaimed, indignantly: "Shame to you to perpetuate the breed! Close that window, will you? You young people have your veins full of hot blood. We old ones grow chilly."
Justin obediently closed it, then, reseating himself, gazed at her with a compassion and even a tenderness that her abusive words could neither change nor dissipate.
"Yesterday, when I received that blow in the river," and he lightly touched his plastered forehead, "I seemed to see in a flash the possibilities of the future in case of my death. My young wife frightened and alone—"
"Where is her father?"
"He said that he was going to Australia; and I made up my mind yesterday to speak to you,—to tell you that, spoiled child as she may appear, she is a worthy daughter of your house."
"What kind of a life is her father leading now?"
Justin took off his glasses and passed his handkerchief over his troubled eyes. "I do not know, but I am sure he solemnly promised my father that after his escapade here it would be an honest one. Knowing his family's wealth, I have thought that possibly he might be receiving money from them—"
"There is not a Gastonguay that would throw him a dime if he were starving," she said, with disdain.
"But his daughter," said Justin, and his whole face glowed with such sincerity of love that his companion turned her head away, "the innocent, beautiful girl whom I married in haste, partly because my whole soul was bound up in her, and partly because I wished to snatch her while still young and docile from an environment that might at some future day mean—"
"Disgrace," supplied Miss Gastonguay, when he hesitated, "bald, black, nasty disgrace that you wish now to attach to my unspotted name,—or," she went on, irrelevantly, "is it the money you are after? We rich people can see snares and pitfalls where you poor ones would not suspect them. We are so beset and encompassed by sticky fingers that would make some of our gold pieces adhere to them that we walk with garments drawn gingerly aside. What looks to you a very pretty and flattering appeal from youth to old age, may to me look no better than one of the cunningly adjusted gins your Bible speaks of. I have the honour to wish you good afternoon, youngman," and she rose from her seat and made him a low, old-fashioned courtesy.
Justin rose too, and respectfully prepared to open the door for her. "May God bless you, Miss Gastonguay. My heart is lighter now that I have committed my darling's interests to you,—you know that I am not thinking solely of material interests. If I am cut off suddenly you will see that a woman's love and tenderness are not wanting. And I have a token for you from that brother. I will not offer it to you now, but when you are ready to receive it, I have it here—" and he pointed toward a safe in a corner.
Miss Gastonguay rushed by him and out of the bank like a flash, so that even the clerks who were used to her odd ways followed her with a smile.
An hour later, when Justin had his key in the lock of the outer door, she came back. Her face was calm now, and she spoke politely. "Give me that token, or whatever it is. No, I will not go in your office. Go get it, I will wait here," and she stepped inside the door.
Justin looking over his shoulder, to keep a watchful eye on the entrance door, hastened to his room, unlocked his safe, withdrew a small parcel and came back.
Miss Gastonguay tore off the folds of tissue-paper. There was nothing but a little shoe inside,—a little shoe of white velvet ornamented with gilt buttons.
"Our mother was a proud woman," she said, calmly, as she surveyed it. "Louis and I were shod in velvet, while our playmates had to be content with leather. We always played together," she went on, holding up the shoe, and speaking in a voice of unnatural calm. "He was a handsome little lad. Though I was much older, he used to put his arm around my neck and call me his little Jane."
Justin silently pointed to the tiny sole. On it was written in a faltering hand, "Little Jane's shoe,—carried over half the world by her unworthy Louis."
"Oh, my God," she said, suddenly. "I loved him so!" and staggering against the wall she burst into violent and painful weeping. "My poor lost brother—and I would have died for him— Go away, young man, don't look at me in my misery."
Justin's own eyes were full of tears. In distressed sympathy he went for a glass of water that she would not drink. "Go away, go away," she said, waving her hands at him, so that at last he was obliged to take his station on the street where the white pony stood gazing at him in reproachful anxiety.
In a quarter of an hour Miss Gastonguay cameout. Her face was more stern than usual, but bore no traces of tears, and without a word to him, and looking neither to the right nor to the left, she took the road to French Cross, followed by the pony with sympathetically drooping head.