Her maid handed the message to Helen before she was out of bed the next morning. The girl read it, caught its meaning, and shook with an ague of fear. Her love for her husband, outraged and stricken, may not have been dead—for who shall speak the last word for a woman's heart?—and her tender soul recoiled at the murder so calmly forespoken: and yet neither of these impulses was elemental in her agony of terror. Her impetuous letter of the day before, breaking a silence she had sworn to keep, was not intended as a reply to anything that Hayward had written. It was but a wild protest against the new-born realization that her situation was tragic, and could not be ignored nor long concealed. She had not meant to suggest or to counsel death, but to rail against life. The possibility of his taking-off had not occurred to her. His letter terrified her! Death!—her husband's death? It was the one thing that mustnotbe! When she had read his words, her blood was ice. "No! No!" her teeth chattered as she dressed, "he must not, he must not!" In the nervousness, the weakness, the faintness, the sickness into which fevered meditations upon the day-old revelation had shaken her, she did not think to question the sincerity of Hayward's purpose at self-destruction. The calamity was imminent—and trebly calamitous. The chill of more than death was upon her. When she had dressed she dashed off a hurried scrawl."No, no, no. I did not mean that. It is not my wish that you destroy yourself. You must not.You must not! I need you—above everything Ineed you. If you die I am undone! Where is our marriage certificate? Or was there one? And who was that witness? Do not die, do not die. As you love medo not die!"She carefully arranged every detail of her toilet, pinched her pale cheeks into something of pink, put on her morning smile, and, with a very conscious effort at lightness of manner, tripped out into the hall and down the stairs. She knew the very spot on which she would see her husband standing. With a round-about journey she approached it. He was not there. She laughed nervously, and with an aimless air, but a faster thumping heart, sought him at another haunt. Failure. And failure again. She went to breakfast, and displayed a lack of appetite and a tendency to hysterics. After breakfast she lingered down-stairs on every conceivable pretext, and journeyed from one end of the house to the other many times and again. At last when her nerves could not stand the strain a second longer she asked the coachman, who had driven the carriage to the door, where Hayward was. She felt that there was a full confession in the tones of her voice."Hayward asked for a day off this mornin', mum. He didn't come. Just telephoned."Helen felt the tension of her nerves snap. She hurried to her room, suppressing fairly by force an impulse to scream, and locking the door, threw herself across the bed. There for three hours, pleading a headache and denying admittance to all who knocked, she cowered before the thoughts of her seething brain—and suffered torment.Along about two o'clock she sprang up suddenly and turned out of her trunk all of her husband's letters and began feverishly to search for one she remembered written long ago which by chance contained the street number of his lodgings. She was nearly an hour finding it.Again she went through the womanly process of making herself presentable, and sauntered freshly forth in quest of the post office and a special delivery stamp. With an added prayer that he relieve her suspense quickly, she dropped her agonized note into the box under the hurry postage. Having thus done all that was possible to save her husband's life—and her own—she went back to her bed in collapse, and waited for the night-fall as one, hoping for a reprieve, who must die at sunset.CHAPTER XXXIHelen waited in vain for a word from her husband. Her letter did not come to his hand. She tossed in agonized suspense through the long hours—through the snail-paced minutes—through the dragging, tortured moments.Elise came in to see her. Helen gave the first explanation of her indisposition that came to mind, and declined all ministrations. Her mother came, and she would have dismissed her as briefly had not Mrs. Phillips asserted authority and ordered her into bed and suggested calling the family physician. At this intimation Helen demurred. She felt that she would suffocate if she were to be tucked up and made to lie quiet, with the doctor fingering her pulse and talking of sleeping potions while her soul was throbbing in such a frenzy of horror.To escape from them and from herself, she suddenly sat up and announced her intention of attending the dancing party which Elise was giving for the evening. There was a vigorous opposition to this procedure by both her mother and Elise, and by her father also, who had come in to have a look at her: but she outwilled them all.* * * * *Elise's dancing party was an affair to be remembered—an affair that is remembered. It deserved to be an unusual occasion, for in arranging it Elise was conscious of being in an unusual frame of mind. She was in some way disposed to be so perfectly even-handed in her dispensations. She directed the three invitations to Mr. Evans Rutledge, Captain George St. Lawrence Howard and Senator Joseph Richland with her own hand and with almost one continuous stroke of the pen. She took this batch of three invitations as a separate handful and placed them together in the basket for the mail. She assigned to each of these gentlemen one dance with herself, and one only, in the programme of the formal first half of the evening. She appointed as attendants for the eleven o'clock collation Mr. Rutledge to Mrs. Hazard, Captain Howard to Helen, and Senator Richland to Alice Mackenzie—the fiancée of Donald MacLane. In everything she was judicially impartial. She played no favourites.Her plans carried through charmingly, and after dancing through the card a delighted lot of guests sat down to the light luncheon, though three men in the party, despite all their gallant attentions to the women beside them, were using half of their brains at least in planning for the catch-as-catch-can hour and a half that was to follow. Elise had smiled upon them equally and tormentingly, and not a man of them but felt that the briefest little five minutestête-à-têtemight do magical things."Well," said Lola, after she and Rutledge had effervesced in a few minutes of commonplaces and conventionalities, "is your money still on the Englishman?""No," said Rutledge, "I've quit gambling.""Lost your sporting nerve?""No, not that; but a man who bets against himself deserves to lose, and I can't afford to lose.""But your self-respect?" laughed Lola."Now Miss—ah—Mrs. Hazard, don't jump on a fellow when he's down. Self-respect is nothing less than an abomination when it comes between a man and a girl like—that,—and besides, she didn't mean it that way.""Oh, didn't she?""No, she didn't, and she's just the finest, dearest woman in the whole wide—unmarried state!""Thank you," said Lola, "but you needn't have minded. And so I'm to congratulate you? I've been so anxious to hear, but our mail has never caught up with us since the day we left New York.""Oh, bless your heart, there are no congratulations—only good wishes, I hope. Take note of the exact mathematical equality in the distances by which Richland and Sir Monocle and I are removed from the chair of the Lady Beautiful. Could anything be more beautifully impartial?""And who is the ancient gentleman with Elise?" Lola asked."Some old party from York State. Bachelor uncle or cousin or some such chap—quite a character too, it seems—danced with Dolly Madison or Martha Washington or the Queen of Sheba or somebody like that in his youth. Miss Phillips was telling me of him awhile ago.""That was a very safe subject of discussion," said Lola."Yes," Rutledge replied grimly, "and do you know I tried my very hardest to lose him out of the conversation and he just wouldn't drop. Miss Phillips must be greatly interested in him.""Anything will do in a pinch, Mr. Rutledge. What were you trying to talk about?""Oh, that's it, you think? Well I wish I had ten good minutes with her. I'd make the talk—for half the time—or know the reason why.""I think I remember that Elise told me once that you could be very abrupt.""Yes, and I'm going to do a few stunts in abruptness that will surprise her the next time I have a chance. I've tried the easy and graceful approach for the last six weeks, and it's getting on my nerves.""I tell you what, Mr. Rutledge," Lola laughed, "Elise is to be with me to-morrow evening. You come around after dinner, and I promise you shall have a square deal and ten minutes at least for your very own. Come early and avoid the rush.""Good. I'll do it. You are a trump!""And you may run along now if you wish," she said as they came out of the dining-room, "and take her away from the old party before the others get a chance at her.""You'll go to heaven when you die," Rutledge whispered as he left her....Evans met some difficulty in cutting Elise out of the herd. It took time and determination and some strategy to carry the smiling young hostess off down the hall alone; but he brought it to pass, and drew a breath of exultation when he had shaken himself free. However, turn where he would, every nook and corner seemed to be occupied. He was not openly on the hunt for a retired spot, but he was wishing for one with a prayerful heart and wide-open eyes.Now a man can make love to a girl right out in the open—in full view of the multitude—in fact there is a sort of fascination in it—in telling her what a dear she is with the careless air and gesture which, to the onlookers, suggests a remark anent the blizzard in the west or the hot times in South Carolina; but when it comes to putting the cap-sheaf on the courting and running the game to earth, in pushing the inquiry to ultimate conclusions and demanding the supreme reply,—a man who dares to hope to win and whose blood has not been thinned by promiscuous flirtations ever wants the girl to be in a situation grab-able.When Evans became convinced that the fates were against him on that evening, he set definite plans in order for the next."Mrs. Hazard tells me that you are to be with her to-morrow evening," he said to Elise, with something of that abruptness. "May I not call upon you there? There is something I wish very much to tell you, and the crowd here is always too great."Elise looked up at him quickly. The something he wished to tell her was to be read in his face, but she could not presume to assume it had been said. The man waited quietly for his answer."Why, certainly, yes, I will be very glad to see you," she said in a tone of conventional politeness; but assuredly, Rutledge thought, the light in her gray eyes was not discouraging."But I must be going now, if you will take me back," she said; and they turned to go up the hall. A lumbering crash and a stifled little cry changed their purpose.Three minutes before, they had seen Helen and Harry Lodge turn a corner in the hall and pass round behind some of the overflowing greenery which almost shut off a side entrance. Lodge was as intent upon the pursuit of Helen as Rutledge of Elise, and was making more of his opportunities. Helen was welcoming any excitement that carried her out of herself. With Lodge's pushfulness and her indifference to consequences, it did not take long to bring the issue to a point. From her manner Harry did not gather the faintest idea of losing. She listened to his speeches with a smile which was not in the least false but none the less deceiving. She did not offer the slightest objection to his wooing nor put the smallest obstruction in the way of it. In his enthusiasm he developed an eloquence, and, taking her unresisting hand, he rushed along to the climax of a rapturous declaration."—And will you be my wife?" he asked, with his arm already half about her."No," Helen answered dispassionately, drawing herself back from him as if his meaning were but just now made clear to her: but that "no" came too late.A pair of eyes in which the lightnings had gathered and gone wild had looked upon the whole of this tender scene except the last moments of it. Hayward Graham felt the devils in the blood of all his ancestors white and black cry to be uncaged as he looked upon Lodge in his ecstasy of love-making, and when Lodge took Helen's hand and it was not withdrawn, the devils broke the bars."So," cried Hayward in his soul, "it's for you—to resign her to your arms—that I am asked to die! No! If I may not possess her, not you, you hound!"A door was wrenched open and Lodge had only time to straighten himself before he was knocked senseless by the infuriated husband.Hayward drew himself up, terrible, before his wife, and Helen in the moment of recognition threw herself into his arms with a glad cry."Oh, you have come at last!" she moaned. "You got my letter at last and have come to me!""No. What letter?" asked Hayward—but as he asked it Helen was pushing herself from him as savagely as she freely had thrown herself to him. Her ear had caught the sound of people approaching. Hayward was too confused to notice that. He was in consternation at the lightning change from love to aversion, and clung to her desperately.A second later he was lying prone upon the floor with Evans Rutledge standing above him, murder in his eyes. He made a wild attempt to rise, when another terrific blow from Rutledge's arm sent him again to the floor. The hall was in an uproar, and a couple of palms were knocked aside as President Phillips burst into the midst of the mêlée in time to restrain another smash from Rutledge's clenched fist."In the name of God, what's the row?" he asked."This nigger has assaulted Miss Helen," said Rutledge, gasping and choking with fury.Mr. Phillips trembled with a fearful passion, but, seeing Helen apparently unhurt, pulled himself down to a terrible quiet."Get up," he growled to Hayward. "Now"—when the footman was on his feet—"what have you to say for yourself?"Hayward looked for the hundredth part of a second in Helen's eyes."I have no excuse," he answered simply.Only silence could greet such an admission. For five seconds the silence and the stillness were torturing.As Mr. Phillips moved to speak, Helen took two quick steps to the negro's side. His renunciation, his silent, unhesitating committal of the issue—of his life—to her decision, had touched her heart."I am his wife," she said, as she took his hand and turned to face the circle of her friends.[image]"'I AM HIS WIFE,' SHE SAID."CHAPTER XXXIIHelen's announcement was made quietly, without any melodramatic display.In the circle immediately surrounding her and her husband were her father and mother, Elise and Evans Rutledge, and Hal Lodge but just now coming to his senses and his feet. Behind these were Mrs. Hazard, Captain Howard, Senator Richland, and a gathering of other excited guests. For a space after Helen's speech the scene was steady and fixed as for a flashlight picture, and was photographed on Elise's brain: the incredulity on her father's face—the horror on that of Evans Rutledge—the perfectly restrained features of Howard—the quickly suppressed smile of Richland as he glanced at Evans in lightning comprehension of all the situation meant—the ghastly pallor of Mrs. Phillips as she sank voiceless in a dead faint—"No—o!"The harshly aspirated protest of Mr. Phillips was propelled from his lungs with a burst of indignant anger, but drawn out at the end into a pathetic quaver—and the scene dissolved.Rutledge caught and lifted Mrs. Phillips whose collapse was unnoticed by her husband in his transfixed stare at Helen, and pushing back through the crowd was about to place her upon a settle in the hall; but at Elise's bidding he carried her up the broad stairs and left her in the care of her daughter and Lola Hazard. There could be no good-bye said—no time for it; but at the glance of dismissal Elise gave him from her mother's bedside—at the look of suffering in her eyes—his heart was like to burst.Down-stairs the confusion was painful. The guests were hesitating between being accounted so ill-bred as to stare at a family scene, and running away from it as from a scourge.To her father's unsteady denial Helen repeated her simple statement: "I am his wife.""Since when?" Mr. Phillips demanded."A year ago last October."The father looked about him as for help."Come along with me," he said. "Both of you. Good night, ladies and gentlemen," he added to the hesitating guests—and there was a breath of relief and a scattering for home.* * * * *With his hand upon Helen's arm, and Hayward following, President Phillips led the way to his offices."I am not to be disturbed," he told a servant after he had stopped at the door and waved Helen and Hayward into the room. "Ask Mrs. Phillips if she will please come here."Entering, he motioned Hayward to a chair, and, taking Helen with him, went into the inner office and closed the door behind him."Now, my child," he said, with a break in his voice despite every effort to keep it steady, "tell me all about this, and we—we'll find a way out."He patted her hand reassuringly."There's no way out, papa. I loved Hayward, and I married him.""No, no, child, not love. You were infatuated—he was a footman and you are—""He was a gentleman," interrupted Helen."In a way, perhaps, but uncultured and common—how could—""He is a Harvard man," Helen cut in again, "a man of intelligence and education. He is—""But a weakling—no genuine Harvard man could be a menial—a flunkey—""He's not a weakling, papa. He stooped to the service for love of me. He loved me long before we came here—when he was a student at Harvard. It was so romantic, papa—he saw me first at a football game and he has loved me from that day. He was the hero of the game and he has yet the Harvard pennant I gave him—and, oh, he's a greater hero than that, papa—he was a soldier and he was the trooper that—wait a moment." Helen ran to the door."Here, Hayward, give me the knife," she called; and she came running back, holding it out to her father."The knife that the trooper stole!" she said, with a pitiful little attempt at gayety in her voice and face."What's that?" her father asked harshly."Why, papa, you surely don't forget the knife I gave you on your birthday? The one that was taken by the trooper who rescued you at Valencia?"The light of understanding came to her father's eyes."Well, Hayward was the man, papa! He it was who saved your life to us—oh, how I have loved him for that! Just think, daddy dear, how often you have told me what a heroic thing it was—and for such a long time I have known it was Hayward and wanted so to tell you, but I couldn't.""Why couldn't you?" demanded her father."Well, I found it out by accident when he caught me off my falling horse—there it is again, papa—he saved my life as well as yours—it was just the grandest thing the way he did it!—no wonder I have loved and married him—he's the sort that can take care of a woman—enough different from Bobby Scott, who couldn't stay in his own saddle!""But Mr. Scott is of an excellent family—distinguished for generations—while Hayward is a nobody—a—a nothing—no family and no recognized personal distinction or merit of his own—the commonest circus clown can ride a horse, my child.""But he is personally distinguished, papa; and you have approved his merit by making him a lieutenant of cavalry.""When? How?" the father asked."He is John H. Graham, papa—John Hayward Graham; and there can be no denying his fitness or ability, for you have certified to both."Mr. Phillips saw he was estopped on that line; but it only made him angry and stirred his fighting blood."That's the reason," Helen continued, "that Hayward wouldn't let me tell you who he was or thing about his service to you. He wanted to obtain his commission absolutely on his merit and without appealing to your gratitude—wasn't it noble of him?"A grunt was all the answer Helen got to her question."But his people, who are they? What sort of a family have you married into? Do you know?" Mr. Phillips demanded sharply."He lives with his mother—his father is dead—oh, I wish you could hear him tell about his father and mother, and his grandfather—it's just beautiful. I don't know whether he has any other relatives,—but that doesn't make any difference. I am not married to them, papa, and he's not responsible for his people but must be judged by his own personal character and excellence!"In this last speech of Helen, Mr. Phillips thought he caught an echo of something he had heard himself say, and he winced a little: but it only added a spark more to his anger."But he's so far below you socially, Helen. You cannot be happy with him! You must remember that you are the President's daughter and—""And my husband," interrupted Helen, "is of the one order of American nobility—a man! I've thought about all that—the man's the thing, you said, papa—and besides, an army officer has no social superiors."There was no mere echo in Helen's defence now. It was plain fighting her father with his own words: and it irritated him beyond endurance. His wrath burst through and threw off the shell of theories and sentiment which he had built up around himself and the man's real self spoke."But he's a negro, Helen!A negro! How could you!""Anegro, papa?" Helen questioned in unmixed surprise. "What has that to do with it? He's the finest looking man in Washington if he is—and didn't you tell Elise that that was nothing more than a colour of skin?—that the man was the thing?—that a—that a—negro must stand or fall upon his own merit and not upon his colour or caste?—and did you not say to Mr. Mackenzie that colour has nothing to do with a man's acceptability in your house?—and that—""Oh, my God! yes, my child, but I did not mea—you are too young, too young to be married, my child,—too young and too—yes, too young, and we must annul this marriage—yes, we must annul it, we must annul it—we can annul it without trouble, don't worry about it, child, don't worry—we can annul it, and—for you are too young, my little girl, my little girl, my little girl!"At sight of her father's tears, and the trembling that shook him as he sank down in a chair, Helen's combative attitude began to melt and her eyes to fill."Yes, little girl, don't worry," he said, drawing her tenderly down within his arms, "don't worry, and we will have it annulled in short order.""It's too late, papa," she spoke against his shoulder."No, no, precious heart, it's not too late—we can have it annulled—don't cry, and don't worry, we can have it annulled.""But, papa," she said again as she pushed herself back so that he looked her full in the face, "it's too late, I tell you! It's—too—late!"—and with outburst of weeping she curled herself up against him.With a dry sob of comprehension her father gathered her close to his heart.* * * * *For a long time after he heard the voices cease Hayward Graham waited in Mr. Phillips' outer office to learn his fate. He had caught some of the excited discussion—enough to be convinced of his father-in-law's opposition; but he could not be sure of the details. A servant had come in to say that Mrs. Phillips could not come to the office, and had knocked softly on the inner door several times while the discussion was at its warmest. Failing to get an answer, he had left his message with Hayward and retired. When the voices were quiet and the inner room became silent Hayward was on thequi vivefor developments; and stood facing the door in a fever of expectation.... His fever, however, had time to burn itself out.... In that long silence President Phillips fought his greatest battle.... The issue was predestined, of course. In his heart there was no passion at all comparable to his love for Helen, and that love won over all obstacles.... He saw clearly in what measure he was responsible for her undoing; and he came squarely to the mark with a courage that would faceallodds for his little girl—that would face a frowning world, a laughing, a mocking world—that would face his own soul even to the death—that her gentle heart might not be troubled.... He held her while her sobs shook themselves out, and then on and on he held her, close and warm, as if he would never again let her out of his sheltering arms,—while he gazed over her bowed head into the dying fire, and fixed and fortified his resolution.At last Graham summoned courage to knock upon the door. President Phillips started as from a reverie."Come in," he said, rising unsteadily and placing Helen gently on her feet, his arm still about her."Why, certainly, Hayward, come in,"—and then he added after a short pause: "Helen has told me all about it, and, while I can't approve of the clandestine marriage, I shall do what I can to make my little girl happy—yes, I'll do what I can to make her happy.... And since this has been such an—unusual—evening I'll ask you to go now and come back to-morrow morning."Hayward delivered the belated message from Mrs. Phillips, stood for a moment uncertain whether Helen would speak to him, and then turned to go."And do not wear your livery in the morning, Hayward," said Mr. Phillips."Very well, sir," said Hayward, as he withdrew.CHAPTER XXXIIIWhen President Phillips came out of his office after dismissing Hayward, he found a score of reporters and newspaper correspondents fighting for places at the great front door. They were awaiting with what patience they could Mr. Phillips' pleasure in giving to the public an authoritative statement of his daughter's marriage.The President, after he had obtained from Helen the details of time and place, and other items of interest, gave the press men the story. He customarily had his secretary to make statements to the newspaper people, but he chose to do this for himself: in his infinite loyalty to his little girl he was taking the situation by the horns. There was no elation in his manner, but there certainly was nothing to indicate his slightest objection to Helen's marriage, nor to Hayward Graham as his son-in-law. He gave a short sketch of that young man's life and excellences. He stated that he had not known Graham was either his footman or his daughter's husband when he had nominated him for a lieutenancy in the cavalry. He did not state that Graham had carried him off the battlefield at Valencia.When he had finished with the men of the pencil Mr. Phillips went back to his office for Helen, and they sought the mother's room together. With another flood of tears Helen dropped on her knees by her mother's bed.This scene was hardly less a trial for the father than had been the travail of his own soul. Here also must he win if he would save his child's happiness: and so, amid the tears and the sobs of the mother and daughters, and with misgivings and dread in his own heart, at first unflinchingly, then more zealously, and at last of necessity reserving nothing, he excused, and upheld, and vindicated, Helen.Mrs. Phillips was too heart-broken to utter a word in opposition or condemnation, and Elise did not open her lips to speak. It was against accusing silence, therefore, and upbraiding tears, that the father made his desperate defence.... Such a debate can never be brought to any real finish; and it was at last only in exhaustion, Helen of nerves, her father of words, and Elise and her mother of lamentation, that the distressed family found peace—enough at least to permit of dispersal to their rooms for the night.Elise was bowed down in grief for Helen, and for Helen she wept upon her pillow till the fountain of tears was dry: but even then there was no sleep for her. Her mind was painfully alive to her own personal problems, and her brain was awake the night long although weariness held her scalded eyelids down. The incident of the evening, like an electric storm, had clarified the haze of uncertainty for her heart—but only to plunge it into a more intense perplexity.No longer unchoosing, her heart had spoken its choice. It were better had it never spoken at all; but there could be no mistaking its decree—she loved Evans Rutledge. As she had looked upon the three men who loved her in that brief time when Helen proclaimed her husband,she had known: and she had known that not for her was the man who in the fleetest moment could smile while her heart was breaking; nor for her that other, who, with his alien point of view, was untouched with her distress, and who with his perfect breeding—she resented it—could be so contained, so unmoved, in a situation which brought anguish to her. In the throes of that anguish her soul had turned, unerring, to its affinity in suffering, tothe heart that understoodand wept, not in a ready sympathy for her pain, but in the pains of a common grief.In such manner Elise accounted for the reading of her heart's message. She believed that it had been undecipherable, confused, until that evening. Yet in all her distress then, and in the heartaches afterward resulting from its choosing, she was strangely happy because her heart had been true to the fancy of its earlier years, had been faithful to its first girlish inclination to love, had not misled her, had not been fickle in any degree, or false. She told herself with a tremor of rapturous, prideful humility that one man had been the master of her love from the beginning.Thinking on it as she lay unsleeping through the night, she more than once forgot her tears and was lost in the transport of loving. She petted and caressed her heart for its constancy. She made excuses for its indecision in that long time when the man's love had seemed unworthy. She murmured tender things to it because it had prevailed, even though with a hesitating loyalty, against her head's capricious disapproval.In her wanderings back and forth through the desert of her miseries on that night, she straggled back many times to this oasis of her love and stopped to soothe her troubled heart with its upspringing freshnesses.... And yet a wildness of perplexity was set about her, and she could not find a way out. She knew that Rutledge loved her—had loved her from the time he declared it on the flood-beaten rock in the St. Lawrence till the moment of his tender unspoken good-night three hours ago. That his love could not be shaken by any act not her own, she verily believed. But would he have loved her?—would he have dared to love her?—could he, with his blood-deep, immutable ideas,couldhe have loved her?—if he had known that his love would bring him to this unspeakable extremity, to this heart-breaking dilemma, where he must be traitor to himself and to her—or become brother-in-law to a negro?Yes, he would havelovedher—her of all women—despite the slings and arrows of the most outrageous fortune, her heart told her: but, with prescience of such calamity, would he havespokenhis love?—would he have asked for that interview for to-morrow evening that he might tell it to her again? Was he not even now regretting that appointment? Was he not even nowpityinghis love for her? She must know. But how could she know? By what means could she learnthe truth? ... Way there was none: and yet shemust know. Doubt, uncertainty, here would be unendurable—and implacable for she could no longer find peace in indifference. She loved Evans Rutledge, and her love would fight, was fighting, desperately for its own.... But again, her own must be worthy, without compulsion, or she would repudiate it. Her heart's tenderness, virgin, single, measureless, she held too precious to barter for a love, withal sincere and beautiful, which were weighted with a minim of regret or limitation. Rather would she crush back its fragrance eternally in her own bosom, than dishonour it by exchange for less than the highest.... Yes, she must know.... And she couldnotknow.... And the morning came, bringing no relief for heart or brain....Mr. Phillips was at some pains to intimate to his wife and Elise what he thought a proper pride demanded in the way of the "front" they should show to the public. Queer that he should have thought it necessary: but, unhappy man, he spoke out of his fears for his own steadiness. Elise, at least, had no need for his admonitions. Her pride was the pride of youth: the pride which finds all sufficiency in itself, and needs not the prop of outward circumstance which age requires to hold its chin in air.It was this pride which gave Elise some hesitation in deciding what she should do with her promise to see Rutledge that evening. Pride said: "Meet him as if nothing has happened to disturb the serenity of your life. Do not show—to him, of all men—chagrin at this episodeen famille." But pride said: "No! Recall that engagement. Do not appear to hold him by so much as a hair. His love must be undistrained!"She wavered between these conflicting demands of a consistent self-respect until the middle afternoon. Then the pride of her love overmastered the pride in her pride: and she wrote Rutledge a short note."MY DEAR MR. RUTLEDGE:—I find it necessary to change my plans for this evening. This will prevent my seeing you at Mrs. Hazard's as I promised. I am very sorry."Sincerely,"ELISE PHILLIPS."This was her afternoon at home; and after having dispatched the message to Rutledge Elise gave her mind over as far as might be to receiving her callers. They were more numerous than usual, despite many notable absences, and before they fairly well had begun to crowd in she realized that she was on parade. Oh, the duplicity of women! How they chirruped and chattered about every imaginable thing under heaven, while they listened and looked for only one thing: to find out what Helen's family really thought of her marriage.This was not Mrs. Phillips' afternoon, nor Helen's and they did not appear—to have done so would have been to overdo composure: and so it was that Elise alone fenced with the dear, dear procession of sensation hunters who passed in and out of her doors. The women came in such flocks that she really did not have time to be embarrassed, for the sympathetic creatures who showed a disposition to sidle up close to her and begin with low-voiced confidences covert attacks upon her reserve were quite regularly bowled over by their oncoming followers before they could get their sly little schemes of investigation well going. It became fascinating to her to watch them defeat each other's plans, and she was somewhat regretful when they stopped coming. They stopped quite suddenly, for the reason that, in eagerness to see for herself, every daughter of Eve among them had made the White House the first stopping-place in her round of visits for the afternoon.When the women were all come and gone, save two who evidently were trying to sit each other out, Captain Howard was announced. Elise was unfeignedly glad to see him and in a few minutes the two contesting ladies departed and left the Englishman and the girl together.Captain Howard's coming was very refreshing, and Elise was grateful. He was the only person she had seen that day who did not seem to be conscious of the electric condition of the atmosphere, and she sat down to talk to him with a feeling of genuine relief and pleasure. His conversation began easily and unconstrainedly and ran along the usual lines with all freedom. As chance demanded he spoke of Helen several times in connection with one small matter, and another, and his manner of doing it was positively restful.Elise felt so comfortable sitting there talking to him that for the first time she was impressed to think that it might be a nice thing to have him always to come and sit beside her and make her forget that things went wrong. The unfluttered ease and peacefulness of his manner and his words appealed very strongly to her distressed heart, and it warmed toward him in simple gratefulness.Captain Howard was not without knowledge of the tense situation created by the announcement of Helen Phillips' marriage. He read the newspapers and could not but know that a tremendous sensation was a-blow. He was himself excited by the affair—in a steady-going fashion. It was as if a princess of the blood had eloped and married a—say a tradesman—or, maybe, a gentleman—of course it was sensational.In his amorous state of mind, however, the captain thought kindly of the wealth of love which had inspired the young woman with such a sublime contempt for rank—for that very real and very puissant divinity, Rank. He also had shaken himself sufficiently free from the shackles of provincialism to be able to recognize the effect of democratic ideas in making possible and permissible such an event. Affairs of this sort could not be entirely unlooked for in a genuinely democratic society; and, since the President acquiesced in his daughter's choice and had no regrets, there was no more to be said. Altogether Captain Howard viewed the matter very calmly and philosophically.Having this attitude, he had no hesitation after a time in speaking directly of Helen's marriage and its dramatic announcement. He was a gentleman in every instinct, was Captain Howard; and there could not be the slightest offence taken by Elise at his natural and sympathetic interest in what he considered a most romantic episode. But while one may not be offended or resentful, one may become nauseated. Captain Howard did not know of the chill of disgust and horror that was creeping over the girl's heart, nor notice the silence to which she was come. Her friendliness had been so graciously simple and so promising that his purpose had been formed and he was moving straight toward it, not noticing her silence further than to be glad she was saying nothing to create a diversion.... Elise felt that if she spoke she would be very, very rude.
Her maid handed the message to Helen before she was out of bed the next morning. The girl read it, caught its meaning, and shook with an ague of fear. Her love for her husband, outraged and stricken, may not have been dead—for who shall speak the last word for a woman's heart?—and her tender soul recoiled at the murder so calmly forespoken: and yet neither of these impulses was elemental in her agony of terror. Her impetuous letter of the day before, breaking a silence she had sworn to keep, was not intended as a reply to anything that Hayward had written. It was but a wild protest against the new-born realization that her situation was tragic, and could not be ignored nor long concealed. She had not meant to suggest or to counsel death, but to rail against life. The possibility of his taking-off had not occurred to her. His letter terrified her! Death!—her husband's death? It was the one thing that mustnotbe! When she had read his words, her blood was ice. "No! No!" her teeth chattered as she dressed, "he must not, he must not!" In the nervousness, the weakness, the faintness, the sickness into which fevered meditations upon the day-old revelation had shaken her, she did not think to question the sincerity of Hayward's purpose at self-destruction. The calamity was imminent—and trebly calamitous. The chill of more than death was upon her. When she had dressed she dashed off a hurried scrawl.
"No, no, no. I did not mean that. It is not my wish that you destroy yourself. You must not.You must not! I need you—above everything Ineed you. If you die I am undone! Where is our marriage certificate? Or was there one? And who was that witness? Do not die, do not die. As you love medo not die!"
She carefully arranged every detail of her toilet, pinched her pale cheeks into something of pink, put on her morning smile, and, with a very conscious effort at lightness of manner, tripped out into the hall and down the stairs. She knew the very spot on which she would see her husband standing. With a round-about journey she approached it. He was not there. She laughed nervously, and with an aimless air, but a faster thumping heart, sought him at another haunt. Failure. And failure again. She went to breakfast, and displayed a lack of appetite and a tendency to hysterics. After breakfast she lingered down-stairs on every conceivable pretext, and journeyed from one end of the house to the other many times and again. At last when her nerves could not stand the strain a second longer she asked the coachman, who had driven the carriage to the door, where Hayward was. She felt that there was a full confession in the tones of her voice.
"Hayward asked for a day off this mornin', mum. He didn't come. Just telephoned."
Helen felt the tension of her nerves snap. She hurried to her room, suppressing fairly by force an impulse to scream, and locking the door, threw herself across the bed. There for three hours, pleading a headache and denying admittance to all who knocked, she cowered before the thoughts of her seething brain—and suffered torment.
Along about two o'clock she sprang up suddenly and turned out of her trunk all of her husband's letters and began feverishly to search for one she remembered written long ago which by chance contained the street number of his lodgings. She was nearly an hour finding it.
Again she went through the womanly process of making herself presentable, and sauntered freshly forth in quest of the post office and a special delivery stamp. With an added prayer that he relieve her suspense quickly, she dropped her agonized note into the box under the hurry postage. Having thus done all that was possible to save her husband's life—and her own—she went back to her bed in collapse, and waited for the night-fall as one, hoping for a reprieve, who must die at sunset.
CHAPTER XXXI
Helen waited in vain for a word from her husband. Her letter did not come to his hand. She tossed in agonized suspense through the long hours—through the snail-paced minutes—through the dragging, tortured moments.
Elise came in to see her. Helen gave the first explanation of her indisposition that came to mind, and declined all ministrations. Her mother came, and she would have dismissed her as briefly had not Mrs. Phillips asserted authority and ordered her into bed and suggested calling the family physician. At this intimation Helen demurred. She felt that she would suffocate if she were to be tucked up and made to lie quiet, with the doctor fingering her pulse and talking of sleeping potions while her soul was throbbing in such a frenzy of horror.
To escape from them and from herself, she suddenly sat up and announced her intention of attending the dancing party which Elise was giving for the evening. There was a vigorous opposition to this procedure by both her mother and Elise, and by her father also, who had come in to have a look at her: but she outwilled them all.
* * * * *
Elise's dancing party was an affair to be remembered—an affair that is remembered. It deserved to be an unusual occasion, for in arranging it Elise was conscious of being in an unusual frame of mind. She was in some way disposed to be so perfectly even-handed in her dispensations. She directed the three invitations to Mr. Evans Rutledge, Captain George St. Lawrence Howard and Senator Joseph Richland with her own hand and with almost one continuous stroke of the pen. She took this batch of three invitations as a separate handful and placed them together in the basket for the mail. She assigned to each of these gentlemen one dance with herself, and one only, in the programme of the formal first half of the evening. She appointed as attendants for the eleven o'clock collation Mr. Rutledge to Mrs. Hazard, Captain Howard to Helen, and Senator Richland to Alice Mackenzie—the fiancée of Donald MacLane. In everything she was judicially impartial. She played no favourites.
Her plans carried through charmingly, and after dancing through the card a delighted lot of guests sat down to the light luncheon, though three men in the party, despite all their gallant attentions to the women beside them, were using half of their brains at least in planning for the catch-as-catch-can hour and a half that was to follow. Elise had smiled upon them equally and tormentingly, and not a man of them but felt that the briefest little five minutestête-à-têtemight do magical things.
"Well," said Lola, after she and Rutledge had effervesced in a few minutes of commonplaces and conventionalities, "is your money still on the Englishman?"
"No," said Rutledge, "I've quit gambling."
"Lost your sporting nerve?"
"No, not that; but a man who bets against himself deserves to lose, and I can't afford to lose."
"But your self-respect?" laughed Lola.
"Now Miss—ah—Mrs. Hazard, don't jump on a fellow when he's down. Self-respect is nothing less than an abomination when it comes between a man and a girl like—that,—and besides, she didn't mean it that way."
"Oh, didn't she?"
"No, she didn't, and she's just the finest, dearest woman in the whole wide—unmarried state!"
"Thank you," said Lola, "but you needn't have minded. And so I'm to congratulate you? I've been so anxious to hear, but our mail has never caught up with us since the day we left New York."
"Oh, bless your heart, there are no congratulations—only good wishes, I hope. Take note of the exact mathematical equality in the distances by which Richland and Sir Monocle and I are removed from the chair of the Lady Beautiful. Could anything be more beautifully impartial?"
"And who is the ancient gentleman with Elise?" Lola asked.
"Some old party from York State. Bachelor uncle or cousin or some such chap—quite a character too, it seems—danced with Dolly Madison or Martha Washington or the Queen of Sheba or somebody like that in his youth. Miss Phillips was telling me of him awhile ago."
"That was a very safe subject of discussion," said Lola.
"Yes," Rutledge replied grimly, "and do you know I tried my very hardest to lose him out of the conversation and he just wouldn't drop. Miss Phillips must be greatly interested in him."
"Anything will do in a pinch, Mr. Rutledge. What were you trying to talk about?"
"Oh, that's it, you think? Well I wish I had ten good minutes with her. I'd make the talk—for half the time—or know the reason why."
"I think I remember that Elise told me once that you could be very abrupt."
"Yes, and I'm going to do a few stunts in abruptness that will surprise her the next time I have a chance. I've tried the easy and graceful approach for the last six weeks, and it's getting on my nerves."
"I tell you what, Mr. Rutledge," Lola laughed, "Elise is to be with me to-morrow evening. You come around after dinner, and I promise you shall have a square deal and ten minutes at least for your very own. Come early and avoid the rush."
"Good. I'll do it. You are a trump!"
"And you may run along now if you wish," she said as they came out of the dining-room, "and take her away from the old party before the others get a chance at her."
"You'll go to heaven when you die," Rutledge whispered as he left her....
Evans met some difficulty in cutting Elise out of the herd. It took time and determination and some strategy to carry the smiling young hostess off down the hall alone; but he brought it to pass, and drew a breath of exultation when he had shaken himself free. However, turn where he would, every nook and corner seemed to be occupied. He was not openly on the hunt for a retired spot, but he was wishing for one with a prayerful heart and wide-open eyes.
Now a man can make love to a girl right out in the open—in full view of the multitude—in fact there is a sort of fascination in it—in telling her what a dear she is with the careless air and gesture which, to the onlookers, suggests a remark anent the blizzard in the west or the hot times in South Carolina; but when it comes to putting the cap-sheaf on the courting and running the game to earth, in pushing the inquiry to ultimate conclusions and demanding the supreme reply,—a man who dares to hope to win and whose blood has not been thinned by promiscuous flirtations ever wants the girl to be in a situation grab-able.
When Evans became convinced that the fates were against him on that evening, he set definite plans in order for the next.
"Mrs. Hazard tells me that you are to be with her to-morrow evening," he said to Elise, with something of that abruptness. "May I not call upon you there? There is something I wish very much to tell you, and the crowd here is always too great."
Elise looked up at him quickly. The something he wished to tell her was to be read in his face, but she could not presume to assume it had been said. The man waited quietly for his answer.
"Why, certainly, yes, I will be very glad to see you," she said in a tone of conventional politeness; but assuredly, Rutledge thought, the light in her gray eyes was not discouraging.
"But I must be going now, if you will take me back," she said; and they turned to go up the hall. A lumbering crash and a stifled little cry changed their purpose.
Three minutes before, they had seen Helen and Harry Lodge turn a corner in the hall and pass round behind some of the overflowing greenery which almost shut off a side entrance. Lodge was as intent upon the pursuit of Helen as Rutledge of Elise, and was making more of his opportunities. Helen was welcoming any excitement that carried her out of herself. With Lodge's pushfulness and her indifference to consequences, it did not take long to bring the issue to a point. From her manner Harry did not gather the faintest idea of losing. She listened to his speeches with a smile which was not in the least false but none the less deceiving. She did not offer the slightest objection to his wooing nor put the smallest obstruction in the way of it. In his enthusiasm he developed an eloquence, and, taking her unresisting hand, he rushed along to the climax of a rapturous declaration.
"—And will you be my wife?" he asked, with his arm already half about her.
"No," Helen answered dispassionately, drawing herself back from him as if his meaning were but just now made clear to her: but that "no" came too late.
A pair of eyes in which the lightnings had gathered and gone wild had looked upon the whole of this tender scene except the last moments of it. Hayward Graham felt the devils in the blood of all his ancestors white and black cry to be uncaged as he looked upon Lodge in his ecstasy of love-making, and when Lodge took Helen's hand and it was not withdrawn, the devils broke the bars.
"So," cried Hayward in his soul, "it's for you—to resign her to your arms—that I am asked to die! No! If I may not possess her, not you, you hound!"
A door was wrenched open and Lodge had only time to straighten himself before he was knocked senseless by the infuriated husband.
Hayward drew himself up, terrible, before his wife, and Helen in the moment of recognition threw herself into his arms with a glad cry.
"Oh, you have come at last!" she moaned. "You got my letter at last and have come to me!"
"No. What letter?" asked Hayward—but as he asked it Helen was pushing herself from him as savagely as she freely had thrown herself to him. Her ear had caught the sound of people approaching. Hayward was too confused to notice that. He was in consternation at the lightning change from love to aversion, and clung to her desperately.
A second later he was lying prone upon the floor with Evans Rutledge standing above him, murder in his eyes. He made a wild attempt to rise, when another terrific blow from Rutledge's arm sent him again to the floor. The hall was in an uproar, and a couple of palms were knocked aside as President Phillips burst into the midst of the mêlée in time to restrain another smash from Rutledge's clenched fist.
"In the name of God, what's the row?" he asked.
"This nigger has assaulted Miss Helen," said Rutledge, gasping and choking with fury.
Mr. Phillips trembled with a fearful passion, but, seeing Helen apparently unhurt, pulled himself down to a terrible quiet.
"Get up," he growled to Hayward. "Now"—when the footman was on his feet—"what have you to say for yourself?"
Hayward looked for the hundredth part of a second in Helen's eyes.
"I have no excuse," he answered simply.
Only silence could greet such an admission. For five seconds the silence and the stillness were torturing.
As Mr. Phillips moved to speak, Helen took two quick steps to the negro's side. His renunciation, his silent, unhesitating committal of the issue—of his life—to her decision, had touched her heart.
"I am his wife," she said, as she took his hand and turned to face the circle of her friends.
[image]"'I AM HIS WIFE,' SHE SAID."
[image]
[image]
"'I AM HIS WIFE,' SHE SAID."
CHAPTER XXXII
Helen's announcement was made quietly, without any melodramatic display.
In the circle immediately surrounding her and her husband were her father and mother, Elise and Evans Rutledge, and Hal Lodge but just now coming to his senses and his feet. Behind these were Mrs. Hazard, Captain Howard, Senator Richland, and a gathering of other excited guests. For a space after Helen's speech the scene was steady and fixed as for a flashlight picture, and was photographed on Elise's brain: the incredulity on her father's face—the horror on that of Evans Rutledge—the perfectly restrained features of Howard—the quickly suppressed smile of Richland as he glanced at Evans in lightning comprehension of all the situation meant—the ghastly pallor of Mrs. Phillips as she sank voiceless in a dead faint—
"No—o!"
The harshly aspirated protest of Mr. Phillips was propelled from his lungs with a burst of indignant anger, but drawn out at the end into a pathetic quaver—and the scene dissolved.
Rutledge caught and lifted Mrs. Phillips whose collapse was unnoticed by her husband in his transfixed stare at Helen, and pushing back through the crowd was about to place her upon a settle in the hall; but at Elise's bidding he carried her up the broad stairs and left her in the care of her daughter and Lola Hazard. There could be no good-bye said—no time for it; but at the glance of dismissal Elise gave him from her mother's bedside—at the look of suffering in her eyes—his heart was like to burst.
Down-stairs the confusion was painful. The guests were hesitating between being accounted so ill-bred as to stare at a family scene, and running away from it as from a scourge.
To her father's unsteady denial Helen repeated her simple statement: "I am his wife."
"Since when?" Mr. Phillips demanded.
"A year ago last October."
The father looked about him as for help.
"Come along with me," he said. "Both of you. Good night, ladies and gentlemen," he added to the hesitating guests—and there was a breath of relief and a scattering for home.
* * * * *
With his hand upon Helen's arm, and Hayward following, President Phillips led the way to his offices.
"I am not to be disturbed," he told a servant after he had stopped at the door and waved Helen and Hayward into the room. "Ask Mrs. Phillips if she will please come here."
Entering, he motioned Hayward to a chair, and, taking Helen with him, went into the inner office and closed the door behind him.
"Now, my child," he said, with a break in his voice despite every effort to keep it steady, "tell me all about this, and we—we'll find a way out."
He patted her hand reassuringly.
"There's no way out, papa. I loved Hayward, and I married him."
"No, no, child, not love. You were infatuated—he was a footman and you are—"
"He was a gentleman," interrupted Helen.
"In a way, perhaps, but uncultured and common—how could—"
"He is a Harvard man," Helen cut in again, "a man of intelligence and education. He is—"
"But a weakling—no genuine Harvard man could be a menial—a flunkey—"
"He's not a weakling, papa. He stooped to the service for love of me. He loved me long before we came here—when he was a student at Harvard. It was so romantic, papa—he saw me first at a football game and he has loved me from that day. He was the hero of the game and he has yet the Harvard pennant I gave him—and, oh, he's a greater hero than that, papa—he was a soldier and he was the trooper that—wait a moment." Helen ran to the door.
"Here, Hayward, give me the knife," she called; and she came running back, holding it out to her father.
"The knife that the trooper stole!" she said, with a pitiful little attempt at gayety in her voice and face.
"What's that?" her father asked harshly.
"Why, papa, you surely don't forget the knife I gave you on your birthday? The one that was taken by the trooper who rescued you at Valencia?"
The light of understanding came to her father's eyes.
"Well, Hayward was the man, papa! He it was who saved your life to us—oh, how I have loved him for that! Just think, daddy dear, how often you have told me what a heroic thing it was—and for such a long time I have known it was Hayward and wanted so to tell you, but I couldn't."
"Why couldn't you?" demanded her father.
"Well, I found it out by accident when he caught me off my falling horse—there it is again, papa—he saved my life as well as yours—it was just the grandest thing the way he did it!—no wonder I have loved and married him—he's the sort that can take care of a woman—enough different from Bobby Scott, who couldn't stay in his own saddle!"
"But Mr. Scott is of an excellent family—distinguished for generations—while Hayward is a nobody—a—a nothing—no family and no recognized personal distinction or merit of his own—the commonest circus clown can ride a horse, my child."
"But he is personally distinguished, papa; and you have approved his merit by making him a lieutenant of cavalry."
"When? How?" the father asked.
"He is John H. Graham, papa—John Hayward Graham; and there can be no denying his fitness or ability, for you have certified to both."
Mr. Phillips saw he was estopped on that line; but it only made him angry and stirred his fighting blood.
"That's the reason," Helen continued, "that Hayward wouldn't let me tell you who he was or thing about his service to you. He wanted to obtain his commission absolutely on his merit and without appealing to your gratitude—wasn't it noble of him?"
A grunt was all the answer Helen got to her question.
"But his people, who are they? What sort of a family have you married into? Do you know?" Mr. Phillips demanded sharply.
"He lives with his mother—his father is dead—oh, I wish you could hear him tell about his father and mother, and his grandfather—it's just beautiful. I don't know whether he has any other relatives,—but that doesn't make any difference. I am not married to them, papa, and he's not responsible for his people but must be judged by his own personal character and excellence!"
In this last speech of Helen, Mr. Phillips thought he caught an echo of something he had heard himself say, and he winced a little: but it only added a spark more to his anger.
"But he's so far below you socially, Helen. You cannot be happy with him! You must remember that you are the President's daughter and—"
"And my husband," interrupted Helen, "is of the one order of American nobility—a man! I've thought about all that—the man's the thing, you said, papa—and besides, an army officer has no social superiors."
There was no mere echo in Helen's defence now. It was plain fighting her father with his own words: and it irritated him beyond endurance. His wrath burst through and threw off the shell of theories and sentiment which he had built up around himself and the man's real self spoke.
"But he's a negro, Helen!A negro! How could you!"
"Anegro, papa?" Helen questioned in unmixed surprise. "What has that to do with it? He's the finest looking man in Washington if he is—and didn't you tell Elise that that was nothing more than a colour of skin?—that the man was the thing?—that a—that a—negro must stand or fall upon his own merit and not upon his colour or caste?—and did you not say to Mr. Mackenzie that colour has nothing to do with a man's acceptability in your house?—and that—"
"Oh, my God! yes, my child, but I did not mea—you are too young, too young to be married, my child,—too young and too—yes, too young, and we must annul this marriage—yes, we must annul it, we must annul it—we can annul it without trouble, don't worry about it, child, don't worry—we can annul it, and—for you are too young, my little girl, my little girl, my little girl!"
At sight of her father's tears, and the trembling that shook him as he sank down in a chair, Helen's combative attitude began to melt and her eyes to fill.
"Yes, little girl, don't worry," he said, drawing her tenderly down within his arms, "don't worry, and we will have it annulled in short order."
"It's too late, papa," she spoke against his shoulder.
"No, no, precious heart, it's not too late—we can have it annulled—don't cry, and don't worry, we can have it annulled."
"But, papa," she said again as she pushed herself back so that he looked her full in the face, "it's too late, I tell you! It's—too—late!"—and with outburst of weeping she curled herself up against him.
With a dry sob of comprehension her father gathered her close to his heart.
* * * * *
For a long time after he heard the voices cease Hayward Graham waited in Mr. Phillips' outer office to learn his fate. He had caught some of the excited discussion—enough to be convinced of his father-in-law's opposition; but he could not be sure of the details. A servant had come in to say that Mrs. Phillips could not come to the office, and had knocked softly on the inner door several times while the discussion was at its warmest. Failing to get an answer, he had left his message with Hayward and retired. When the voices were quiet and the inner room became silent Hayward was on thequi vivefor developments; and stood facing the door in a fever of expectation.... His fever, however, had time to burn itself out.... In that long silence President Phillips fought his greatest battle.... The issue was predestined, of course. In his heart there was no passion at all comparable to his love for Helen, and that love won over all obstacles.... He saw clearly in what measure he was responsible for her undoing; and he came squarely to the mark with a courage that would faceallodds for his little girl—that would face a frowning world, a laughing, a mocking world—that would face his own soul even to the death—that her gentle heart might not be troubled.... He held her while her sobs shook themselves out, and then on and on he held her, close and warm, as if he would never again let her out of his sheltering arms,—while he gazed over her bowed head into the dying fire, and fixed and fortified his resolution.
At last Graham summoned courage to knock upon the door. President Phillips started as from a reverie.
"Come in," he said, rising unsteadily and placing Helen gently on her feet, his arm still about her.
"Why, certainly, Hayward, come in,"—and then he added after a short pause: "Helen has told me all about it, and, while I can't approve of the clandestine marriage, I shall do what I can to make my little girl happy—yes, I'll do what I can to make her happy.... And since this has been such an—unusual—evening I'll ask you to go now and come back to-morrow morning."
Hayward delivered the belated message from Mrs. Phillips, stood for a moment uncertain whether Helen would speak to him, and then turned to go.
"And do not wear your livery in the morning, Hayward," said Mr. Phillips.
"Very well, sir," said Hayward, as he withdrew.
CHAPTER XXXIII
When President Phillips came out of his office after dismissing Hayward, he found a score of reporters and newspaper correspondents fighting for places at the great front door. They were awaiting with what patience they could Mr. Phillips' pleasure in giving to the public an authoritative statement of his daughter's marriage.
The President, after he had obtained from Helen the details of time and place, and other items of interest, gave the press men the story. He customarily had his secretary to make statements to the newspaper people, but he chose to do this for himself: in his infinite loyalty to his little girl he was taking the situation by the horns. There was no elation in his manner, but there certainly was nothing to indicate his slightest objection to Helen's marriage, nor to Hayward Graham as his son-in-law. He gave a short sketch of that young man's life and excellences. He stated that he had not known Graham was either his footman or his daughter's husband when he had nominated him for a lieutenancy in the cavalry. He did not state that Graham had carried him off the battlefield at Valencia.
When he had finished with the men of the pencil Mr. Phillips went back to his office for Helen, and they sought the mother's room together. With another flood of tears Helen dropped on her knees by her mother's bed.
This scene was hardly less a trial for the father than had been the travail of his own soul. Here also must he win if he would save his child's happiness: and so, amid the tears and the sobs of the mother and daughters, and with misgivings and dread in his own heart, at first unflinchingly, then more zealously, and at last of necessity reserving nothing, he excused, and upheld, and vindicated, Helen.
Mrs. Phillips was too heart-broken to utter a word in opposition or condemnation, and Elise did not open her lips to speak. It was against accusing silence, therefore, and upbraiding tears, that the father made his desperate defence.... Such a debate can never be brought to any real finish; and it was at last only in exhaustion, Helen of nerves, her father of words, and Elise and her mother of lamentation, that the distressed family found peace—enough at least to permit of dispersal to their rooms for the night.
Elise was bowed down in grief for Helen, and for Helen she wept upon her pillow till the fountain of tears was dry: but even then there was no sleep for her. Her mind was painfully alive to her own personal problems, and her brain was awake the night long although weariness held her scalded eyelids down. The incident of the evening, like an electric storm, had clarified the haze of uncertainty for her heart—but only to plunge it into a more intense perplexity.
No longer unchoosing, her heart had spoken its choice. It were better had it never spoken at all; but there could be no mistaking its decree—she loved Evans Rutledge. As she had looked upon the three men who loved her in that brief time when Helen proclaimed her husband,she had known: and she had known that not for her was the man who in the fleetest moment could smile while her heart was breaking; nor for her that other, who, with his alien point of view, was untouched with her distress, and who with his perfect breeding—she resented it—could be so contained, so unmoved, in a situation which brought anguish to her. In the throes of that anguish her soul had turned, unerring, to its affinity in suffering, tothe heart that understoodand wept, not in a ready sympathy for her pain, but in the pains of a common grief.
In such manner Elise accounted for the reading of her heart's message. She believed that it had been undecipherable, confused, until that evening. Yet in all her distress then, and in the heartaches afterward resulting from its choosing, she was strangely happy because her heart had been true to the fancy of its earlier years, had been faithful to its first girlish inclination to love, had not misled her, had not been fickle in any degree, or false. She told herself with a tremor of rapturous, prideful humility that one man had been the master of her love from the beginning.
Thinking on it as she lay unsleeping through the night, she more than once forgot her tears and was lost in the transport of loving. She petted and caressed her heart for its constancy. She made excuses for its indecision in that long time when the man's love had seemed unworthy. She murmured tender things to it because it had prevailed, even though with a hesitating loyalty, against her head's capricious disapproval.
In her wanderings back and forth through the desert of her miseries on that night, she straggled back many times to this oasis of her love and stopped to soothe her troubled heart with its upspringing freshnesses.... And yet a wildness of perplexity was set about her, and she could not find a way out. She knew that Rutledge loved her—had loved her from the time he declared it on the flood-beaten rock in the St. Lawrence till the moment of his tender unspoken good-night three hours ago. That his love could not be shaken by any act not her own, she verily believed. But would he have loved her?—would he have dared to love her?—could he, with his blood-deep, immutable ideas,couldhe have loved her?—if he had known that his love would bring him to this unspeakable extremity, to this heart-breaking dilemma, where he must be traitor to himself and to her—or become brother-in-law to a negro?
Yes, he would havelovedher—her of all women—despite the slings and arrows of the most outrageous fortune, her heart told her: but, with prescience of such calamity, would he havespokenhis love?—would he have asked for that interview for to-morrow evening that he might tell it to her again? Was he not even now regretting that appointment? Was he not even nowpityinghis love for her? She must know. But how could she know? By what means could she learnthe truth? ... Way there was none: and yet shemust know. Doubt, uncertainty, here would be unendurable—and implacable for she could no longer find peace in indifference. She loved Evans Rutledge, and her love would fight, was fighting, desperately for its own.... But again, her own must be worthy, without compulsion, or she would repudiate it. Her heart's tenderness, virgin, single, measureless, she held too precious to barter for a love, withal sincere and beautiful, which were weighted with a minim of regret or limitation. Rather would she crush back its fragrance eternally in her own bosom, than dishonour it by exchange for less than the highest.... Yes, she must know.... And she couldnotknow.... And the morning came, bringing no relief for heart or brain....
Mr. Phillips was at some pains to intimate to his wife and Elise what he thought a proper pride demanded in the way of the "front" they should show to the public. Queer that he should have thought it necessary: but, unhappy man, he spoke out of his fears for his own steadiness. Elise, at least, had no need for his admonitions. Her pride was the pride of youth: the pride which finds all sufficiency in itself, and needs not the prop of outward circumstance which age requires to hold its chin in air.
It was this pride which gave Elise some hesitation in deciding what she should do with her promise to see Rutledge that evening. Pride said: "Meet him as if nothing has happened to disturb the serenity of your life. Do not show—to him, of all men—chagrin at this episodeen famille." But pride said: "No! Recall that engagement. Do not appear to hold him by so much as a hair. His love must be undistrained!"
She wavered between these conflicting demands of a consistent self-respect until the middle afternoon. Then the pride of her love overmastered the pride in her pride: and she wrote Rutledge a short note.
"MY DEAR MR. RUTLEDGE:—I find it necessary to change my plans for this evening. This will prevent my seeing you at Mrs. Hazard's as I promised. I am very sorry.
"ELISE PHILLIPS."
This was her afternoon at home; and after having dispatched the message to Rutledge Elise gave her mind over as far as might be to receiving her callers. They were more numerous than usual, despite many notable absences, and before they fairly well had begun to crowd in she realized that she was on parade. Oh, the duplicity of women! How they chirruped and chattered about every imaginable thing under heaven, while they listened and looked for only one thing: to find out what Helen's family really thought of her marriage.
This was not Mrs. Phillips' afternoon, nor Helen's and they did not appear—to have done so would have been to overdo composure: and so it was that Elise alone fenced with the dear, dear procession of sensation hunters who passed in and out of her doors. The women came in such flocks that she really did not have time to be embarrassed, for the sympathetic creatures who showed a disposition to sidle up close to her and begin with low-voiced confidences covert attacks upon her reserve were quite regularly bowled over by their oncoming followers before they could get their sly little schemes of investigation well going. It became fascinating to her to watch them defeat each other's plans, and she was somewhat regretful when they stopped coming. They stopped quite suddenly, for the reason that, in eagerness to see for herself, every daughter of Eve among them had made the White House the first stopping-place in her round of visits for the afternoon.
When the women were all come and gone, save two who evidently were trying to sit each other out, Captain Howard was announced. Elise was unfeignedly glad to see him and in a few minutes the two contesting ladies departed and left the Englishman and the girl together.
Captain Howard's coming was very refreshing, and Elise was grateful. He was the only person she had seen that day who did not seem to be conscious of the electric condition of the atmosphere, and she sat down to talk to him with a feeling of genuine relief and pleasure. His conversation began easily and unconstrainedly and ran along the usual lines with all freedom. As chance demanded he spoke of Helen several times in connection with one small matter, and another, and his manner of doing it was positively restful.
Elise felt so comfortable sitting there talking to him that for the first time she was impressed to think that it might be a nice thing to have him always to come and sit beside her and make her forget that things went wrong. The unfluttered ease and peacefulness of his manner and his words appealed very strongly to her distressed heart, and it warmed toward him in simple gratefulness.
Captain Howard was not without knowledge of the tense situation created by the announcement of Helen Phillips' marriage. He read the newspapers and could not but know that a tremendous sensation was a-blow. He was himself excited by the affair—in a steady-going fashion. It was as if a princess of the blood had eloped and married a—say a tradesman—or, maybe, a gentleman—of course it was sensational.
In his amorous state of mind, however, the captain thought kindly of the wealth of love which had inspired the young woman with such a sublime contempt for rank—for that very real and very puissant divinity, Rank. He also had shaken himself sufficiently free from the shackles of provincialism to be able to recognize the effect of democratic ideas in making possible and permissible such an event. Affairs of this sort could not be entirely unlooked for in a genuinely democratic society; and, since the President acquiesced in his daughter's choice and had no regrets, there was no more to be said. Altogether Captain Howard viewed the matter very calmly and philosophically.
Having this attitude, he had no hesitation after a time in speaking directly of Helen's marriage and its dramatic announcement. He was a gentleman in every instinct, was Captain Howard; and there could not be the slightest offence taken by Elise at his natural and sympathetic interest in what he considered a most romantic episode. But while one may not be offended or resentful, one may become nauseated. Captain Howard did not know of the chill of disgust and horror that was creeping over the girl's heart, nor notice the silence to which she was come. Her friendliness had been so graciously simple and so promising that his purpose had been formed and he was moving straight toward it, not noticing her silence further than to be glad she was saying nothing to create a diversion.... Elise felt that if she spoke she would be very, very rude.