IT was evening at The Friary, and in the garden under the cypresses and oaks Gabriel watched the sun sink towards the sea. There was great bitterness in the man’s heart, the bitterness of one whom the world had wronged.
By all reasonable law moral bankruptcy should have overwhelmed Gabriel that day. Public obloquy had been loosed upon his head; Saltire would point the finger of scorn at him; the mob would jeer and squeak over his shame. He was to be an outcast, an Adam driven by the Saltire seraphs from their fair Eden of charity and truth.
Yet the outcast was discovering his manhood amid the anathemas of his neighbors. He was one of those souls who are never stirred to the higher courage save by the heavier scourgings of misfortune. Luxury had enervated him, and as a Sybarite he had forfeited his own manhood. Battle had set the strong blood spinning in his heart, and he had sufficient of the Norse spirit left in him to set sail and dare the storm.
His thoughts that evening were for Joan and the dishonor that had descended upon her name. Though her heroism had pardoned him, he had no pardon for his own heart. His father’s iconoclasm had been no great doom to him. He had foreshadowed the worst after his last parley with his wife. It was the future that troubled him that evening, the future streaked with foam like a stormy sea. Joan’s heart was his. It was Gabriel’s thought that night how best he could casket this treasure against the world.
As the west darkened he entered the library by the garden window, and lit the lamp with his own hands. The immediate purpose to abandon Saltire was as iron in his mind. His needs should not be beholden for a day to his father’s exchequer. The two hundred pounds he would reserve for a season, but he would refund the sum when the chance served him.
He unlocked his desk, sorted his letters, bound Joan’s in a bundle and laid them against his heart. As for the minor records of Mammon, he set them in order, a sinister legacy dedicated to his father’s care. He constructed a list of his small possessions, his books, his personal belongings, the presents of his friends. He had determined to claim but little as his own. Lastly, he took Ophelia’s letters from their drawer, tore them in fragments, burned them as a sacrifice to the future good of his soul.
The night was calm and placid, the sky ablaze with stars. A great silence pervaded the house, a silence figurative of Gabriel’s fortune. He was utterly alone, nor did the solitude grieve him, for he had his thoughts. Joan, in the spirit, stood ever at his elbow. On the morrow he would ride towards Rilchester and speak with her. Together they would take counsel of the Great Father and their own hearts, that Love might show to them the dawn-star of the future.
It was verging on midnight, and Gabriel was still writing at his desk when he heard a sound as of footsteps on the gravel-path. He straightened in his chair and listened. The French window stood open, showing a faint, silvery sky and the deep gloom of the summer garden. A shadow stole suddenly into the stream of light. The man started up and moved towards the window. A figure dawned to him out of the dusk, the tall, slim figure of Joan Gildersedge.
Gabriel gave a sudden cry.
“Joan!”
She came in to him, a cloak over her shoulders, her hat carried in her hand. The light glimmered on her hair. Her dress was damp with dew, her face white and strained, her eyes full of a strange despair.
“Joan!”
She tottered in as though weary even to death. Gabriel sprang to her, thrust forward a chair. She sank into it, her hands hanging limply over her knees, her head thrown back so that her white throat showed to the collar of her dress.
“What has happened?”
He bent over her with a great gesture of tenderness and gazed into her face.
“Gabriel!”
“Speak!”
She caught her breath, pressed a hand over her heart, spoke hurriedly and huskily, like one faint with suffering.
“To-night my father had a letter,” she said, “a letter with a great red seal. What was in it, Heaven only can declare. Ah! he was furious, mad—he raved at me—”
She faltered and drooped. Gabriel bent to her; his arm went about her shoulders, his face overhung hers.
“Yes, yes!”
“He raved at me, such words I cannot speak them nor understand—”
“Joan!”
“He turned me from the house.”
“Joan!”
“I have come to you.”
The man stood back from her, white to the lips, his eyes strangely bright as he stared out into the gloom of the garden. A thousand clarions seemed sounding in his brain, a thousand roses burning in the night. The silence between them was as the calm before some passionate burst of song.
Joan was the first to speak again.
“Gabriel!” she said.
“Ah!”
“You will not fail me?”
The blood flooded to Gabriel’s face; he strode forward, held out both his hands. The girl rose and came to him with a great light shining in her eyes. Her cloak fell from her shoulders as she hung in the man’s arms.
“Gabriel, what could I do?”
“This is God’s desire.”
“You will not turn me away?”
“My life, are you not mine? We will face the world together.”
She lay heavy in his arms, as though her whole soul hung upon his strength. Presently she turned her face to his and he kissed her upon the lips. For a while there was silence between them. Then Gabriel lifted up his hand like one who makes a vow to Heaven.
“God judge me,” he said—“I had not worked for this. The world has outraged us; so be it; I defy the world! Henceforth I fling away my rotten reputation and my friends. Let all the fantasies of fools be dust! Lover and beloved, we will go out together into the night!”
PART IV
DIVORCE-COURT proceedings can be confidently abandoned to the admirable frankness of the Sabbath press. The “Strong romance” had produced some excitement in cultured circles, and provided the Saltire moralists with a fable that promised to serve for many generations. Seeing that there had been no defence, and that the case had progressed with unsensational speed, it had failed to become notorious in any popular sense. Fashion had not flattered it, nor had it been wildly paragraphed in the evening papers. There had been no thrashing out of delicate details, so that the “mess” was not highly savored enough to please the public palate.
Honest gold had gilded the tongues of unprejudiced and veracious witnesses. Truth, hired for the occasion, had blown her brazen trumpet in the court, a fine fan-fan in praise of justice. Maltravers’ guineas had instilled wondrous intelligence into sundry rustic noddles. Ophelia, a matrimonial martyr, had been crowned with the crown of virgin liberty.
One night in early spring you might have seen a white-faced man writing at a table in the third-floor room of a Bloomsbury lodging-house. A cheap brass lamp shed an unpleasant savor from beneath its yellow paper shade. The table-cloth, a dingy red, was smutched with ink-stains and the dyes of many dinners. Faded chromographs covered the walls. The carpet was threadbare, the chintz curtains dirty. A few live coals still smoked in the unpolished grate.
Midnight was at hand; a church clock in the neighborhood had chimed the quarter. The footfalls in the street grew few and infrequent. London, vast, palpitating giant, had turned from toil to brief, healthless sleep. Her myriad fires burned dim under the stars. Her great heart slackened from the moil of greed and care.
The man before the lamp labored and bent his brows. Papers and a few books were squandered on the table, while under the lamp stood a bowl of golden primroses, children of joy, fair stars of the dawning year. The man’s pen scratched feverishly over the paper. Often he would pause, stare at the lamp, glance at the golden flowers, and smile. His eyes were lustreless and heavy, his face thin. From time to time he would take up a written page, stare at the scrawled and erasured sheet, smite out a word with a stroke of the pen, sigh, and toss the page aside with a twinge of despair.
As the clock chimed midnight the door opened, and a girl in a red gown came in from the dark landing. Her hair, noosed with a strand of blue, poured over her white ears and about her shapely throat. There were shadows under her eyes; she looked thinner and more ethereal than of yore; the June freshness upon her face had faded to a more pearly gleam.
A brighter lustre kindled in the man’s tired eyes. The vision was gracious and fair to him as some green and dewy garden in a golden desert. He leaned back from his labor, took a deep breath as to fill his heart with the breath of youth. Joan came softly towards him, adorable as love moving amid summer roses. The room with all its ugly penury seemed transformed by the glamour of her presence there.
She stood behind his chair, pillowing his head upon her breast, bending her face to his, so that her hair shone bright about his forehead.
“Dear, you are working too late.”
“Am I?”
“You look tired to death.”
“Not yet,” he answered her, smiling in her eyes. “Can I tire with love at my right hand?”
“Ah,” she said, touching his hair with her white fingers, “you try yourself too much; come with me, and sleep.”
He took her hand and held it over his heart.
“Gold, gold, gold, what a task-master art thou!”
“Is not the tale nearly ended?”
“No, not yet. This sensational stuff baffles me; I cannot force the vulgar speed enough. It is not easy to prostitute one’s art to fill the public maw. I wish to Heaven we could hear from Garfield.”
She sighed slightly; her arm quivered beneath his head and her eyes grew wistful.
“How much misery I have brought to you!” she said.
“Misery!”
“Shame and hunger.”
“Joan!”
He turned in his chair, drew her into his arms so that her head rested on his shoulder as she kneeled beside him. Her hair threaded his black coat with gold.
“Joan, wife, never speak so to me.”
“It is the truth.”
“A splendid truth to me. Would I return to my vile servitude and lose the glory of you out of my heart?”
She sighed deeply, the sigh of a woman well beloved, and looked up at him from amid her hair.
“I am utterly happy,” she said, “for we are together.”
“And that is heaven.”
“For me.”
She laid her fingers upon his closed lids and kissed his lips.
“You must rest to-night,” she said, “for you are weary, and a tired brain thinks but feebly. Come, I will gather your papers and put out the lamp. I am your wife, and I must care for you.”
POVERTY, when the bride of need, is in truth a skeleton in ragged raiment. Those folk who prate of the beauties of indigence and of the divine unselfishness of so saintly a state should test the superstition with some leaning towards truth. God help those who are born both proud and poor. God help those who have fallen from the car of opulence into the slough of hunger and of need.
Joan and Gabriel had discovered the many curses of that cultured poverty which is the most piteous product of a diseased civilization. They found the old quip true, that greed, not God, rules the hearts of the many. Penury had encompassed them. Children of an ungenerous shame, they braved the hundred ignominies that poverty creates. Economy was with them, as with thousands of their fellows, a juggling with coins, a plotting with pence, a combat with trifles. Their very existence was a contorted and twisted struggle to escape the coils of annihilation. They had become as drift-wood on the billows of the great city. Alone in the vast solitudes of that human sea, they struggled for life, unknown, abandoned to their own fate, acknowledged of none.
It was such a trial as sours the soul and fills the heart with malice towards those careless of the miseries of their fellows. Like twin shoots cut from a green and luxuriant tree, they had been thrust into sand and left to suck sustenance from brine. They were together, and their love sustained them. It strengthened the man’s heart like wine, touched him with a lustre of heroism, chastened his whole soul.
Gabriel began to comprehend in those troublous days the strange, rich beauty of a woman’s love. Joan’s tenderness, her transcendent courage, kept him mellowed against the gall of care. She was as sunshine and the perfume of roses amid rotting ruins, a shaft of joy gleaming amid gloom. Self seemed never with her. There was never a frown upon her face, an unworthy word upon her lips. She moved through the sordid realism of life unconsciously divine, spontaneously beautiful.
Though hope still trimmed her lamp, the hand of tragedy beckoned through the hangings of the future. Spring had spread her nets of gold and sapphire in the woods; tree called unto tree under the wakening moon; the sap of youth stirred in the earth’s red heart. In the great city the sky alone shone clear and generous, hanging like a blue pall above the pit of labor and disease.
With Joan and Gabriel their store of gold had dwindled like sand in an upturned hour-glass. No harvest had fallen to their lot; no cup had brimmed with the coming of the year. Effort had brought no echo of hope, and the man’s pen seemed to have labored through the nights for naught. Many a package had gone out from the little room; none had returned with the kiss of peace.
It was a spring evening, clear and bright. A swift sunset had brandished the crimson banners of romance above the gray and grinding tide of toil. A film of green had spread over the few pools of nature in the living desert. The restless fires of barter were startling the thin gloom. A last quaver of joy seemed to fall from the ensanguined clouds.
From the door of a pawnshop in a hurrying highway a man stepped out with his hat drawn down over his brows. He glanced half furtively hither and thither, as one new to the ignominies of defeat. A girl in a green cloak, with red roses in her hat, came to him gray-eyed from the dusk of the streets. The man colored as she drew near, and held out a hand with a scanty store of gold glistening in its palm.
“All this?” she asked him, with an eager increase of color.
“Three pounds.”
“Riches.”
He smiled, sadly enough, as she took a faded purse and engulfed the gold.
“It was Judith’s gift to me,” he said, “a marriage present. Poor little Judith, if she but knew its fate! To what ends love falls.”
“I should have loved your sister.”
“Ah, she is soul of your soul, little wife.”
They passed on together into a more populous highway, where the flood of life ran strong and eager. White faces flickered by them, gay, heavy, or morose. The tide of toil gushed past on every hand, bearing the galleys of misery or greed. The painted moths of passion fluttered from darkened byways to jig and glitter in the glow of the many lamps. Opulence rolled on in sable and white. From many a street penury and despair rushed like noisome water from some thundering mill.
The man and the woman passed from the highway into a quiet square where bare trees and the turrets of an antique inn rose against the colorless sky. A garden lay shadowy under the bleak and arid walls. There was even a suggestion of solemnity in the silence of the place, with the muffled roar of toil flooding from the distance. Joan’s arm rested in Gabriel’s. The warm dusk of the great square was welcome after the turmoil of the streets.
“What a city is this,” said the girl, looking up into the man’s face. “At first I thought that it would stifle me with its dust and din. Think of Domremy and its woods and waters. I often say to myself, ‘How can these people have souls?’ From my heart I pity the poor.”
“Are we not among them?”
“Struggling against fate.”
“And starvation.”
The man sighed, glanced at the stars in the vault above, and at the great silver rim of the moon doming the house-tops.
“Often this city,” he said, “this maelstrom of misery, makes me think there is no God.”
Joan’s arm tightened on his.
“Much is dark and strange to us,” she said.
“Dark indeed.”
“You are cast down, dear, to-night.”
“I am heavy of heart.”
She drew very close to him, still gazing in his face.
“Is it so ill with us?”
“In a month,” he answered her, “unless fortune pities us, we must starve. God knows, I have pride. I cannot whine. The world seems deaf to the children of shame.”
They passed on awhile in silence, threading dark streets and lurid highways where the torch of passion flickered by. Many men stared in Joan’s fair face as she moved like Truth at the side of Love. The unclean air was webbed with gold. The dance of death went merrily on. To the stars many a church held an iron cross, and the dead moon climbed in the heavy sky.
Down a dusky street they saw the gleam of water under the moon. Turning, they came to where the river swept with its black bosom under the stars. Like a great scimitar it seemed to cleave the city’s heart.
The man and the woman leaned on the parapet and watched the restless tide swirl by. Many lights flashed on the dusky water, symbolic of hope on the stream of years. The ebb and flow was as the life of the city, dark and unceasing under the stars.
Joan’s face was turned to the heavens; her hand, clasped by Gabriel’s, rested on the cold stone. She stood so close to him that he felt her take her breath.
“You cannot write to your father,” she said to him, as though suggesting his own thoughts.
“It would be useless.”
“No, you could not beg of him. What of your sister?”
“Judith?”
“Yes; she loves you.”
“I could not beg from a girl.”
She looked out over the river. The moon now shone upon it, spreading a glittering track of light. A myriad clocks seemed chiming the hour.
“I have less pride,” she said.
“Joan.”
“It is I who have brought this shame and poverty upon you. I can plead with my own father.”
He looked at her in silence and his hand tightened upon hers. The river glittered, a black band streaked with silver; roof and spire glimmered under the moon. The lessening roar of the great loom of life rose upon the night breeze. As for Joan, she was dreaming of the Mallan water, the green woods, and the roses that would crimson her old home. The trees would be flowering in the orchard; the almond had waved its pink pennons athwart the blue. There would be a thousand violets purpling the grass.
“I will go to Rilchester,” she said. “I will see my father; there were mellow seasons in him when the sun shone warm. There may be justice left within his heart.”
“I doubt it,” Gabriel answered her, watching the moonlight on the river.
“Nevertheless, I will try,” she said. “I will go to him alone.”
MR. MINCE, ruddy and effulgent, spread his palms to the glow of his study fire. Muddy boots steamed before the fender. Mrs. Mince, duster in hand, was brushing the rain and mud from her husband’s trousers. The vicarage cat, perched on a footstool as on a pulpit, purred forth a feline hymn of peace.
Mrs. Mince drew the tea-table before the fire, sat down with lavish lap in a basket-chair, took up the sugar-tongs, and held them poised like a miniature spear.
“So the old man is dying,” she said, with a slight sniff, thrusting out her slippered feet before the fire and taking the warmth into her bosom.
“Sinking fast,” the vicar answered her; “the last ebb of the tide. A singular man—a most singular man. Marjoy tells me he can’t last a week.”
Mrs. Mince dropped three cubes of sugar with deliberation into her husband’s cup.
“What a moral,” she observed, reflectively; “what a living text on the vanity of riches. Mammon deserts a rich man at the grave; he trusteth in gold and findeth it dust. Zeus Gildersedge might leave a legacy to the ‘living.’ The porch needs repairing, and we cannot afford to pay for dilapidations.”
Mr. Mince stared at the fire and smiled.
“There is that daughter,” the vicaress continued, “a dreadful drab; left her father in his old age to run away with that blackguard Gabriel Strong. I wonder what has become of them.”
“Can’t say,” said the clergyman.
“Gone to the bad, of course. Such women always gravitate to the gutter. I’ve no sympathy with the slut. He won’t leave her anything.”
Mr. Mince lifted the lid of the muffineer; a fragrant steam ascended therefrom; his eyes sparkled as he replenished his plate.
“Terrible, terrible,” he observed. “Ah, my dear, the way of transgressors is hard, their feet light upon stony places. Sad, most sad. I like these muffins.”
Mrs. Mince adjusted the tea-cosey and settled herself comfortably in the arm-chair. The black cat, abandoning its rostrum, migrated to the lady’s lap and lay curled there, licking her paws.
“The girl had had no education,” said the vicaress. “I believe she had never been inside a church. What can you expect of a wench who has never been confirmed and knows nothing of the catechism? Such barbaric ignorance is inconceivable in these days; a most dreadful instance of neglect. What about the old man’s money?”
Mr. Mince’s soul expanded in the fragrant atmosphere of home. He lolled in his chair with the two lower buttons of his waistcoat unfastened and his bald head pillowed on a faded green cushion. He stretched the soles of his gray, besocked feet to the fire, twitching his toes as they tingled on the fender.
“I had some very serious words with Zeus Gildersedge,” he said. “I found him to-day in a subdued and penitent spirit, thanks to the good counsel that I had left to germinate in his heart. He grew quite trustful, spoke to me about his money and his daughter. He confessed that he was troubled about the wench.”
“Surely, Jacob,” said the vicaress, “you did not advise him to try his strength by worrying about so abandoned a hussy?”
Mr. Mince sipped his tea, besprinkling his waistcoat with customary libations.
“My dear,” he retorted, “I had more Christian forethought than to increase the old man’s troubles. In fact, I told him that it would be an absolute sin for him to darken his last moments with reflections that were unnecessary and unpleasant.”
“Admirable tact, my dear.”
“I demonstrated to him how little the girl deserved his remembrance or claimed his pity.”
“Exactly.”
“That she had wilfully deserted him to follow a notorious blackguard.”
“Precisely.”
“That certain folk are undeserving of consideration, and that one must set one’s face sternly against impertinent iniquity and gross ingratitude.”
“My dear,” said the vicaress, “you have the spirit of a Solomon. If Zeus Gildersedge left the girl any of his money it would only fall into the hands of that young brute Gabriel Strong. And such a circumstance could only be deplored as the actual subsidizing of immorality.”
Mr. Mince sat up suddenly in his chair, as though the idea had stimulated his spinal marrow.
“Pomponia,” he said, “you are a most intelligent woman; strangely enough, that is the very argument I used to impress my point upon Zeus Gildersedge.”
The vicaress refilled her husband’s cup.
“The old man saw the wisdom of your words?” she asked.
“Absolutely. My logic triumphed.”
The pair subsided into silence for a season, a peaceful interlude suffused as with a beatific sanctity. The fire jigged and flickered in the grate. Mr. Mince’s gray socks smoked. The black cat purred beneath the vicaress’s bony hand.
“And the money?” she said, at last, her large, yellow face gleaming in the fire-light.
Her husband awoke as from some saintly reverie.
“Zeus Gildersedge stated certain facts to me,” he said, “facts that I may confide to your admirable discretion.”
“Of course, my dear.”
“Mrs. Primmer and I were witnesses to his will. He has left the bulk of his money to charitable enterprises and missions.”
“Most creditable.”
“A solid annuity has been settled on Mrs. Primmer.”
“A most deserving woman.”
“He has also bequeathed a certain sum to be used by me in the parish—to be used, my dear, at my own discretion.”
“Excellent man.”
“I must confess, Pomponia, that Zeus Gildersedge is departing this world with a chastened and regenerate soul.”
“Due, my dear Jacob, to your Christian zeal.”
“I shall bury him in Saltire church-yard, and make no charge for it upon his estate.”
Mrs. Mince beamed on him out of the fulness of her heart.
“You are a good man, Jacob,” she said; “may Heaven recompense you according to your deserts. I am a proud woman and a proud wife. You fulfil my ideals. Let me give you some more tea.”
“Only one more cup, my dear,” said the vicar, “and then I must complete my Sabbath sermon.”
UP the long road from Rilchester came Joan, her wet skirt blown about her by the wind. Weary though she was, the breeze had kissed fresh color into her face, and her eyes were brave under the faded roses in her old straw hat. Overhead the sky hurried, gray and sullen, unsilvered by the sun. Rain fell in swift, hurrying showers, dimming the landscape, wiping out the sea. The trees moaned and waved to one another, troubled by the restless melancholy of the wind.
Joan’s eyes brightened as she drew near towards her old home. The meadows rippled at her feet; the great trees called to her like old playmates out of the woods; the very wind blew blithely in her hair. The past rushed back, vivid and wistful; memories of her childhood glimmered through her brain. Yonder in the valley lay the Mallan water, where she had first met Gabriel when the woods were green.
Betimes Burnt House rose up before her in the east, its red roof warm above the yews and cypresses, its old wall filleting the brow of the hill. Joan’s heart beat fast, and for the moment her eyes were dim. Was there yet hope for her within those well-loved walls? How would her father greet her?—as of old with his rude, rough tongue?
She reached the iron gate and set it creaking on its rusty hinges. The shrubs and trees were wild and untrammelled as of yore. They seemed to welcome her like green-limbed guardians of the past, tossing their hands, breathing forth deep greetings. Joan saw the track of wheels upon the grass-grown drive, tracks freshly graven, glistening with the rain. To the left the orchard flashed before her eyes, with petals rosy and white scattered by the wind upon the tall, rank grass. Primroses and hyacinths were in bloom there, and daffodils shook their golden faces to the breeze.
She crossed the stretch of gravel and entered the old porch. Her hand held the iron handle; the bell clamored through the silent house. She waited with her heart hurrying, her eyes watching the waving trees. Slow footsteps sounded within. The great door opened a very little and Mrs. Primmer’s yellow face peered out from the gloom.
Joan confronted her with no wavering or fear, the sense of innocence strong within her heart. The woman’s figure closed the entry; with one bony hand she held the door.
“Well, mistress?”
There was an insolence in the very word that made Joan color. She moved forward a step, but Mrs. Primmer did not falter.
“Make way, please.”
“Mr. Gildersedge is ill.”
“My father ill?”
“He maunt see nobody; I have my orders.”
It was plain to Joan that the woman’s rudeness arose from no superabundance of sincere concern. There was an intentional insult in her very attitude. Joan’s gray eyes kindled; she was no child to be shamed and frightened by a frowning face.
“I have come,” she said, quietly, “to see my father.”
“Doctor’s orders—”
“Make way, woman.”
She stepped in and set one hand on Mrs. Primmer’s shoulder. There was no unseemliness in this strength of hers. The hireling fell back even as a hireling should.
“Stand aside!”
“I’ve had my orders.”
“And your pay.”
Joan crossed the hall, unfastening her hat and ignoring the lean, black figure by the door. She climbed the oak stairway, halted in the gallery above, turning to find Mrs. Primmer had followed from the hall. Throwing her hat upon a broad window-sill, she looked down on the woman with a dignity that was not mute.
“Stay,” she said, stretching out a hand.
“Dr. Marjoy told me—”
“Are you the mistress of this house?”
“You won’t get anything out of him, young woman.”
“Spare your words,” said the girl, calmly. “I have come to see my father, and to see him alone. Go back to the kitchen. That is your proper place.”
Very pale but very purposeful, Joan moved down the gallery towards her father’s room. She halted a moment outside the door, listening, watching to see whether the woman followed. There were no sounds save the moaning of the wind, the chattering of the casements, and the beating of boughs against the panes.
Very quietly Joan turned the handle and stood on the threshold of her father’s room. The old man’s bed faced the broad window, where rain clouds raced over the rolling downs. He lay half propped upon pillows, staring at the sullen sky, his thin hands stretched upon the coverlet.
It was not till Joan had closed the door and moved forward into the room that her father awoke to her presence there. A great change had come over him those winter months, for disease had dragged him near to the grave. The yellow skin hung in folds about the neck, the eyes were sunken, the lips bloodless and marked by the teeth. It was the face of the dead more than of the living, sharp, earthy, and repulsive, still infinitely cunning.
When Zeus Gildersedge saw his daughter, a look of peculiar vindictiveness sharpened his thin face. He strove to rise higher in the bed, his yellow talons clawing at the coverlet as he raised himself upon his elbows, the muscles contracted in his pendulous throat. As by instinct Joan had started towards him to help him as of old; the look in his sunken eyes beat her back.
“So you have sneaked home,” he said to her, breathing hard, his eyes glistening with an indescribable malice.
“Father!”
“To beg, eh?”
“Can a daughter beg?”
“He has deserted you, the fine fellow—”
“No, no, not that.”
Zeus Gildersedge propped himself upon his pillows, his birdlike head straining forward upon its yellow neck.
“You have timed it well, eh?”
“Timed it, father?”
“To sneak back and play the pretty penitent and finger the old man’s money.”
“We are poor, father.”
“Poor, eh?”
“The world has wronged us.”
There was an unhallowed smirk on Zeus Gildersedge’s face.
“What about your father?” he asked; “you didn’t come to see him. No, by God! He can die, and that’s about the best thing you think he can do.”
“Father!”
She stretched out her hands to him as though to stem back his taunting words. Zeus Gildersedge was a dying man; the bitterness of the approaching hour, the sordid realism of his past, only incensed him against his fate. There was none of the mild solemnity of death in that dark room. Nothing but malice seemed quick in the lean body, nothing but mocking anger alive in the dim eyes.
“Is it my money you want?” he panted. “I am to be deserted, am I, and then squeezed on my death-bed like a sponge, to keep you and your blackguard from the gutter? Gold, is it? Curse them, they’re all scrambling for it—the parson, the doctor, that woman in the kitchen. What do they care about me—what do they care about me, I say? By God, wench, I won’t give you a farthing!”
He sank back upon his pillows, seized with a spasmodic fit of coughing. His face grew dusky, his eyes suffused. The veins were turgid and swollen in the straining neck; one claw of a hand was hooked in the collar of his shirt.
Joan stood and gazed at him, mute and impotent. His words had stunned her and she could not think. Rain came rattling against the window; storm-clouds darkened the room; the wind moaned in the chimney and whistled over the roof.
The old man upon the bed had recovered his breath. He struggled up and gestured at her with one trembling hand, his eyes shining with a peculiar brightness in his dusky face.
“Get out from here!” he cried.
“Father!”
“I’ll not be bled upon my death-bed. Away, you wastrel! Starve, starve! I’ll not pay for your shame.”
She drew back from him, shuddering. An utter hopelessness descended upon her soul. She knew full well at last that there was no pity in her father’s heart.
“I will go,” she said, moving towards the door.
“Out of my house, you wanton.”
He was leaning from his pillows, his face distorted, one outstretched hand pointing her away. Joan had opened the door; she halted for a moment on the threshold.
“God forgive you,” she said.
“Forgive me!” he screamed; “by God, you have the impudence of the devil!”
Joan went out and closed the door, leaned against the wainscoting with her hand over her eyes. Slowly her strength came back to her. She passed down the old gallery, filled with sad memories of the past, took her hat from off the window-sill, and went down the stairs. In the dusk of the hall Mrs. Primmer met her. Joan swept by the woman without a word, unlatched the door, and went out into the wind and rain.
But before night came Zeus Gildersedge lay dead.
HAGGARD and weary, Joan turned her back upon her old home, and struggled on against the wind towards Rilchester and the sea. Brave woman that she was, the tragic hour beside her father’s bed had benumbed her courage and deepened the forebodings that crowded upon her heart. She had gone hungry since the morning, and for the last two months she had faced starvation with Gabriel in the great city. As she held on against the whirling wind under the gray and hurrying sky, her strength began to ebb from her like wine from some cracked and splendid vase. Her feet lagged along the broad high-road as the wind moaned and the rain beat in her face.
Coming to the cross-roads where the highway from Saltire curled from the woods, she sank down on a granite heap under the shelter of the hedge. In the utter distress of the hour, she still held her old straw hat forgotten in her right hand. Great faintness came over her as she sat there half sheltered from the wind. With trembling fingers she unfastened the collar of her dress, and bowed her head down almost to her knees.
It was as Joan grieved thus with her golden head adroop under the sullen sky that one of those strange crossings of the threads of fate knitted two destinies into one common coil. From Rilchester up the long, listless road came the slim figure of a woman, clad in gray with a knot of violets over her bosom, and her pale face turned wistfully towards the heavens. It was Judith Strong who walked with the wind, returning from one of those long rambles she and Gabriel had enjoyed of old. The days had passed very heavily for Judith since her brother’s tragedy. She loved to be alone amid the woods and by the sea, brooding on the strange sadnesses of life, its lost ideals, and its broken dreams.
Judith, coming to the cross-roads, saw the bowed figure throned on the heap of stones under the hedge. There was something so forlorn and piteous about the woman seated there that Judith stood still, forgetful of her own sad thoughts. She saw the bowed head, the hanging hands, the desolate pose of the whole figure. Her woman’s sympathy awoke at once, for those who have grieved are quick to discover grief.
Joan, hearing footsteps on the road, looked up and turned her face to the mild, questioning eyes that stared her over. Judith had halted by the grass. Some hidden flash of sympathy seemed to leap instinctively from heart to heart. Where had they met and touched before? What common bitterness had smitten both? There were vague memories in Judith’s mind, a prophetic instinct that seemed to tell of all the sadness they had known together.
The two women looked into each other’s eyes with one long, unwavering look that hid some mystery from them both. Judith was the first to break the silence. She might have passed on, but that was not a true woman’s way.
“Are you ill? Let me help you.”
At the sound of that voice, so like Gabriel’s in its mellow tone, a wave of color warmed Joan’s face, for she half guessed who stood before her. There were the same clear eyes, the same delicate features, pure and mobile, sensitive as light. Yet Joan’s heart failed her for the moment; her pride was quick in her despite her misery.
“I am tired,” she said, hanging her head a little, “and have walked too far. I shall be better soon.”
To Judith there was a pathos in the voice that made her heart open like a budding rose. Some deep instinct urged her on, to take rebuffs if they should come.
“Have I not seen your face before?”
Drawing near, she sat down beside Joan on the stones. The move was too sudden to be prevented. Yet Joan would not look into Judith’s eyes, but drew her wet cloak round her and hardened her heart.
“I am only tired,” she said; “please do not trouble over me. I shall be strong again when I have rested.”
Judith touched the other’s cloak.
“Why, you are drenched!” she said; “have you far to go?”
There were lines as of pain about Joan’s mouth; she shivered in the wind and seemed to strive for her breath.
“To Rilchester,” she said, “and then—”
“And then?”
“To London, if I can catch a night train.”
There was sudden silence between them, such a silence that their very hearts seemed to beat in rhythm, one with another. Judith’s eyes were full of light, a lustre of pity as though she guessed some part of the sorrow the other bore. Her heart grew full of dim surmises like a sky half smitten with the dawn.
“To London?” she asked.
Joan did not answer her.
“You must not go to-night or you will catch your death chill. Have you not got a home near?”
Then, like the breaking of gossamer by too heavy a dew, Joan’s courage seemed to fail her of a sudden and she broke into piteous weeping. No petulant child’s tears were they, but the grief of one whose cup of suffering was full. Judith’s words had shaken her very soul. She covered her wet face with her hands and bowed her head down over her knees.
As for Judith, the strong presence of such grief as this stirred to the deeps her woman’s nature. A meaner woman would have fallen to texts, or to juggling glibly with God’s name. Judith’s heart beat straight towards the truth, and she did not squander empty words.
Putting her arm about Joan’s waist, she drew her close to her, even into her bosom, feeling the intake of her breath under the damp clothes and the rain-drenched cloak.
“Tell me,” she said, “what troubles you. Am I not a woman, also? May I not have some share in this?”
Joan took her hands from before her face. In her eyes there burned a new courage, shining through a mist of tears. Should she not tell the truth for good or evil, silence this friend, or challenge her full trust?
“Tell me,” she said, “are you Judith Strong?”
“I am Judith Strong.”
“And I am Joan—Joan Gildersedge.”
The two women sat and looked into each other’s eyes, as though each were striving to read the other’s thoughts. Judith’s arm rested on Joan’s shoulder. She did not flinch from her or turn away.
Perhaps Joan felt the earnest searching of Judith’s eyes, eyes that watched a brother’s honor. The fear of her condemnation grew great within Joan’s heart, the dread that calumny had outpaced her here.
“Yes, I am Joan Gildersedge,” she said, speaking as though her breath were short, with sharp pauses between each sentence; “you know all, yes, don’t speak to me yet. Gabriel—Gabriel and I went away together; for when they accused us falsely my father turned me from my home. Gabriel, who is always noble, surrendered all for my sake, and we lived together through those awful days. They said I ruined him; but no, no, it was not I who ruined Gabriel, but those who lied and perjured the whole truth. Gabriel was always noble, and he loved me, and I him.”
Judith swept out her right hand as though to clasp her, but Joan’s hand put her back.
“Listen,” she said, still speaking breathlessly, “for I would have you hear the whole. Gabriel and I—Gabriel and I hid ourselves in London and tried to live as best we could. We had but little money, and no work came. Soon we began to starve and starve, and in my anguish for him I came here again to see my father, even that he might take pity on us and give us help. But no; though he is dying, he turned me away with curses. And that is why I sit here in the rain.”
There was a clear light in Judith’s eyes, like the light in a mother’s eyes whose pride is perfected in her child. She set both her hands upon Joan’s shoulders, held her at arm’s-length, and looked into her face.
“Joan Gildersedge,” she said.
“Judith.”
“Well did I know my brother’s heart; now I know also the full reason of his great love. Were I a man, should I not love you even as Gabriel loves? Come, you are my sister, and I am proud of it.”
Silently, while the wind whistled over the hedgerows, these two good women looked long into each other’s eyes. The tears were dry upon Joan’s cheeks, but on Judith’s lashes there were fresh tears. Bending herself, she kissed Joan Gildersedge upon the mouth, held both her hands clasped fast between her own.
“That men have lied,” she said, “I believe full well, since I have seen you, I who am Gabriel’s sister. Yet is there not joy in such a grief as this, since love has triumphed over wrong and pain?”
Joan looked at her, even as one who sees pure water bubbling in a desert place.
“I had not thought that any could believe,” she said, “for the whole world seems built upon distrust.”
Judith took the wet cloak from Joan’s shoulders. Her own gray coat was dry, for she had sheltered from the showers under the trees. She gave it to Joan and would not be rebuked therefrom.
“To London,” she said, “you must not go to-night.”
Joan blushed, touched by an act that had more honest sympathy than had a hundred words. Since she was weary and tired at heart, such tyranny was very sweet.
“But what of Gabriel?” she asked.
“Gabriel can wait,” Judith answered her, with a smile; “you are my charge, and I will play my brother’s keeper. Shall I risk your health on such a night! No, I have come by other plans. Can you walk with me one short mile?”
Some faint color had risen to Joan’s cheeks. She stood up like one half dazed, one hand still clasped in Judith’s, the other holding her wet skirt.
“Where shall I go?” she asked.
“Come; leave the where to me.”
Not a mile from the cross-roads towards Saltire lived an old widow whom Judith had mothered in her winter years. The widow’s cottage was set back from the road amid trees and meadows, all alone. To this same cottage Judith took Joan that windy evening, like some kind fairy radiant in doing good. She would lodge Joan there for her sake and for Gabriel’s, and tread the dream-path she herself had made.
Thus these two, sisters in charity, came that evening to the little cottage and knocked at the door under the tiled porch. Judith went in while Joan waited in the twilight. She heard the voice of Gabriel’s sister conjuring for her comfort in the cottage room. Nor did the old woman hesitate to comply, for Judith’s asking was law with the honest poor.
Widow Milton was soon laying wood in the parlor grate and setting a chair for the drying of Joan’s wet clothes. Judith came out to Gabriel’s wife in the twilight, with a wonderful smile on her pale face.
“Go in, sister,” she said, “the old lady can be trusted. Stay, promise me, till I come again.”
And Joan promised, with her arms about Judith’s neck.
MAJOR MALTRAVERS had taken a “hunting-box” early in the year in perilous proximity to Gabingly Castle. Maltravers had remained a god above the clouds through the autumn and early winter, both for expediency’s sake and to prevent any unnecessary linking-up of incidents. His name had not appeared in the cause of justice, for Gabriel’s undefended suit had led to no ransacking of evidence on Ophelia’s side. The soldier had soon become popular in the neighborhood, and he was even formally introduced to Ophelia on the hunting-field by Miss Mabel Saker, who posed as a mutual friend. Maltravers, being an excellent horseman and a good man at the flask, had soon won the esteem of the “young bloods” of the neighborhood. His keen, jockey-like face and trim, tailor-made figure were to the fore in many a gusty gallop, and his voice rang as clear as the huntsman’s horn.
Ophelia had ridden to many a meet, sitting her thoroughbred like a queen, and staring full in the whole world’s face. There was no wavering of her vivid eyes, no tinge of discomfort upon her cheeks. Had she not been proved an honest woman, one who had been wronged and whom the law had righted? A fair dame she seemed with her coat buttoned tight over her smooth, full bust, her rich hair closely plaited under her hat. Men saw that Maltravers was often beside her, twirling his mustachios, staring in her face. Her friends whispered that she would soon be comforted for the loss of a husband and a home.
Yet human schemes come often to naught when the raw elements are in the ascendant. As the year wore on towards the spring a pair of brown eyes had challenged the blue. Miss Mabel Saker had been established at Gabingly since the autumn as Ophelia Gusset’s bosom friend. It was noted by the vigilant at the “meets” that Maltravers’ black horse stood more often beside Miss Saker’s bay mare. The soldier was one of those mutable beings whose honor was “blinkered” by an immoderate vanity. As for Miss Saker, she was his very twin in such sentiments as cheated the heart.
Possibly none of the sweet gossips of the neighborhood saw much in the drama to point a moral, for, superficial as is the veil that covers deceit, it is rarely rent by the professional gossip, but rather by the hand that scorns all guile. There is more error in habitual prejudice than in that calm sincerity which is slow to condemn, and the pessimist sees his own sour face reflected in all things, be they foul or clean. Maltravers’ name had never entered the zone of scandal that had played about Gabriel’s honor. He was considered to be a mere sportsman who had heard of the excellence of the Rilchester pack and had come for a gallop over the Mallan meadows.
Whatever the reasons might be, the fact remained that Maltravers was less Ophelia’s hero than he had been when she was Gabriel’s wife. Possibly she had expected too much from a man whose vigorous egoism clashed with her own. Such a passion as theirs was utterly selfish, and as such was doomed to no true consummation.
Ophelia was the last woman in the world to abide a rival, even in the minor matter of dress. Moreover, she had always considered Miss Mabel Saker as a protégée and a disciple, a foil to her own more lavish beauty. She had never been jealous of her friend, for the simple reason that she had never possessed sufficient respect for Miss Saker’s fascination to inspire the passion. Hence she had been slow at first to realize the change in Maltravers’ humor, nor did she suspect him of any inward disloyalty to herself.
There was no great vice in Mabel Saker. She was mischief personified, a vain, merry creature, with a mind like a spice-box and eyes like amber. If a man admired her, she had neither the heart nor the character to treat him with surliness. Being so inured to sentimental pleasantries, she was not easily frightened by anything she might see in a man’s eyes. Flirtation was merely a recreation with her, an amusement no more serious than fly-fishing or the aesthetic appreciation of a musical comedy. She was a woman of no ideals, few convictions. She lived her sensuous, merry existence in the sun, and never delved around her for the problems that yawn like primeval forests about the fair meads of life.
Maltravers jested with her, and she took his jests as she would have taken a flask of scent or many such trifles, in delicate acknowledgment of her own charms. She did not consider Ophelia’s powerful pride or her aggressive egoism that could suffer no shadow. Hence she was unable at first to comprehend Ophelia’s change of temper, her petulance, the true reason of their frequent bickerings. Miss Saker had much of the vixen in her, in the spiteful sense. She was too shallow and boisterous to appreciate the negative passions in a friend; she had too little sympathy to treat seriously and honorably the injured pride of a fellow-woman. Hence she tossed her head and bridled at what she was pleased to call Ophelia’s “whims.” And, being a creature of contradictory impulses, she took pleasure in aggravating her friend’s impatience and in playing the tormentor with true feminine agility.
Gay swimmer that she was, Miss Saker soon discovered herself beyond the shallows of her frivolous philosophy. The climax came with an abruptness that startled even her futile soul. And since Mabel Saker was a woman who heartily detested any troubling of her sensuous good-humor, she was soon every whit as bitter as Ophelia and as reasonless as a frightened ape.
The storm broke one evening after a dinner-party at the castle. Maltravers had lavished his fascinations in Miss Saker’s service and had left Ophelia to a casual friend. By the fatefulness of coincidence, Ophelia had come upon the pair seated under the palms in a corner of the conservatory. Moreover, she had seen Maltravers take the flower the brunette had pinned over her heart.
About midnight, the very night after Joan had taken lodging in Widow Milton’s cottage, Mabel Saker was in her bedroom unravelling her dark hair. To her came Ophelia fully dressed, her face pale as china, her lips almost bloodless, her eyes peculiarly bright. There was a restrained fury in her look, an atmosphere about her that boded ill for the friendship between the two.
It was a woman’s quarrel that night, swift, malicious, and contemptible. As is the case in some such feminine fracas, the disputants grew the more bitter, the more icily eager with every word. Gibe stabbed at gibe and taunt at taunt. There was no generosity in their passion to give human pathos to the scene.
Ophelia leaned against an escritoire and watched with her hard blue eyes the flushed and dishevelled woman before her. They were both breathless for the moment, like two duellists who shrink back dazed after some fierce locking of their swords. The younger woman tossed back her hair, her bosom rising and falling rapidly as in an ecstasy of unspeakable anger.
“Are you mad?” she said. “This is too utterly ridiculous.”
Ophelia laughed, her white face shining with her scorn.
“It is the fashion to think others ridiculous,” she retorted, “when all the folly is one’s own.”
“Tell me, whose fault is it?”
“I am asking you the same question.”
“Because a man pays me small attentions am I to snub him like a barmaid?”
“Small attentions—well phrased, indeed!”
“Is it my fault if he prefers me to you?”
“Is it his fault if you throw yourself under his feet every hour of the day? Leave him alone, or you shall pay for it.”
Miss Saker sat up stiffly in her chair, her face quivering as the words smote her.
“This is your gratitude after I have been such a friend to you! Oh, my God, I will be even with you, and that quickly. What of Gabriel Strong, and the girl you ruined? What of Jim’s cunning and bribery? Don’t I know all about this? Pay for it, indeed!”
Miss Saker recovered her composure of a sudden, went to the glass and began to braid her hair. She held the pins between her quivering lips, her hands working feverishly, her eyes hot and strained. Ophelia watched her as though half repentant, more from fear of what might follow than out of pity for her friend.
“What are you doing, Mab?”
Mabel Saker paid no heed to her, but went to the wardrobe, drew out a morning gown and coat, donned them, and took a hat from the bonnet rack.
“Have I hurt you, Mab?”
The brunette turned on her with eyes afire. She was a woman out of whose heart all pity and forgiveness had fled. Nothing but infinite resentment ruled her impulses.
“I will not stay in this house another hour.”
“But it is midnight; what will people say?”
“I don’t care. You have insulted me too badly, and you shall pay for it.”
She started aside towards the wall and seized the bell-rope that hung beside the bed. Ophelia moved towards her with hand outstretched. She was too late, however, either for penitence or intimidation. Ten times or more Mabel Saker had jerked at the cord, and the bell clamored distantly in the silence of the house.