CHAPTER XIX
THE LAST ILLUSION
As the moment drew nearer for the doctor to make known his presence to Bivens his heart began to fail. With an effort he took fresh courage.
"Of course I'll succeed!" he exclaimed. "There's no such thing as defeat for him who refuses to acknowledge it."
As he watched the magnificent ball his eyes grew dim at the thought of the social tragedy which it symbolized, of his own poverty and of the deeper wretchedness of scores to whom he had been trying to minister. He was fighting to keep his courage up, but the longer he watched the barbaric, sensual display of wealth sweeping before him, the deeper his spirit sank.
The butler touched his arm and he turned with a sudden start, a look of anguish on his rugged face.
"Mr. Bivens will be pleased to see you in the little library, sir, if you will come at once!"
The man bowed with stately deference.
He followed the servant with quick firm step, a hundred happy ideas floating through his mind.
"Of course, it's all right. My fears were absurd!" he mused. "My instinct was right. He will be pleased to see me. He's in a good humour with all the world to-night."
When the doctor was ushered into the library, Bivens, who was awaiting him alone, sprang to his feet with a look of blank amazement, and then a smile began to play about his hard mouth. He thrust his delicate hands into his pockets and deliberately looked the doctor's big figure over from head to foot as he approached with embarrassment.
"My servant announced that a gentleman wished to speak to me a moment. Will you be good enough to tell me what you are doing in this house to-night?"
The doctor paused and hesitated, his face scarlet from the deliberate insult.
"I must really ask your pardon, Mr. Bivens, for my apparent intrusion. It is only apparent. I came with my daughter."
"Your daughter?"
"She sang to-night on your programme."
"Oh, I see, with the other hired singers; well, what do you want?"
"Only a few minutes of your time on a matter of grave importance."
"I don't care to discuss business here to-night, Woodman," Bivens broke in abruptly. "Come to my office."
"I have been there three or four times," the doctor went on hurriedly, "and wrote to you twice. I felt sure that my letters had not reached you. I hoped for the chance of a moment to-night to lay my case before you."
Bivens smiled and sat down.
"All right, I'll give you five minutes."
"I felt sure you had not seen my letters."
"I'll ease your mind on that question. I did see them both. You got my answer?"
"That's just it. I didn't. And I couldn't understand it."
"Oh, I see!" Bivens's mouth quivered with the slightest sneer. "Perhaps it was lost in transit!"
The sneer was lost on the doctor. He was too intent on his purpose.
"I know. It was a mistake. I see it now, and I'm perfectly willing to pay for that mistake by accepting even half of your last proposition."
Bivens laughed cynically.
"This might be serious, Woodman, if it wasn't funny. But you had as well know, once and for all, that I owe you nothing. Your suit has been lost. Your appeal has been forfeited. My answer is brief but to the point—not one cent—my generosity is for my friends and followers, not my enemies."
"But we are not enemies, personally," the doctor explained, good-naturedly. "I have put all bitterness out of my heart and come to-night to ask that bygones be bygones. You know the history of our relations and of my business. I need not repeat it. And you know that in God's great book of accounts you are my debtor."
Bivens's eyes danced with anger, and his words had the ring of cold steel.
"I owe you nothing."
In every accent of the financier's voice the man before him felt the deadly merciless hatred whose fires had been smouldering for years.
For a moment he was helpless under the spell of his fierce gaze. He began to feel dimly something of the little man's powerful personality, the power that had crushed his enemies.
The doctor's voice was full of tenderness when he replied at last:
"My boy," he began quietly—"for you are still a boy when you stand beside my gray hairs—men may fight one another for a great principle without being personal enemies. We are men still, with common hopes, fears, ills, griefs and joys. When I was a soldier I fought the Southern army, shot and shot to kill. I was fighting for a principle. When the firing ceased I helped the wounded men on the field as I came to them. Many a wounded man in blue I've seen drag himself over the rough ground to pass his canteen to the lips of a boy in gray who was lying on his back, crying for water. If I am your enemy, it is over a question of principle. The fight has ended, and I have fallen across your path to-night, dying of thirst while rivers of water flow about me."
Bivens turned away and the doctor pressed closer.
"Suppose we have fought each other in the heat of the day in the ranks of two hostile armies? The battle has ceased. For me the night has fallen, I——"
His voice quivered and broke for an instant.
"You have won. You can afford to be generous. That you can deny me in this the hour of my desolation is unthinkable. I'm not pleading for myself. I can live on a rat's allowance. I'm begging for my little girl. I need two thousand dollars immediately to complete her musical studies. You know what her love means to me. I have put myself in your power. Suppose I've wronged you? Now is your chance to do a divine thing. Deep down in your heart of hearts you know that the act would be one of justice between man and man."
Bivens looked up sharply.
"As a charity, Woodman, I might give you the paltry fifty thousand dollars you ask."—
"I'll take it as a charity!" he cried eagerly, "take it with joy and gratitude, and thank God for his salvation sent in the hour of my need."
Bivens smiled coldly.
"But in reality you demand justice of me?"
"I have put myself in your power. I have refused and still refuse to believe that you can treat me with such bitter cruelty as to refuse to recognize my claim. I have waked at last to find myself helpless. The shock of it has crushed me. I've always felt rich in the love of my country, in the consciousness that I did my part to save the Union. Its growing wealth I have rejoiced in as my own. There has never been a moment in my life up to this hour that I have envied any man the possession of his millions. In the fight I have made on you, I have been trying to strike for the freedom of the individual man against what seemed to me to be the crushing slavery of soulless machinery."
The little financier lifted his shapely hand with a commanding gesture and the speaker paused.
"Come to the point, Woodman, what is in your mind when you say that I am your debtor?"
"Simply that I have always known that your formula for that drink was a prescription which I compounded years ago and which you often filled for me when I was busy. As a physician I could not patent such a thing. You had as much right to patent it as any one else."
"In other words," Bivens interrupted coldly, "you inform me that you have always known that I stole from your prescription counter the formula which gave me my first fortune, and for that reason every dollar I possess to-day is branded with the finger print of a thief; and you, the upright physician, held by the old code of honour which makes your profession a fraternity of ancient chivalry, come now with your hat in hand and ask me for a share of this tainted money."
"Bivens," the doctor protested with dignity, "you know that I have made no such wild accusation against you. In our contest I have never stooped to personalities. I have always felt that the inherent justice of my cause was based on principle. But I'm an old man to-night. The sands of life are running low. I'm down and out. The one being I love supremely is in peril. I can't fight."
Bivens turned with sudden fury and faced his visitor, every mask of restraint thrown to the winds. His little bead-eyes flashed with the venom of a snake coiled to strike. He stood close to the doctor and looked up at his tall massive figure, stretching his own diminutive form in a desperate effort to stand on a level with his enemy.
The doctor's face grew suddenly pale and his form rigid as the two men stood holding each other's gaze for a moment without words.
The financier began to speak with slow venomous energy:
"I've let you ramble on in your maudlin talk, Woodman, because it amused me. For years I've waited for your coming. Your unexpected advent is the sweetest triumph of this festival night. The offer I made you was at the suggestion of my wife. I did it solely to please her. I think you will take my word for it to-night." He paused and a sinister smile played about his mouth. "The last time I saw you I promised myself that I'd make you come to me the next time, and when you did, that you'd come on your hands and knees."
The doctor's big fists suddenly closed and Bivens took a step back toward his desk when his slender hand gripped and fumbled a heavy cut glass ink stand. The older observed his trembling hand with a smile of contempt.
"And I swore," Bivens went on in a voice quivering with unrestrained passion, "that when you looked up into my face grovelling and whining for mercy as you have to-night, I'd call my servants and order them to kick you down my door step."
He loosed his hold on the ink stand and leaned across the massive flat-top desk to touch an electric button.
The doctor's fist suddenly gripped the outstretched hand and his eyes glared into the face of the financier with the dangerous look of a madman.
"You had better not ring that bell, yet," he said, with forced quiet in his tones.
Bivens hesitated and his muscles relaxed in the grip on his wrist.
"You wish to prolong the agony for another moral discussion?" the financier asked with a sneer. "All right, if you enjoy it."
"Just long enough to say one thing to you, Bivens. There's a limit beyond which you and your kind had better not press the men you have wronged. You have made a brave show of your power to-night. Well, you are mistaken if you believe you can longer awe the imagination of the world with its tinsel. You have begun to stir deeper thoughts. Look to your skin. I've always said this is God's world, and it must come out right in the end. I've begun to think to-night there's something wrong. God can't look down and see what's going on here—the God I've tried to serve and worship, whose praise I have sung beneath the stars on fields of battle with the blood streaming from wounds I got fighting for what I believed to be right. If the devil rules the universe, and dog-eat-dog is the law, there'll be a big hand feeling for your throat, feeling blindly in the dark, perhaps, but it will get there! When I look into your brazen face to-night, and hear the strains of that music, there's something inside of me that wants to kill."
"But you won't, Woodman!" Bivens interrupted with a sneer.
"When it comes to the test your liver is white. I know your breed of men, but I like you better in that mood. It gives me pleasure to torture you, and I'm not going to kick you out."
"I shouldn't advise you to try it," was the grim response.
"No. Your tirade gives me an idea. I want you to stay until the festivities end, and enjoy yourself. Observe that I'm pouring out my wealth here to-night in a river of generosity, and that you are starving for a drop which I refuse to give. Take a look over my house. It cost two millions to build it, and requires half a million a year to keep it up. I have a country estate of a hundred thousand acres in the mountains of North Carolina, with a French chateau that cost a million. I only weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, but I require these palaces to properly house me for a year. Think this over while you stroll among my laughing guests. My art gallery will interest you. I've a single painting there which cost three hundred thousand dollars—the entire collection two millions. The butterflies those dancers are crushing beneath their feet in my ball room, I imported from Central America at a cost of five thousand dollars. The favours in jewelry I shall give to my rich guests who have no use for them will be worth twenty-five thousand dollars. You'll see my wife among the dancers. Her dresses cost a hundred thousand a year. For the string of pearls around her neck I paid a half million. The slippers on her feet cost two thousand—all you need for your daughter's education. Take a good look at it, Woodman, and as the day dawns and my guests depart, some of them drunk on wine that cost twenty-five dollars a bottle—remember that I spent three hundred and fifty thousand on this banquet which lasted eight hours and that I will see you and your daughter dead and in the bottomless pit before I will give you one penny. Enjoy yourself, it's a fine evening."
The crushed man stared at Bivens in a stupor of pain. The brazen audacity of his assault was more than he could foresee. When the full import of its cruelty found his soul, he spoke in faltering tones:
"Only he who is willing to die, Bivens, is the master of life. Well, I go now to meet Death and celebrate defeat."
"And I the sweetest victory of my life—good evening!"
Before the doctor could answer, the financier turned with a laugh and left the room.
For a long time the dazed man stood motionless. He passed his big hand over his forehead in a vague instinctive physical effort to lift the fog of horror and despair that was slowly strangling him.
"My God!" he gasped at last.
The orchestra began a new waltz while the hum of voices, and the laughter of half-drunken revellers floated up the grand stairs and struck upon his ears with a strange new accent. He seemed to have lived a thousand years, and come to life a new man with strange new impulses. The light of faith that once illumined his soul had suddenly gone out and a new sense of brutal power quivered in every nerve and muscle.
He felt at last his kinship to the torn bleeding bundle of despair he saw dying on the pavement in Union Square.
The music, soft, sweet and sensuous, seemed to fill every nook and corner of the great palace with its low penetrating notes. He felt that he was suffocating. He tore his collar apart to give himself room to breathe. He thrust his hand into the hip pocket of his dress suit where he usually carried a handkerchief and felt something hard and cold.
It was a revolver he had been accustomed to carry of late in his rounds through the dangerous quarters of the city. Without thinking when he dressed, he had transferred it to his evening suit. His hand closed over the ivory handle with a sudden fierce joy. And in a moment the beast that sleeps beneath the skin of religion and culture was in the saddle.
"Yes, I'll kill him in his magnificent ball room—to the strains of his own music!" he said half aloud. "I'll give a fit climax to his dance of Death and the Worm."
He drew the revolver from his pocket, broke it, examined the shells, snapped them in place and thrust the deadly thing in the inner pocket of his coat. He could draw it from there without attracting the attention of his victim.
He quickly descended the stairs and saw Bivens talking to his wife. He didn't wish to kill him in her presence and as he passed a look of hatred flashed from the little black eyes of the millionaire.
The doctor answered with a smile that roused the master of the house to a pitch of incontrollable fury. He left his wife's side, stepped quickly in front of Woodman, hesitated as he was about to utter an oath, changed his mind and resumed his rôle of host:
"If I can show you any of the treasures of the house, I'll be glad to act as your guide, Woodman!" he said with an effort at laughter.
"Thank you. I've just seen some very interesting pictures."
"Surely you have not finished with my masterpieces so soon?" he said, with mocking protest.
The doctor had made up his mind to kill him at the moment the dance was at the highest pitch of gaiety and he wanted to get him as near the great arch as possible.
His answer was given so politely and evenly the financier was puzzled.
"No, Bivens," he said in a matter-of-fact voice, "the pictures I saw were purely mental. I haven't been to your art gallery yet."
"See it by all means!" he urged with exaggerated politeness. "It's a rare privilege, you know. It's not often the rabble is inside these walls. It's the chance of your life."
"Thank you, I'll find enough to amuse me before I go."
Again the doctor smiled.
Bivens turned on his heels with a muttered oath and disappeared in the crowd. He was plainly disconcerted by his enemy's manner. To see a man of his temperament rise suddenly from the depths of despair into smiling serenity was something uncanny. He left him deliberating whether to call his servants and throw him into the street.
As the doctor waited for the music to begin, he watched the women pass, resplendent in their jewels and magnificent in their nakedness. To-night he saw it without the excuses of conventional social usage.
"And this," he exclaimed bitterly, "is the highest development of American life; this splendid, sordid, criminal degrading pageant with its sensual appeal; and yet if the house should fall and crush them all, the world would lose nothing of value except the jewelry that might be mixed with its débris!"
He felt for the moment a messenger of divine vengeance. His pistol shot would at least give them something to think about.
The music began, and the dancers once more whirled into the centre of the room and the crowd filled the space under the grand arch which led into the hall. Bivens was the centre of an admiring group of sycophants and worshipful snobs. The doctor's heart gave a mad throb of joy. His hour had come.
With quick strides he covered the space which separated them and without a moment's hesitation thrust his hand into his breast for his revolver. Not a muscle or nerve quivered. His finger touched the trigger softly and he gave Bivens a look which he meant he should take with him into eternity, when just beyond him he saw Harriet. She stood motionless with a look of mute agony on her fair young face, watching Stuart talk to Bivens's wife.
His finger slipped from the trigger and his hand loosed its deadly grip.
"Have I forgotten my baby!" he cried in sudden anguish. And then another vision flashed through his excited brain. A court room, a prisoner, his own bowed figure the centre of a thousand eyes while the jury brought in their verdict. A moment of awful silence and the foreman said:
"Guilty of murder in the first degree."
And the long piercing scream from the broken heart of his little girl.
"No, no, not that!" he groaned in sudden terror, his face white with pain. "I can't kill her, too. No, I must save her, that's why I want to kill him because he has imperilled her life, and I am about to crush her at a single blow. God save and help me!—God! Where is God? He helps those who help themselves in this madman's world. Well, then I'll look out for my own, too!"
His breath came in laboured gasps as one mad thought succeeded another.
"Yes!" he said hoarsely, "I must save her. I must be cunning. I must succeed, not fail. I must get what I came here for. I must save my baby. My own fate is of no importance. She is everything."
'I must save her. I must be cunning'"'I must save her. I must be cunning'"
He watched the dancers, greedily catching the flash of their diamonds, gleaming tiaras, rings, necklaces, bracelets, each worth a king's ransom. Suddenly the idea flashed through his mind:
Bivens had taken from him, by fraud, his formula, destroyed his business and robbed him of all he possessed. The law gave him power to hold it. He, too, would appeal to the same power and take what belonged to him. No matter how, he would take it, and he would take it to-night.
Bivens had boasted that his favours in jewelry given in sheer wantonness of pride to rich guests would be worth twenty-five thousand dollars. His plan was instantly formed.
He turned quickly and began to search the house until he found the half-drunken servant arranging these packages under the direction of a secretary. These favours had been made for the occasion by a famous jeweller; a diamond pin of peculiar design, a gold death's head with diamond teeth and eyes surmounted by a butterfly and a caterpillar. The stones in each piece were worth a hundred dollars. They lay on a table in little open jewel boxes, fifty in a box, and each box contained five thousand dollars' worth of gold and precious stones.
The doctor inspected the boxes with exclamations of wonder and admiration.
The secretary who had lingered long over his champagne was busy trying to write the names of the guests on separate cards. The doctor bent low over the table for an instant, and when he left one of the jewel cases rested securely in his pocket.
He was amazed at his own skill and a thrill of fierce triumph filled his being as he realized that he had succeeded and that his little girl would go to Europe and complete her work. He spoke pleasantly to the secretary, and congratulating him on his good fortune in securing such a master, turned and strolled leisurely back to the ball room.
Not for a moment did he doubt the safety of his act. He was a chemist and knew the secrets of the laboratory. He would melt the gold into a single bar and sell the diamonds as he needed them. His only regret was that he could not have taken the full amount he had demanded of the little scoundrel.
He found Harriet and they started at once for home.
The dancers who were not staying for the second dinner, about to be announced at four o'clock, had begun to leave. Friends were helping the ladies to their cars and carriages, and other friends were labouring hopefully with those who were not yet convinced of the incapacity to take care of themselves.
Everywhere the floors were stained with the crushed forms of butterflies. The wonderful flashing creatures had darted through the rooms at first with swift whirling circling wings. But in the hot fetid air one by one they had fallen to the floor crushed into shapeless masses. Hundreds of them had clung to the leaves of the lilacs, roses and ferns until they dropped exhausted. Some of them still hung in long graceful swaying streamers of dazzling colour from the ceilings.
The doctor pointed to them.
"Look, dear, their poor little hearts are counting the seconds that yet separate them from the mangled bodies of their mates on the floor. So the hearts of millions of people have been crushed out for the sport of this evening. It's a funny world, isn't it?"
Harriet looked up quickly into his face with puzzled inquiry.
"Why, Papa, I never heard you talk so strangely. What's the matter?"
The father laughed in the best of spirits.
"Only the fancy of a moment, child. I never felt better. Did you have a good time?"
The girl's face grew serious as she drew on her wrap and glanced back toward the great doorway of the ball room.
"Yes, when I could forget the pain in my heart."
She paused and seized his arm with sudden energy.
"You succeeded? It's all right? I'm going abroad at once to study?"
The doctor laughed aloud in a burst of fierce joy.
"Certainly, my dear! Didn't I tell you it would be so?"
The tears sprang into the gentle eyes as she answered gratefully.
"You can't know how happy you've made me."
Bivens, who had heard the doctor's laughter, passed and said with exaggerated courtesy:
"I trust you have enjoyed the evening, Woodman?"
The doctor laughed again in his face.
"More than I can possibly tell you!"
Bivens followed to the door and watched him slowly walk down the steps.
CHAPTER XX
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
The two weeks which followed the Bivens ball, were the happiest Harriet Woodman had known since Nan's shadow had fallen across her life. Every moment was crowded with the work of preparing for her trip, except the hours she could not refuse Stuart, who had suddenly waked to the fact that something beautiful was going out of his life. Every day he asked her to play and sing for him or go for one of their rambles over the hills. They talked but little. He simply loved to be alone with her.
Harriet watched him with keen joy, and deep in her heart a secret hope began to slowly grow.
The day she sailed he refused to go with her to the pier.
"Why Jim, you must come with me!" she protested.
"No, I can't, little pal. Sit down at your piano now and sing my favourite song and I'll say goodbye here."
"But why?" she pleaded.
"I'm not quite sure how I would behave in public."
Without a word she took off her gloves, sat down at the piano and sung in low tones of melting tenderness. When the last note died away, he rose quietly, came to her side, and took her hand.
"I never knew, little girl, how my life has grown into yours until I'm about to lose you."
"But you're not going to lose me. Remember I'm coming back to sing for you before thousands. And I'm going to make you proud of me."
"I couldn't know how deeply and tenderly I love you, child, until this moment when I'm about to say goodbye."
The little figure was very still. Her eyes drooped and her lips trembled pathetically. She knew that he had said too much to mean a great deal. He had spoken of his love for her as a "child," when long ago the child had grown into the tragic figure of a woman who had learned to wait and suffer in silence.
She tried to speak and her voice failed. Her hand began to tremble in his.
She turned and faced him with a smile, pressing his hand. The cab was at the door and her father calling from below.
"Goodbye, Jim," she said tenderly.
"Goodbye to the dearest little chum God ever sent to cheer a lonely unhappy man's soul."
A sob stilled his voice and she turned her face away to hide her tears.
He still clung to her hand.
"It's been a long time," he said hesitatingly, "since you've kissed me, girlie; just one for remembrance!"
With a quick movement she drew her hand away and started with a laugh toward the door.
"No, Jim, I'm afraid I'm getting too old for that now."
He made no reply but stepped to her side and grasped her hand.
"Then again, goodbye."
"Goodbye."
He pressed her hand to his lips.
The slender body quivered and her face flushed scarlet. She hurried down the steps to the cab, turned and threw him a kiss.
He watched the cab roll down Fourth Street toward the pier while a great wave of loneliness overwhelmed him.
He slowly climbed the stairs toward his room, and passed the door of Harriet's on the way. It was open and he looked in expecting her to appear suddenly before him with a smile on her serene little face. He noted how neat and tidy she had left her nest; not a sign of confusion, the floor swept clean, everything in its place and the bed made with scrupulous care. The whole place breathed the perfume of her sunny character.
On the mantel he saw a love letter she had written to her father.
"How thoughtful of the little darling," he exclaimed. "God knows he'll need it to-night."
He hurried to his own room with the hope that she might have left one for him. He searched his mantel and bureau in vain and had just given up with a sigh when his eye rested on a card fastened over the old-fashioned grate in the fire place. His hand trembled as he read it:
"Dear Jim:"I shall miss you dreadfully, in the strange world beyond the seas. When you sit here and look into your fire I hope you'll see the face of your little pal in the picture sometimes."Harriet."
"Dear Jim:
"I shall miss you dreadfully, in the strange world beyond the seas. When you sit here and look into your fire I hope you'll see the face of your little pal in the picture sometimes.
"Harriet."
He kissed the card and placed it in his pocket-book.
At night the doctor was not at home. He rapped on his door next morning and got no answer.
The girl said he had spent the night out—she didn't know where.
As Stuart was about to leave for his office the doctor entered. His bloodshot eyes were sunken deep behind his brows, his face haggard and his shoulders drooped. Stuart knew he had tramped the streets all night in a stupor of hopeless misery.
He stared at the young lawyer as if he didn't recognize him and then said feebly:
"Don't go yet, my boy, wait a few moments. I just want to know that you're here."
Stuart took his outstretched hand, and led him into the library. "I know why you tramped the streets; the old house is very lonely."
The father placed his hand on his head, exclaiming:
"I never knew what loneliness meant before!" The big hand fell in a gesture of despair. "It's dark and cold, I'm slipping down into a bottomless pit. There's not a soul in heaven or earth or hell to whom I can cry for help or pity."
Stuart pressed his hand.
"I understand. I'm younger than you, Doctor, but I, too, have walked that way, thevia dolorosaalone."
The older man glared at him with a wild look in his eyes.
"But you don't understand; that's what's the matter, and I can't tell you. I'm alone, I tell you, alone in a world of cold and darkness."
"No, no," Stuart interrupted soothingly. "You're just all in; you must go to bed and sleep. Go at once, and you'll find something to cheer you in the little girl's room, a love letter for you."
"Yes," he asked, the light slowly returning to his eyes, "a love letter from my baby?"
"I saw it there after she left. Read it and go to sleep. I'll see you to-night."
"Yes, yes, of course, my boy, that's what's the matter with me. I'm just all in for the lack of sleep. I've been raving half the time, I think. I'll go to bed at once."
When Stuart returned early from his work in the afternoon he found a group of forlorn women and children standing beside the stoop. A pale, elfish-looking boy of ten, whose face appeared to be five years older, sat on the lower step crying.
"What's the matter, kiddie?" he asked kindly.
"I wants de doctor—me mudder's sick. She'll croak before mornin' ef he don't come—dey all want him." He waved his little dirty hand toward the others. "He ain't come around no more for a week. The goil says we can't see him, he's asleep."
"I'll tell him you're here. The doctor's been ill himself."
The boy rose quickly and doffed his ragged cap.
"Tank ye, boss."
He urged the doctor to go at once to see his patients. The work he loved would restore his spirits. He was dumfounded at the answer he received.
"Tell them to go away," he said with a frown. "I can't see them to-day. I may never be able to see them again."
"Come, come, Doctor, pull yourself together and go. I'll go with you. It's the best medicine you can take."
He answered angrily:
"No, no! I'm in no mood to work. I couldn't help them. I'd poison and kill them all, feeling as I do to-day. A physician can't heal the sick unless there's healing in his own soul. I'd bring death not life into their homes. Tell them to go away!"
Stuart emptied his pockets of all the money he had in a desperate effort to break their disappointment.
"The doctor's too ill to see you, now," he explained. "He sent this money for you and hopes it will help you over the worst until he can come."
He divided the money among them and they looked at it with dull disappointment. They were glad to get it, but what they needed more than the money was the hope and strength of their friend's presence. They left with dragging feet and Stuart returned to the doctor's room determined not to leave until he knew the secret of his collapse.
From the haggard face and feverish eyes he knew he hadn't slept yet. He had gotten up at one o'clock and dressed. The lunch which the maid had brought to his room was on the table by his bed, untouched.
The young lawyer softly closed the door and sat down. The older man gazed at him in a dull stupor.
"Doctor," Stuart began gently. "I've known you for about fifteen years. You're the only father I've had in this big town, and you've been a good one. You've been acting strangely for the past two weeks. You're in trouble."
"The greatest trouble that can come to any human soul," was the bitter answer.
"Haven't I won the right to your confidence and friendship in such an hour?"
"My trouble, boy, is beyond the help of friends."
"Nonsense," Stuart answered cheerfully. "Shake off the blues. What's wrong? Do you need money?"
The doctor broke into a discordant laugh.
"No. I've just sent Harriet abroad. I've some money laid away that will last a year or two until she is earning a good salary. What gave you the idea?"
The last question he asked with sudden sharp energy.
"Actions that indicate a strain greater than you can bear."
"No, you're mistaken," he answered roughly. "I can bear it all right." He paused and his eyes stared at the ceiling as he groaned: "I've got to bear it; what's the use to whine?"
Stuart stepped close and slipped his arm about the stalwart figure. His voice was tender with a man's deep feeling.
"Come, Doctor, you're not fooling me. I've known you too long. There's only one man on earth for whom I'd do as much as I would for you—my own gray-haired father down South. You've been everything to me one man could be to another during the past fifteen years. You have given me a home, the love of a big tender heart, and the wise counsel of tried friendship. If there's anything that I have and you need, it's yours before you ask it, to the last dollar I possess. Come now—tell me what's the trouble?"
Stuart could feel the big form sway and tremble under the stress of overwhelming emotion, and his arm pressed a little closer. And then the tension suddenly broke.
The doctor sank into a chair and looked up with a helpless stare.
"Yes, Jim, I will—I'll—tell—you."
He gasped and choked, paused, pulled himself together and cried:
"I must tell somebody or jump out of that window and dash my brains out!"
When the paroxysm of emotion had spent itself, he drew a deep sigh and began to speak in broken accents.
"I was in trouble for money, my boy, in the deepest trouble."
"And you didn't let me know!" Stuart interrupted reproachfully.
"How could I? I was proud and sensitive. I had taught you high ideals. How could the teacher come to his pupil and say, 'I've failed.' My theories were beautiful, but they don't work in life. And so I struggled on until I waked one day to find that I was getting old, that I had gone to war to fight other men's battles and had left my loved one at home to perish. The first hideous sense of failure crept over me and paralyzed soul and body with fear. I was becoming a pauper. You see I had always believed that a man who poured out his life for others could not fail. And then I—who had given, given, given, always given my time, my money, my soul, and body—waked to find that I was sucked dry, that I was played out, that I was bankrupt in money, bankrupt in life! The great love I had borne the world suddenly grew faint under the sense of loneliness and failure. And I gave up. I withdrew my suit and determined to throw myself on the generosity of the man who owed his wealth and power to the start I had given him, the man who destroyed my business and wrecked my fortune. He had made me two offers that seemed generous when I recalled them. I judged his character by my own and I went to his house the night of that ball without invitation."
The doctor's voice broke and he paused. And then with the tears streaming down his cheeks unchecked, his accents broken with unrestrained sobs he told the story of his meeting with Bivens, of his abject pleading when he had thrown pride to the winds, of the cruel and brutal taunts, and the last beastly insult when the millionaire boasted of his squandering of millions and rejoiced that he could flaunt this in the face of his suffering and humiliation.
"And then, boy," the broken man moaned, "he left me with a sneer and told me to stroll over his palace and enjoy the evening. That I would find his wife wearing a pearl necklace which cost a half million and jewelled slippers worth enough to finish my baby's education, but that he would see us both to the bottom of hell before I could have one penny."
Again the doctor's voice sank into a strangling sob. When he lifted his head his eyes were glittering with a strange light.
"And then," he went on with quivering voice, "I began to see things red. The lust of blood was beating in every stroke of my heart. In vivid flashes of blasphemous fury I saw life from a new point of view. I began to ask where God lived that such things could be in his world. I saw the bruised bodies of my fellow beings flung before such men as Bivens and ground to dust. I saw the lies that pass for truth, the low fights for gain at the cost of blood and tears, the deeds that laugh at shame and honour, and gloating over it all the brutal glory of success. I determined to kill the little wretch as I would stamp on a snake. And then I saw my baby standing near. My hand grew limp. I felt that I must save her first and then die if need be. I felt for the first time the cunning of the elemental man, the force that gave him food and shelter for himself and babies before the laws of property had come to rule the world. I reached out my hand and took by cunning what belonged to me by right."
Again he paused and looked into Stuart's face with a hopeless stare.
"I—stole—a—case—of—jewels!"
Stuart sprang to his feet with an exclamation of horror.
"You—did—what!"
"Yes," the doctor went on hoarsely. "I stole a case of his jewels, and sent my girl abroad. I'm going to plead guilty now and go to prison. I shall never again lift my head in the haunts of men."
Stuart sobbed in anguish.
"You see, boy, I failed when put to the test. It doesn't make any difference about my reputation. Character only counts, and I'm a thief."
"Shut up!" Stuart cried fiercely, seizing his arm. "Don't say that again and don't talk so loudly. Whatever you did, you were insane when you did it."
"No, I had just failed," the older man insisted in dull tones, "failed in all save one thing. I've done that, at least. And I didn't forget my honour. I used it for my purpose. I did as old Palissy the great mad potter. To get the heat required to perfect his greatest work of art, you know he broke the last piece of furniture in his house and thrust it into his furnace. So I threw my honour into the flames of hell to save my little girl's voice. Maybe it was a mistake. I don't know. I couldn't think then. I only know now that life is impossible any more, and I'm ready to go. You can send me to prison at once, Jim, I'd rather you would do it, for I know that you love me and at least no unkind word will fall from your lips before I receive my sentence. I'll make no fight. I'm glad I don't have to say all this to a stranger. You can send me up the river at once. I'm glad you are the district attorney."
"But I'm not. I resigned my office this morning."
"Resigned?" The doctor asked in dazed surprise.
"Yes, to go into business for myself. I had only another month to serve. You're not going to prison if I can help it."
"But I don't want you to help it. It's the only place to go now—you see, boy, I can't live with myself any more! Besides I'm old and played out; the world don't need me any longer."
"Well, I need you," Stuart broke in, "and you're not going to give up this fight as long as I'm here."
"I'm a failure; it's no use."
"But you've forgotten some things," the younger man said tenderly. "You've helped to make my life what it is—you haven't failed in that. You gave your blood to your country when she needed it—-you didn't fail in that. You have forgotten the thousands you have helped, the hope and cheer and inspiration that passed into their lives through yours. Failure sometimes means success. The greatest failure of all the ages perhaps was Jesus Christ. Deserted and denied by his own disciples, scoffed at, spit on and beaten by his enemies, crucified between two thieves, crying in anguish and despair to the God who had forsaken him; yet this friendless crucified peasant who failed, has conquered the world at last."
Stuart paused and looked at the older man sharply.
"Are you listening, Doctor?" he asked, seizing his arm. "Did you hear what I just said to you?"
He turned his head stupidly.
"Hear what? No, I can't hear anything. Jim, except a devil that follows me everywhere, day and night, and whispers in my ear—'thief! thief!' It's no use. I'm done."
"Well I'm not done. I've just begun. You are not going to give up and you're not going to prison. We'll go to Bivens's house to-night. We'll tell him the truth. We'll return the value of his jewels. I'll get the money to make good what you owe him——" his voice broke.
"Oh, why, why, why didn't you let me know; but what's the use to ask, it's done now!"
"Yes, it's done and it can't be undone," the older man interrupted hopelessly.
"But it can and it will be undone. I've influence with Bivens. He'll drop the matter and no one on earth will know save we three. You can go on with your work among the poor and I'll help you."
"But you don't understand, Jim," the broken man protested, feebly. "I tell you I've given up. I can't take your money, I can't pay. I tell you I've given up. I can't take your money. I can't pay it back."
"You can pay it back, too, if you like. Harriet will be earning thousands of dollars in a few years. Her success is sure."
A faint smile lighted the father's face.
"Her successissure, isn't it?" he asked with the eagerness of a child. And then the smile slowly faded.
"But I shall not be here to see it."
"Yes you will. I'm running your affairs now, and you've got to do what I say. Get ready. We are going to see Bivens."
"I'll do it if you say so, boy," the doctor answered feebly, "but it's no use. He'll prosecute me to the limit of the law."
"He'll do nothing of the kind."
"He will—I know him."
Bivens refused point blank at first to see Woodman and ordered his servant to put him out of the house and ask Stuart to remain for a conference.
Stuart drew from his case a card and wrote a message to Nan.