Mortimer fairly grinned in his face.
“Your big mistake,” he sneered, “is in undervaluing others. You don't think I amount to very much, do you, Beverly? But I'm going to try to take care of myself all the same.” He laughed, showing his big teeth, and the vanity in him began to drug him. “No, you think I don't know much. But men like you and Quarrier will damn soon find out! I want you to understand,” he went on excitedly, forgetting the instinctive caution which in saner moments he was only too certain that his present business required—“I want you to understand a few things, my friend, and one of them is that I'm not afraid of Quarrier, and another is, I'm not afraid of you!”
“Leroy—”
“No, not afraid of you, either!” repeated Mortimer with an ugly stare. “Don't try any of your smug, aint-it-a-shame-he-drinks ways on me, Beverly! I'm getting tired of it; I'm tired of it now, by God! You keep a civil tongue in your head after this—do you understand?—and we'll get on all right. If you don't, I've the means to make you!”
“Are you crazy?”
“Not a bit of it! Too damn sane for you and Leila to hoodwink!”
“You are crazy!” repeated Plank, aghast.
“Am I? You and Leila can take the matter into court, if you want to—unless I do. And”—here he leaned forward, showing his teeth again—“the next time you kiss her, close the door!”
Then he went away up the marble steps and entered an elevator; and Plank, grave and pale, went out into the street and entered his big touring-car. But the drive up town and through the sunlit park gave him no pleasure, and he entered his great house with a heavy, lifeless step, head bent, as though counting every crevice in the stones under his lagging feet. For the first time in all his life he was afraid of a man.
The man he was afraid of had gone directly to Quarrier's office, missing the gentleman he was seeking by such a small fraction of a minute that he realised they must have passed each other in the elevators, he ascending while Quarrier was descending.
Mortimer turned and hurried to the elevator, hoping to come up with Quarrier in the rotunda, or possibly in the street outside; but he was too late, and, furious to think of the time he had wasted with Plank, he crawled into a hansom and bade the driver take him to a number he gave, designating one of the new limestone basement houses on the upper west side.
All the way up town, as he jolted about in his seat, he angrily regretted the meeting with Plank, even in spite of the cheque. What demon had possessed him to boast—to display his hand when there had been no necessity? Plank was still ready to give him aid at a crisis—had always been ready. Time enough when Plank turned stingy to use persuasion; time enough when Plank attempted to dodge him to employ a club. And now, for no earthly reason, intoxicated with his own vanity, catering to his own long-smouldering resentment, he had used his club on a willing horse—deliberately threatened a man whose gratitude had been good for many a cheque yet.
“Ass that I am!” fumed Mortimer; “now when I'm stuck I'll have to go at him with the club, if I want any money out of him. Confound him, he's putting me in a false position! He's trying to make it look like extortion! I won't do it! I'm no blackmailer! I'll starve, before I go to him again! No blundering, clumsy Dutchman can make a blackmailer out of me by holding hands with that scoundrelly wife of mine! That's the reason he did it, too! Between them they are trying to make my loans from Plank look like blackmail! It would serve them right if I took them up—if I called their bluff, and stuck Plank up in earnest! But I won't, to please them! I won't do any dirty thing like that, to humour them! Not much!”
He lay back, rolling about in the jouncing cab, scowling at space.
“Not much!” he repeated. “I'll shake down Quarrier, though! I'll make him pay for his treachery—scaring me out of Amalgamated! That will be restitution, not extortion!”
He was the angrier because he had been for days screwing up his courage to the point of seeking Quarrier face to face. He had not wished to do it; the scene, and his own attitude in it, could only be repugnant to him, although he continually explained to himself that it was restitution, not extortion.
But whatever it was, he didn't like to figure in it, and he had hung back as long as circumstances permitted. But his new lodgings and his new friends were expensive; and Plank, he supposed, was off somewhere fishing; so he hung on as long as it was possible; then, exasperated by necessity, started for Quarrier's office, only to miss him by a few seconds because he was fool enough to waste his temper and his opportunity in making an enemy out of a friend!
“Oh,” he groaned, “what an ass I am!” And he got out of his cab in front of a very new limestone basement house with red geraniums blooming on the window-sills, and let himself in with a latch-key.
The interior of the house was attractive in a rather bright, new, clean fashion. There seemed to be a great deal of white wood-work about, a wilderness of slender white spindles supporting the dark, rich mahogany handrail of the stairway; elaborate white grilles between snowy, Corinthian pillars separating the hall from the drawing-room, where a pale gilt mirror over a white, colonial mantel reflected a glass chandelier and panelled walls hung with pale blue silk.
All was new, very clean, very quiet; the maid, too, who appeared at the sound of the closing door and took his hat and gloves was as newly groomed as the floors and wood-work, and so noiseless as to be conspicuous in her swift, silent movements.
Yet there was something about it all—about the bluish silvery half-light, the spotless floors and walls, the abnormally noiseless maid in her flamboyant cap and apron—that arrested attention and fixed it. The soundless brightness of the house was as conspicuous as the contrast between the maid's black gown and her snow-white cuffs. There was nothing subdued about anything, although the long, silvery blue curtains were drawn over the lace window hangings; no shadows anywhere, no half-lights. The very stillness was gay with suspense, like a pretty woman's suppressed laughter glimmering in her eyes.
And into this tinted light, framed in palest blue and white, waddled Mortimer, appropriate as a June-bug scrambling in a Sèvres teacup.
“Anybody here?” he growled, leering into the drawing-room at a tiny grand piano cased in unvarnished Circassian walnut.
“There is nobody at home, sir,” said the maid.
“Music lesson over?”
“Yes, sir, at three.”
He began to ascend the stairway, breathing heavily, thud, thud over the deep velvet strip, his fat hand grasping the banister rail.
Somewhere on the second floor a small dog barked, and Mortimer traversed the ball and opened the door into a room hung with gold Spanish leather and pale green curtains.
“Hello, Tinto!” he said affably as a tiny Japanese spaniel hurled herself at him, barking furiously, then began writhing and weaving herself about him, gurgling recognition and welcome.
He sat down heavily in a padded easy-chair. The spaniel sprang into his lap, wheezing, sniffling, goggling its protruding eyes. Mortimer liked the dog, but he didn't like what the owner of the dog said about the resemblance between his own and Tinto's eyes.
“Get down!” he said; “you're shedding black and white hairs all over me.” But the dog didn't want to get down, and Mortimer's good nature permitted her to curl up on his fat knees and sleep that nervous, twitching sleep peculiar to overpampered toy canines.
The southern sun was warm in the room; the windows open, but not a silken hanging stirred.
Presently another maid entered, with an apple cut into thin wafers and a decanter of port; and Mortimer lay back in his chair, sopping his apple in the thick, crimson wine, and feeding morsels of the combination to himself and to Tinto at intervals until the apple was all gone and the decanter three-fourths empty.
It was very still in the room—so still, that Mortimer, opening his eyes at longer and longer intervals to peer at the door, finally opened them no more.
The droning gurgle that he made kept Tinto awake. When his lower jaw sagged, and he began to really show what snoring could be, Tinto, very nervous, got up and hopped down.
It was still daylight when Mortimer awoke, conscious of people about him. As he opened his eyes, a man laughed; several people seated by the windows joined in. Then, straightening up with an effort, something tumbled from his head to the floor and he started to rise.
“Oh, look out, Leroy! Don't step on my hat!” cried a girl's voice; and he sank back in his chair, gazing stupidly around.
“Hello! you people!” he said, amused; “I guess I've been asleep. Oh, is that you Millbank? Whose hat was that—yours, Lydia?”
He yawned, laughed, turning his heavy eyes from one to another, recognising a couple of young girls at the window. He didn't want to get up; but there is, in the society he now adorned, a stringency of etiquette known as “re-finement,” and which, to ignore, is to become unpopular.
So he got onto his massive legs and went over to shake hands with a gravity becoming the ceremony.
“How d'ye do, Miss Hutchinson? Thought you were at Asbury Park. How de do, Miss Del Garcia. Have you been out in Millbank's motor yet?”
“We broke down at McGowan's Pass,” said Miss Del Garcia, laughing the laugh that had made her so attractive in “A Word to the Wise.”
“Muddy gasoline,” nodded Millbank tersely—an iron-jawed, over-groomed man of forty, with a florid face shaved blue.
“We passed Mr. Plank's big touring-car,” observed Lydia Vyse, shifting Tinto to the couch and brushing the black and white hairs from her automobile coat. “How much does a car like that cost, Leroy?”
“About twenty-five thousand,” he said gloomily. Then, looking up, “Hold on, Millbank, don't be going! Why can't you all dine with us? Never mind your car; ours is all right, and we'll run out into the country for dinner. How about it, Miss Del Garcia?”
But both Miss Del Garcia and Miss Hutchinson had accepted another invitation, in which Millbank was also included.
They stood about, veils floating, leather decorated coats thrown back, lingering for awhile to talk the garage talk which fascinates people of their type; then Millbank looked at the clock, made his adieux to Lydia, nodded significantly to Mortimer, and followed the others down-stairs.
There was something amiss with his motor, for it made a startling racket in the street, finally plunging forward with a kick.
Lydia laughed as the two young girls in the tonneau turned to nod to her in mock despair; then she came running back up-stairs, holding her skirt free from her hurrying little feet.
“Well?” she inquired, as Mortimer turned back from the window to confront her.
“Nothing doing, little girl,” he said with a sombre smile.
She looked at him, slowly divesting herself of her light leather-trimmed coat.
“I missed him,” said Mortimer.
She flung the coat over a chair, stood a moment, her fingers busy with her hair-pegs, then sat down on the couch, taking Tinto into her lap. She was very pretty, dark, slim, marvellously graceful in her every movement.
“I missed him,” repeated Mortimer.
“Can't you see him to-morrow?” she asked.
“I suppose so,” said Mortimer slowly. “Oh, Lord! how I hate this business!”
“Hasn't he misused your confidence? Hasn't he taken your money?” she asked. “It may be unpleasant for you to make him unbelt, but you're a coward if you don't!”
“Easy! easy, now!” muttered Mortimer; “I'm going to shake it out of him. I said I would, and I will.”
“I should hope so; it's yours.”
“Certainly it's mine. I wish I'd held fast now. I never supposed Plank would take hold. It was that drivelling old Belwether who scared me stiff! The minute I saw him scurrying to cover like a singed cat I was fool enough to climb the first tree. I've had my lesson, little girl.”
“I hope you'll give Howard his. Somebody ought to,” she said quietly.
Then gathering up her hat and coat she went into her own apartments. Mortimer picked up a cheap magazine, looked over the portraits of the actresses, then, hunching up into a comfortable position, settled himself to read the theatrical comment.
Later, Lydia not appearing, and his own valet arriving to turn on the electricity, bring him his White Rock and Irish and the Evening Telegraph, he hoisted his legs into another chair and sprawled there luxuriously over his paper until it was time to dress.
About half past eight they dined in a white and pink dining-room furnished in dull gray walnut, and served by a stealthy, white-haired, pink-skinned butler, chiefly remarkable because it seemed utterly impossible to get a glimpse of his eyes. Nobody could tell whether there was anything the matter with them or not—and whether they were only very deep set or were weak, like an albino's, or were slightly crossed, the guests of the house never knew. Lydia herself didn't know, and had given up trying to find out.
They had planned to go for a spin in Mortimer's motor after dinner, but in view of the Quarrier fiasco neither was in the mood for anything.
Mortimer, as usual, ate and drank heavily. He was a carnivorous man, and liked plenty of thick, fat, underdone meat. As for Lydia, her appetite was as erratic as her own impulses. Her table, always wastefully elaborate, no doubt furnished subsistence for all the relatives of her household below stairs, and left sufficient for any ambitious butler to make a decent profit on.
“Do you know, Leroy,” she observed, as they left the table and sauntered back into the pale blue drawing-room, “do you know that the servants haven't been paid for three months?”
“Oh, for Heaven's sake,” he expostulated, “don't begin that sort of thing! I get enough of that at home; I get it every time I show my nose!”
“I only mentioned it,” she said carelessly.
“I heard you all right. It isn't any pleasanter for me than for you. In fact, I'm sick of it; I'm dead tired of being up against it every day of my life. When a man has anything somebody gets it before he can sidestep. When a man's dead broke there's nobody in sight to touch.”
“You had an opportunity to make Howard pay you back.”
“Didn't I tell you I missed him?”
“Yes. What are you going to do?”
“Do?”
“Of course. You are going to do something, I suppose.”
They had reached the gold and green room above. Lydia began pacing the length of a beautiful Kermanshah rug—a pale, delicate marvel of rose and green on a ground of ivory—lovely, but doomed to fade sooner than the pretty woman who trod it with restless, silk-shod feet.
Mortimer had not responded to her last question. She said presently: “You have never told me how you intend to make him pay you back.”
“What?” inquired Mortimer, turning very red.
“I said that you haven't yet told me how you intend to make Howard return the money you lost through his juggling with your stock.”
“I don't exactly know myself,” admitted Mortimer, still overflushed. “I mean to put it to him squarely, as a debt of honour that he owes. I asked him whether to invest. Damn him! he never warned me not to. He is morally responsible. Any man who would sit there and nod monotonously like a mandarin, knowing all the while what he was doing to wreck the company, and let a friend put into a rotten concern all the cash he could scrape together, is a swindler!”
“I think so too,” she said, studying the rose arabesques in the rug.
There was a little click of her teeth when she ended her inspection and looked across at Mortimer. Something in her expressionless gaze seemed to reassure him, and give him a confidence he may have lacked.
“I want him to understand that I won't swallow that sort of contemptible treatment,” asserted Mortimer, lighting a thick, dark cigar.
“I hope you'll make him understand,” she said, seating herself and resting her clasped, brilliantly ringed hands in her lap.
“Oh, I will—never fear! He has abused my confidence abominably; he has practically swindled me, Lydia. Don't you think so?”
She nodded.
“I'll tell him so, too,” blustered Mortimer, shaking himself into an upright posture, and laying a pudgy, clinched fist on the table. “I'm not afraid of him! He'll find that out, too. I know enough to stagger him. Not that I mean to use it. I'm not going to have him think that my demands on him for my own property resemble extortion.”
“Extortion?” she repeated.
“Yes. I don't want him to think I'm trying to intimidate him. I won't have him think I'm a grafter; but I've half a mind to shake that money out of him, in one way or another.”
He struck the table and looked at her for further sign of approval.
“I'm not afraid of him,” he repeated. “I wish to God he were here, and I'd tell him so!”
She said coolly: “I was wishing that too.”
For a while they sat silent, preoccupied, avoiding each other's direct gaze. When she rose he started, watching her in a dazed way as she walked to the telephone.
“Shall I?” she asked quietly, turning to him, her hand on the receiver.
“Wait. W-what are you going to do?” he stammered.
“Call him up. Shall I?”
A dull throb of fright pulsed through him.
“You say you are not afraid of him, Leroy.”
“No!” he said with an oath, “I am not. Go ahead!”
She unhooked the receiver. After a second or two her low, even voice sounded. There came a pause. She rested one elbow on the walnut shelf, the receiver tight to her ear. Then:
“Mr. Quarrier, please.... Yes, Mr. Howard Quarrier.... No, no name. Say it is on business of immediate importance.... Very well, then; you may say that Miss Vyse insists on speaking to him.... Yes, I'll hold the wire.”
She turned, the receiver at her ear, and looked narrowly at Mortimer.
“Won't he speak to you?” he demanded.
“I'm going to find out. Hush a moment!” and in the same calm, almost childish voice: “Oh, Howard, is that you? Yes, I know I promised not to do this, but that was before things happened!... Well, what am I to do when it is necessary to talk to you?... Yes, it is necessary!... I tell you it is necessary!... I am sorry it is not convenient for you to talk to me, but I really must ask you to listen!... No, I shall not write. I want to talk to you to-night—now! Yes, you may come here, if you care to!... I think you had better come, Howard.... Because I am liable to continue ringing your telephone until you are willing to listen.... No, there is nobody here. I am alone. What time?... Very well; I shall expect you. Good-bye.”
She hung up the receiver and turned to Mortimer:
“He's coming up at once. Did I say anything to scare him particularly?”
“One thing's sure as preaching,” said Mortimer; “he's a coward, and I'm dammed glad of it,” he added naively, relighting his cigar, which had gone out.
“If he comes up in his motor he'll be here in a few minutes,” she said. “Suppose you take your hat and go out. I don't want him to think what he will think if he walks into the room and finds you waiting. You have your key, Leroy. Walk down the block; and when you see him come in, give him five minutes.”
Her voice had become a little breathless, and her colour was high. Mortimer, too, seemed apprehensive. Things had suddenly begun to work themselves out too swiftly.
“Do you think that's best?” he faltered, looking about for his hat. “Tell Merkle that nobody has been here, if Quarrier should ask him. Do you think we're doing it in the best way, Lydia? By God, it smells of a put-up job to me! But I guess it's all right. It's better for me to just happen in, isn't it? Don't forget to put Merkle wise.”
He descended the stairs hastily. Merkle, of the invisible eyes, held his hat and gloves and opened the door for him.
Once on the dark street, his impulse was to flee—get out, get away from the whole business. A sullen shame was pumping the hot blood up into his neck and cheeks. He strove to find an inoffensive name for what he was proposing to do, but ugly terms, synonym after synonym, crowded in to characterise the impending procedure, and he walked on angrily, half frightened, looking back from moment to moment at the house he had just left.
On the corner he halted, breathing spasmodically, for he had struck a smarter pace than he had been aware of.
Few people passed him. Once he caught a glimmer of a policeman's buttons along the park wall, and an unpleasant shiver passed over him. At the same moment an electric hansom flew noiselessly past him. He shrank back into the shadow of a porte-cochere. The hansom halted before the limestone basement house. A tall figure left it, stood a moment in the middle of the sidewalk, then walked quickly to the front door. It opened, and the man vanished.
The hansom still waited at the door. Mortimer, his hands shaking, looked at his watch by the light of the electric bulbs flanking the gateway under which he stood.
There was not much time in which to make up his mind, yet his fright was increasing to a pitch which began to enrage him with that coward's courage which it is impossible to reckon with.
He had missed Quarrier once to-day when he had been keyed to the encounter. Was he going to miss him again through sheer terror? Besides, was not Quarrier a coward? Besides, was it not his own money? Had he not been vilely swindled by a pretended friend? Urging, lashing himself into a heavy, shuffling motion, he emerged from the porte-cochere and lurched off down the street. No time to think now, no time for second thought, for hesitation, for weakness. He had waited too long already. He had waited ten minutes, instead of five. Was Quarrier going to escape again? Was he going to get out of the house before—
Fumbling with his latch-key, but with sense enough left to make no noise, he let himself in, passed silently through the reception-hall and up to the drawing-room floor, where for a second he stood listening. Then something of the perverted sportsman sent the blood quivering into his veins. He had him! He had run him down! The game was at bay.
An inrush of exhilaration steadied him. He laid his hand on the banister and mounted, gloves and hat-brim crushed in the other hand. When he entered the room he pretended to see only Lydia.
“Hello, little girl!” he said, laughing, “are you surprised to—”
At that moment he caught sight of Quarrier, and the start he gave was genuine enough. Never had he seen in a man's visage such white concentration of anger.
“Quarrier!” he stammered, for his acting was becoming real enough to supplant art.
Quarrier had risen; his narrowing eyes moved from Mortimer to Lydia, then reverted to the man in the combination.
“Rather unexpected, isn't it?” said Mortimer, staring at Quarrier.
“Is it?” returned Quarrier in a low voice.
“I suppose so,” sneered Mortimer. “Did you expect to find me here?”
“No. Did you expect to find me?” asked the other, with emphasis unmistakable.
“What do you mean?” demanded Mortimer hoarsely. “What the devil do you mean by asking me if I expected to find you here? If I had, I'd not have travelled down to your office to-day to see you; I'd have come here for you. Naturally people suppose that an engaged man is likely to give up this sort of thing.”
Quarrier, motionless, white to the lips, turned his eyes from one to the other.
“It doesn't look very well, does it?” asked Mortimer; and he stood there, smiling, danger written all over him. “It's beginning rather early,” he continued, with a sneer. “Most engaged men with a conscience wait until they're married before they return to the gay and frivolous. But here you are, it seems, handsome, jolly, and irresistible as ever!”
Quarrier looked at Lydia, and his lips moved: “You asked me to come,” he said.
“No; you offered to. I wished to talk to you over the wire, but “—her lip curled, and she shrugged her shoulders—“you seemed to be afraid of something or other.”
“I couldn't talk to you in my own house, with guests in the room.”
“Why not? Did I say anything your fashionable guests might take exception to? Am I likely to do anything of that kind?—you coward!”
Quarrier stood very still, then noiselessly turned and made one step toward the door.
“One moment,” interposed Mortimer blandly. “As long as I travelled down town to see you, and find you here so unexpectedly, I may as well take advantage of this opportunity to regulate a little matter. You don't mind our talking shop for a moment, Lydia? Thank you. It's just a little business matter between Mr. Quarrier and myself—a matter concerning a few shares of stock which I once held in one of his companies, bought at par, and tumbled to ten and—What is the fraction, Quarrier? I forget.”
Quarrier thought deeply for a moment; then he raised his head, looking full at Mortimer, and under his silky beard an edge of teeth glimmered. “Did you wish me to take back those shares at par?” he asked.
“Exactly! I knew you would! I knew you'd see it in that way!” cried Mortimer heartily. “Confound it all, Quarrier, I've always said you were that sort of man—that you'd never let a friend in on the top floor, and kick him clear to the cellar! As a matter of fact, I sold out at ten and three-eighths. Wait! Here's a pencil. Lydia, give me that pad on your desk. Here you are, Quarrier. It's easy enough to figure out how much you owe me.”
And as Quarrier slowly began tracing figures on the pad, Mortimer rambled on, growing more demonstrative and boisterous every moment. “It's white of you, Quarrier—I'll say that! Legally, of course, you could laugh at me; but I've always said your business conscience would never let you stand for this sort of thing. 'You can talk and talk,' I've told people, many a time, 'but you'll never convince me that Howard Quarrier hasn't a heart.' No, by jinks! they couldn't make me believe it. And here's my proof—here's my vindication! Lydia, would you mind hunting up that cheque-book I left here before dinn—”
He had made a mistake. The girl flushed. He choked up, and cast a startled glance at Quarrier. But Quarrier, if he heard, made no motion of understanding. Perhaps it had not been necessary to convince him of the conspiracy.
When he had finished his figures he reviewed them, tracing each total with his pencil's point; then quietly handed the pad to Mortimer who went over it, and nodded that it was correct.
Lydia rose. Quarrier said, without looking at her: “I have a blank cheque with me. May I use one of these pens?”
So he had brought a cheque! Had he supposed that a cheque might be necessary when Lydia called him up? Was he prepared to meet any demand of hers, too, even before Mortimer appeared on the scene?
“As long as you have a cheque with you, Howard,” said Lydia quietly, “suppose you simply add to Mr. Mortimer's amount what you had intended to offer me?”
He stared at her without answering.
“That little remembrance for old time's sake. Don't you recollect?”
“No,” said Quarrier.
“Why, Howard! Didn't you promise me all sorts of things when I wanted to go to your friend Mr. Siward, and explain that it was not his fault I got into the Patroons Club? Don't you remember I felt dreadfully that he was expelled—that I was simply wild to write to the governors and tell them how I took Merkle's clothes and drove to the club and waited until I saw a lot of men go in, and then crowded in with the push?”
Mortimer was staring at Quarrier out of his protruding eyes. The girl leaned forward, deliberate, self-possessed, the red lips edged with growing scorn.
“That was a dirty trick!” said Mortimer heavily. He took the pad, added a figure, passed it to Lydia, and she coolly wrote a total, underscoring it heavily.
“That is the amount,” she said.
Quarrier looked at the pad which she had tossed upon the desk. Then he slowly wetted his pen with ink, and, laying the loose cheque flat, began to fill it in. Afterward he dried it, and, reading it carefully, pushed it aside and rose.
“It wouldn't be advisable for you to stop payment, you know,” observed Mortimer insolently, lying back in his chair and stretching his legs.
“I know,” said Quarrier, pausing to turn on them a deathly stare. Then he went away. After awhile they heard the door close. But there was no sound from the electric hansom, and Mortimer rose and walked to the window.
“He's gone,” he said.
Lydia stood at the desk, examining the cheque.
“We ought to afford a decent touring-car now,” she suggested—“like that yellow and black Serin-Chanteur car of Mr. Plank's.”
The heat, which had been severe in June, driving the last fashionable loiterer into the country, continued fiercely throughout July. August was stifling; the chestnut leaves in the parks curled up and grew brittle; the elms were blotched; brown stretches scarred the lawns; the blazing colour of the geranium beds seemed to intensify the heat, like a bed of living coals.
Nobody who was anybody remained in town—except some wealthy business men and their million odd employés; but the million, being nobodies, didn't count.
Nobody came into town; that is to say that a million odd strangers came as usual, swelling the sweltering, resident population sufficiently to animate the main commercial thoroughfares morning and evening, but they didn't count; the money they spent was, however, very carefully counted.
The fashionable columns of the newspapers informed the fashionable ex-urbanated that the city was empty—though the East Side reeked like a cattle-pen, and another million or two gasped on the hot, tin roofs under the stars, or buried their dirty faces in the parched park grass.
What the press meant to say was that the wealthy section of the city within the shadow of St. Patrick's twin white spires and north of Fifty-ninth Street was as empty and silent as an abandoned gold-mine. Which was true. Miles of elaborate, untenanted dwellings glimmered blank under the moon and stood tomb-like in barren magnificence against the blazing blue of noon. Miles of plate-glass windows, boarded, or bearing between lowered shade and dusty pane the significant parti-coloured placard warning the honest thief, stared out at the heated park or, in the cross streets, confronted each other with inert hauteur, awaiting the pleasure of their absent owners.
The humidity increased; the horses' heads hung heavily under their ridiculously pitiful straw bonnets. When the sun was vertical nobody stirred; when the bluish shadows began to creep out over baked sidewalks, broadening to a strip of superheated shade, a few stirred abroad in the deserted streets; here a policeman, thin blue summer tunic open, helmet in hand, swabbing the sweat from forehead and neck; there a white uniformed street sweeper dragging his rubber-edged mop or a section of wet hose; perhaps a haggard peddler of lemonade making for the Park wall around the Metropolitan Museum where, a little later, the East Side would venture out to sit on the benches, or the great electric tourists' busses would halt to dump out a living cargo—perhaps only the bent figure of a woman, very shabby, very old, dragging her ancient bones along the silent splendour of Fifth Avenue, and peering about the gutters for something she never finds—always peering, always mumbling the endless, wordless, soundless miserere of the poor.
Quarrier's huge limestone mansion, looming golden in the sun, was tenantless; its owner, closing even The Sedges, his Long Island house, and driven northward for a breath of air, was expected at Shotover.
The house of Mrs. Mortimer was closed and boarded up; the Caithness mansion was closed; the Ferralls', the Bonnesdels', the Pages', the Shannons', Mrs. Vendenning's, all were sealed up like vaults. A caretaker apparently guarded Major Belwether's house, peeping out at intervals from behind the basement windows. As for Plank's great pile of masonry, edging the outer Hundreds in the north, several lighted windows were to be seen in it at night, and a big yellow and black touring-car whizzed down town from its bronze gateway every morning with perfect regularity.
For there was a fight on that had steadily grown hotter with the weather, and Plank had little time to concern himself with the temperature or to mop his red features over the weather bureau report. Harrington and Quarrier were after him, horse, foot, and dragoons; Harrington had even taken a house at Seabright in order to be near in person; and Quarrier's move from Long Island to Shotover House was not as flippant as it might appear, for he had his private car there and a locomotive at Black Fells Crossing station, and he was within striking distance of Rochester, Utica, Syracuse, and Albany. Which was what Harrington thought necessary.
The vast unseen machinery set in motion by Harrington and Quarrier had begun to grind in May; and, at the first audible rumble, the aspect of things financial in the country changed. A few industrials began to rocket, nobody knew why; but the market's first tremor left it baggy and spineless, and the reaction, already overdue, became a sodden and soggy slump. Nobody knew why.
The noise of the fray in the papers, which had first excited then stunned the outside public, continued in a delirium of rumour, report, forecast, and summing up at the week's end.
Scare heads, involving everybody and everything, from the District-Attorney to Plank's office boy, succeeded one another. Plank's name headed column after column. Already becoming familiar in the society and financial sections, it began to appear in neighbouring paragraphs. Who was Plank? And the papers told people with more or less inaccuracy, humour, or sarcasm. What was he trying to do? The papers tried to tell that, too, making a pretty close guess, with comments good-natured or ill-natured according to circumstances over which somebody ought to have some control. What was Harrington trying to do to Plank—if he was trying to do anything? They told that pretty clearly. What was Quarrier going to do to Plank? That, also, they explained in lively detail. A few clergymen who stuck to their churches began to volunteer pulpit opinions concerning the ethics of the battle. A minister who was generally supposed to make an unmitigated nuisance of himself in politics dealt Plank an unexpected blow by saying that he was a “hero.” Some papers called him “Hero” Plank for awhile, but soon tired of it or forgot it under the stress of the increasing heat.
Besides Plank scarcely noticed what the press said of him. He was too busy; his days were full days, brimming over deep into the night. Brokers, lawyers, sycophants, tipsters, treacherous ex-employés of Quarrier, detectives, up-State petty officials, lobbyists from Albany, newspaper men, men from Wall Street, Broad Street, Mulberry Street, Forty-second Street—all these he saw in units, relays, regiments—either at his offices or after dinner—and sometimes after midnight in his own house. And these were only a few, picked from the interested or disinterested thousands who besieged him with advice, importunity, threats, and attempted blackmail. And he handled them all in turn, stolidly but with decision. His obstinate under lip protruded further and further with rare recessions; his heavy head was like the lowered head of a bull. Undaunted, inexorable, slow to the verge of stupidity at times, at times swift as a startled tiger, this new, amazing personality steadily developing, looming higher, heavier, athwart the financial horizon—in stature holding his own among giants, then growing, gradually, inch by inch, dominated his surrounding level sky line.
The youth in him was the tragedy to the old; the sudden silence of the man the danger to the secretive. Harrington was already an old man; Quarrier's own weapon had always been secrecy; but the silence of Plank confused him, for he had never learned to parry well another's use of his own weapon. The left-handed swordsman dreads to cross with a man who fights with the left hand. And Harrington, hoary, seamed, scarred, maimed in onslaughts of long forgotten battles, looked long and hard upon this weird of his own dead youth which now rose towering to confront him, menacing him with the armed point of the same shield behind which he himself had so long found shelter—the Law!
The closing of the courts enforced armed truces along certain lines of Plank's battle front; the adjournment of the legislature emptied Albany. Once it was rumoured that Plank had passed an entire morning with the Governor of the greatest State in the Union and that the conference was to be repeated. A swarm of newspaper men settled about the Governor's summer cottage at Saratoga, but they learned nothing, nor could they find a trace of Plank's tracks in the trodden trails of the great Spa.
Besides, the racing had begun; Desmond, Burbank, Sneed, and others of the gilded guild had opened new club-houses; the wretched, half-starved natives in the surrounding hills were violating the game-laws to distend the paunches of the overfed with five-inch troutlings and grouse and woodcock slaughtered out of season; so there was plenty of copy for newspaper men without the daily speculative paragraph devoted to the doings of Beverly Plank. Some scandal, too—but newspapers never touch that; and after all it was nobody's affair that Leroy Mortimer drove a large yellow and black Serin-Chanteur touring-car, new model, all over Saratoga county. Perhaps the similarity of machines gave rise to the rumour of Plank's presence; perhaps not, because the car was often driven by a tall, slender girl with dark eyes and hair; and nobody ever saw that sort of pretty woman in Plank's Serin, or saw Leroy Mortimer for many days without a companion of that species.
Mortimer's health was excellent. The races had not proved remunerative however, and his new motor-car was horribly expensive. So was Lydia. And he began to be seriously afraid that by the end of August he would be obliged to apply to Quarrier once more for some slight temporary token of that gentleman's goodwill. He told Lydia this, and she seemed to agree with him. This pleased him. She had not pleased him very much recently. For one thing she was becoming too friendly with some of his friends—Desmond in particular.
Plank, it was known, had opened his great house at Black Fells. His servants, gamekeepers, were there; his stables, kennels, greenhouses, model stock-farm—all had been put in immaculate condition pending the advent of the master. But Plank had not appeared; his new sea-going steam yacht still lay in the East River, and, at rare intervals, a significant glimmer of bunting disclosed the owner's presence aboard for an hour or two. That was all, however; and the cliff-watchers at Shotover House and the Fells looked seaward in vain for the big Siwanoa, as yacht after yacht, heralded by the smudge on the horizon, turned from a gray speck to a white one, and crept in from the sea to anchor.
The Ferralls were at Shotover with their first instalment of guests. Sylvia was there, Quarrier expected—because Kemp Ferrall's break with him was not a social one, and Grace's real affection for Sylvia blinded neither her nor her husband to the material and social importance of the intimacy. Siward was not invited; neither had an invitation to him been even discussed in view of what Grace was aware of, and what everybody knew concerning the implacable relations existing between him, personally, and Howard Quarrier.
Bridge, yachting, and motoring were the August sports; the shooting set had not yet arrived, of course; in fact there was still another relay expected before the season opened and brought the shooting coterie for the first two weeks. But Sylvia was expected to last through and hold over with a brief interlude for a week's end at Lenox. So was Quarrier; and Grace, always animated by a lively but harmless malice, hoped to Heaven that Plank might arrive before Quarrier left, because she adored the tension of situations and was delightedly persuaded that Plank was more than able to hold his own with her irritating cousin.
“Oh, to see them together in a small room,” she sighed ecstatically in Sylvia's ear; “I'd certainly poke them up if they only turned around sulkily in the corners of the cage and evinced a desire to lie down.”
“What a mischief-maker you are,” said Sylvia listlessly; and though Grace became very vivacious in describing her plans to extract amusement out of Plank's hoped-for presence Sylvia remained uninterested.
There seemed, in fact, little to interest her that summer at Shotover House; and, though she never refused any plans made for her, and her attitude was one of quiet acquiescence always—she never expressed a preference for anything, a desire to do anything; and, if let alone, was prone to pace the cliffs or stretch her slim, rounded body on the sand of some little, sheltered, crescent beach, apparently content with the thunderous calm of sea and sky.
Her interest, too, in people had seemingly been extinguished. Once or twice she did inquire as to Marion's whereabouts, and learned that Miss Page was fishing in Minnesota somewhere but would return to Shotover when the shooting opened. Somebody, Captain Voucher, perhaps, mentioned to somebody in her hearing that Siward was still in New York. If she heard she made no sign, no inquiry. The next morning she remained abed with a headache, and Grace motored to Wendover without her; but Sylvia spent the balance of the day on the cliffs, and played Bridge with the devil's own luck till dawn, piling up a score that staggered Mr. Fleetwood, who had been instructing her in adversary play a day or two before.
The hot month dragged on; Quarrier came; Agatha Caithness arrived a few days later—scheme of the Ferralls involving Alderdene!—but the Siwanoa did not come, and Plank remained invisible. Leila Mortimer arrived from Swan's Harbour toward the middle of the month, offering no information as to the whereabouts of what Major Belwether delicately designated as her “legitimate.” But everybody knew he was at last to be crossed off and struck clean out, and the ugly history of the winter, now so impudently corroborated at Saratoga, gave many a hostess the opportunity long desired. Mortimer, as far as his own particular circle was concerned, was down and out; Leila, accepted as a matter of course without him, remained quietly uncommunicative. If the outward physical change in her was due to her marital rupture people thought it was well that it had come in time, for she bloomed like a lovely exotic; and her silences and enthusiasms, and the fragrant freshness of her developing attitude toward the world first disconcerted, then amused, then touched those who had supposed themselves to be so long a buckler for her foibles and a shield for her caprice.
“Gad,” said Alderdene, “she's well rid of him if he's been choking her this long—the rank, rotten weed that he is, sapping the life from her so when she hung over toward another fellow's bush we thought she was frail in the stem—God bless us all for a simpering lot of blatherskites!”
And if, in the corner of the gun-room, there was a man among them who had ever ventured to hold Leila's smooth little hand, unrebuked, in days gone by, none the less he knew that Alderdene spoke truth; and none the less he knew that what witness he might be called to bear at the end of the end of all must only incriminate himself and not that young matron who now, before their very eyes, was budding again, reverting to the esoteric charm of youth reincarnated.
“A suit before a referee would settle him,” mused Voucher; “he hasn't a leg to stand on. Lord! The same cat that tripped up Stephen Siward!”
Fleetwood's quick eyes glimmered for an instant in Quarrier's direction. Quarrier was in the billiard-room, out of earshot, practising balk-line problems with Major Belwether; and Fleetwood said: “The same cat that tripped up Stephen Siward. Yes. But who let her loose?”
“It was your dinner; you ought to know,” said Voucher bluntly.
“I do know. He brought her”—nodding toward the billiard-room.
“Belwether?”
“No,” yawned Fleetwood.
Somebody said presently: “Isn't he one of the Governors? Oh, I say, that was rather rough on Siward though.”
“Yes, rough. The law of trespass ought to have operated; a man's liable for the damage done by his own live-stock.”
“That's a brutal way of talking,” said somebody. And the subject was closed with the entrance of Agatha in white flannels on her way to the squash court where she had an appointment with Quarrier.
“A strange girl,” said somebody after she had disappeared with Quarrier.
“That pallor is stunning,” said a big, ruddy youth, with sunburn on his neck and forehead.
“It isn't healthy,” said Fleetwood.
“It attracts me,” persisted the ruddy young man, voicing naively that curious truth concerning the attraction that disease so often exerts on health—the strange curiosity the normal has for the sub-normal—that fascination of the wholesome for the unhealthy. It is, perhaps, more curiosity than anything, unless, deep hidden under the normal, there lie one single, perverted nerve.
Sylvia, passing the hall, glanced in through the gun-room door with an absentminded smile at the men and their laughing greeting, as they rose with uplifted glasses to salute her.
“The sweetest of all,” observed a man, disconsolately emptying his glass. “Oh irony! What a marriage!”
“Do you know any girl who would not change places with her?” asked another.
Every man there insisted that he knew one girl at least who would not exchange Sylvia's future for her own. That was very nice of them; it is to be hoped they believed it. Some of them did—for the moment, anyhow. Then Alderdene, blinking furiously, emitted one of his ear-racking laughs; and everybody, as usual, laughed too.
“You damned cynic,” observed Voucher affectionately.
“Somebody,” said Fleetwood, “insists that she doubled up poor Siward.”
“She never met Siward until she was engaged to Howard,” remarked Voucher.
“Well?”
“Oh, don't you consider that enough to squelch the story?”
“Engaged girls,” mused Alderdene, “never double up except at Bridge.”
“Everybody has been or is in love with Sylvia Landis,” said Voucher, “and it's a man's own fault if he's hit. Once she did it, innocently enough, and enjoyed it, never realising that it hurt a man to be doubled up.”
Fleetwood yawned again and said: “She can have me to-morrow. But she won't. She's tired of the sport. Any girl would get enough with the pack at her heels day in and day out. Besides she's done for—unless she looses Quarrier and starts on a duke-hunt over in Blinky's country!... Is anybody on for a sail? Is anybody on for anything? No? Oh, very well. Shove that decanter north by west, Billy.”
This was characteristic of the dog-days at Shotover. The dog-days in town were very different; the city threw open the parks to the poor at night; horses fell dead in the streets; pallid urchins, stripped naked, splashed and rolled and screeched in the basin of the City Hall fountain under the indifferent eyes of the police.
As for Plank he was too busy to know what the thermometer was about; he had no time for anything outside of his own particular business except to go every day to the big, darkened house in lower Fifth Avenue where the days had been hard on Siward and the nights harder.
Siward, however, could walk now, using his crutches still, but often stopping to gently test his left foot and see how much weight he was able to bear on it—even taking a tentative step or two without crutch support. He drove when he thought it prudent to use the horses in the heat, usually very early in the morning, though sometimes at night with Plank when the latter had time to run his touring-car through the park and out into the Bronx or Westchester for a breath of air.
But Plank wanted him to go away, get out of the city for his convalescence, and Siward flatly declined, demanding that Plank permit him to do his share in the fight against the Inter-County people.
And Plank, utterly unable to persuade him, and the more hampered because of his anxiety about Siward—though that young man did not know it—wore himself out providing Siward with such employment in the matter as would lightly occupy him without doing any good to the enemy.
So Siward, stripped to his pajamas, pored over reams of typewritten matter and took his brief walking exercise in the comparative cool of the evening and drove when he dared use his horses; or, sitting beside Plank, whizzed northward through the starry darkness of the suburbs.
When it was that he first began to like Plank very much he could not exactly remember. He was not, perhaps, aware of how much he liked him. Plank's unexpected fits of shyness, of formality, often and often amused him. But there was a subtler feeling under the unexpressed amusement, and, beneath all, a constantly increasing sub-stratum of respect. Too, he found himself curiously at ease with Plank, as with one born to his own caste. And this feeling, unconscious, but more and more apparent, meant more to Plank than anything that had ever happened to him. It was a tonic in hours of doubt, a pleasure in his brief leisure, a pride never to be hinted at, never to be guessed, never to be dreamed of by any living soul save Plank alone.
Then, one sultry day toward the last week in August, a certain judge of a certain court, known among some as “Harrington's judge,” sent secretly for Plank. And Plank knew that the crisis was over. But neither Harrington nor Quarrier dreamed of such a thing.
Fear sat heavy on that judge's soul—the godless, selfish fear that sends the first coward slinking from the councils of conspiracy to seek immunity from those slowly grinding millstones that grind exceeding fine.
Quarrier at Shotover, with his private car and his locomotive within an hour's drive, strolled with Sylvia on the eve of her departure for Lenox with Leila Mortimer; then, when their conference was ended, he returned to Agatha, calmly unconscious of impending events.
Harrington, at Seabright, paced his veranda, awaiting this same judge, annoyed as two boats came in without the expected guest. And never for one instant did he dream that his creature sat closeted with Plank, tremulous, sallow, nearing the edge of cringing avowal—only held back from utter collapse by the agonising necessity of completing a bargain that might save himself from the degradation of the punishment that had seemed inevitable. All day long he sat with Plank. Nobody except those two knew he was there. And after a very long time Plank consented that nobody else except Siward and Harrington and Quarrier should ever know. So he called up Harrington on the telephone, saying that there was, in the office, somebody who desired to speak to him. And when Harrington caught the judge's first faint, stammered word he reeled where he stood, ashen, unbelieving, speechless. The shaking but remorseless voice went on, dinning horribly in his ear, then ceased, and Plank's heavy voice sounded the curt coup de grâce.
Harrington was an old man, a very old man, mortally hurt; but he steadied himself along the wall of his study to the desk and sank into the chair.
There he sat, feeling the scars of old wounds throbbing, feeling his age and the tragedy of it, and the new sensation of fear—fear of the wraith of his own youth, wearing the mask of Plank, and menacing him with the menace he had used on others so long ago—so very long ago.
After a little while he passed a thin hand over his eyes, over his gray head, over the mouth that all men watched with fear, over the shaven jaw now grimly set, but trembling. His hand, too, shook with palsy as he wrote, painfully picking out the words and figures of the cipher from his code-book; but he closed his thin lips and squared his unsteady jaw and wrote his message to Quarrier:
“It is all up. Plank will take over Inter-County. Come at once.”
And that was all there was to be done until he could come into Plank's camp with arms and banners, a conquered man, cynical of the mercy he dared not expect and which, in all his life, he had never, never shown to man, to woman, or to child.
Plank slept the sleep of utter exhaustion that night; the morning found him haggard but strong, cool in his triumph, serious, stern faced, almost sad that his work was done, the battle won.
From his own house he telegraphed a curt summons to Harrington and to Quarrier for a conference in his own office; then, finishing whatever business his morning mail required, put on his hat and went to see the one man in the world he was most glad for.
He found him at breakfast, sipping coffee and wrinkling his brows over the eternal typewritten pages. And Plank's face cleared at the sight and he sat down, laughing aloud.
“It's all over, Siward,” he said. “Harrington knows it; Quarrier knows it by this time. Their judge crawled in yesterday and threw himself on our mercy; and the men whose whip he obeyed will be on their way to surrender by this time.... Well! Haven't you a word?”
“Many,” said Siward slowly; “too many to utter, but not enough to express what I feel. If you will take two on account, here they are in one phrase: thank you.”
“Debt's cancelled,” said Plank, laughing. “Do you want to hear the details?”
They talked for an hour, and, in the telling, even Plank's stolidity gave way sufficient to make his heavy voice ring at moments, and the glimmer of excitement edge his eyes. Yet, in the telling, he scarcely mentioned himself, never hinted of the personal part—the inspiration which was his alone; the brunt of the battle which centred in him; the tireless vigilance; the loneliness of the nights when he lay awake, perplexed with doubt and nobody to counsel him—because men who wage such wars are lonely men and must work out their own salvation. No, nobody but his peers could advise him; and he had thought that his enemy was his peer, until that enemy surrendered.
The narrative exchanged by Plank in return for Siward's intensely interested questions was a simple, limpid review of a short but terrific campaign that only yesterday had threatened to rage through court after court, year after year. In the sudden shock of the cessation from battle, Plank himself was a little dazed. Yet he himself had expected the treason that ended all; he himself had foreseen it. He had counted on it as a good general counts on such things, confidently, but with a dozen plans as substitutes in case that plan failed—each plan as elaborately worked out to the last detail as though it alone existed as the only hope of victory. But if Siward suspected something of this it was not from Plank that he learned it.
“Plank,” he said at last, “there is nothing in the world that men admire more than a man. It is a good deal of a privilege for me to tell you so.”
Plank turned red with surprise and embarrassment, stammering out something incoherent.
That was all that was said about the victory. Siward, unusually gay for awhile, presently turned sombre; and it was Plank's turn to lift him out of it by careless remarks about his rapid convalescence, and the chance for vacation he so much needed.
Once Siward looked up vacantly: “Where am I to go?” he asked. “I'd as soon stay here.”
“But I'm going,” insisted Plank. “The Fells is all ready for us.”
“The Fells! I can't go there!”
“W-what?” faltered Plank, looking at Siward with hurt eyes.
“Can't you—don't you understand?” said Siward in a low voice.
“No. You once promised—”
“Plank, I'll go anywhere except there with you. I'd rather be with you than with anybody. Can I say more than that?”
“I think you ought to, Siward. A—a fellow feels the refusal of his offered roof-tree.”
“Man! man! it isn't your roof I am refusing. I want to go; I'd give anything to go. If it were anywhere except where it is, I'd go fast enough. Now do you understand? If—if Shotover House and Shotover people were not next door to the Fells, I'd go. Now do you understand?”
Plank said: “I don't know whether I understand. If you mean Quarrier, he's on his way here, and he'll have business to keep him here for the next few months, I assure you. But”—he looked very gravely across at Siward—“if you don't mean Quarrier—” He hesitated, ill at ease under the expressionless scrutiny of the other.
“Do you know what's the matter with me, Plank?” he asked at length.
“I think so.”
“I have wondered. I wonder now how much you know.”
“Very little, Siward.”
“How much?”
Plank looked up, hesitated, and shook his head: “One infers from what one hears.”
“Infers what?”
“The truth, I suppose,” replied Plank simply.
“And what,” insisted Siward, “have you inferred that you believe to be the truth? Don't parry, Plank; it isn't easy for me, and I—I never before spoke this way to any man.... It is likely I should have spoken to my mother about it.... I had expected to. It may be weakness—I don't know; but I'd like to talk a little about it to somebody. And there's nobody fit to listen, except you.”
“If you feel that way,” said Plank slowly, “I will be very glad to listen.”
“I feel that way. I've been through—some things; I've been pretty sick, Plank. It tires a man out; a man's head and shoulders get tired. Oh, I don't mean the usual reaction from self-contempt, disgust—the dreadful, aching sadness of it all which lasts even while desire, stunned for the moment, wakens into craving. I don't mean that. It is something else—a deathly, mental solitude that terrifies. I tell you, no man except a man smitten by my malady knows what solitude can be!... There! I didn't mean to be theatrical; I had no intention of—”
“Go on,” cut in Plank heavily.
“Go on!... Yes, I want to. You know what a pillow is to a tired man's shoulders. I want to use your sane intelligence to rest on a moment. It's my brain that's tired, Plank.”
Although everybody had cynically used Plank, nobody had ever before found him a necessity.
“Go on,” he said unsteadily. “If I can be of use to you, Siward, in God's name let me be, for I have never been necessary to anybody in all my life.”
Siward rested his head on one clinched hand: “How much chance do you think I have?” he asked wearily.
“Chance to get well?”
“Yes.”
Plank considered for a moment, then: “You are not trying, Siward.”
“I have been trying since—since March.”
“Since March?”
“Yes.”
Plank looked at him curiously: “What happened in March?”
“Had I better tell you?”
“You know better than I.”
Siward, cheek crushed against his fist, his elbow on the desk, gazed at him steadily:
“In March,” he said, “Miss Landis spoke to me. I've made a better fight since.”
Plank's serious face darkened. “Is she the only anchor you have?”
“Plank, I am not even sure of her. I have made a better fight since then; that is all I dare say. I know what men think about a man like me; I knew they demand character, pride, self-denial. But, Plank, I am driving faster and faster toward the breakers, and these anchors are dragging. For it is not, in my case, the physical failure to obey the will; it is the will itself that has been attacked from the first. That is the horror of it. And what is there behind the will-power to strengthen it? Only the source of will-power—the mind. It is the mind that cannot help me. What am I to do?”
“There is a spiritual strength,” said Plank timidly.
“I have never dreamed of denying it,” said Siward. “I have tried to find it through the accepted sources—accepted by me, too. God has not helped me in the conventional way or through traditional methods; but that has not inclined me to doubt Him as the tribunal of last resort,” he added hastily. “I don't for a moment waver in faith because I am ignorant of the proper manner to approach Him. The Arbiter of all knows that I desire to be decent. He must be aware, too, that all anchors save one have failed to hold me.”
“You mean—Miss Landis?”
“Yes. It may be weakness; it may be to my shame that the cables of pride and self-respect, even the spiritual respect for the Highest, cannot hold me when this one anchor holds. All I know is that it holds—so far. It held me at Shotover; it holds me again, now. And the rocks were close abeam, Plank—very close—when she spoke to me over the wires, through the rain, that dark day in March.”
He moistened his lips feverishly.
“She said that I might see her. I have waited a long time. I have taken my fighting chance again and I've won out, so far.”
He looked up at Plank, curiously embarrassed: