MARGARET DEARING passed a restless, tumultuous night following the disturbing visit to Dora. In the evening she had joined her uncle at a game of whist in a nervous, abstracted way; she had played the piano in a spiritless fashion for her brother, who had come in tired from a long drive into the country, where he had performed a successful surgical operation; and then she had gone up to her bedchamber and thrown off the mask. She kept it off, for there was only the starlight to witness her white, blank face and piteously staring eyes as she sat at her window looking out. From the stretch of darkness below only one salient feature presented itself: it was the steadily burning light in Dora Barry's window. In her fancy Margaret saw the beautiful young mother bending over a table writing—writing to Fred Walton in answer to the last letter he had written. She rose suddenly, exasperated beyond endurance, and threw herself on her bed.
She rose late the next morning and breakfasted in the big, sombre dining-room after the General and Wynn had gone to town. The servant said something she hardly heard, to the effect that Wynn had received a letter which called him to Augusta, and that he might be absent for several days. Breakfast over, Margaret strolled down to a favorite seat of hers on the lawn. Why was it, she asked herself, with poignant chagrin, that she welcomed the position as putting her into the full view of any one chancing to look from Dora Barry's cottage? Had she been very subtle in self-analysis and very frank touching her own desires, she would have admitted the subtle suggestion of her attitude, her apparent absorption in the magazine that she held in hand; must it not convey to her watching neighbor a conviction that the conversation of the afternoon just passed had been of no possible moment to her—that it had, in fact, caused no ripple in the even current of her satisfied existence.
Indeed, the pages of the magazine were held so firmly before her unshifting eyes that she failed to notice that Lionel had crossed over the fence and was coming toward her holding an envelope in his little hand. He was dressed in a becoming gray suit, and his yellow, carefully brushed tresses caught the morning sunlight till they seemed a mass of delicate golden flames. The grass he daintily trod was wet with dew, and opalescent jewels seemed to blaze and fall at his feet. Margaret saw him from the corner of her eye as he timidly paused near her, and yet she did not at first deign to look up. The grim thought fastened itself on her distorted imagination that Dora was now watching, if at no other moment, so she lowered the magazine to her lap, taking studied care to turn down a leaf before glancing at the child.
“My mother sent this note,” Lionel said, when he caught her eye.
She took the envelope and opened it. It contained two separate communications. The first was to her from Dora. The other was in Fred Walton's well-remembered hand. Dora's note ran:
Dear Margaret,—I want you to do poor Fred the simple justice of reading his letter to me. I saw yesterday that you were angered by my mentioning him, and I don't believe you could have been so if you had the faith in him which he deserves. You may doubt him, for some reason or other, but I am sure you could do so no longer if you would only read the tender things he has written about you. Sincerely, Dora Barry.
Margaret read and reread the note. Her prejudice was still playing riot with her better judgment, and, feeling sure that Dora's eyes were on her, she scornfully swept both the communications from her lap to the grass at her feet and turned to her magazine.
Lionel stared, a pained expression slowly capturing his mobile features as he stood in rigid indecision for a moment; then, with a sigh, he stooped down and picked up the sheets of paper which were being blown about on the grass. The first page of Fred Walton's letter to Dora was the last he secured, and, just as he was picking it up, Margaret, almost against her will, dropped her glance upon it, reading the introductory line at the top of the sheet.
“My dear old friend,” she saw quite plainly, in Fred's bold writing, “You will be surprised to hear from me for the first time after all these years—”
“Old friend—after all these years!” Those words, so contradictory to what she expected, remained before Margaret's sight even after the child had gathered the sheets in his offended arms and was turning away. What could they mean? Surely that was not the way a man would begin a letter to the woman he had betrayed and deserted. There must be some mystery, and the child was bearing its solution away. Her desire to know more was too strong to be resisted. Impulsively she cried out:
“Little boy! Lionel! Wait! Bring them back! I dropped them!” He turned, a look of mystification on his face, and came back doubtfully.
“I haven't read them yet,” she explained, humbly enough, and she extended her hand. “Let me have them.”
“I thought you were angry,” he said, staring at her. “I thought you didn't want my mother's letter.”
“I'll read them,” she promised, tremblingly. “Wait, won't you? That's a good boy.”
He stood beside her, studiously observant of the phenomenon of her changeableness, while she literally devoured Fred Walton's letter. It ran:
My dear old friend,—You will be surprised to hear from me for the first time after all these years, and I have no valid excuse to offer. You may or may not have received the letter I wrote you telling you that I was leaving old Stafford forever. My bad conduct had driven my father to desperation, and I had grave reasons to believe that he would actually enforce the law against me. I had made up my mind to turn over a new leaf and fight it out on new lines at home, when the last straw came to break my purpose. Dear Dora, her brother Wynn approached me that very night and told me that her uncle intended positively to disinherit her if she kept faith in me. What was there for me to do? God knows I was unworthy of her, and the next morning was to bring things to light which would make her despise me; so I promised him then and there to go away and never communicate with her again. No human being ever suffered more keenly than I did at losing her, but I determined to fight my way to reformation, and by my own toil to restore to my father the funds I had misappropriated. After years of strife and hardship I have done it, and he has fully forgiven me. He has forgiven me and wants me to come home.Home!Just think of it! To me old Stafford would be a heaven on earth. I think I could fall face downward in the dear old streets and kiss the very pavement. But I may not come yet. Somehow I can't, Dora. I believe most of the old town will forgive me, but she won't. I know she won't. Her ideas of honor are too high for that. The reason I am so sure is that I met her by chance in New York not long ago, and she gave me clearly to understand that I need never expect to regain her respect. I made my own case out pretty black to her brother, and I suppose he gave me my full dues in telling her about it. To my astonishment, my father told me that he had not spoken of my shortage at the bank, and that nothing had been said about it at home, but her brother told her. She got the confession straight from me, and there could be no better authority. I love her still, dear Dora, and more than ever. The very gulf between her and me has only made her the dearer.
But I mustn't write so much about myself. My father says you are still unmarried. He couldn't tell me whether you had carried your painting further. I was sure it would do great things for you, and it is not too late, even yet.
Another thing—I have always felt that I may have hurt your feelings past forgiveness by advising you as I did in that last letter not to trust too fully the man whom I mentioned. I now see that I had no right to go so far. You were hardly more than a child then, but you knew how to take care of yourself even with a man of the world like him, and I had no right to warn you. But I was going away, dear Dora, and I was so miserable about myself that I exaggerated your danger. I have seen by the papers that he has made a great success in life, and that old Stafford is very proud of him—
Margaret folded the letter in her lap and sat aflame with joy, staring with glowing eyes at the vacant air.
“Do you like it? Is it nice, lady?” the child asked.
“Yes, very nice, and I thank you,” she answered. The child said something, but she did not hear it. The pent-up ecstasy within her was like physical pain; she could have screamed to give it an outlet. She felt a womanly yearning to embrace the boy, and would have opened her arms to him had she not heard steps behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Kenneth Galt approaching.
“I dropped in at the front to see you,” he said, with a bow. “They told me you were out here.” His eyes fell on the child, and a strange flare of inexpressible tenderness lighted his lack-lustre eyes as he drew a chair forward and sat down.
“Yes, I like it here,” she intoned, and her voice, in her own ears, sounded far off, and as if it had taken on the timbre of a new and exalted existence. She half feared that Galt would note it.
“You seem happy,” he said, thoughtfully, “and that is a condition that is most rare with humankind. I certainly envy a happy individual.”
“Yes, I am very happy,” she said—“more so than I ever was in my life before.”
“I certainly envy you,” he repeated, gloomily. “I have given up all hope of even touching the hem of the good dame's garment.” The boy had gone to him, and stood with his little hand on his father's knee, looking with trustful adoration into the dark, saturnine face above him. Something in the child's profile, now that Margaret held the glass of revelation to her eyes, showed kinship to its paternal prototype, and a dazzling dart of conviction flashed through her. At that instant she had a motherly instinct to draw the child from the contaminating touch of the man who had disowned it. His attitude of denial was a desecration to the holiness of parenthood, and in her soul she resented it.
“Come to me, Lionel,” she said, gently. “I want you to kiss me. Won't you, just once?”
The child stared as if scarcely believing that he had heard aright.
“What did you say, lady?” he asked, as he lingered hesitatingly.
She repeated her words more tenderly than before, and there was a mist before her sight as he came toward her.
“Do you like me now?” he asked, wonderingly. “Yes, and love you very, very much,” she answered, huskily.
“But you didn't ever so long atfirst; you didn'tyesterday, when I asked you to see my church. You didn't justthis minute, when I brought my mother's letter.”
“But I do now, ever and ever so much,” she said, adopting his tone, and, taking him into her arms, she pressed him passionately to her breast and kissed him on his brow, on his cheeks, and on his red lips. Then, holding him in her arms, and with no word of explanation to Galt, she rose. “Put your arms close around my neck,” she said, “and hug me tight. I am going to run over and see your mother.”
The child complied, timidly, a delicate flush of appreciation on his mobile face. Then she put him down, and, still not looking at Galt, she said:
“No, you needn't come, Lionel; I'll only be there a minute to return the letter. You may stay here and entertain your—your good friend.”
Galt, who had risen, stood looking after her for a moment, his countenance dark with the ever-constant despair within him. He felt the tiny, confident hands of his child as they pressed against his legs, and looked down into the sweetly smiling, upturned face.
“Theyalllike me now,” Lionel said. “She was the only one that didn't, but she says she doesnow. She kissed me. Did you see her? Oh, she's so pretty! She is—no, she isn't, but she isnearlyas pretty as my mother.”
Galt sat down and drew the boy first to a seat on his knee and then into his arms.
“She knows the truth,” he said to himself, in a tone of desperate indifference to fate. “Something in that letter told her.”
AS she passed through the gate at the end of the lawn, Margaret looked back and saw the child and its father seated together.
“Yes, he is the one,” she mused. “He of all men! And yet I might have known it; he has adored the child since the moment he first saw it there on the lawn.”
Dora saw her coming from her easel near the window of her studio, and stood in the hall awaiting her. Her face was aglow with expectation.
Without any word of greeting Margaret simply ran to her and threw her arms about her neck. “Oh, you aresogood,sonoble!” she cried. “I see it all now, and I have been wofully wrong. Oh, Dora, I could not have treated you as I have all these miserable years if I had not thought—I actually thought—”
“I know now what you thought,” Dora broke in, a pained expression clutching her lips, as she drew Margaret into the studio. “I don't know why I did not think of it sooner, but I didn't. Away back when my trouble was blackest I heard that Fred's name had been coupled with mine. I denied it then, and thought that was the end of it. After that, you see,” she went on, with a shudder of repugnance to the topic, “I buried myself here so completely that no outside gossip reached my ears. I had to guard my own secret, and I was afraid that even the slightest agitation of the matter might disclose the truth. I—I would have died rather than have had it known—all of it, I mean.”
“And yet you sent me this letter?” Margaret laid it on a table and stood staring gratefully into the beautiful face. “You sent it, although you knew that it might—at least—lead me to—to wonder who—”
“Yes, I had to do it,” the young artist interrupted, her glance averted. “I could not bear to have you think Fred was anything but noble and true and good. Margaret, I cried for joy over the fine news in his letter. I couldn't believe you had snubbed the poor boy in New York for nothing. I was puzzled for a while, and then the horrible truth dawned on me. I hope he will never learn that he was so terribly misjudged. It would hurt him more than all else that has happened to him. They said he was bad, Margaret—wild, and a gambler, and all that; but to me he was like a sweet, thoughtful brother. If I'd only listened to his advice, I'd never have been situated like this; but I didn't. I thought I was very wise then. I have Lionel now, of course. He seemed to come to me like an angel of light out of a black sky of infinite pain. But if God will only show me a way to save him from future trouble, I—I—”
“There, I have made you cry!” Margaret exclaimed, regretfully. “I am so sorry!”
“I don't give way often.” Dora brushed the tears from her eyes. “It is only when I think of what may come to my little darling. Perhaps we shall get to Paris before he is old enough to understand, and then all this will fade from his childish memory.”
“Yes, yes, you must go to Paris,” Margaret said. “I have more money than I need. Dora, surely you would not refuse to let me—”
“Oh, no, no, no!” Dora cried out. “I couldn't think of it. What is done must be done byme, bymybrain, and bymyhands. God will surely let me atone in that way for my mistake. It is what I have prayed for night and day all these years, and the reward surely can't be far off.” She forced a wan smile to her rigid face, and added: “Then, like the Arabs, some night we'll fold our tents and silently steal away from old Stafford. Only the grocer-boy and the postman will know, at first, and then the last chapter of our life here will be written. It seems sad, doesn't it?—but it is sweet, so very, very sweet and soothing.”
Margaret was crying. Without a word, she kissed Dora and went out. But she did not return home at once. She kept on down the little street on which the cottage stood till she came to another which led to the square.
She passed the stores, bowing to an acquaintance in a doorway or in a passing carriage, and went on to Walton's bank.
“Is Mr. Walton in?” she asked Toby Lassiter, at the cashier's window in the green wire grating.
“He has just this minute stepped out,” Toby answered. “He will be right in. Won't you go to his office and wait?”
“Thank you, yes,” she answered, and went back to the musty little room, taking a chair near the old man's desk.
Without a moment's delay, Toby grabbed his hat and went out in the street. He found the banker lounging around Pete Longley's grocery store, where he had an attentive audience. Toby knew better than to interrupt the old man when he was talking, so he waited for Walton to finish his remarks, which, judging by the steady gleam of the banker's eye, had some underlying motive; and, considering the fact that Pete was a noted gossip, Toby decided that his employer was simply and deliberately setting afloat certain reports that would be on every lip before nightfall.
“Oh yes,” Toby heard him saying, “I never was a man to let my right hand know what my left was doing in any deal whatsoever, and so, all this time, I have kept my own counsel in regard to where Fred was at, and why—why I sent him out there. He invested some of the scads that is coming to him in that big boom town and turned his money over as fast as a dog can trot. Boys, I'm actually ashamed to tell you fellows how rich he really is. I reckon you'd get an idea of how he's fixed if I was to say he has made more since he left here than I've raked and scraped together all my life.”
“You don't say!” Pete Longley exclaimed. “Well, that certainly is fine. I reckon he did it through his popularity. I never knew a chap that had as many friends.”
“Well, he'll be back to shake hands with you all very soon now,” Walton said, gratified at the way his fuse had ignited. “I've been out to see him a time or two, but he has always been too busy to come this way; but he'll get here—he'll lay everything down and head this way some day before long.”
Just then Walton caught sight of the breathless Toby at his elbow; he stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, and bent down to hear what his clerk had to say.
“She's waiting for you in your office, Mr. Walton,” Toby panted.
“Who?—not—”
“Yes, sir; I told her to sit down and I'd fetch you in.”
“Oh, Lord, I reckon I'll get it in the neck, Toby!” Walton's face was a veritable mask of gravity and concern. “I reckon she's come to give the boy his walking-papers. I have thought it over till my head swims. No woman of her station and pride would ever let a man come back to her while a thing like that is hanging over him. If the woman and the child was dead and under ground, it might be different. She's come too quick to bear good news—a woman would tussle over a thing like that for a good month, and then ask for more time. No, the jig is up! I deserve it for the string of lies I was wrapping round that gang to make my case as good as possible.”
He moved slowly into the bank, hung up his hat in the little hallway deliberately, and quite after the manner in which he went to meet business proposals, with his rough face grimly set against rejections and compromises. She was going to cast him down, but he'd show her that he was game. She had practically closed the matter during his interview with her, and had only delayed longer at his earnest request. No, she shouldn't chuckle over his defeat. He didn't know but what he'd throw out a hint that Fred wasn't really so very “rampageous” in the matter, after all.
“Oh, how do you do?” he said, as he went in. She started to hold out her hand, but, not looking for such a movement, he failed to see it, and lunged toward his desk, where he sat and took up a pen.
“Well, I reckon,” he began, awkwardly, “you've' come to see me about—to say whether or not—that is, you remember, I said if you finally decided—”
“Ihavedecided, Mr. Walton.” She rose and came and stood over him. Her voice was quivering; there was a blaze of burning joy in her face and eyes, but he did not see it.
“Oh, youhave!Well, it's for you to say whether you thought best or not. I reckon I went just alittlemite beyond my authority up there, in my effort to conduct Fred's affairs for him, without, you understand—without hisfreeconsent. I only thought, maybe, if you would signify your willingness to overlook certain rather shady things, Fred might take it as a sort o'—sort o' all-round sign fromthisend—a sort of index of public opinion bearing on his particular case, and—”
“Yes, I have decided, Mr. Walton,” Margaret broke in. “I have come to ask you to write to him. Tell him, please, that I'd like to see him. I feel sure that when he gets home he and I will fully understand each other.”
“Good gracious, Miss Margaret, you don't mean—” Simon stood up to his full height, his old eyes blinking in astonishment.
“Yes, I do, Mr. Walton. I want to see him and talk to him. I don't know how to say it toyou, but I am sure Fred will understand. Tell him that I—that I kissed you for his sake, there!”
And before Simon could avoid it she had thrown her arms around his neck and actually pressed her lips to his grizzled cheek. To add to his confusion, Toby hastily entered the room just as she was releasing her dumfounded captive.
“Oh!” Toby gasped, his face ablaze with embarrassment, “I didn't mean to; but the General is at the door in his carriage, and asked if you were in here. Of course, Miss Margaret, I hadn't the least idea but—”
“Well, don't let it get out, for all you do, Toby,” Margaret laughed, merrily. “Don't forget, Mr. Walton; by to-night's mail, sure!”
And the next instant she had floated out of the room, leaving the red-face banker under the perplexed stare of his apologetic clerk.
“She oughtn't to have done that!” Walton growled, as he brushed the shoulders of his coat where her gloved hands had rested and stroked his tingling cheek. “She had no business going as far as that. Women are such dad-dratted galoots when they get wound up in any matter. She seems willing for him to come. I'm not able to understand it, and I don't intend to try. They won't be long getting hitched if she goes at him in a whirlwind like that. Good Lord, I wouldn't have my wife know what she done just now for any man's pile! She'd make a scandal out of it, or break her neck trying.”
“Well, it's safe in my hands, Mr. Walton,” Toby said, with unconscious humor. “I'llnever tell it.”
“You'llnever tell it? Who the devil asked you to hide it?” Walton stormed. “But I reckon she meant it to sort o' seal what she'd made up her mind to agree to, and she really is swallowing a pill, Toby, from any point of view. But it will make the boy powerful happy, and he will be on the wing as soon as he gets my report. Huh! I see his old stepdaddy's face now. He may try to keep him; but, shucks! I've got the old duck where the feathers are short. I've started a bang-up report in the boy's favor, Toby, and you can sort o' kick the ball along whenever it comes your way. We needn't mention that nasty business to him, neither; if Margaret can let bygones be bygones, surely the rest of us can.”
UNDER a growing weight of uneasiness, combined with a sense of utter discontent with himself, Galt put Lionel down when he had half listened to his accusing prattle for an hour, and sought the shadowy solitude of his great house.
Yes, Margaret Dealing knew, he told himself. That was plain from her change of manner. She knew the truth at last, and was now heaping upon him the silent, womanly contempt which he so eminently deserved.
He sat at his open window and watched the shadows fall and sullenly creep across the lawn as the sunbeams receded, and the twilight of a close, sultry evening came on. He went down to supper when he was called, but he ate little and his loneliness seemed more oppressive there in the open gas-light, under the gaze of the observant and solicitous attendants. Taking a cigar, he went outside and began to walk up and down on the grass, now grimly fighting against the fate which, like some grim sea-monster, was clutching him with a million penetrating tentacles, and coiling round him as might some insidious reptile bent upon retributive torture. How had he dared to question the predominance of spirit over matter when this piteous appeal for the peace of his soul was oozing from the very fibre of his being?
Presently he saw Wynn Dearing emerge from the front door of his home, carrying a traveller's bag. Dearing rested the bag on the walk at his feet and stood looking down the street. Then, with his arms folded, he began to walk nervously to and fro.
“He is going away,” Galt speculated. “He looks excited. I wonder if Margaret could have told him of her discovery?”
Galt stood still, held to the ground by the sheer horror of the thought. Of all possible happenings, he had most dreaded his best friend's discovery of that particular thing. The young doctor had turned toward him and was approaching. He now held his head down and had clasped his hands tensely behind him. Suddenly, when quite near, he raised his eyes and recognized Galt.
“Hello, Kenneth!” he said. “I didn't know you were at home. Otherwise, I should have run in and said good-bye.”
“You are going somewhere, then?” Galt said.
“To Augusta for a few days,” Dearing replied. “I got a letter offering me a chance to do an important operation. I shall be glad to get away, even for so short a time as that. I almost wish, old man, that I could stay away forever. I used to love this town, but I hate it now. I hate anything that is heartless and totally blinded by money and power to all sense of justice and common decency.”
“Why, what's gone wrong?” Galt inquired.
“Wrong? The place is rotten to the core!” Dearing burst out. “Kenneth, a thing is going to be countenanced by the citizens of this town that would stain the character of the Dark Ages. Haven't you heard the news that has set every tongue to wagging like a thousand bell-clappers?”
“No, I haven't heard anything out of the ordinary. You see, I am keeping so close here at home that—”
“Well, old man, the lowest, poorest excuse for a man that old Stafford ever produced is coming back,” Dearing broke it, furiously. “Fred Walton, I mean. I didn't think he'd have the effrontery to show his face here again, but he has decided to do it.”
“Oh!” Galt exclaimed. But that was all he said, for Dearing went on, angrily:
“Yes, and the dastardly thing—the most outrageous fact about it all—is that every soul in the place is ready to receive him with open arms. He has made lots of money; he is rich; he has reformed, they say, and, idiots that they are, they have forgiven him. I have heard his return spoken of by a score of our very best citizens, and not one of them has even mentioned the crime that lies at his door—the crime that stands out to-day in a more damning light than it ever did. The brave, patient, suffering little woman—who is as high above him intellectually, morally, and every other way as the stars are above the earth—and that glorious child are to have another slap from his dirty, egotistical paw. He put her into prison and made her an exile with his nameless offspring, and yet he comes back like a royal prince. 'Wild oats,' they call his vile conduct, and they are ready to wipe it off his record. That is modern mankind for you, and, Kenneth, this one circumstance has come nearer to shaking my faith than anything that ever happened to me. If God can allow an insult like that to come to Dora Barry now, after all she has borne so sweetly, silently, and bravely, He can be no God of mine. I'll be through with the creeds, I tell you. I'll join your gang of scoffers and trot along wherever your black philosophy leads. Even my uncle has no protest to make, nor my sister, who I thought had given the scamp up in disgust. By George, she even looks happy over it! I don't want to meet him face to face. I don't know that I could control myself. She has given me no right to act as her defender; if she had, Kenneth, I'd take up her cause if it ended my career here forever!”
“You? You?” Galt gasped.
“Yes, I. Listen, old man. You are my best friend, and I feel like telling some one. I feel that it would be a sort of tribute of respect to her worthiness. I presume you, like all the rest, think that I never have had any preference for any particular woman, but I have had, and I am not ashamed of it.
“When I was a boy of thirteen or so, and Dora was about eight, we used to play together. Even at that age I had an eye for beauty, and she was the prettiest child that ever lived. We called ourselves sweethearts. Her old father used to get us to sit for him in his studio, and he would talk to us as only such a beautiful soul could to children. He used to sigh and say that she would be a pauper, and that I would grow up a prince, for an artist could not leave his daughter money, and my father was said to be well-to-do. Even at that early age I denied the possibility of such a thing making any difference between her and me, and when she grew up into such beautiful girlhood, and was studying art under her father, I determined to make something of myself, aside from the inheritance which was to come to me. So I went in for medicine and surgery, and she kept to art, saying that she would earn a living for her parents when they became old. But he died away off in Paris, whither his dreams led him, while I was at college, and when I came home I found that she had grown away from me. It was a great blow, for I had been constantly thinking of her. To me she was the very glory of her sex, and it was mostly her influence that made me what I am. I have seen many women since then, but never her equal from any point of view. I went with her occasionally after that, but it was more to become accustomed to her loss than in the hope of winning her regard. Then the awful, unmentionable thing came out. You know what I mean. That man had won her confidence, won her heart—how, God only knows, but he had—and dealt her a back-handed blow, and left her helpless, miserable. I tried then, harder than ever, to tear her image out of my heart, but I couldn't. My professional duties called me into the saddened home to which no other soul was admitted. I saw that even in her blighted womanhood she was fulfilling every promise given by her youth. Instead of sinking lower, she was blooming like a flower under snow. I suppose I shall go through the rest of my life with her personality woven into the very warp and woof of my being. But knowing her has strengthened and broadened me. She is beautiful, pure, and spiritual—God's denial of the social law held over her. Only shallow men judge women by physical mistakes made in the unselfish purity of over-confidence. She will never call on me for the aid I'd gladly give, and I can't insult her strange widowhood by offering it. She has her heart set on going to Paris to live and study, as her father did. She thinks she can bury herself there before Lionel is old enough to realize his condition, and that he may never know the truth. It is a beautiful dream, but it can never be realized.”
A horse and buggy stopped at the gate, and Doctor Beaman, who was driving, leaned over and called out, excitedly: “I'm fifteen minutes late, Wynn; you may miss the train. Hurry! hurry!”
“That's a fact; I must go. Good-bye, old man.” Galt held on to Dearing's hand firmly, almost desperately.
“Wait, I have something to say,” he began—“something that simply must be said.”
“Good gracious, Wynn, hurry, hurry!” Doctor Beaman was heard calling out, impatiently. “You don't want to lie over in Atlanta. I'll have to go in a gallop, andthenmay miss your train! Hurry!”
“Wait, just a moment,” Galt implored.
“Oh, I know you are sympathetic.” Dealing, misunderstanding, ran for his bag, with the wordless Galt shambling along at his side. “I couldn't have told you all that if you hadn't taken such a liking for the poor little kid. Good-bye, good-bye, only don't join the gang of fools that will laud that scamp to the skies when he comes—that is all I ask.”
“But youmustlisten!” Galt cried out. “I must tell you now that—” But Dearing had darted away. The gate closed after him, and Galt saw him climbing into the buggy even while it was in motion.
“Well, he'll know it soon enough,” the lonely man thought. “The facts will come out now. Walton will hear the report when he gets back, and Dora will declare him innocent.”
Galt went into the dimly lighted hallway of his house and ascended the stairs. There was nothing to do now, he told himself. The world that had admired him, the men and women who had entrusted him with the investment of their savings in his various schemes, would stare and doubt their senses. They would shun him—one and all they would shun him as they would some loathsome thing; he had used their money well, but their profit had been made by a man who had known no honor.
He entered his room, turned up the light, and critically examined his ghastly image in the mirror on his bureau. What a gashed and blearing mask to all that lay behind it! How could it go on? How could he bear with it another day? Even if he could lay it aside in sleep to-night, the heartless dawn would reveal it all the more relentlessly. Suddenly out of the turmoil of his emotions a grim resolve rose and fastened itself on him. His suicide would be his confession—his belated exoneration of the man who so long had borne the stigma in his stead. In a small drawer in the bureau lay a revolver. It was loaded in all of its six chambers, and as he took the weapon out he almost fondled it in his clammy hand. In the morning his servants would find his body, and the truth would be out. He would close the door and windows that the revolver's report might be smothered. But he started; there was the child, his helpless child, to whom he had given life—andsucha life!
“Lionel, Lionel!” he said, aloud. “My son, my son, my beautiful brave boy, who loves me in spite of what I have done against him! Will he grow up and understand? Will he pardon his misguided father, or blush for shame at the thought of him?”
With the revolver still in his hand, he sank into a chair near a window and gazed out into the star-filled sky. Suddenly he started. Whence had come the thought? He could not tell, but a new and dazzling conviction was on him like light streaming through the gates of Paradise. Kill himself? How absurd the thought! He might dash his bleeding, lifeless body to the earth, but he, himself, would remain a deathless witness to the act. Nothing in the shape of matter, no force known to science, could possibly put out of existence the yearning for atonement within him. Nothing so divine as that could die. Such a thing was from the Eternity that had created Eternity. He threw the revolver on his bed, and drew a deep, delectable breath. His now entranced vision seemed to extend further out into the world-filled void above him. He stood up, panting from the sheer ravage his new hope had wrought upon him.
“Eternity! Eternity!” he whispered, in reverential awe. “Now I see—the scales have fallen from my sight. I see! Thank God, I see! I understand!”
WHEN Kenneth Galt waked the next morning it was with the new sense of having slept long and restfully for the first time in years. The sun was streaming into his windows from the golden east; the cool air seemed crisp and invigorating; in the boughs of the trees close by birds were flitting about and singing merrily. The dew-wet sward, bespangled with a myriad of sun-born gems, stretched away into the gauzy mist which hung over the town.
“It is glorious—glorious!” he cried, in ecstasy. “She may refuse, but I shall never desist till I have won her forgiveness.”
After he had breakfasted in the big dining-room, now no longer solitary, sombre, or accusing, he went directly down to Mrs. Barry's cottage. With a strange, buoyant lightness of step he entered the little gate, fastened the latch with a calm hand, and went up the steps and rapped on the closed door, seeing, as he stood waiting, the face of Mrs. Chumley, as the washerwoman peered curiously over the fence at him from her wood-pile, where she was wielding a gapped and dull-edged axe. The door was opened by Mrs. Barry, who could not disguise her surprise.
“I have come to see your daughter, Mrs. Barry,” he said, humbly, as he stood uncovered before her. “I hope she will receive me; I have something important to say.”
“She's not here. But don't stand there,” the old woman said; “somebody might see you and wonder. Come into the parlor.”
She led the way, and he followed.
“No, she is not here,” she repeated, when they were in the simply furnished room. “She and Lionel went very early to the swamp over the hill near the river. She had some sketching to do, and he wished to go along. You say you want to see her. Of course, you understand that such a request is unexpected, to say the least, and, as I am her mother—” The speaker seemed at a loss for words to express her meaning, and paused helplessly.
“I am glad of this opportunity to see you first,” Galt said, humbly. “Mrs. Barry, I've come to beg her, on my knees if need be, to be my wife. Perhaps you may understand; I hope you do.”
“Oh!” And the old woman sank into a rocking-chair and stared up at him. “Oh!” she exclaimed again, her wrinkled hand pressed against her thin breast. “You mean that, do you, Kenneth Galt? Well, I have never mentioned it to her, but I thought it might come. I read faces fairly well, and I saw, even at a distance, the spiritual despair in yours. Knowing what you were responsible for, I felt that your solitary life in your lonely house would bring results, for good or bad. At first I thought you might resume—might make dishonorable proposals; but when I saw you and Lionel together so often I began to count on other things—I began toprayfor other things. You don't look like a mean man, Kenneth Galt; and I can't find it in my heart to reproach you. Besides, it is pitiful to think about, considering the child's future; but she may have you now right where you had her once.”
“You mean—you mean!” he exclaimed, aghast, as he bent over her chair and stared into her calm face. “You mean that—”
“I mean that it may be too late,” she interrupted him.
“Too late?” He sank into a chair in front of her, and, pale and quivering in every limb, swung his hat between his knees.
“Yes; she is my daughter, but she is above me in a thousand ways. She suffered untold agonies after you desert—after you left Stafford, and all through her trouble; but when the baby came, and we were all shut up here away from human sight, the choicest blessings from on high seemed to fall on her. With her close work in her studio, and her devotion to the child, she grew into something more of heaven than of earth. I suppose there is such a thing as rising too high to love, in ahumansort of way, and I tremble when I think of how she may now take your proposal. I want her to be sensible and think of the boy's interests, but the idea of helping him injust that waymay be—be repulsive to her. She's done without your aid all these years, you see, Kenneth Galt. She has leaned on a Higher Power than any earthly one, and has already received her reward. You knew her as she was once, but not as she is now. She was hardly more than a child then. Her father used to say she would be a great genius, and I think she really is. Her isolation from mankind has done her more good in one way than harm. It has put something into her work that couldn't have got there any other way. Only yesterday a letter came from a high authority on art—But I have no right to speak of her private affairs. If she sees fit to tell you about it she may. That's another matter. She has never been ashamed, as this town, no doubt, thinks she is. She looked on what passed between you and her before the trouble as a true marriage in the sight of God. It wasn't the way persons generally look at such matters, but she wasn't a common, ordinary person, and she didn't think the man she loved was—that is, I mean she thought you looked at itexactly as she did. She took you at your word. If what I say pains you, I'm sorry. I must be blunt to express what is in me, for I have long ago justified her. If she had been worldly minded, back there when she was glorying in the secret between you and her, she would have had worldly caution and forethought. You may get forgiveness even from her, Kenneth Galt, in time, but there can be nothing quite as unforgivable in the sight of God, it seems to me, as taking advantage ofjust that sort of faith.”
The light of hope had died out of Galt's parchment-like face. He dropped his horrified gaze to the floor.
“I see,” he groaned. “I am too late!” and sat as if stunned. “I was never up to her level. It was only her girlish fancy that told her I was.”
“Oh, I don't know!” Mrs. Barry said, almost sympathetically. “Now that you feel as you do, her old trust might come back. There is one thing that has touched her, I'll tell you that much, for certain, and that has been your love for Lionel. One day I caught her shedding tears over it as she stood concealed by the window-curtain watching you play with him in the swing. If anything ever brings her back to you, it will be that one thing. He loves you, too; he is always talking of you, and, if I am any judge, she rather likes to hear it. It may be that—it may not; I never can be sure I am reading her right.”
He rose. “I am going to find her now,” he said. “At any rate, she shall know how I feel. She may spurn me, but from this day on I shall devote my life to her interests and those of our child.”