CHAPTER XVIITHE SHADOW OF DEATH
Mr. Grey had been so impressed with a conviction that his creditors would proceed against him and was so nervous on the subject that Louie decided to tell him that nothing was to be done. This was the morning after the meeting, when his mind seemed clearer and he said to her, “What are they doing aboutme? I mean, will they proceed against me? They can, you know.”
“No,” Louie replied. “Some of them are a good deal excited, of course; but they will do nothing. I have that from the best authority, so, don’t worry any more.”
“They are kind,” he answered, “to leave me in peace. I am punished enough with my conscience, which goads me like so many demons.”
He was silent a moment and then his eyes grew brighter again, with an expression Louie did not like, and his old comical smile played round his mouth as he said,
“It would be a big thing to send a dying man to prison, wouldn’t it? and do a lot of good. I deserve it, though, but am glad not to go. And now, cover me up. I am very cold all the time—some likeHarry Gill, you know, shivering with his three coats and I don’t know how many blankets.”
He laughed again—a laugh pitiful to see; and Louie covered him up and wiped the cold sweat from his face, and sat down beside him with a sinking heart as she saw how fast he was failing, both bodily and mentally. The strain he had endured for years, with the recent excitement, was telling fearfully upon a constitution never very strong. As the days went by he asked no questions about the business, and answered none very coherently, but lay all day with his eyes closed as if asleep. Louie knew he was not sleeping, for if she left the room he always looked after her, and smiled when she came back. Once, when he heard the sound of wheels in the lane, he said to her:
“That is our horses, Jack and Jill; where are they going?”
Louie’s eyes were full of tears which she could not keep back, as she told him that Jack and Jill had been sold with the carriage, and were being driven away.
“Sold to whom?” he asked.
“Godfrey Sheldon,” she replied. “He offered so big a price that Mr. Blake advised us to take it. Do you care?”
“No,” he said. “Nothing matters now for me, but I would like to see my bays once more. Do you think you could help me to the window?”
“I’ll try,” Louie replied, and stepping from his bed he tottered to the window just as the carriage reached the highway.
Jack and Jill had not been exercised for some time and their heads were high in the air and it was with difficulty the driver could keep them from breaking into a run in their delight to be out again.
“Beautiful bays! I hope Mr. Sheldon will be kind to them. They have never had a blow from me. They wouldn’t know what it meant,” Mr. Grey said, and Louie replied, “He will be kind; he told me so, and promised faithfully not to cut off their tails, as is the cruel fashion of the day, or curb them with one of those straight checks which fret them so. I never see a horse with his head reined so high that he can almost see his own back that I do not wish his master was obliged to have his head pulled back, while he was driven up hill and down, in heat and cold, dragging heavy loads after him and trying in vain to ease his aching neck.”
“Yes, yes, Mr. Grey answered feebly. “It is wicked; it is cruel; and I am glad Jack and Jill will not be subjected to it. Good-bye, my pets, good-bye. I shall never see you again.”
He waved his hands towards his horses just disappearing from sight and then went back to bed, where he lay for a while very quiet. Then he roused up and said:
“I don’t know anything about the business.Everything is misty and unreal, except that terrible day when the mob came, and I wanted to kill myself. That, with what led to it, is always before me. Just now my brain is clearer and I want to know what has been done.”
Very briefly Louie told him what had been sold and what debts were paid.
“And the house?” he asked. “Is that sold?”
“No,” Louie said. “It is in the market but no one has bought it. The price is so high, but Mr. Blake advises us not to sell for less. He has a purchaser in mind.”
“Yes,” Mr. Grey replied. “The price may seem high, but I have spent more than that upon it and I’d like to stay here as long as I live. It is a beautiful place, but if a purchaser is found, don’t hesitate on my account. We can find some cheap place. May be we can move into the little house in which we once lived in White’s Row. Nancy told me it was vacant. That would be a joke and a kind of retributive justice, too. I guess the judge would be glad to rent it to us again. He’d say the end of our see-saw was down pretty low.”
He laughed aloud and then relapsed into silence, with his eyes closed and his whole body as motionless as if he were dead.
Mrs. Grey had been persuaded to take another room, and was nearly as helpless as her husband with nervous prostration, from which she did notrally, and thus every care was left to Louie, whose burden grew heavier as the summer waned and the autumn came on.
On the day after her interview with Herbert she had answered Miss Percy’s letter, telling her of the trouble which had come upon them and of her resolve to pay the debts, if possible, and adding that when her father and mother were able to be left she should come to Paris if they could afford the expense of the journey.
“Whatever you expend for me I shall pay again, for something tells me I shall succeed,” she wrote, taking upon herself another debt in addition to the one already assumed. But she felt brave and hopeful, knowing nothing of the difficulties which attend the career she had marked out for herself.
Miss Percy seemed to her a tower of strength, and she waited anxiously for a reply to her letter. It came at last, full of sympathy and hope and promises to do whatever could be done should the chance come to do it. Evidently Miss Percy had heard more of the failure than Louie had told her, and her great, kind heart went out warmly towards the young girl buffeting the tide of misfortune alone.
No mention was made of the Lansings, and Louie did not know they were abroad. Occasionally a thought of Fred crossed her mind with a feeling that in some way he would have stood by her as Herberthad not done. But she resolutely put such thoughts aside as a wrong to Herbert. She was no longer bound to him, and she was glad; but sometimes in the night, when she was too tired and anxious to sleep, there would come over her a feeling of desolation which made her heart ache for the love she had put from her, and which at times had made her very happy. Then she would rally and say, “It is better so; a great deal better,” and be herself again.
She did not see Herbert after her talk with him until just before he went back to college in the autumn. He had been to the Adirondacks, with some of his classmates and their sisters,—girls with big hats and tailor gowns, who were up-to-date in every way, and while rambling and climbing and hunting among the mountains and lakes he began to find that life might be tolerably endurable without Louie. There had been full accounts of the failure in the papers, and he had heard it discussed many times, and Mr. Grey spoken of as a man who deserved the weight of the law, if he did not get it. His companions knew nothing of his former relations with Louie, nor did he enlighten them, and he was conscious of a feeling of relief that the Greys were nothing to him.
“If Louie were all alone it would be different,” he thought, “and I would not give her up, but I cannot take the family.”
He went to see her on his return from the Adirondacks,and just before he left for Yale. He had a little time to wait, and as he glanced around the elegantly furnished room he wondered how long the family could stay there, and where they would go when obliged to leave. His father had wondered so, too; and as the house in White’s Row was still vacant, and his generous fit still on him, he had said to Herbert, in speaking of the Greys:
“Yes, sir. They’ve done the fair thing, or the girl has, for she is boss and all hands. Her mother don’t amount to shucks! They’ve sold their diamonds and paid debts, and sold their horses and carriage, and, Lord Harry, who do you s’pose has bought ’em, the horses and carriage, I mean: Godfrey Sheldon! Yes, sir! Godfrey Sheldon! Rides round town with his girls, big as life; and, if you’ll b’lieve it, has got the Grey coachman, too, and his clothes! Think of it! I stripped Dave quicker than wink! It was bad enough to have Tom Grey in livery, but Godfrey Sheldon! Lord Harry! What a farce! I wonder he didn’t buy the diamonds and have his wife and girls flaunt ’em morning, noon and night as they would! They don’t know any better! Why, your mother won’t wear hers except it’s something swell like our party! I hear their house is sold, or going to be, and they’ll have to leave, and I’ll tell you what I’ve thought of doing as a kind of recompense for what the Grey girl did for us. I hain’t forgot it. No, sir! I didn’t sendthat bellus thing, you made such a row, and now how would it do to offer them, rent free, the house in White’s Row where they used to live? It is empty and has been for quite a spell. I’d paper some of the rooms. You always have to with new tenants!”
“I think it would be an insult!” Herbert answered hotly, expressing himself so fully on the subject that his father gave up his magnanimous intentions with regard to the tenement in White’s Row.
Herbert was thinking of this and what a change it would be for the family when Louie came in, looking so hollow-eyed and worn that he could scarcely suppress a cry of dismay as he arose to meet her.
“Louie! Louie! Poor little Louie!” he said, and his chin quivered, while Louie broke down entirely and cried for a moment as Herbert had never seen any one cry before.
Then she brushed her tears away, and, smiling up at him, said, “I did not mean to give way like this, but the sight of you brought the old happy times back, before I knew what sorrow was; and father is bad this morning, and mother, too, and everything is so changed; but I am glad to see you. I knew you would come.”
She tried to seem natural and asked him of his trip, and how soon he was going back to college, and told how kind everybody was to her, from Nancy Sharp, who, now that all their old servants had goneand they had only a young girl, was their mainstay in the kitchen. The house was sold at last she said, to a stranger, whose name she didn’t know.
“It is very curious. Don’t know his name! How can that he?” Herbert asked, and Louie replied: “No one would buy it, the price was so high, till Mr. Blake bought it and paid the money down, and then in a few days told us he had sold it to some one who does not care to occupy it at present, and said we could stay here rent free as long as we like. Mr. Blake will not tell me who it is—says he is not at liberty to do so. Who do you suppose it can be? I wish I knew.”
Something in Herbert’s face made Louie start suddenly and exclaim, “It isn’t you?”
“No,” Herbert said bitterly. “It isn’t I. I wish to Heaven it were or that I had the means to help you. Oh, Louie, Louie! is it all over between us?”
A strong suspicion of the unknown friend had entered Herbert’s mind, and with it a fierce pang of jealousy which prompted him to cry out for what he had lost, and which had never seemed dearer to him than now when she stood before him, like some fair flower beaten by the storm, but sweet and lovely still.
Louie was surprised and drew away from him quickly. She had no wish to renew their old relations and knew it could not be.
“It is all over; it must be,” she said. “We settled that, you know; but we are friends; the best of friends, always; and I am glad you came to see me. There is no one in the world except father and mother whom I like half as well as I do you; and now good-by. I hear Nancy Sharp’s voice in the kitchen, and that means a battle with the maid, if there is anything out of order, as there probably is. Nancy is sharp by nature as well as by name! and makes no allowance for what she calls ‘sozzlin ways,’ and Betty is rather that way. I must go to them. Good-by.”
She gave him her hand, which he pressed hard between both his own, but could not speak, for the lump in his throat choking him. So, without a word, he went away, feeling that everything was surely over between himself and Louie, and feeling envious and jealous of the stranger who had bought the Grey house and whose identity he guessed.
What business had he to meddle, and what would Louie say if she knew, as she must some time know, but not from him? he thought. He would be generous enough to both to keep his suspicions to himself, and not even hint them to his father, to whom he merely said that the house was sold to some stranger, who, for the present, would allow the family to stay there rent free.
Such generosity the judge could not understand. He had suggested the tenement in White’s Row,and thought himself very magnanimous to do it, and had even spoken of his intention to some of his acquaintances, who elevated their eyebrows and said he was very kind, while inwardly they laughed at the idea. The judge, however, was not one to understand insinuations derogatory to himself, and felt that he was exceedingly generous.
“Same as givin’ ’em a hundred dollars, square!” he said, and he was thinking of writing his offer to Louie, when Herbert dampened his zeal, first by telling him it was an insult, and next that the Grey house was given to the family rent free, and there would be no necessity for them to move either into White’s Row or elsewhere.
Such kindness from a stranger passed him, he said, and the man must be either crazy or a millionaire. The fact, however, helped the Greys in his estimation. Somebody with money must think a great deal of them, and the day after Herbert left for New Haven he suggested to his wife that they should call at the Greys.
“Most everybody is calling,” he said, “and I don’t want to be the only dog in the manger.”
Mrs. White, who had a headache, declined, and the judge went alone, gotten up with a good deal of care, in his second best clothes, with a flower in his button hole, and gloves, which he seldom wore, on his hands. He wished to impress Louie with a sense of what she had lost when she declined an alliancewith his family. She received him courteously, but did not seem at all abashed, and answered his questions civilly.
Neither her father, nor her mother could see him, she said, but she would tell them he had called, and she thanked him for coming.
“Oh, that’s a mere nothing,” he replied, with a pompous wave of his hand. “We are taught in the good book to have charity, you know, and I mean to have it. Yes, I do, and I was goin’ to offer you my tenement for nothing—the one you used to live in, when I heard you was to stay here. You’ve no idea who the man is that gives you the rent? It’s amazing!”
Louie had been growing stiffer and more dignified as he talked, for she understood perfectly that he was trying to patronize her and did not wish for his patronage. His mention of the White Row tenement brought a scarlet flush to her cheek and an angry gleam to her eyes. She could go back to Bay Cottage willingly, if they went of their own free will and seeking, but as dependents on Herbert’s father, never! And she did not even thank him for what he had proposed to do.
It would not be necessary for them move at present, thanks to some kind friend whom they did not know, but whom they should pay in time, she said, with her head held high and something in her manner which made the judge feel small beside her.
She would not shame the White pedigree, he thought, admiring her in spite of his pride.
“Oh, yes, certainly. We all hope your father will be on his feet again before long. Remember me to him and your mother; if there’s anything we can do, call on us. I hain’t forgot the run. No, I hain’t! and I feel friendly, I do, and don’t care a cent about losing the back rent on the bank. No, I don’t! I can afford that. Yes, I can! Good day!” he said, with another wave of his hand, which he might have offered to Louie, if she had not stood with her hands clasped behind her.
“Good-morning, sir!” she said, standing quite still, as he went out, thinking to himself, “Gritty and plucky and proud, and, by the Lord Harry, handsome as blazes. Herbert might do worse—if she wa’n’t Grey’s daughter. Well, I’ve done my duty, and needn’t pray to be delivered from uncharitableness.”
The judge was in quite a peaceful frame of mind, as he drove away behind his blacks, while Louie looked after him with a feeling of contempt and a wonder that Herbert could be so nice with such a conceited father. It was the first time she had given a thought to the back rent on the bank, of which he had reminded her, and for which he did not “care a cent!”
“But it shall be paid at once. We will not be indebted to Judge White,” she said, as she went to her father, telling him of the judge’s call andimitating his manner so perfectly that her father laughed aloud and told her she would make a good actress if she chose to employ her talent in that direction.
“The judge meant to be kind,” he said, “and I am much obliged to him for his intended offer of Bay Cottage. I might have been glad to accept it but for this unknown friend who so generously allows us to stay here. I’ve no idea who it is?”
“No,” Louie answered. “I’ve no idea, for Mr. Blake does not give me the slightest hint, but it is very kind in him, whoever he is. Everybody is kind. I did not know we had so many friends.”
“It is for you and your mother, not for me, I do not deserve any consideration,” Mr. Grey replied, the old sad, hopeless look settling on his face which had brightened a little when Louie described the judge’s visit; but whether he deserved kindness or not he had it from almost every source and the failure seemed forgotten as the days went by, and the shadows grew darker and darker in the room where Louie kept her tireless watch. Even Godfrey Sheldon came over with Jack and Jill, offering to take the sick man for an airing, if he were able to go.
Louie thanked him and said, “Father will never go out again till he is carried out. The doctor says so, and I know it without his saying. He is weaker than usual this morning, but I will tell him of your kindness.”
Her father was sleeping when she returned to him, and continued drowsy until late in the afternoon, when he roused up, seemingly in possession of all his faculties, which for a few days had been rather misty. How his eyes were bright and his voice natural, as he asked first how his wife was and then what time it was.
“You are better,” Louie said, smoothing his hair, which was growing white so fast.
“No, daughter,” he answered, “not really better; it is the reaction which sometimes comes before the last change, and is given me so that I may tell you what I must tell to somebody. Confession is good for the troubled conscience, they say, and I must try it, and see if there is help for this conscience of mine, which constantly conjures up all the specters of the past—and there are so many of them.”
He was silent a moment, and then said, “Sit down by me while I tell you, and hold my hand, and when you drop it I shall know that you think of me as I deserve.”
She sat down by him, and, taking his hand, said to him, “I am listening and I shall not drop your hand.”