ALETTER came to Gabriel in his dingy rooms, where he was waiting to hear news of Joan and of her quest. There had not been money enough to take both of them to Rilchester, when possible defeat would have burdened the journey home. Gabriel had never known the full divinity of Joan’s love till she parted from him with a brave smile in her dear eyes. Her womanly courage had revealed itself to him in all its pathetic beauty when her golden head sunned the shadows of the room no more.
Gabriel was at his supper, a sorry meal enough, when the letter came to him from Rilchester. He had been in a desperate mood all day, nor had he slept the previous night, with dark doubts fluttering through his brain like bats through a ruin. Why had not Joan returned? At the dim and half-desolate station, Gabriel had watched, waiting and waiting as each night train came in. He had spent the next day in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and by the river, hanging a haggard face over the stone parapet, too sick at heart to eat. How often had defeat smitten hope down into the dust! Ever and again he had wandered back to the hot, dusty by-street, hoping to find that Joan had returned.
When Gabriel looked at the letter that the dirty servant tossed onto the table, he flushed like a boy, and his heavy, sleepless eyes grew bright. The writing was Judith’s. Visions of green woods and golden meadows flashed up before him like romance, the warm scent of a woman’s hair, the memory of her pale face and shadowy eyes. Judith! How he loved that name! Were not all truth and beauty built therein, purity and pity, the divine tenderness that makes earth heaven?
He tore open the envelope and read the letter, leaning forward a little towards the window, his hands trembling markedly:
“My dearest Brother[it began],—At last I am able to write to you after all these months of silence and distress. Oh, strange fate, that in finding a woman fainting on the road to Rilchester I should find my brother!”
“My dearest Brother[it began],—At last I am able to write to you after all these months of silence and distress. Oh, strange fate, that in finding a woman fainting on the road to Rilchester I should find my brother!”
The letter, warm and fragrant with the love of a good woman, went on to tell how Joan and Judith had come together after Joan’s flight from Zeus Gildersedge’s death-bed. The outpourings of hours of solitary yearning seemed to flow in the eager and impassioned words. Of Joan, Judith wrote with a fervor that brought a strange smile to Gabriel’s face:
“Now I can understand your love, brother, and your strong heroism in defying society for a woman’s sake. This dear Joan is blood of my blood, heart of my heart. In two days we have become as sisters. Ah, Gabriel, I would trust her, even if she had come to me from the gate of hell. But methinks she is more like Beatrice out of paradise.”
“Now I can understand your love, brother, and your strong heroism in defying society for a woman’s sake. This dear Joan is blood of my blood, heart of my heart. In two days we have become as sisters. Ah, Gabriel, I would trust her, even if she had come to me from the gate of hell. But methinks she is more like Beatrice out of paradise.”
From such sisterly exultation Judith digressed to speak of John Strong:
“Father has aged since the autumn. He is whiter and stoops a little, and his eyes look tired. Poor father! he has always been a hard man, but I believe the ice is broken about his heart. Would to God he would be less proud! And yet I love this pride of his when he faces the prattlers here like a Brutus, and frowns back those he does not trust.“Moreover, I am convinced that father has changed his opinions greatly, though he says but little. That woman—pardon me, Gabriel, for I hate her—has been brazening it about like any countess. That she is none too honest I would stake my soul. We of Gabingly and Saltire are like border barons locked in a death feud. Maltravers. Have you ever heard the name from Ophelia’s lips? Father has hinted that he has had his suspicions aroused by some casual circumstances that have been brought to his notice. Would to Heaven he would be more frank with me!“Now, Gabriel, my own brother, let me plead with you as a sister. Joan must remain here; I have my reasons, and a woman’s wit is worth more than a lawyer’s tongue. As for yourself, stay in London till I bid you come.“Joan is well. See, I enclose a short letter from her. Also a little money out of my allowance. Use it, dear Gabriel, and God bless you!“Pardon the vagueness of all this; I write in great haste.“Judith.”
“Father has aged since the autumn. He is whiter and stoops a little, and his eyes look tired. Poor father! he has always been a hard man, but I believe the ice is broken about his heart. Would to God he would be less proud! And yet I love this pride of his when he faces the prattlers here like a Brutus, and frowns back those he does not trust.
“Moreover, I am convinced that father has changed his opinions greatly, though he says but little. That woman—pardon me, Gabriel, for I hate her—has been brazening it about like any countess. That she is none too honest I would stake my soul. We of Gabingly and Saltire are like border barons locked in a death feud. Maltravers. Have you ever heard the name from Ophelia’s lips? Father has hinted that he has had his suspicions aroused by some casual circumstances that have been brought to his notice. Would to Heaven he would be more frank with me!
“Now, Gabriel, my own brother, let me plead with you as a sister. Joan must remain here; I have my reasons, and a woman’s wit is worth more than a lawyer’s tongue. As for yourself, stay in London till I bid you come.
“Joan is well. See, I enclose a short letter from her. Also a little money out of my allowance. Use it, dear Gabriel, and God bless you!
“Pardon the vagueness of all this; I write in great haste.
“Judith.”
Gabriel sat there in the twilight with the letters and bank-notes laid upon his knee. From without came the sound of a woman singing, singing in one of the dim and narrow rooms below his window. To Gabriel it seemed for the moment as the voice of some aspiring spirit climbing from the squalor of life into the more splendid land of dreams. It was but a poor, struggling child of art who sang, mocking with her melody the coarse cares of a loveless world.
He took Joan’s letter and read it as through a mist, halting often as though to hold and possess each word.
“Dear Heart[it ran],—Judith, your sister, will have told you all; how we two have come together and how she has helped me. I had dreamed of noble women in the past, and now I have found one of my own flesh and blood and crown and all. Judith is wonderful; were she a queen, I could die for her as easily as I could fall asleep.“Of my father I need write nothing, save that he is dead.“Oh, my own, I stretch out my arms to you, and my heart is full. Yet must I stay here in exile, even as you must wait for what God shall give to us. I have great joy and faith in Judith, for like an angel she seems to press the clouds back from the world.“Gabriel, good-night. There is a spirit in me that bids me hope.”
“Dear Heart[it ran],—Judith, your sister, will have told you all; how we two have come together and how she has helped me. I had dreamed of noble women in the past, and now I have found one of my own flesh and blood and crown and all. Judith is wonderful; were she a queen, I could die for her as easily as I could fall asleep.
“Of my father I need write nothing, save that he is dead.
“Oh, my own, I stretch out my arms to you, and my heart is full. Yet must I stay here in exile, even as you must wait for what God shall give to us. I have great joy and faith in Judith, for like an angel she seems to press the clouds back from the world.
“Gabriel, good-night. There is a spirit in me that bids me hope.”
The man sat a long while in the silent room, while the night came down and the gloom increased. Out of the dusk, under the shadow of fruit-trees, within beck of a red rose, Gabriel beheld two women standing, fair women whose faces seemed to cleanse the world. Horror and despair seemed to faint away like black waters ebbing from before their feet. For in either hand there was a lamp, golden-tongued and stately, Faith out of Heaven.
The singing had ceased in the room below, and over the myriad roofs rose the solemn arch of the moon. Gabriel watched it climb the sky, till it seemed to hang like a mighty halo behind the iron cross of a church.
THEY buried Zeus Gildersedge in Saltire churchyard, Mr. Mince officiating, bleating through the burial service with his usual sentimental unction.
“Earth to earth, and dust to dust.”
Good gold also to the greedy, and the dead man’s store consecrated to strangers and to hirelings. Thus Zeus Gildersedge, who had never given a penny away gladly in his life, went to his last resting-place, and, Lazarus-like, lay in Charity’s bosom, while his child was barred out from before the gates of “the worthy.”
There was a goodly gathering about the grave, for the funeral had excited the curiosity of the villagers. Mrs. Mince was there in black gloves and black bonnet; also James Marjoy, pulling his ragged mustache; also his wife, eying creation irritably through her brimming glasses. Mrs. Primmer, hard mouthed and self-satisfied, stood beside the gravestone of a girl who had died in child-bed, dabbing her eyes at intervals with a large, white handkerchief. To judge by the dignity of the display, Zeus Gildersedge might have been one of the most respected of patriarchs, a man whose sympathies had fathomed the woes of many a poor fellow’s pocket.
At the end thereof, the crowd dwindled through the lych-gate, under the green chestnut-trees, and by the school-house where the children were at work. Mrs. Primmer, whose tongue had been busy ascribing Zeus Gildersedge’s death to his daughter’s “shocking interference,” accompanied Mrs. Mince up Saltire High Street to the vicarage. Mrs. Primmer carried a little black hand-bag, wherein lay the handkerchief she had used at the funeral, her post-office savings book, and several trinkets she had appropriated from Joan’s bedroom at Burnt House. Mrs. Primmer, in acknowledgment of her many virtues, was to be received once more at the vicarage as cook.
Dr. Marjoy and his wife drove home together, uninspired above their mean level of materialism by the miser’s funeral. The suggestiveness of the scene had been lost upon them—the subtlety of those significant words, “dust to dust.” They discussed the profits of the case over the tea-table, discussed it with that complacency that had accustomed them to existing upon the misfortunes of others.
“I should send in my account at once to the executors,” said the lady, eying the carpet and debating inwardly how much it would cost her to replace it with a new one.
“Mince and Lang are acting in the matter.”
Mrs. Marjoy frowned and fidgeted in her chair.
“How much have you charged?” she asked.
“Thirty pounds or so.”
“Make it fifty, dear; dead men can afford to pay. I am sure you were backward and forward enough.”
“I think it is only fair,” said the doctor, “that one should recuperate one’s self from the wealthy for the amount of time one has to waste gratuitously on the poor. It is an extraordinary thing, but whenever I get a bad diphtheria case it is always in a cottage, and one gets nothing out of it.”
“I thought the Robinsons’ baby was really going to have whooping-cough at last,” added Mrs. Marjoy, “but it turned out only a cold. That would have been a good case, James; people are always ridiculously anxious about an only child.”
The doctor sipped his tea.
“I think I might charge old Gildersedge’s estate sixty guineas,” he observed. “I spared the daughter any inquiries about that last attack of syncope.”
“His death lies at her door,” said Mrs. Marjoy, pursing up her mouth. “Infamous wench—attacking an old man on his death-bed. Nothing more has been seen of her; I suppose she has gone back to that young blackguard of a Strong.”
“At all events, Zeus Gildersedge did not leave her a farthing.”
“Vice must be suppressed,” quoth Mrs. Marjoy, with irritable unction.
Judith Strong had heard in Saltire of Zeus Gildersedge’s death, but she had kept the news from Joan, knowing that Gabriel’s wife had had sufficient sorrow since the autumn. The same day that the old man was buried in Saltire churchyard, Judith had ordered out her dog-cart and persuaded her father to drive with her towards the sea.
Judith seemed to be the one being in the world for whom John Strong had any sentimental respect. The merchant was a hard man, even as many men are hard who have buffeted their way to the van in their strenuous and materialistic struggle of the day. The aggressive and self-reliant elements of his nature had been exaggerated to a degree that rendered him often offensive to folk of finer fibre. John Strong’s vindictiveness towards his son had originated largely from outraged vanity and imbittered pride. It was not so much the offence, but the destructive and thorough sincerity of the deed that had made John Strong so implacable a Minos. Doubtless he would have ignored a guarded indiscretion. Gabriel’s whole-hearted enthusiasm in consummating his own social overthrow had maddened his father, to whom prudence was one of the prime virtues.
Yet John Strong had a heart in him under all the grim and orthodox materialism that had contracted about his character. Judith could remember the time when her father, less cumbered by the cult of gold, had romped with her like a great boy. Nor was it imbittered ambition alone that had whitened his hair and bowed his broad shoulders a little those winter months. Deep under the granite surface John Strong had loved his son, and loved him still with a doggedness that he himself perhaps would never have allowed.
Judith, warm-hearted woman, had suspected this same truth, and had drawn her dreams therefrom. Had not her father, silent and stubborn, watchful as some grizzled dog, confessed that he had received rumors that had set him pondering anew? There was old Symes, the solicitor at Rilchester, a fast friend, who had seen Ophelia at St. Aylmers while he was taking his own holiday there. Had not Symes sworn in confidence that he had seen this same Maltravers with Ophelia, this Maltravers whose name was now linked with hers? Then there were certain of The Friary servants, hired creatures whom John Strong had distrusted, and had taken pains to strengthen his distrust. Some such suggestive hints as these had fallen casually to him since the autumn; nor was he the man to throw a hint away.
John Strong climbed heavily into the dog-cart that day, and sat himself down beside Judith, telling the groom they did not need him for the afternoon. Judith touched the brown mare with the whip, and they swung away down the drive and under the great oaks of the home park. John Strong’s eyes wandered almost wistfully over the rich meadow-land, the woods, the fish-ponds glimmering below the garden. Had he not held this for his son, that son whom he had hoped to see more of an aristocrat than was his father?
As they went through Saltire they heard the church-bell tolling, slowly and heavily, from the tall spire.
“Who’s dead?” John Strong asked, as he saw people moving towards the gate.
“Zeus Gildersedge,” Judith answered, glancing at him slantwise as she drove.
She saw her father’s figure stiffen unconsciously, his forehead grow full of lines under the brim of his shooting-hat. His lids were half closed over his keen, gray eyes as they drove on down the street in the full glare of the sun.
“Zeus Gildersedge is dead, is he?”
“Yes, father.”
“His daughter’s doing, I suppose?”
“No, not that. He has been killing himself for years with wine and opium.”
“So. But how do you know that?”
Judith colored.
“Every one knows of it,” she said.
John Strong sat silent, staring southward where he could see Cambron Head and a streak of sea-blue in the distance. His mouth was not so implacable as of old, and there was something in his eyes that half suggested to Judith the thoughts that were in his heart.
“Girl,” he said suddenly.
Judith tightened her hold upon the reins.
“Did you ever see this wench? Don’t be afraid of telling the truth.”
“I have seen her, father.”
“Mere baggage, I suppose.”
“Gabriel thought her a noble woman. I think as Gabriel did.”
John Strong cast a rapid glance at his daughter’s face. There was some movement about his mouth—the hard lines were softer, the gray eyes less repellent.
“You mean to tell me that the woman is presentable?”
“Far more presentable than I am. Do you think Gabriel would have risked all for a slattern?”
John Strong winced.
“Then whose fault was it?” he asked.
“Whose, indeed?”
“You tell me that Gabriel is an honest man, that the girl is all that she should be, while the law has declared for the Gusset woman. How can these things harmonize?”
“My dear father, do you trust Ophelia Gusset?”
John Strong considered his reply a moment, like a witness confronting an expert advocate.
“The law trusted her,” he said.
“What is the law?”
“Common-sense, girl.”
“It was Ophelia’s word against Gabriel’s. You believed Ophelia.”
“The evidence was on her side. And why the devil should the woman kick up such a dust if she had suffered nothing?”
“Because that marriage was a mockery; because she did not love Gabriel; because she wanted to get back her liberty.”
John Strong leaned back and stared sullenly under his bushy brows towards the sea. Judith knew that he was thinking deeply, and that his thoughts were tinged with bitterness, the bitterness of a proud and self-righteous man half moved to confess himself deceived. Had not his own reason uttered these same words that he heard from Judith’s lips, and had he not hurled them again and again out of his heart with scorn?
“Judith,” he said, “I would give my right hand to know whether my son was a fool or a knave.”
“And the proof lies—”
“Partly with the woman for whom he ruined himself. Gabriel was always a dreamer and an enthusiast. I tried to break him of his Quixotism. That’s where we clashed.”
“And Joan Gildersedge?”
“The girl may have been an adventuress, or a mere twin fool to Gabriel. If I could have that girl’s heart like an open ledger before me, I wager I could discover who falsified the accounts.”
“You think so, father?”
“I have seen something of the world.”
“And Ophelia?”
He answered with an oath.
Before them ran a straight road. On the left towered a beech-wood, where huge trunks pillared the gloom under the dense cloud of green. On the right ran meadows ablaze with gold. Set back from the road stood a red-tiled cottage under the shade of two poplars and an elm. The white garden-gate blinked between two yew-trees at the end of a path that ran over the meadow.
Judith drew up suddenly by the roadside and sprang down into the grass. She took a strap from under the seat and tethered the mare to a stake in the hedge. Her father watched her with no great interest. Judith had many poor folk on her charity, and such visits as this were by no means rare.
“Come with me,” she said, holding out her hand to him.
“Who lives yonder? Old Milton? You don’t want me on these occasions.”
“Yes, I do want you, father. Old Widow Milton was very grateful for the seeds you sent her.”
“Seeds I sent her?”
“Yes, you remember, for her garden. Come. Jenny will be safe tied to the hedge.”
John Strong, rising with something betwixt a grunt and a sigh, clambered out of the trap and followed Judith over the stile. He did not trouble himself to understand her humor, and, moreover, he was busied with reflections of his own that drove Dame Milton and her small affairs into oblivion. He was thinking of Gabriel, and of what Judith had said to him as they drove from Saltire. Like a man who had lost his way in a fog, he peered round him into space, ignorant that the very path he sought curled close to his feet.
They came to the gate and entered the little front garden, bright with its flowers. Judith turned off along the brick path that ran round the cottage to where several fruit-trees overhung a patch of grass. Beds of cottage flowers bloomed in barbaric abundance about the lawn. Under a plum-tree was set a table covered with a clean, white cloth, and in an old arm-chair sat a girl reading.
John Strong had followed his daughter round the cottage, with his hands in his coat-pockets and his hat tilted over his eyes. He glanced half listlessly at the flowers, as though the opulence of his own garden had spoiled him for the humbler broideries of nature. He had no definite consciousness with regard to externals for the moment, and had followed Judith more from lack of thought than from any desire to speak with Widow Milton. Thus when he came to a sudden halt on the grass behind the cottage, and saw a pale, slim woman standing under a fruit-tree with an open book held in both her hands, he started, stiffened at the hips, and seemed not a little nonplussed by the unexpectedness of the vision.
His surprise was increased the more by Judith’s behavior. He saw his daughter go to the woman standing under the tree, kiss her, and thrust her back gently into the chair. A look, a word or two passed between them. Instinctively John Strong had taken off his hat. He stood irresolutely in the middle of the lawn, holding his hat between his hands, staring first at Joan and then at Judith.
But Gabriel’s sister had no intention of suffering the scene to degenerate into melodrama. She put a chair forward, took her father’s hat, smiled at him as though the situation was the most natural thing in the whole world.
“Sit down, father dear.”
And John Strong sat down.
Judith had flown to the cottage door.
“We are ready for tea, please, Mrs. Milton; there are three of us.”
She was back again in her white dress like a beam of light, her eyes tremulous, her face eager with the inspiration of the moment. Was not the delicate balance poised upon her diplomacy? She gave Joan one long, loving look, and then turned to watch her father.
As for John Strong, he sat there a man very ill at ease within himself, neither knowing whether to be angry nor upon what reason he could base his anger. Who was this white-faced woman with the splendid hair, whose half-frightened and mesmeric eyes stared at him from under the shadow of the tree? How had she come there, and what was she to Judith? John Strong’s eyes twinkled nervously over the half-reclining figure. He was expecting an introduction, but no such trite formality released him from his ignorance.
Judith’s voice reached his ear. It was a perilous hour for Gabriel and for Joan, and Judith’s courage rose to the occasion. Father and sister both looked to her for promptings, and Judith sustained the burden of it all.
“My father is a great gardener,” she said, flashing a look into Joan’s eyes.
“Ah, yes; I, too, know something of flowers, for I love them all.”
John Strong, autocrat though he was, accepted the opening gladly, even as a callow boy welcomes a partner’s sympathy at a dance. He awoke and expanded, grew warm and even eager. The two women encouraged him with that luminous interest that a philosopher loves in his disciples. Mysteries were unfolded, the subtleties in horticulture were discussed. John Strong, enthusiast that he was, grew the more surprised at the knowledge this mere woman possessed. Nor was her knowledge mere book-lore concerning birds and flowers, but the vivid wisdom of one who had waded through dew-drenched fields at many a dawn and watched wild life from many a woodland hermitage.
John Strong was very partial to a pretty woman, provided she hadl’air spiritueland a certain stateliness that suggested “birth.” This stranger under the fruit-tree was wonderfully intelligent, nor was there anything of the “blue” about her to arouse distrust. What eyes she had, and what a mouth! Who the dickens was she? What a goose Judith was to forget the decent formalities of society. Gabriel’s wife? Could it be possible?
Tea came. Mrs. Milton, in a clean apron and cap, beamed upon them like a ruddy cottage rose, honest and uncultivated.
Joan drew to the table, and John Strong watched her white, delicate hands hovering over the cups. He had grown silent of a sudden—thoughtful, restless. Joan’s eyes wavered up to his, large, limpid, and entreating.
“May I give you sugar?”
“Three lumps, please.”
“Cream?”
“Cream, thank you.”
“Won’t you sit in the shade. It is such a glare out there in the sun.”
John Strong edged his chair under the tree, while Judith watched him, smiling out of her dark eyes. It was all very simple, yet very strange. She wondered what thoughts were working in her father’s brain.
Half an hour passed, smoothly enough, and then came the leave-taking. Joan, very pale and a little defiant for all her wistfulness, stood up and looked into John Strong’s face. The gray eyes and the blue ones met and challenged each other steadily. Judith was watching Joan as a mother watches a child taking the first step on the stair of fame. It was Joan’s instinct that triumphed in that moment. She went straight up to John Strong, put up her mouth to him to be kissed.
And John Strong kissed her.
“Thank you,” was all she said.
As for Gabriel’s father, he spoke never a word as he drove home with Judith towards Saltire. His daughter watched him, biding her time, wondering whether he were angry or not, and what would follow if his pride should prove too strong.
It was not till he had entered his own lodge gates that John Strong spoke to Judith of the woman he had met at the cottage.
“Is she—?” he said.
“Yes—Gabriel’s wife.”
John Strong was silent again for fully a minute. Then he asked Joan a single question.
“Was this a plant?”
His daughter looked him full in the face.
“No, father,” she said; “I did not know we should drive there till after we heard the death-bell tolling.”
“This is the truth?”
“Have I ever lied to you in my life?”
THE morning after Zeus Gildersedge’s burial, John Strong walked the terrace before Saltire Hall, a man much troubled within himself. Sentiment had always seemed so doubtful a virtue to the tea-merchant that he had for years regarded any such ebullition of the soul with intense suspicion. After a long talk with Judith the preceding night he had gone to bed in a mood so generous and pliant that his own daughter had been astonished at the sudden surrender of her father’s pride.
But with the morning, that sober hour when the mind gleams like a sphere of marble in the sun, John Strong’s emotions had cooled discouragingly. He viewed them on rising much as a masker regards the gay clothes he had worn the night before, when wine had cozened him out of his saner self. John Strong went down to breakfast and faced Judith stolidly over the massive oak table. She saw speedily that his mood had changed, and that he was much more the father she had known of old.
Judith, with a sense of emptiness at her heart, left him alone after the meal, to his papers and his pipe. John Strong smoked vigorously, biting the amber mouth-piece, twisting his papers to and fro with the viciousness of a man irritated by his own indecision. Judith, on the watch, saw her father pass out onto the terrace with his favorite dog following at his heels. By instinct she went to the organ that stood in the great gallery above the hall, and began to play some sad, heart-searching melodies religion had drawn from the deeps of the soul. The solemn tones pealed out into the sunlight with a passion that throbbed from the woman’s heart.
John Strong stood still to listen. The lines softened somewhat on his face and a slight tremor played about the dogged mouth. Few men, be they blunt Philistines, are inert to music when the tide of trouble runs deep. John Strong leaned against the balustrading of the terrace, and felt once more the throes of tenderness that sleep had wiped from out his brain.
It was even as he pondered thus, pacing to and fro, then halting for a time as though thought claimed every red spherelet coursing in his blood, that John Strong heard the sound of wheels upon the carriage-drive beyond the garden. The sound skirted the pines and laurels and the three great cedars, and ceased before the entrance on the northern front of the Hall. John Strong, with a shadow as of displeasure upon his face, turned towards the library window that opened upon the terrace.
Then he heard voices, a woman’s and a man’s. A door closed. John Strong halted in the sun. To him from the window came a man-servant, sleek and clean-shaven, treading deferentially towards his master.
“A lady to see you, sir.”
“What name?”
“She would give no name, sir.”
“Hum.”
“I showed her into the library.”
“What sort of lady, William?”
“Young, sir; came in a cab, one of Dixon’s traps from Rilchester. Hope I did right, sir; the lady said it was important.”
“Quite right,” said John Strong, moving in the direction of the library.
Within he found a smartly dressed, brown-haired woman in a pink toque seated with constrained precision in the middle of the sofa. The perfume of Parma violets filled the room. The stranger was palpably nervous, a little hot and flurried, like a woman who had hurried to catch a train. John Strong stared at her, hat in hand, questioned her as to the reason of the favor her presence conferred upon him.
“Mr. Strong?” she asked, tentatively, smiling forcedly, rising, and sinking again into her seat.
“I am John Strong, madam—”
“I have come on a very delicate matter—”
The ex-tea-merchant took a chair and settled himself so that he could see the woman’s face.
“A delicate matter?” he repeated, scenting charity, or a hospital donation.
“Most delicate, and to me—painful, Mr. Strong. Excuse me if I seem disconnected. I want you to promise—”
She hesitated a moment, and sat staring half apologetically into the old man’s face.
“Well, madam, what am I to promise?”
“That this visit of mine shall be kept a profound secret.”
John Strong elevated his eyebrows.
“If you will first tell me your name, madam—” he suggested.
“My name?”
“I shall be better able to understand the situation.”
The lady in the pink toque drew off her gloves with nervous jerks and laid them neatly in her lap. Then she put her veil up and moistened her lips with her tongue.
“My name is Mabel Saker,” she said, with her eyes fixed on the man’s face; “probably you remember that name.”
Most certainly John Strong remembered it. The expression on his massive and determined face betrayed the unpleasant familiarity of those few syllables. He sat in silence for the moment, his gray eyes fixed on the woman before him.
“So, madam,” he said, “you desire this interview to be kept secret. Will you kindly inform me what its purpose is?”
“Does my name suggest it to you?”
“I have my suspicions.”
“And you will consider any information I may give you as privileged?”
“How privileged, madam?”
“That you may make use of it where and when you like, provided my name is never mentioned.”
John Strong settled himself firmly in his chair like the man of weight and substance that he was.
“Well, madam,” he said, “I make you this promise. I suppose what you have to tell me concerns my son.”
Miss Saker touched her lips with her handkerchief and coughed suggestively. She assumed an air of reluctance with a cleverness that did her adaptability credit.
“Mr. Strong,” she said, impressively, “I have suffered greatly in my mind since certain unfortunate facts came to my knowledge. Doubt and indecision have made a martyr of me. You will sympathize, Mr. Strong, when I confess to you that I have been torn between friendship and a sense of duty.”
John Strong nodded like a judge.
“Let me assure you, madam, that you have my sympathy,” he said.
Miss Saker pressed her hand tragically to her forehead and aped the manner of a popular actress whom she admired.
“How dreadful a thing it is,” she observed, “to find that one has been deceived!”
“Most painful, madam.”
“Your son, Mr. Strong—”
“My son, yes, madam.”
“Was absolutely innocent, as was the girl whose honor they traduced.”
Miss Saker’s brown eyes were fixed expectantly upon the old man’s face. She had promised herself some dramatic excitement in watching the effect of her disclosures upon Gabriel’s father. The result was less sensational than she could have imagined. She saw the old man sink more deeply into his chair. His head was bowed down over his chest, and there was a sudden spasm as of pain upon his face.
“Please explain,” he said, in a strange voice.
Mabel Saker, somewhat frightened, pretended inordinate concern.
“Oh, Mr. Strong, the truth has been too much for you. I have been clumsy. Oh—”
The old man quieted her with a gesture of the hand.
“If you would be kind to me,” he said, “please tell me quickly all you know. It was a conspiracy, I suppose.”
Miss Saker began to lose her melodramatic action.
“Major Maltravers—”
“Major Maltravers. Exactly.”
“He was in love with Ophelia Gusset.”
“Exactly.”
“Ophelia was sick of your son.”
“So I have heard.”
“People wrote anonymous letters.”
“People do that sort of thing—women, I should have said.”
“You understand me.”
“Perfectly, madam; and the witnesses?”
Miss Saker put two plump fingers before her mouth.
“Bribery,” she lisped; “inquire at Callydon, Mr. Strong, and elsewhere; inquire at St. Aylmers. I need not advise you in this.”
“And the decree has been made absolute?”
“Six months—”
“It is too late, thank God, for mere intervention.”
Miss Saker stared.
“Why do you say ‘thank God’?” she asked.
“Because, madam, I would not have my son re-wedded to a devil.”
There was a short but impressive silence between them for a moment. Then Miss Saker stood up, tugging at her gloves. John Strong also rose like a man who was very tired.
“You understand, Mr. Strong,” she said, “what a terrible ordeal this has been to me.”
“I understand, madam, and, believe me, I am grateful.”
“And your promise?”
“A promise, Miss Saker, is a promise.”
The woman in the pink toque smiled, but the smile vanished utterly as she met the old man’s gray eyes. There was something so subtle and contemptuous in the look he gave her that her vapid self-esteem and her facile hypocrisy seemed to wither in a moment.
“Good-bye,” she gushed, holding out a hand.
John Strong touched her fingers and walked with her towards the door.
“Good-bye, madam,” he said. “I hope you will have a pleasant drive to Gabingly.”
“Gabingly? Not Gabingly, Rilchester.”
“Pardon me, I was forgetting.”
“Rilchester. I leave for London to-night.”
When the woman in the pink toque with her silks and perfumes had gone, and the sound of the carriage wheels had died beyond the meadows, John Strong passed back to the library and found Judith standing by the window. There was so strange a look upon her father’s face that Judith gazed at him and was mute. Haggard as he looked, a certain grim joy seemed to shine in his gray eyes, a joy that betrayed the passions that were working in his heart. Judith went to him and held his arm.
“Father, what is it?” she asked.
He partly leaned upon her, with one hand upon her shoulder.
“I was in the wrong,” he said, doggedly.
“Father!”
“Gabriel shall come home.”
“Home!”
“And I, John Strong, will stand and fight beside my son.”
THE master of Saltire was no mean enemy to be pitted against in such a feud as had arisen over Gabriel, his son. There was much of the bull-terrier about John Strong. He had been born of solid yeoman stock, folk who would have gone stubbornly to the stake rather than admit the power of the pope. Moreover, the ex-tea-merchant had learned to the full in his commercial life the sure power of gold. He had always laughed at socialism. Even Judith could remember him standing before a public building in France and staring contemptuously at the inscription:
“Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”
“Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”
“Bosh!” he had ejaculated; “the Revolution did not abolish bullion.”
John Strong was not only a stubborn and a very wealthy man, but he was in that pugnacious mood that had served him so well in his commercial struggles in the past. He threw himself into the cause with something of the spirit of an old British sea-dog laying his ship “gun to gun” against the crack “thunderer” of the French fleet.
The day after his interview with Miss Saker, John Strong left by an early train for Rilchester, travelling alone, with no luggage to cumber him. Judith had driven over with him to Rilchester and had taken leave of him there. For fully a week John Strong was absent from Saltire Hall. He returned one evening unexpectedly, looking the more grim and resolved about the eyes, and having the air of a man very well satisfied with his venture.
The following morning he ordered his carriage out and drove in the direction of Gabingly, passing the castle on the south. Half an hour later he drew up before an old manor-house packed with tall chimney stacks and straggling gables. The garden was a wilderness, the house itself smothered in creepers. John Strong walked up the grass-grown drive, pulled the rusty bell-handle, and, withholding his name, desired to see Major Maltravers.
The master of Saltire was shown into the dining-room, that smelled of stale cigar-smoke. The room was but shabbily furnished in the early Victorian style, the panelled walls being hung with sporting prints, the heavy table littered with cheap periodicals, gloves, pipes, and ragged novels. It was some minutes before Maltravers entered, to find a stout, bull-necked little gentleman standing stolidly in the middle of the hearth-rug. The soldier was dressed as for riding, in checks and yellow gaiters, with a gold pin fastening his white stock. He took John Strong for a Rilchester tout or a travelling agent, and was more peremptory than polite in his method of address.
“Morning. Your business?”
“My business, sir, is of a private nature.”
“Private, eh? Take a seat. I’m busy; you must excuse me being in a hurry.”
The master of Saltire remained standing. There was a look of such implacable earnestness upon his massive face that Maltravers regarded him with more consideration than before.
“Well, sir,” he said, “what can I do for you?”
“Your ability to meet my demands is dependent upon circumstances.”
The soldier elevated his arched eyebrows, smiled, and showed his white teeth. He was in debt to no man, and yet this stout little fellow was wondrous like a dun.
“Demands?” he asked.
“I will explain them.”
“May I ask who the devil you are?”
“Certainly, sir; I am John Strong of Saltire.”
The soldier thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and slouching his shoulders, looked at the ex-tea-merchant with his alert, black eyes.
“Mr. Strong?” he repeated.
“John Strong.”
“Have we met before?”
“I guess not.”
“Will you sit down, sir?”
“No, sir; I prefer to stand.”
“As you like,” said the soldier, with a sniff; “kindly explain your business.”
John Strong did so; neither was the matter thereof particularly encouraging to James Maltravers’ self-esteem. The ex-tea-merchant was not a man given to mincing his epithets or performing his facts. He hit straight from the shoulder, and with solid effect.
Doubtless, according to dramatic ideals, Maltravers should have lit a cigarette and poised himself on the back of a chair with a cool and insolent complacency. He should have smiled, glittered with Mephistophelian cunning, and played his part like the clever egotist that he was. On the contrary, the soldier appeared suspiciously uncomfortable, and betrayed a certain uneasiness that even his military hauteur could not hide.
“Really,” he observed with much affectation of surprise, “these are extraordinary remarks, Mr. Strong. You must have been sitting in the sun.”
“No, sir, I have been at Callydon.”
“Callydon, eh?”
“And at St. Aylmers.”
“A pretty place enough.”
“And at Messrs. Goring’s office in London.”
The two men remained some seven paces apart and looked each other over. The soldier, suave and angular, stood with his feet planted wide apart, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his riding-breeches.
“I should be much obliged, Mr. Strong,” he observed, “if you would stop speaking in riddles.”
“Certainly,” retorted the other.
“Am I to understand—”
“You are to understand this, sir—I shall have you prosecuted for conspiring to defeat justice.”
“A large order, Mr. Strong.”
“A damned large order, sir—an order upon which I shall spend fifty thousand pounds with pleasure.”
The soldier stared at him, somewhat stupidly, it must be confessed, for one whose wit was usually so nimble. The whole truth was that Maltravers was a coward, not in the mere physical sense, but rather morally and ethically. Like many a selfish and sensual man, he could play the Pistol when his own sleek interests were threatened. His philosophy was Epicurean in the vulgar sense, a philosophy that shirked any overshadowing of its comfort.
“So, sir, you consider me a criminal?”
“I have my facts.”
The soldier seemed amused despite the gravity of the occasion; the elder man’s face was as stubborn as ever.
“I doubt very much whether you can prove anything.”
“You admit conspiracy.”
“Mr. Strong, am I a fool?”
A flicker of a smile passed over the master of Saltire’s face.
“One of your chief witnesses has confessed to me,” he said.
“Who?”
“Never mind, sir; keep to the point.”
Now it was only by subtle sword-play that such a man as John Strong could be delicately baffled. Maltravers, who now had his temper admirably under control, had adapted himself to the situation with the adroitness of an athlete. He was not fool enough to indulge in sword and buckler work, or to suffer himself to be bullied by an old plutocrat who had both the will and the means to make matters vastly uncomfortable for a gentleman of fashion. It was matador’s work this, to dangle the red rag of a woman’s honor before this bovine and stolid being, and to reserve the steel to consummate his own safety.
Thus Maltravers had the wit to see that he might turn the situation to his own credit by performing sundry subtle gyrations about the truth. He might victimize John Strong by making a victim of the very woman who trusted him. No very noble strategy this! But, then, who would be the wiser if the trick succeeded, and if John Strong recoiled from sacrificing a woman? Maltravers’ easy sophistry was capable of anæsthetizing his own none too vivid conscience.
“Believe me, Mr. Strong,” he began; “let me be frank with you. As an English gentleman, I should be sorry to see a woman’s honor dragged in the mire.”
“Don’t preach to me, sir, on honor,” quoth John Strong; “what about my son’s honor?”
“Your son, sir, was perhaps more fool than knave.”
“Indeed!”
“It seems to me, Mr. Strong,” said the soldier, with admirable magnanimity, “that we are both waxing hot over a matter which has passed beyond our control. Let us talk more calmly. What has been done has been done, and we are all of us human. You are aware, of course, that no legal readjustment can be made.”
“Fully aware.”
The soldier smiled again.
“Then I am to understand that your chief desire is to drag me down into the mud.”
“Exactly.”
“My dear sir, you are mistaken. Your vengeance would not fall upon me, nor should I be the one to suffer.”
“You insinuate—”
“I make no insinuations, sir. I repeat the suggestion that you only would sacrifice a woman.”
John Strong planted his feet more firmly on the hearth-rug and knitted his brows.
“Explain,” he said.
Maltravers adopted a more graceful and easy attitude, and spoke as a man who knew something of the world.
“Firstly, sir,” he observed, “you have to prove that I am a scoundrel.”
“True.”
“What are your chances? They are not very great, I must confess. But, Mr. Strong, have you considered the other side of the question. You desire to justify your son.”
“I do.”
“So you think you can improve matters by dragging all concerned again before the world. I presume you know something of the British public, what they would say in the matter. The pot and the kettle—there is much truth in the proverb. Another big scandal; all the old ladies shaking their heads over ‘a depraved and corrupt society.’ ”
John Strong was silent.
“Why not let matters stand?” said the soldier. “Perhaps I am not so bad as you think me. There is another person more deeply concerned, as I have suggested to you, but I will not betray a woman’s secret. If you persist, what will be the result? Two women besmirched the more and your own son rendered doubly ridiculous.”
The master of Saltire squared his shoulders and looked Maltravers over with his keen, gray eyes. There was much logic in the soldier’s argument, and John Strong, even in his most obstinate mood, was not a man who was blind to prudence.
“There is something in all this,” he observed, “but—”
“Well, sir?”
“I shall stand out for two things.”
“State them, Mr. Strong.”
“That you leave the neighborhood within a week.”
Maltravers’ black brows lifted a moment, but he smiled as before and seemed perfectly agreeable.
“A small matter,” he said. “I was preparing to leave, intending to travel abroad. There will be no difficulty in this.”
John Strong could not refrain from blurting out his thoughts.
“And Ophelia Gusset?”
“The Honorable Miss Gusset, Mr. Strong, is nothing to me.”
“Nothing to you?”
“Nothing, sir—nothing. What I have done I have done; it belongs to the past. Take the hint, sir; but understand, as a gentleman, I will not betray a woman. Her affairs are her affairs; I meddle no further. And the second demand?”
“That you inform me who it was that wrote a certain anonymous letter concerning my son.”
Maltravers, suave diplomat, contrived to conjure up a laugh over the question.
“Really, Mr. Strong,” he said, “I have not the faintest notion.”
“Impossible.”
Turning suddenly, the soldier strode to a bureau, unlocked it, fumbled in a pigeon-hole, drew out a crumpled sheet of note-paper, tossed it on the table before John Strong.
“The very letter,” he said, apparently much amused; “take it, sir, and unravel the mystery for yourself. Eve might have written it, so far as I am concerned.”
“And now—”
“We had better shake hands, Mr. Strong. Your son was innocent, perfectly innocent. This, of course, is in confidence. In the witness-box I should swear the opposite.”
“By God!” said the elder man, “where are we, on our heads or on our feet?”
“Ask God, sir,” said the soldier, “for is not God Himself a paradox?”
Thus, with this last gross piece of inconsistency, the parley ended, as many such a passage of passion has ended, and will end. Maltravers had sheltered himself behind the woman who had trusted him. Wrong-doer and avenger cried a truce over the business, shirking the last death-grip, the one from selfishness, the other because hearts more dear would have been the more deeply wounded. For man cannot conquer truth at times save by dragging the innocent through the dust, even as Achilles dragged Hector about the walls of Troy.
IN her turret-room at Gabingly, Ophelia sat before an open window with a letter lying in her lap. There was a look of apathy upon her face, an apathy so deep and utter that life seemed stagnant in her as though her heart stood still. Her eyes stared over the woods and meadows towards the sea, eyes that beheld nothing, comprehended nothing. Only her deep breathing betrayed the passions that still worked within.
It was Maltravers’ letter that lay open in her lap, the letter of a coward and a hypocrite, full of euphemistic cunning and of subtle sentiment. For an hour or more Ophelia had sat silent and motionless before the window, with the glib sentences ebbing and flowing through her brain. Anger had failed her in that hour; shame and loneliness seemed closing about her soul.