CHAPTER XVISEVERING THE TIE
Herbert went in, with a presentiment that something was going to happen deleterious to himself.
Leaving him a moment, Louie went to her father’s room. Both he and her mother were asleep; and, assured of that, she returned to Herbert and told him very briefly what was in her mind. She did not say that anything in his conduct had influenced her. She spoke at first only of her own changed position, and her wish to shield him from what he would regret.
“They call my father bad names,” she said, “and perhaps he deserves them; but he is my father, and I shall stand by him. With you it is different, and you must not be bound to the daughter of a speculator—a thief—a gambler—and they say my father is all three, and they have threatened to tar and feather him if he appeared in the street, and have talked of arrest and State’s prison. I cannot expect you to bear that disgrace, together with your father’s anger, when he knows, as he must know some time. I told you you were free when the crash first came, and you would not accept your freedom,but you must now, I am in earnest. And then—” She hesitated, breathing hard before she continued, “I have promised to pay his debts, and if I live I shall keep my word.”
“How?” Herbert asked.
“By my voice,” she answered. “You remember what Miss Percy said of it. She may be right—she may be wrong. I believe she was right. At all events I shall try. She has not forgotten me. I had a letter from her to-day after you left me. God moved her to write, I am sure, when my need was greatest, for she has never written before since she went abroad last fall. She is in Paris, and still has Marchesi in mind for me, and offered to bear the expense of my lessons if father would send me there. I think, if we sell everything, the creditors will not care if I keep enough for us to live on, and take me to Paris, when father and mother get well.”
She paused and Herbert said, “You mean the stage, of course; opera, perhaps?”
“Yes, if that brings the most money,” Louie answered. “It will take years to pay the debts, and I may be old—thirty perhaps—before it is done. You cannot wait all that time, and it is better to end the relations between us now. They have always been rather peculiar, and I have never liked the secrecy which put me in a false position. Hush!” she continued, as she saw how white Herbert turned as he tried to speak. “I do not say you have notloved me, but the chain has fretted you at times, and fettered your actions, as it has mine; and it is better for us both to be free—friends always, but free. There will then be no more fear of your father; and if you wish to call upon me sometimes, you will not have to come by stealth as if afraid some one would know it. Don’t interrupt me, please,” she continued, warming up to the subject. “I have seen it, and felt it, and it has hurt me a little; and only the belief that you really loved me has kept me from telling you that I must be one thing or the other—either acknowledged as your promised wife, or nothing more to you than a friend. Father’s failure has precipitated matters, and I give you your freedom, and your ring. I will get it.”
She left the room, while Herbert sat unable to realize what had befallen him, or that Louie could mean what she said. He could hear her moving in the chamber overhead, but he could not see her holding the ring to the light, and kissing it once as she had never kissed him.
She did not cry, but was dangerously near it when she at last returned to the room where Herbert was walking up and down, nervous and excited, and shaking as if he were cold.
“Here it is,” she said, offering it to him. “I have never worn it except in my room, where it seemed a mockery rather than a symbol of the tie between us. Take it,” she persisted, as he made no sign that he heard her.
“Louie,” he began, in a choking voice. “You must not cast me off like this. It is very sudden, and you don’t give me time to think. I have been a coward, I’ll admit, but try me again. There is some manhood in me, although I admit I have not shown much since your father’s failure. I was a cad not to join you to-night, but upon my soul I believe you did better alone. Try me again, I will tell father everything. I will, upon my word, and every one shall know you are to be my wife. Try me, Louie.”
Louie shook her head. With every step she had taken she had felt herself growing lighter and happier, with a sense of freedom, and Herbert’s persuasive words did not move her.
“You can’t wait ten or twenty years for me, and you cannot marry the daughter of a man disgraced as my father is. In a short time you will see it as I do. You couldn’t speak for father to-night, and you surely could not identify yourself with him as his son-in-law if the worst should happen, although in your excitement you think you can.”
This fling at his cowardice stung Herbert to the quick, making him redouble his arguments why she should reconsider. It was of no use. Louie was resolved, and when at last he left the house, the ring was in his pocket, and there was an ache in his heart such as he had never known before, and the world looked very dark.
When he reached home he found his father up and evidently waiting for him.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “Not to see the Grey girl again on such a night as this?”
“Yes, I have been to see the Grey girl,” Herbert answered, doggedly, and in a moment his father grew angry.
“Haven’t I told you to quit it?” he asked.
There was a moment’s silence, a shutting of his teeth together, and then Herbert began:
“I have quit it, or she has. She has thrown me over—given me my congé. I hope you are satisfied.”
“Given you what? Thrown you over? Grey’s girl thrown you over? Given you the mitten? What do you mean?” the judge exclaimed.
All Herbert’s fear of his father was gone—how or why, he did not know, but it was gone, and his voice was very distinct and steady as he told the story of his engagement from beginning to end, omitting nothing, while his father listened with his jaw dropped and every possible expression upon his face. Herbert expected a storm and was prepared for it, and there was one, but not for him, although he was called a “fool” several times, and told that he was well out of the Grey girl’s meshes; then the storm burst on her head.
“The hussy! the upstart! Who does she think she is to throw you over?” the judge began. “She’s like her father, who, I’ve no doubt, thinks thisminute he is better than I am. He always did think so; never paid me his rent without making me feel that he was the landlord and I the tenant, even when he lived in White’s Row. That’s his cut. No doubt his chin is in the air now. The gambler! the cheat! And his daughter refused my son! She, that Grey girl! The trollop! Does she know what she is doing when she refused you? I wouldn’t have believed it. The minx!”
“Stop, father!” Herbert said. “I’ll not hear a word against Louie. She was to have been my wife, and my heart aches for her now.”
“Let it ache a spell! Do you good! You’ll get over it, and be glad; for, by the Lord Harry, as I’ve told you, if you had stuck to her, I’d ‘a’ cut you. Yes, I’d ‘a’ cut you! But she—well she’s plucky. Refused you! My son! It beats me! Yes, it does. Going to pay the debts? I’d laugh. Why, she’ll be a hundred before she can do it. Who is going to hear her sing? Nobody! It’s a good riddance for you—but that girl! I wouldn’t have thought it. No, sir! Going on the stage, is she! I like that. How would Mrs. Herbert White, the actress, sound? Or would she take some fancy name? Most of ’em do. Going to sing and pay the debts! Lord Harry, it makes me laugh! I must tell your mother the kind of a daughter she has missed!”
He might have rambled on an hour longer if Herbert had not stopped him by saying,
“Don’t talk any more about it, now or ever. You will never be disgraced by having an actress in the family. I would not mind. I love her so much that I would take her no matter what she did, or what her father has done. I have not thought so all the time. I’ve been a coward, and now that I have lost her I’d give a great deal to get her back. I hate myself when I think how I sat hiding in the dark and let her go in alone among those men, and she so dainty and pretty, and—”
“Bold!” the judge interrupted him.
Herbert made a gesture of impatience and went on:
“She is not bold. She is far from it. She was pleading for her father and her face was white as a sheet when she came out, and she accomplished more single-handed than both you and I could have done.”
“I don’t know ‘bout that. Don’t know ‘bout that,” the judge exclaimed, not willing to admit that any one could have more influence than he—Judge White, if he chose to exert it.
“I know,” Herbert continued, “and there was not a man there who did not think more highly of her and less hard towards her father for what she said. I am ashamed that we who owe her so much have done nothing. But, father, it is not too late and if you can do a favor to Mr. Grey, do it. Show him some attention for my sake and Louie’s. Rememberwhat she did for us a year ago. It was her suggestion that saved our bank. She worked till she fainted. You were grateful then. You were going to make her a present and mother was to write her a note, and you have done nothing of the sort. You have slighted her and let no occasion pass to speak ill of her father, and I don’t like it.”
Herbert was showing a courage and manliness, for which Louie would have respected him could she have seen him. And strange to say, his father did not resent it, neither did he reply, but when Herbert had finished his speech and left the room he said to himself:
“The boy is hard hit with that little filly, but he’ll get over it, and by George, he is more than half right. I hain’t done the square thing, and it’s funny how different I feel towards Grey from what I did now I know there’s no danger in that quarter. I’m sorry I didn’t make her a present last Christmas, as I said I would; but Herbert blew so about that bellus thing I thought to get her, that I forgot it. I did, upon my soul, and I s’pose Susan forgot to write, but I’ll do something. I don’t know what. I’ll speak to Susan.”
He found her in their sleeping room preparing for bed and putting her front hair in crimping pins.
“Susan,” he began, “I’ve got the greatest yarn to tell you. What do you think that Grey girl hasbeen and done? In the first place she was engaged to Herbert—”
Mrs. White stopped crimping her hair and dropped into a chair.
“Is engaged to Herbert!” she exclaimed, and the judge replied, “Was engaged, but isn’t now. She has thrown him over! Think of it! Refused Herbert! My son! And is going to sing on the stage to pay her father’s debts. There’s grit for you! And the boy is all broke up, and says he aches all over.”
“What do you mean?” Mrs. White asked, resuming her crimping, while her husband repeated in substance what Herbert had told him of his engagement and of Louie’s visit to the Session and its result.
“I could have stopped it, of course, but I didn’t,” he said, “but I must say the girl is plucky, and she did do me a good turn and no mistake, and, Susan, I don’t b’lieve you ever wrote that note.”
“What note?” his wife asked, and the judge replied, “Lord Harry, is your memory so short? You was going to send her a nicely worded note of thanks, and I was to give her a present at Christmas, and we didn’t do neither, but ’tain’t too late. Their house is to be sold, they must live somewhere, and I b’lieve I’ll let ’em have that house in White’s Row, where they used to live, free, if they want it. Yes, sir, that’ll be better than the bellus thing, and will be heaping coals. Yes, sir!”
Just why he was to heap coals, unless it were that Louie had refused his son, was not clear to him; but having decided on the house in White’s Row, he went to bed in a much calmer frame of mind than Herbert, who sat through nearly the entire night, reviewing the past as connected with Louie, and feeling that life could never be again to him just what it had been when she was his guiding star. There was much for which he blamed himself—much for which he was sorry, and yet—he could not help the little word yet, which came stealing into his mind with a suggestion that the present condition of things was better than the old. His father knew all, and had not annihilated him. Then, Mr. Grey might die. He did not quite believe he hoped he would; but, if he should, and the disgrace be forgotten, and Louie get over the Quixotic idea of the stage, and paying the debts, which would take so many years, she might come back to him, and he be able to take her, without fear of his father or the world.
There was comfort in this, and his heart was not quite as sore, or the world as dark, when, just as it was growing light, he fell into a troubled sleep.