Floyd-Rosney was still eyeing the craft, meditating how best to signal his wish to be taken back to theAglaia, when a sudden sound caught his attention—a sound of swift steps. They came rapidly along the hurricane deck, where he himself had found footing, mounted the short stair to the texas, and the next moment the door of the pilot-house was burst ajar and the face and form of Adrian Ducie appeared at the entrance.
Floyd-Rosney staggered to his feet.
“What does this mean, sir?” he cried, thickly, the veins of his forehead swollen stiff and blue, his face scarlet, his eyes flashing fire.
The newcomer seemed surprised beyond measure. He stared at Floyd-Rosney as if doubting his senses and could not collect his thoughts or summon words until Floyd-Rosney blustered forth:
“Why this intrusion! Leave this place instantly!”
“It is no intrusion, and I will go at my own good pleasure. I came here thinking to find a man with whom I have business.”
“Well, you have found him. A business that should have been settled between us long ago!” He advanced a step, and he had his right hand in his pocket.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’ll find out, as sure as your name is Randal Ducie,” hissed Floyd-Rosney.
“That’s exactly what it is not. I am Adrian Ducie.”
“You can’t play that game with me. I know your cursed face well enough. I will mark it now, so that there will never be any more mistakes between you.”
Adrian had thought he had a pistol, but it was a knife—a large clasp knife which he had opened with difficulty because of the strength of its spring as he fumbled with it in his pocket. He thrust violently at Ducie’s face, who only avoided the blow by suddenly springing aside; the blade struck the door with such force as to shiver off a fragment of the wood.
Taken at this disadvantage it was impossible for Adrian to retreat in the precarious footing of the wreck and useless to call for help. He could only defend himself with his bare hands.
“I call you to observe, Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” he exclaimed, “that I am unarmed!”
“So much the better!” cried Floyd-Rosney, striking furiously with the knife at the face he hated with such rancor.
But this time Adrian caught at the other man’s arm to deflect the blow and there ensued a fierce struggle for the possession of the knife, the only weapon between them. While Floyd-Rosney was the heavier and the stronger of the combatants, Adrian was the more active and the quicker of resource. He had almost wrested the knife from Floyd-Rosney’s grasp; in seeking to close the blade the sharp edge was brought down on Floyd-Rosney’shand, and the blood spurted out. The next moment he had regained it and he rushed at his adversary’s face—the point held high. Pushing him back with one hand against his breast Adrian once more deflected his aim from his eyes and face, but the point struck lower with the full force of Floyd-Rosney’s terrific lunge, piercing the throat and severing the jugular vein.
Ashis antagonist fell heavily to the floor, the force of the impact shaking the crazy, ruinous superstructure of the boat with a sinister menace, Floyd-Rosney’s first emotion was the stirring of the impulse of self-preservation. Not one moment was wasted in indecision. He stepped deftly across the prostrate body, wrenched the door open with a violent effort and with satisfaction heard the dislocated spring slam it noisily behind him. There the corpse would lie indefinitely, unless, indeed, the man whom Ducie had professed to seek should come to keep an appointment; probably he had already been here, and had gone, for the mustering splendors of the evening sky betokened how the hours wore on to sunset. As Floyd-Rosney took his way with a swift, sure step to the stair where his boat still struggled at the end of the painter attached to the post, he noted that Ducie had followed his example and secured his own skiff in like manner. A sudden monition of precaution occurred to Floyd-Rosney even in his precipitation, and in loosing his own craft he set the other adrift, reflecting that to leave it here was to advertise the presence of its owner aboard theCherokee Rose; the current, sweeping as if impelled by some tremendous artificial force as of steam or electricity, set strongly toward the shore, and the boat, swiftly gliding on the ripples, wouldultimately ground itself on the bank, affording evidence that Ducie had landed. As without an instant’s hesitation he busied himself in putting his plan into execution he did not think once of the powerful lenses of the binocle of the skipper, at watch for his return on the bow of the beautifulAglaia, lying there in the bend of the river, not two miles away, like a swan on the water, between the radiant evening sky, and the irradiated stream, reflecting her white breast as she floated, a vision suspended in soft splendors.
He had a momentary doubt of the wisdom of his course, as he took up his oars, and the possibility of this observation occurred to him. Then he endeavored to reassure himself. It was the only practicable procedure, he argued. He took the chance of being unobserved, while otherwise the boat, swinging at the stairway, would unavoidably excite curiosity and allure investigation. Still, he would have preferred to have had that possibility in mind, before taking incriminating action,—to have had his course a matter of choice instead of making the best of it.
From this moment circumstances seemed contorted and difficult of adjustment. He had not noticed in his absorption that the cut inflicted upon him from his own knife was bleeding profusely, and beginning to sting and smart violently. He must have unwittingly scattered drops of blood all along the deck and stairs as he came. It was a marvel, he reflected, still optimistic in instinctive self-defense, that none had fallen on his suit of white flannel. He held the wounded hand in the water, hoping to stanch the flow, but the red drops welled forth withan impetuous gush, as of a burst of tears. The cut was not deep, but it was clear and clean, for the blade had been as sharp as a razor. With a little time it would dry in the cicatrix and close the wound. His back toward theAglaia, he felt sufficiently free of espionage to tear his linen handkerchief to shreds, using his teeth to start the rent, for with that hand dripping not only with blood, but with bloodguiltiness, he dared not search his pockets for his knife. He bound up the wound, carefully, his plans forming in his mind with all minute detail as he adjusted the bandages. He would loiter about the river, he said to himself, till the bleeding ceased, which must be in half an hour’s time, and the hand would then not be liable to notice. With his splendid physical condition any wound would be swift in healing. It would be close on nightfall, he meditated, and this was all the better, for he would board the yacht under cover of the darkness and give orders to drop down the river to the Gulf, thence to the open sea—his ultimate destination being some port beyond the reach of extradition, for he had lately tested his hold on public favor, and was resolved to risk nothing on its uncertain tenure. He could perfect his plans when in mid-ocean. Meantime, the present claimed all his faculties.
With the fast plying oars and the strong sweep of the current the skiff shot along with a speed that suggested a winning shell in a ‘varsity race. When he approached within ear-shot of theAglaiahe hailed the skipper, who promptly responded from the deck, and still at a considerable distance, well in mid-channel, Floyd-Rosney shouted out his intentions to proceed in the skiff a few miles further, ashe wished to investigate the old Duciehurst mansion, and ordered theAglaiato drop down at six o’clock and pick him up there.
As his excitement and the fever of his fury began to subside, the flow of blood slackened perceptibly. He noticed that the saturated portion of the bandage was growing stiff and dry; that the blood no longer continued to spread on the fabric. He would throw it away presently and wash his hands clear of the traces in the river.
He looked up at the massive walls of Duciehurst with a deep rancor as he approached the old mansion. The braided currents, making diagonally across the river, were carrying him toward it as if he were borne thither by no will of his own, and indeed this was in some sort true.
He loathed to see it again. He wished he had never seen it. Yet in the same instant he upbraided his attitude of mind as folly. What man of business instincts, he argued, would revolt against a great and substantial accession to his fortune, coming to him in regular course of law, because it was coveted by its former owners, ousted forty years before. He felt hard hit by untoward fate. All had been against him, from the beginning of this accursed imbroglio. He had done what he had thought right and proper,—what any sane and just man would endorse—and he had lost wife, child, and heavily in estate, and was possibly destined to exile for life,—if—if that ghastly witness on the stranded steamer should take up its testimony against him. But no! it was silenced forever! It could not even protect the man whom Ducie had expected to meet should that unlucky wight persistin keeping his appointment, finding more than he bargained for, Floyd-Rosney said grimly.
The boat was running cleverly in to his destination. The landing was under water already, and the skiff glided over its location with never a sign suggesting its submergence. The old levee was indicated in barely a long ripple, washing continually above its summit, and this, too, the skiff skimmed, undulating merely to the tossing of the waters about the obstruction. The relative height of the ground on which the deserted mansion stood alone protected it from inundation, although as yet the disaster of overflow had nowhere fallen upon the land. But evidently the water would soon be within the fine old rooms, and Floyd-Rosney, looking with the eye of a wealthy as well as thrifty proprietor upon the scene, not only willing but able to protect, felt with a surly sigh of frustration that but for the impending lawsuit he would have built a stanch levee to reclaim the old ruin, even though there was a serviceable embankment protecting the lands in the rear.
The large arrogance of the massive cornice of the main building, the wide spread of the wings on either side, appealed to his taste of a justified magnificence. This structure was erected in the days of princelings who had the opulence to sustain its pretensions, and of his acquaintance he knew no man but himself who could afford the waste of money on its restoration. There was something appealing to an esthetic sense in the forwardness of the neglected vegetation about the glassless goggle-eyed ruin. In the magnolias on either side of the wings he caught sight of the white glint of blooms, so early though it was! the pink wands of the almond blossomswaved here and there in the breeze. The grass of the terraces was freshly springing. Vines draped the broken pedestals that had once upheld stone vases, and on the façade of the tall structure the sun crept up and up as suavely benign, as loath to leave as in the days when its splendors dominated the Mississippi, the “show place” of all the river.
Floyd-Rosney walked slowly along the broad pavement and up the long flight of steps to the wide doorless portal. Within shadows lurked, and memories—how bitter! He hesitated to go in—the influence of the place was like the thrall of a fate. He wished again he had never seen it. But he could hear, so definitely the water transmitted the sound, the engines of theAglaiagetting up steam, and he was conscious of the scrutiny of the skipper’s powerful lenses.
Through all the vacant vastness swept the fresh breath of the river, so close at hand. The light from the sinking sun, broadly aslant, fell through the gaping windows and lay athwart the rooms in immaterial bands of burnished gold. The illusion of motion was continuous on the grand staircase where the motes danced in ethereal, hazy illumination. The contrasting dun-gray shadows imparted a depth and richness to the flare of ruddy gold, reddening dreamily as the day slowly tended to its close. All was silence, absolute silence. As he wandered aimlessly from room to room, his step loud in the quietude, the delicate scent of a white jessamine, early abloom, bringing its vernal tribute of incense to the forlorn old ruin year after year, despite half a century of neglect, thrilled his senses and smote some chord of softer feeling. A sentimentof self-justification rose in his breast. How was it that all had gone with him so strangely awry! Wherein had he erred? He had but exerted his prerogative to order the affairs of his family according to his best judgment in its interest, as any man might and should do, and—behold, this tumult of tortures was unloosed upon him. His wife had utilized the opportunity as a pretext to flee to Randal Ducie, and but for this day’s work the deserted and divorced would have been fleeced by the courts to finance the new matrimonial venture. He had done right, he said, thrusting his white cap back from his heated brow. He had done well.
It had not been his intention to kill an unarmed man; the fatality of the blow had been an accident, but it was irrevocable, and it behooved him to look to the future. No one but the skipper of theAglaiacould have known of his entrance upon the derelict, and if he had chanced to observe it, a word in his employee’s ear, that he had discovered the body there—murdered probably—and did not wish to be called as witness would be sufficient for the present; the skipper would have forgotten the whole incident before he had entered the first day’s run at sea in the log of theAglaia. There was no reason to connect him with the tragedy except that the two were on the river the same day. He had retracted, and exonerated, and handsomely eaten all manner of humble pie, and it was to be supposed that relations had been established as friendly as could exist between rival claimants of an estate now to be adjudicated by the courts.
He looked down at his hand. The wound that had so perversely bled showed only pallid lips, butno sign of red. He could not remember if he had thoroughly wiped the gory knife and began apprehensively to search his pockets. Not here—not there. He grew ghastly pale. His breath came quick in suffocating gasps as he realized the truth. He had failed to repossess himself of the knife at that supreme moment of tragedy. He had an illuminating recollection, as if he beheld the scene anew, that the blade had caught on some strong ligament or cartilage in the man’s throat and as the victim swayed and fell heavily he had not sought to secure it.
“Fool! Fool!” the empty building rang with the sound, and a score of frantic echoes shouted opprobrium upon him. He clasped his quivering hands above his head and sought to command his thoughts. He had been too drunk at the time to realize the fact, but the knife was a witness which would indubitably fix the crime upon him. Like all his personal accessories it was the handsomest thing of the kind that could be bought, and on the silver plate on the handle was engraved, according to his wont, his monogram. He started violently toward the hall. He must go back,—but he could never row the distance, exhausted, as he was, against the current. He would have theAglaiato steam up on some pretext, and in company with the skipper they would discover the body, when unperceived he could repossess himself of the knife. He was terrified at the prospect of the attempt. He felt himself already in toils. He tossed his hands above his head and wrung them wildly. A hoarse cry of agony burst from his lips, suddenly dying in his throat, for—was that an echo in the resounding vacancy? A strangesound, a great pervasive sound was filling all the air, as if the old house quavered, and groaned, and cried out in long endured anguish. There was a rush upon the staircase; he saw through the open doors of the drawing-rooms shadowy, flitting figures descending in crowds as if the ancient ghosts that had found harbor here were fleeing their refuge.
Nay, only coils on coils of dust. As he rushed forth into the hall he perceived at the end of the long perspective the great Mississippi River, as in some strange dislocation of the angle of vision, reaching—illuminated and splendid—to the flaunting evening sky.
And from the Mississippi River the lenses of the steam yachtAglaia, focused on the old mansion of Duciehurst, saw it at one moment still and silent, majestic even, in its melancholy ruin, the sun lingering on its massive cornice and columnated portico. The next it slid as softly from vision as an immaterial mirage. The caving bank had gone down into the unimaginable depths of the river, carrying on its floods a thousand acres of disintegrating land and the turbulent waters of the liberated Mississippi were flowing deep over the cotton fields of Duciehurst plantation, two miles inland.
In the widespread commotion of the flood it was fortunate for theAglaia, even though so far up stream—distant in the bight of the bend—that steam was already up in the boilers. Forging up the river, against the current, at her maximum speed, the yacht in the seething turmoil found no safe anchorage till near the bar where the derelict lay. Here she swung round and the officers sought to inaugurate measures to recover if it were possible the bodyof Floyd-Rosney, who had indubitably perished in the submergence of the mansion. The whole region was aroused and aghast at the magnitude of the disaster. From the deck of the yacht were visible hurrying groups as the population pressed toward the ill-fated scene. The skipper’s megaphone was in constant requisition as being an eye-witness of the calamity he alone could give authentic information. Randal Ducie, hastening down to his levee, was met on the summit by the information that his ancestral estate had ceased to exist, swept from the face of the earth as completely as if it had never been. Its restoration had long been the object nearest his heart, its sequestration in alien possession was the hardship of his life. But he showed scant emotion. Some subtle, inexplicable premonition of catastrophe infinitely heart-rending annulled the sense of loss.
“Where’s my brother?” he demanded irrelevantly, and despite the remonstrances of the by-standers he threw himself into a skiff at the landing and pulled out on the tossing, turbulent tide. As the rage of the river subsided the search was joined by others, and a wild rumor of some disaster to Adrian Ducie quickly pervaded the vicinity. The finding of his rowboat on the Arkansas shore did not prove his landing, according to Floyd-Rosney’s forecast, for the craft was caught in a tangle of saw-grass in a marshy swamp where footing was impracticable. The old negro to whom Floyd-Rosney had spoken in the afternoon was now returning from his errand down the river, which was gray with a slowly gathering mist, and melancholy with a cast of the silent and pallid moon. He hove near the little fleet of rowboats that roved the shadows andasked a question concerning the appearance of the missing man, with whom he thought it possible he had had some conversation an hour or so ago.
“He looks like me,” said Randal Ducie, throwing his face into high relief with an electric flashlight, and turning with poignant hope toward the boatman.
“Oh, no, sah! No, sah!” disconsolately admitted the old darkey, blinking in the glare. “Nebber saw two folks more onsimilar. Mr. Ran Ducie, I knowed you, Sah, from way back. Knowed yer daddy. Dis man looked like he thunk I war de wum o’ de yearth, an’ de yearth war built fur him, though I never p’sumed ter talk ter him. ’Twar him fust p’sumed ter talk ter me. He war dressed beautified, too, with white flannel suit, an’ a white cap, an’ handsome ter kill.”
“Floyd-Rosney,” Randal muttered through his set teeth. “And where did he go?”
“Ter de oleCher’kee Rose, sah,” the negro pointed at the derelict, lying on the bar, visible amidst the shadows thronging the river in the ghostly gleams of the moon that was wont to patrol the deck, and seek out the dark recesses of the cabin where the rise and subsidence of the water registered its fluctuations, and to look through the windows of the pilot-house where the steersman at the wheel once took his bearings.
It was a stupendous moment in a man’s life when Randal Ducie stood in the shattered old pilot-house and looked down into his own dead face, as it were, ghastly pale and silent, under the moon’s desolate light. The tie between the brothers had been more than the love of women, and the heart of the wholecountryside bled for Randal’s grief. The extraordinary resemblance of the two, their fraternal devotion, their exile from the home of their fathers, and its wrongful detention in the possession of others, the destruction of the property by the caving bank, the greatest disaster the country had known for a half century, when its restoration to its rightful heirs seemed imminent, all appealed with tender commiseration to the heart of the world, albeit not easily touched, and a flood of condolence poured in unregarded upon Randal where he sat in his solitary home with bowed head and bated pulses, scarcely living himself, admitting no business, seeing no friend, opening no letter.
The knife that Floyd-Rosney had left piercing the dead man’s throat had fixed the crime upon him, together with the testimony at the inquest of the old negro boatman, who had seen him take his way to the derelict, and that of the skipper who had watched him through the binocle of theAglaiadescend the steps, unloose both the boats that swung on the tide, secured to a post, and set one adrift while he rowed the other, the appurtenance of theAglaia.
It was well, Randal felt, taking in these proceedings the only interest he could scourge his mind to entertain, that he was not called upon to prosecute on circumstantial evidence some forlorn water rat, or some friendless negro for the millionaire’s crime, as doubtless Floyd-Rosney had contemplated. Though the death of the gentle and genial Adrian went unavenged, save by the heavy hand of Heaven itself, it wrought no calamity to others, except in his incomparable loss.
Oneevening, late in the summer, the melancholy recluse, who might have forgotten, so seldom did he speak, the sound of his own voice, strolled out to evade the intensity of the heat in the hope of a breath of air from the river. But no, it lay like a sheet of glass, blank of incident—no breeze, no cloud, a pallid monotony of twilight. He had passed through the lawn and came out upon the levee which in the dead levels of that country seems of considerable elevation. He loitered along the summit, finding in the higher ground some amelioration of the motionless atmosphere, for it ceased to harass him, and with his heavy brooding thoughts for company he walked on and on, till at length he was aroused by the perception that in his absorption he had passed the limits of his own domain, and was trespassing on the precincts of a neighboring plantation. This fact was brought to his notice by seeing a bench on the levee which he had not caused to be placed there, and behind it was a mass of Cherokee rose hedge, the growth of which he did not approve on these protective embankments. On it were many waxy white blooms, closing with the waning day, amidst the glossy, deeply green foliage, and seated on the bench was a lady gowned in fleecy white.
He scarcely gave her a glance, and with a sense of intrusion he gravely lifted his hat as he was turningaway. But she sprang up precipitately and came toward him.
“Oh, Randal,Randal,” she exclaimed in a voice of poignant sympathy, and said no more. She had burst into a tempest of sobs and cries, and as he came toward her and held out his hand, he felt her tears raining down on it as she pressed it between both her soft palms.
“Oh, I know you don’t—youcan’t—care for my sympathy,” Hildegarde sobbed out brokenly. “It is nothing to you or tohim, but Randal, he was not a man foronefriend, one mourner. Everybody loved him that knew him.”
She had collapsed in her former place on the bench, her arm over its back, her head bent upon it, her slender figure shaken by her sobs.
“But he would care for your sympathy, he would value your tears, shed for his sake,” Randal said, suddenly. He walked to the bench and sat down beside her. “Only a few hours before—before—he was speaking to me of you. How lovely——”
He paused in embarrassment, remembering Adrian’s protest how gladly he would see his brother make her the chatelaine of Duciehurst,—oh, dreams, dreams!—all shattered and gone!
“Did he—did he, really?”
She lifted her eyes, swimming with tears and irradiated with smiles, that seemed to shine in the dull twilight.
“Oh, how I treasure the words!” Then after a long pause—“I was afraid to speak to you, Randal. I do everything wrong!”
“You? You do everything right,” he declared.
“I am all impulse, you know,” she explained.
“Which is so much better than being all design,” he interpolated.
“And so I speak without consideration, and might—might hurt people’s feelings.”
“Never—never in the world,” he insisted.
“I am so glad you forgive it, if it is intrusiveness. But I am staying down here at my aunt’s; she has been very ill. And I have so longed to say just one word to you—to call you by telephone—or,—something. I would see your solitary light burning across the lake, so late, so late—you know we have been watchers here, too,—and I would think of you, shut in with your sorrow, and no human pity can comfort you. So I could only send my prayers for you. Did you feel my prayers?”
They were very real to her in her simple faith, very important, necessarily efficacious.
“No,” he said, honestly. But as her face fell he added: “Perhaps they will be answered.”
“Oh, assuredly,” she cried, tremulously, and her sincerity touched him.
“Whenever your light shines late from your east window remember that I am praying that you may have the grace to turn your thoughts joyfully to the blessed memories you have of your brother, and the happy hours that were in mercy vouchsafed to you, and what he was to you, and what you were to him, and what you will be to each other on the day of the great Reunion. So that you may have strength to take up your duties in life again, in usefulness and contentment—like the man you were born to be, and the man you are. Then shall my prayers be answered, and the memory of your brother will become a blessing, and not a blight.”
There was some responsive chord in that manly heart of his vibrating strongly to this appeal. Only the next day, struggling with an averse distaste and wincing from the sights and sounds of the former routine, he went out to supervise the weighing of the cotton in the fields, now beginning to open with a fair promise. He felt strangely grateful for the hearty greetings of the laborers, and an humble appeal to right some little injustice only within his power made his hands seem strong, and renewed his sense of a duty in the world.
The next day, collapsing on his resolution, it was difficult to force himself to take out his fine horse and drive as of yore to the neighboring town, attending a meeting of the planters of the vicinity, all agog, always, on the subject of the operations of the levee board.
When Sunday came, with, oh, how faint a spirit, he took his downcast way to the little neighborhood church, built in a dense grove, full of shadows and the sentiment of holy peace, called St. John’s in the Wilderness, and his broken and contrite heart seemed all poignantly lacerated anew and bleeding, and found no comfort. It had all the agony of renunciation to think of his brother—his own other self, his twin existence—as translated to that far, spiritual sphere, which we cannot realize, or formulate aught of its conditions. His brother, alive, well, strong, loving and beloved, fighting his way dauntlessly through inadequate resources and restrictions, making and building of his own inherent values a place for himself in the world—that vital presence quenched! That loyal, generous, gentle heart to beat never again. It was a thought to makethe senses reel. He wondered that reason did not fail before its contemplation. He felt his eyes grow hot and burn in their sockets, and only mechanically and from force of habit could he follow the service. Once, as his unseeing gaze turned restlessly from the chancel they fell upon Hildegarde, seated in her uncle’s pew. Her eyes were downcast, her face was sweetly solemn. A sense of calm radiated from her expression, her look of aloofness from the world. There arose in his mind the thought of Adrian’s faith in her genuine graces of character, which belittled even her charm and beauty, his wish that she might share the splendor of Ran’s restoration to fortune, when it should come full-handed to them, that she might grace the high estate of the lady of Duciehurst—oh, poor Duciehurst! He could but look upon her with different eyes for the thought. It was as a bond between them.
He had regained his composure, grave and dejected—all unlike his former self—by the time the sermon was ended, and he waited for her at the door; together they walked silently to her uncle’s home under the deep rich shadows of the primeval woods.
Even trifles are of moment in the stagnation of interest in a country neighborhood. Some vague rumor of the little incident that these two had been thus seen publicly together penetrated beyond the purview of the parishioners of St. John’s in the Wilderness. The association of names came thus to the ears of Paula Floyd-Rosney, and urged her to an action which she had been contemplating, but had relegated to a future propitious opportunity. It forced precipitancy upon her. If she intended tomove at all time must be taken into account, and the untoward chance of interference with her plans. She was now indeed the arbiter of her own destiny, she told herself. Her suit for divorce had been abated by reason of the death of Floyd-Rosney, and she was in the enjoyment of one-half of his princely estate in Mississippi—where the right of dower has been annulled and a child’s part substituted as the share of the wife—and also the “widow’s third” in Tennessee, for he had died intestate. She was young, and her spirits rebounded with the prospect of the rehabilitation of her happiness. Her heart bore, it is true, some sorry scars which it would carry to the judgment day. But she could not feel, she could not even feign, grief for her husband’s fate; she knew it was liberation for her and his child. She had donned, in deference to the urgency of Mrs. Majoribanks, a fashionable version of widow’s weeds, and she had intended to allow the traditional time of mourning to expire before she made haste to gather the treasures of youth and love that she had so recklessly thrown away. She had not even regret for the disaster of Duciehurst. She regarded its destruction as the solution of a problem. She would not have wished to win in the lawsuit the estate she felt was morally and equitably the property of her former lover. It was delightful to her to be in the position to bestow, and not to receive. She was in case to make brave amends for her fickle desertion of Ran Ducie at the summons of wealth and splendor. She would go back to him a prize beyond computation—the woman he loved and had always loved, but endowed like a princess and looking like a queen. The expectation embellished her almostout of recognition; her closest friends and casual guests—for she had returned to her own home, from which she had fled—could but exclaim as her beauty expanded. “How I loved him!” she would whisper to herself, and sometimes she wondered if those five dread years under the yoke were not heavy payment for the fortune she was bringing him. The consciousness of this great wealth made her the more confident, the more plausible in the letter she wrote him. Though she had feared supplantation, it was only because he might be in ignorance of her attitude toward him.
It took the form of a letter of condolence. She declared she yearned to express her deep sympathy for him, although she had felt he might not care to hear from her on account of her connection with the hand that struck the blow which had so sorely afflicted him. But she conjured him, by their love for each other, so precious in the days that were past, to forbear thinking of her in that wise. The villain who had gone had no hold on her heart. He had destroyed her life. She could confess to Randal now that every day of the years and every hour of the days had been one long penance for her faithless desertion of him, her casting away his precious heart, worth more than all the gold of Ophir. She had never regretted it but once, and that was always, and unceasingly. She was possessed, she supposed,—or rather, consider that she was so young, so unsophisticated, so blinded by the glare of wealth and dizzy with the specious wiles of the world. Oh, to live the old days over again! But he must not hate her—he must not associate her with the name as detestable to her as to him. He must remember,instead, how sweet was the simple story of their love, and date his thoughts of her from its emotions. One thing she begged of him—let her hear from him, and soon.
In all her formulations of the possible result of this letter she never anticipated the event. She had been prepared for delay. Some little time he must have to decide upon his course, his phrases, complicated as the whole incident was with the memory of the murderous Floyd-Rosney. When by return mail she noted the large white missive, with her name in his well-remembered, decided, dashing chirography, her heart plunged, and for a moment she almost thought it had ceased to beat. Her hands trembled violently as she tore open the envelope. Within was her own letter and on the reverse side of the last sheet were penned these words:
“This letter should be in your own possession. The story to which you allude I read to the last page, and the book is closed.”
Asthe months wore on into winter Randal Ducie, in the pursuance of the effort to rehabilitate his broken and maimed life, was often in Memphis. His old associates had an eager welcome for him, for his candid and genial nature was supplemented by a tireless energy and some special acumen and active experience in the line in which these endowments were now needed. The levee crisis was acute, and the planters were eager to formulate an adequate and practical defense against the encroachments of the river, with State or Federal aid, rather than have the Delta serve, as they claimed, as an experiment station for the Government. Cotton was their objective,—not science.
Sometimes a poignant pang smote the heart of the lonely man as some absorbed and eager acquaintance greeted him, from force of habit, with the old look of inquiry as to his identity, one of those who used formerly to ask inadvertently, “Is this you, or your brother?” eliciting in those happy days the delighted response “Of course, it is my brother.”
Alas, how Randal wished now that it was his brother,—to be himself lying in that quiet grave to which he was sure their ill-fated resemblance had consigned Adrian in the flower of his youth, and that it was he who was here among these streets of busy men with many a long year of life before him.
“But you should thank God that you are privileged to suffer in his stead,” Hildegarde would argue with him. “He would have had all this torture to endure if you had been the one called away.”
Shortly after his arrival in Memphis he had gravitated to her father’s house, where he often sat for hours in the library in the quiet atmosphere of the books, her face pensive, illumined by the flash and sparkle of the fire as she worked with dainty, deft fingers on a bit of embroidery. Informal visits these, and often other members of the family gathered around the hearth,—her father, talking levee-board, and the stage of the river, the price of cotton and the dangers of overproduction; her college-boy brother, a football expert, a famous halfback with the latest sensations of the gridiron on Thanksgiving-day; her mother, soft and sweet, with that frank look of Hildegarde in her duller eyes, for which Randal loved her. He found the only comfort he knew in this group. Once, however, the young girl’s unthinking candor almost stunned him.
“Such an odd thing,” she said one day when all were present; she was evidently coming from far reaches of her reverie; she had been carefully matching the skeins for the embroidered gentian blooming under the benison of her touch, and he had a fleeting thought that she might have rivaled nature had she compared them to the tint of her eyes. “I met Mrs. Floyd-Rosney yesterday at the Jennison reception, and she asked me such a strange question.”
She paused, but he would not inquire, and the others, realizing the malapropos subject, could not sufficiently command their embarrassment. Butthe transparent Hildegarde needed no urgency.
“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney asked me,” she said, laying all the skeins together in her right hand while she looked up with bright interest, “if you had ever told me of the contents of the letter she wrote to you some months ago.”
“And what did you answer?” asked Randal, breaking the awkward silence.
“Why, of course I told her that you had never mentioned the letter,” replied Hildegarde, with a flash of surprise. “I told her the truth.”
“You did! Why, you amaze me!” exclaimed Randal, with a touch of his old gayety, and with the laugh that rippled around the circle the incident passed.
Yet this incident put him on his guard. He had long since lost every trace of the sentiment he had once felt for this woman. From the moment he had received his rejection, years ago, he had realized that he had been mistaken from the first in her nature. With many men the contemplation of the magnitude of the temptation, the splendor of the opportunity as Floyd-Rosney’s wife, might have served to condone in a degree her defection. Not so with Randal Ducie. He had a very honest self-respect. He had been trained at his mother’s knee to reverence the high ideals of life. To him, Love was a sacred thing, Marriage was the ordinance of God, and a mercenary motive a profanation. He had been poignantly wounded in the disappointment, humiliated, in some sort, yet he looked upon the discovery that she was vulnerable to this specious lure of gain as an escape, and he set all the strong will of his stanchly endowed nature to recover from theinfluence she had exerted in his life. Now, so long afterward, when he had not only reason to condemn and resent her part in his own past, but to detest the very sight of her, the sound of the name she bore, he could not imagine how she could be the victim of the obsession that she was aught to him but a hateful living lie, a presentment of avarice. He wondered at the persuasion of a woman, perceived by him only in this instance, but often noticed elsewhere by the observant in such matters, as to the unlimited power of her attractions. She can never believe no ember burns amidst the ashes of a former attachment, dulled by time perhaps, covered from sight, but smouldering still, and with fresh fuel ready to flame forth anew. He could not understand on what was based her conviction of the permanence of his attachment. On her true faith to bind them together till death?—it had been tested and found wanting. On her gifts of intellect?—the supposition was an absurdity; she was indubitably a bright and a cultivated woman, but Randal had been educated too definitely in the masculine American methods to think of sitting at the feet of any woman. On her beauty?—where was the traditional delicacy of the feminine perceptions! Did she imagine him a Turk at heart? Her beauty might attract—it could never hold. In the old days of his fond affection if she had been visited by some disfiguring, defacing affliction she would have been the same to him, equally dear, and but that she herself had stripped off the mask and proclaimed the disguise that had befooled him she would have been the lady of his heart, the cherished treasure of his life to the day of his death.
Now he could but wish that she would withhold her withering hand from such poor values as she and hers had left him in life. He did not understand her latest demonstration. But for Hildegarde’s pellucid candor he might never have dreamed of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s covert interest in a proposition made to him by the senior partner of a firm of prominent jewelers, looking to the purchase of the diamond necklace found among the jewels at Duciehurst, now lying in a safety deposit vault. Ducie curtly refused to entertain an offer. Then he as curtly asked:
“But why should you think I would wish to sell it?”
Mr. Dazzle was visibly embarrassed, but still rational.
“The idea was suggested to me, as the stones are of great—well—ahem—considerable value, and you have no ladies in your family.”
“Not at present,” said Randal, stiffly.
“True—true; you might care to retain them if you should marry. But as they are so far beyond the pretensions of present-day ornaments, something more suitable—and—and your being extensively interested in cotton planting where money can be used to advantage——”
“And lost to disadvantage, too,” said Ducie, grimly.
“True—true—but the diamonds being wholly unproductive—they are cut in the old style, too, which tends to reduce their value——”
“You wouldn’t have an antique necklace with diamonds cut in the present style?”
“No—no; I was considering them as disassociatedfrom their setting, which is very rare of workmanship—that is—I thought—the idea was suggested to me”—Mr. Dazzle did not intend to imperil his soul by lying in anybody’s interest—“the idea was suggested to me that perhaps you might care to sell.”
“Not at all. The necklace is reserved as a bridal gift,” said Ducie, precipitately.
“And a most magnificent one,” declared Mr. Dazzle, his face beaming with the enthusiasm befitting his vocation. “I hope you will give us the commission to clean and put the necklace in order, see to the clasp, which should be renewed, possibly, as a precaution against loss,—all those details. It will appear to twice the advantage that it did when I saw it at the time you and your brother had it appraised with a view to dividing the valuables found at Duciehurst.”
Ducie got rid of the man without further committing himself. Then in surprise he demanded of himself why he had said this thing, when nothing was further from his thoughts. In fact it had been thrown off on the spur of the moment, to be quit of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s suspected interference in his affairs. She wear the revered Ducie heirlooms! He would work his fingers to the bone before the jewels should go on the market. And the offensive suggestion that something simpler, cheaper, in the manner of the present day, might suffice for his bridal gifts when he should be called upon to make them, in order that the difference might go to forwarding his business, and ease the struggle for meat and bread, was so characteristic of the Floyd-Rosney methods of considering the affairs of other people that Randal could but ascribe it to her. But whyhad his ungoverned impulse broached the idea of a bridal present? he wondered. Her interest, her espionage in his most intimate personal concerns seemed sinister, and he would fain be rid of the very thought of her.
The reaction had been great when Paula had received back her crafty letter of condolence with the characteristic endorsement on the final page. Her pride was humiliated to the ground, and her heart pierced. She could not realize, she would not believe that he no longer loved her. She could but think that were not other considerations held paramount he would have flown to her arms. She became ingenious in constructing a mental status to justify his course on some other theory—any other theory—than a burned-out flame. He was in the thrall of public opinion, she argued. He fancied it would not sustain him in his devotion to the widow of the man who had murdered his brother. He was ready to sacrifice himself and her also that he might stand unchallenged by the world—the careless unnoting world, rolling on its own way, that would not know to-morrow a phase of the whole episode. What was a gossip’s tongue clacking here and there in comparison with their long deferred happiness. How should a censorious frown or a raised eyebrow outweigh all that they were, all that they had been to each other—their human, pulsing hearts! If she could only have speech of him—yet no! She could not say of her own initiative what had been most difficult to intimate in writing. She must wait, and plan, and watch, and be as patient as she might.
Her spirits had worn low in the process. She had begun to feel the keen griefs of a martyr. Throughher love for this man, what had she not suffered? From the moment on theCherokee Rosethat she had seen his brother’s face, so nearly a facsimile of his own, her old love for him reasserted itself and would not be denied. Had not Adrian been of the passengers of the packet, had not so keen and intense a reminder of the old days risen before her, life would have gone on as heretofore. She would have continued to adjust her moods to the exactions of her arbitrary husband, as she had been well content to do. No jealousy would have inflamed his causeless suspicions. He would have been still in his lordly enjoyment of his rich opportunities and Adrian Ducie alive and well. She had been pilloried before the public gaze; her child had been torn from her bosom; her husband had made his name, the name she bore, infamous with a revolting crime, and was dead in his sins; and the man for whose sake—nay for the sake of a mere sweet memory of a boyish worship, a tender reciprocation of a pure and ardent attachment—this coil of events was set in motion, writes that he has read the story to the end of the page, and the book is closed. Ah, no—Randal Ducie, there is somewhat more, reading between the lines, for your perusal, and the book may be reopened. Her heart was full of reproach for him, and yet she believed that he loved her and secretly upbraided him that he did not love her more than the frown of the world,—that world to which she had in her fresh youth been glad to do homage on her bended knees, sacrificing him to it, and her plighted troth.
She was restless; she could not be still. She was out every day. More than once in her limousine shecaught sight of him on the sidewalk. She had fancied, she had feared he might not speak, but he raised his hat with a grave dignity and a look wholly devoid of consciousness, and she could hang no thread of a theory on the incident. Once he chanced to be strolling with Hildegarde Dean, and with the recollection of her fresh, smiling, girlish face Paula went home in a rage, as if she had received some bitter affront, as if her tenure on his affections precluded his exchange of a word with any other woman, the tender of a casual courtesy. Then it was that she projected the purchase of the necklace. If he should—but oh, he could not! That girl should not wear the gorgeous gewgaw, which she herself had rescued at such pains and risk, and restored to his possession. He was as poor as poverty—she had adopted her husband’s habit of scorn of small means—and she would buy it secretly through an agent, at any price.
When the answer came from the jeweler she was stunned. It was reserved as a bridal gift, quotha. She had crystallized the very thought she had sought to preclude. The mischance tamed her. She caught her breath and took counsel with sober conservatism. She must be wary; she must make no false move. Indeed, she told herself she must be utterly quiescent; she must, in prudence, in self-respect, make no move at all. Then by degrees her persistent hopefulness, her vehement determination, were reasserted. She argued that no immediate bridal was foreshadowed, nor with whom. She herself might wear these jewels,—which she had discovered and restored,—on a day that would be like a first bridal,for her wedding seemed to her now as a sacrifice to Moloch.
Some time later she chanced, while driving, to meet Hildegarde, walking alone. Paula joyously signaled to her and ordered the limousine to be drawn up to the curb. “Come with me,” she said, genially, “let’s have a long drive and a good talk. I was just thinking of you!”
She looked most attractive as she smiled at the girl. Her ermine furs, including the toque—for she had cast aside even the perfunctory weeds she had worn—added an especial richness and daintiness to a wintry toilette of black, adhering to the convention of second mourning, it being now almost a year since Floyd-Rosney had startled the world by his manner of quitting it. Her eyes were bright and kindly, her cheek delicately flushed. She had an increased authority or autocracy in her manner, which might have come about from unrestrained control of her fortune and her actions, but which seemed to the girl in some sort coercive. Hildegarde felt that she could scarcely have refused if she would, yet indeed she did not wish to decline, and soon they were skimming along the smooth curves of the speedway in the driving park, the river, though lower than at this season last year, glimpsed in burnished silver now and again through the trees.
“I have a good scheme for you and me, Hildegarde,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and as the two sat together she slipped one hand into Hildegarde’s chinchilla muff to give her little gloved fingers an affectionate pressure. “I want you to go with me as my guest to New Orleans for Mardi Gras,—doesn’t Lent come early this year? The yacht isquite ready and we will make a list of just a few friends for company. And afterward to my house on Saint Simon’s Island.”
“Oh, ideal,” cried Hildegarde joyously. “I shall be delighted to go.”
“I think Saint Simon’s Island is the choice location for the penitential season,” said Paula flippantly,—“savors least of sackcloth and ashes.”
Hildegarde’s face fell.
“Oh, did I tell you,” the quick Paula broke off suddenly, “that as a Lenten offering I am going to furnish a room and endow a bed in the new Charity Hospital?”
“Oh, how lovely,” cried Hildegarde, radiant once more.
“But to return to our outing,” resumed Paula, “of course, under the circumstances,” with a slanting glance at the presumably grief-stricken ermine and velvet, “I can’t make up a party of pleasure for myself,—it must be complimentary to my dear young friend, and its personnel must be selected with that view.” Once more her hand crept into Hildegarde’s muff.
She paused reflectively for a moment, while her mood seemed to change, and when she went on it was in a different tone and with a crestfallen look.
“To be quite frank with you, dear, I have a strong personal interest in the occasion. I really want an excuse to get out of the town myself. There’s a man here whom I want to avoid, and I’m forever meeting him.”
“I wonder,” commented the guileless girl.
“It is always easier to run away from a thing like that than to bring it to a crisis, and really in this instancecircumstances will not admit of any canvassing of the matter.”
Hildegarde’s face was eloquent of interest, but she decorously forbore inquiry.
“If I mention the name you won’t repeat it, though I don’t see why I should, but Heaven knows I am so lonely I long to confide my troubles to some sympathetic soul.”
And now it was Hildegarde’s hand that stole into the ermine muff with an ardent little clasp which was convulsively returned.
“You can say anything you wish to me, dear Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and rely on my silence.”
She turned such pellucidly clear azure eyes on Paula. She looked so docile and ingenuous, that for one moment the heart of the schemer almost misgave her. And indeed in the old days, before Paula ever met Floyd-Rosney, she would have been incapable of the duplicity which she now contemplated. But when sordid worldly motives are permitted to enter the soul of a woman and to dominate it they work its ultimate disintegration, despite the presence of worthier traits which otherwise might have proved cohesive. As, however, she spoke the name already on her lips she detected a quiver in the little hand she held, and that vague tremor served to renew her purpose and nerved her to go on. “It is Randal Ducie,” she said.
For she had deliberately planned at whatever sacrifice of truth to implant distrust and aversion toward Randal Ducie in the mind of this girl of high ideals; to remove her for a time from the sphere of his influence and the opportunity of explanation; in the interval to supplant him in her estimation withothers of carefully vaunted attributes. By the time Hildegarde Dean should return from Saint Simon’s Island she would not tolerate his presence, and in the humiliation of her contempt Randal Ducie might find a solace in recurring to the page of that sweet old story, albeit he had so hardily declared the book was closed.
“It is Randal Ducie,” Paula repeated. “You know long ago,—is that front window closed—these chauffeurs hear everything if one is not careful,—well, long ago when I was with my grandmother,—we lived at Ingleside, Ran Ducie and I were engaged. Did you know that?”
“I have heard it,” said Hildegarde, her face tense and troubled, her eyes unseeing and dreamily fixed.
“You have heard, too, that I threw him over, having the opportunity to make a wealthy match.”
“Ye-es,” admitted Hildegarde, embarrassed, “people say anything, you know. They gossip so awfully.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, looking out pathetically at the budding trees of the similitude of a forest as the car swung down the broad, smooth curves, “it was the other way about. It washewho changed his mind. Then I had the opportunity of the grand match, the first time I ever was in New Orleans—and I took it out of pique. A girl is such a poor, silly, little fool.”
Hildegarde was silent. There was so strong an expression of negation, of condemnation, of doubt on her face that Paula went on precipitately.
“Of course, I wasn’t in the least justified.”
“And you realized that?” said Hildegarde.
“You see, I didn’t love my husband. You don’tunderstand these things, child. He was kind, in his way, and rich, and talented, and handsome——”
“Oh, yes, he was splendid looking,” said Hildegarde, sustaining her pose of interest, but her lips were white.
“But I didn’t love him—and I loved Randal. A girl, though, Hildegarde, cannot remonstrate against inconstancy. Randal came to me and said he had mistaken the state of his feelings, that the interest he had felt for me was merely because we happened to be the only two young people in the neighborhood and were thrown together so often; that he realized this as soon as he was again in the world, and that it was foolish for him to think of taking a wife in view of his limited resources. He asked to be released. So there was nothing for me to say but ‘Good day, Sir,’ with what dignity I could muster,—for, my dear girl, ‘Good day’ had already been said by him. Oh, kind Heaven, why do women have such keen memories? It wasn’t yesterday, surely.”
Paula threw her face suddenly into its wonted pretty and placid and haughty contour, and bowed and smiled to a passing car, filled with bowing and smiling faces.
“I couldn’t help feeling a bit triumphant that such a notable catch as Mr. Floyd-Rosney—so cultivated, and talented, and wealthy—should single me out as his preference as soon as he saw me.”
“I think your feeling was very natural,” said Hildegarde, “but I don’t see why you should leave town on Randal Ducie’s account.”
What made her lips so dry, she wondered. They fumbled almost unintelligibly on the words.
“Oh, my dear, that isn’t the end of it. He isall for taking it back now; for renewing the old romance. He has a thousand reasons for his defection, the chief being—and it was really true—that he couldn’t afford to marry and was pushed to the wall by some debts that he had contrived to make. But, Hildegarde, the real fact is not the revival of his love for me—very warm it is now, if he is to be believed—but—you would never realize it, you are such an unworldly, uncalculating little kitten—but, I have at my disposal a great fortune, with nobody to say me nay. I am one of the largest taxpayers in the county, and that does make a man’s heart so tender to his old love; the girl who adored him, who told him all her little, foolish heart, and let him kiss her good-by, always, and lied to her grandmother, and told the unsuspecting old lady she never did. Oh, why are women’s memories weighted to bursting with trifles! Now, Hildegarde, haven’t you noticed how much Ran Ducie has been in town all last fall and this spring?”
Hildegarde had, indeed, noticed it. She nodded assent. She was beyond speech.
“That’s his errand, my dear, making up for lost time. Here we are at your home. Thank you so much for giving me the chance to go. I’ll make it lovely for you. The yacht casts off at five to-morrow afternoon, and the limousine will call for you at four.”
Hildegardepassed a wakeful night of troubled thought. Only after the tardy dawn of the early spring was in the room did she fall into the dull slumber of exhaustion, from which she roused at last, unrefreshed and languid. Before she broke her fast she dispatched a note to Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, declining on second thoughts the invitation to make the trip to New Orleans and St. Simon’s Island, which she had welcomed so enthusiastically when it was broached the previous day. She gave no reason for her change of mind, but expressed her thanks very prettily and courteously; the conventional, suave phrases exacted by decorum incongruous with the pale, stern, set face that bent above them. Her mother cried out in surprise and solicitude when she came into the library, with this mask, so to speak, alien to the joyous countenance she was wont to wear, so soft and glowing, so bland and gay, but she petulantly put aside all inquiries, declaring that she was quite well and only wanted to be left alone. To be quit of the family she escaped into the solitary sun-parlor, and sat there in a wicker chair among the palms, and watched the blooms in the window-boxes that illumined the space with their vivid glintings. For there was no sun to-day—a hazy, soft, gray day, and but for the gleam of her white dress in the leafy shadows Randal Duciemight not have seen her there when he was ushered into the library; after somewhat perfunctory greetings to her father and mother he strode, with the freedom of an acknowledged friend of the family, through the room into the sun-parlor and sat down beside her.
She was wearing a house dress of white wool, sparsely trimmed with only a band of Persian embroidery about the sleeves and belt and around the neck, which was cut in a high square, showing her delicate throat. She looked up embarrassed as he came in, conscious that she had on no guimpe, and no lace on the sleeves, and murmured something about not being fit to be seen. But in his masculine inexperience he perceived no lack in point of the finish of her attire, though the change of her countenance instantly struck his attention.
“Oh, what has happened?” he cried, solicitously. “What is the matter?”
“Nothing—nothing at all,” she replied, scarcely lifting her heavily lidded eyes. “I wish everybody would quit asking me that.”
“I can see that something is troubling you dreadfully,” he protested. “Won’t you let me help you? I could brush it away with one hand.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she declared, irritably.
For a few moments there was silence between them as he sat gazing at her pallid and listless face, with its downcast and dreary eyes, her languid, half-reclining attitude, her idle, nerveless hands clasped in her lap. The change in her was pathetic,—appealing.
“See here, Miss Dean, trust me; if you have stolen a horse, I will hide him for you.”
An unwilling smile crept to the verge of her drooping lips, but she ejaculated impatiently:
“Oh, nonsense!”
“I don’t want to intrude on your confidence, but,—but”—with deep gravity and a lowered voice, “have you allowed yourself to become involved in some—conspiracy against the government?”
The unwelcome laugh had crept into her eyes as she lifted her heavy lids and glanced at him.
“Oh, you know I haven’t!”
Then the contending emotions were resolved into tears, and slowly and painfully they overflowed her sapphire eyes, coursing one by one down her white cheeks.
“I should not have spoken,” he said, contritely, “I only add to your distress. Forgive me. I’d better go.”
“No—no—don’t. But I can’t explain. I’ve promised—only this I know—I can’tsay howI know, but Iknowthat my best friend has told me a lie—a wicked, defamatory, deliberate lie—and I can’t forgive it.”
“Why should you forgive it?” he asked. “It is the limit, the unforgivable.”
There was a momentary pause. The tears welled up anew in the blue eyes and the white cheeks were all wet with them; however, she mopped them with her handkerchief rolled into a little ball for the purpose.
“It was such a cruel lie, deliberately planned, so circumstantial,” she sobbed, “so plausible, apparently confirmed by facts. I do believe it would have deceived anybody, everybody, but me. I can’t controvert it—the circumstances are out of my scope.But Iknow—I know—Iknowof my own accord,—I can’t say how,—but every breath I draw, every fiber in me is a witness of the truth—the eternal truth!”
She burst into a tempest of sobs, and Ducie was carried beyond bounds.
“Oh, you must not, you shall not, give yourself so much pain for this vile liar, whoever it is. Have some mercy on me, if not on yourself. I can’t endure to see you so distressed—it breaks my heart. I have loved you too long, too devotedly——”
He paused abruptly; he had not intended to broach the subject thus, to put his fate to the touch while she was hardly herself, overwhelmed by the agony of some poignant, covert grief which he could not share. Surely this was not the moment to decide the course of his future life and hers. He had had his grave misgivings as to her preference. She was joyous and lovely, and sweet and congenial to many alike who basked in the radiance of her charm. She was the reigning belle of the winter, and doubtless her relatives entertained high ambitions as to her settlement in life. Since the loss of Duciehurst from his material hopes and prospects he had scarcely felt himself justified in asking her to share his restrictions and limited resources. He lived on the look in her eyes, a chance word among all the others, and he had not had hope enough, encouragement enough of her preference to urge his suit upon her. He felt as if he stood in an illumination of heaven and earth when she turned her face suddenly, and asked:
“How long?”
He had both her little hands in his when he strove to differentiate for her just when and how he firstrecognized the unfolding of this flower of love to irradiate his life with bloom and fragrance and then to urge upon her some word of promise to set his plunging heart at rest.
Her face, all fluctuating with happy smiles and flushes, grew affectedly grave as she seemed to consider.
“I am not much like a parched flower,” she said, “but I have been waiting some time for this dewdrop.”
“Oh, if I had only known, how much I could have saved myself,” exclaimed Randal, voicing the sentiment of many an accepted lover.
“I expected this—remark—of yours,” she declared, her blue eyes archly glancing, “at the De Lille reception—’way back, ’way back in the Middle Ages, when you said in such an impassioned voice, ‘Will you—will you have some more frappé?’”
Then they both laughed out joyously, and her father in the library, turning over the journal in his hand to get at the river news, had a vague realization of the instability of the moods of women and especially of girls, and was pleased that Hildegarde had recovered her equanimity since her tiff against Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, as he interpreted it, had induced her to forego her charming springtide outing.
The cruise, though somewhat delayed, that the party of guests might be selected anew and assembled, took place according to the plans of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, at once the most discriminating and lavish of hostesses; but before theAglaiaweighed anchor the news of the engagement was sown broadcast in the town and it became the subject of conversation one day as the yacht steamed down theMississippi on her mission of pleasure. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, whose experience and training had developed great powers of self-control, hearkened with special interest to the details of the gossip, and often commented characteristically. The bride-elect, it was surmised, would receive splendid presents, in view of her many wealthy relatives and friends and her great popularity, but none could compare with the necklace of Ducie diamonds, the gift of the groom, which it was said she would wear with her wedding dress of white satin.
“And how ridiculous for people of their limited means,” cried Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. Her late husband himself could hardly have seemed more scornful of moderate circumstances.
“Except that the necklace is an heirloom,” said Colonel Kenwynton.
“A man in love thinks nothing istoofine,” suggested one of the ladies.
“Randal Ducie is not and never was in love with Hildegarde,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney with an air of much discernment. “She is not of the type that would appeal to him; but she was very instant in bringing herself to his notice and diverting his mind, and taking him out of himself after his bereavement and so became a sort of consolatory habit.”
“That is a beautiful idea,” said Colonel Kenwynton warmly,—“to add to the blessed relation of a wife the sacred mission of a ministering angel.”
This was not in the least what Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had intended to intimate, as was abundantly manifest by the thinly veiled anger and repugnance on her face, which was now beginning to have need of all the suavity and grace she could command. Itwas growing perceptibly hard in these days, and its incipient angularities were more definitely asserted. There was a recurrent expression of bitter antagonism in her eyes that gave added emphasis to the satiric fleer in the occasional upward lift of her chin. People were already commenting on the strange deterioration in her beauty of late, and although Colonel Kenwynton was in no degree aware of the reason for her state of mind, he felt vaguely depressed by her look and manner.
He rose presently and strolled away from the group on the deck, smoking his cigar and scanning the weather signs of the coming evening. The stress of the subject of Randal Ducie’s bereavement weighed heavily on his nerves in this vicinity. If, under all the circumstances, it could be so easily and openly mentioned here he was not sure of his ability to listen with discretion. The world was growing strange to him,—he felt himself indeed a survival. He did not understand such views as seemed to possess this woman, such standards of right, such induration of sensibilities. Man and soldier though he was, he could look only with glooming and averse eyes at the wreck of theCherokee Rose, where a dread deed was wrought, lying white and stark, skeleton-wise, like bleaching bones on the sand-bar in that immaterial region between the pallid mists of the evening and the gray sheen of the river. Very melancholy the aspect of the forlorn craft, he thought in passing, and he scarcely wondered at the prevalence of the riverside legend that strange presences were wont to revisit the glimpses of the moon on this grim, storied wreck of the Mississippi.
He could not imagine how Mrs. Floyd-Rosney inpursuit of pleasure could endure to pass this poignantly ghastly reminder, and still further down the stream to approach the site of Duciehurst under its swirling depths,—the packets now made a landing called by the name a mile to the rearward of the spot where the old mansion had stood. But presently the graceful yacht was steaming swiftly down this glamourous reach of the river, and beneath its gliding shadow in inconceivable depths lay this epitome of the past,—the demolished home altar, with its spent incense of domestic affection, the lost hopes, with their lure of tenuous illusions; the futile turmoils of grief; the transient elation of joy; the final climax of death,—all the constituent elements of human experience. Now they were naught, nullified, while the world swept on uncaring, typified by the swift yacht, leaving astern the site of oblivion.