PART II
Monica Hanson stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. For a long time she stood viewing her fair reflection with a smile at once half humorous, half tearful.
Thirty-five!
It sounded terrible as she muttered the age she knew herself to be. Thirty-five! Yet the perfect blue eyes were not a day older, as they looked back at her out of the glass. There was no hardening in their depths; there were no gathering lines about their fringed lids. Perhaps there was a deeper, wiser look in them; a look suggesting a wider knowledge, a more perfect sympathy with the life into which they had peeped during her years of struggling. But there was no aging in them. The rich, ripe mouth, too, so wonderfully firm, yet gentle, the broad, intelligent forehead with its fair, even brows. There was not one single unsightly line to disfigure these features which displayed so much of the strong character which lay behind them. Her wealth of fair, wavy hair, which since her earliest days had been her one little conceit, her constant joy and pride, was faultlessly dressed, nor had she ever yet found in its midst one of those silver threads whose discovery never fails to strike terror into the heart of an aging woman.
No, she beheld nothing in her reflection to cause her a single pang, a single heartache. Yet her heart was aching; and the pain of it was in the smile which came back to her from her reflection.
Had Monica only known it, the years had been more than kind to her. With a little more womanly vanity she would have understood that her girlish attractions had been increased a hundredfold. Not only had the years matured her figure to perfections which can never belong to early youth, but they had endowed her with a beauty of soul and mind, far more rarely found in one of such unusual physical attraction.
But such ponderings before her glass were useless, perhaps harmful. It was all so impossible. So she turned away with a little impatient gesture, and, picking up the letter lying on her bed, she passed through the folding doors into her sitting-room beyond.
The winter sun was shining in through frosty windows; that wonderful winter sun which brightens and makes joyous the Canadian dead season, without shedding sufficient warmth to disturb the thermometer from its despairing depths of cold.
She crossed to the window, and stood beside the heat radiator while she read her letter for perhaps the twentieth time. It was quite short, and intensely characteristic of the writer. Monica understood this. The lack of effusion in no way blinded her to the stormy passion which had inspired it.
"Dear Monica:
"I am going to call on you at 4 o'clock this afternoon, if you have no objection. If you have, 'phone me. I simply cannot rest until the subject of our talk the other night is settled.
"Yours,"Alexander Hendrie."
There was a wistful longing in her eyes as the woman looked up from the brief note. The subject of their talk. He could not rest. Had she rested, or known peace of mind since that evening? She knew she had not. She knew that come what might that calm which belongs to a heart untouched by love could never again be hers. She knew that love, at last, had come knocking at the door of her soul; nor had it knocked in vain, in spite of the impossibility of it all. She had not 'phoned. Instead she had spent two hours over her toilet to receive the man who was her employer, and had now become her lover.
No one knew better than she the happiness that might have been hers in her newly found regard for this great wheat grower of Alberta, had things only been different. She loved him; she had admired him ever since she came into his employ, but now she loved him with all the long-pent passion of a woman who has for years deliberately shut the gates of her soul to all such feelings.
She knew her love must be denied. There was no hope for it.
The trials she had gone through for the sake of her pledge to her dying sister were far too vividly in her mind to leave her with any hope for this love of hers. She must crush it out. She must once more steel herself, that her faith with the dead might be kept.
She dropped upon the ottoman beside the window, and, gazing out on Winnipeg's busy main street, gave herself up to profound thought. Her incisive brain swiftly became busy, reviewing the career which had been hers since—since young Frank, her beloved boy, the child who had cost her a sister's life, had become her one object and care.
Her deep eyes grew introspective, and her pretty lips closed firmly.
She had not traveled an easy road during those years. Far from it. The rocks prophesied by the kindly doctor had been quickly realized. They had come well-nigh to wrecking her craft at the outset. Only that its ribs were so stout, and the heart that guided it so strong, it must inevitably have been doomed.
So much for her youthful conceit; so much for the boundless optimism of her years. She was caught among the very first shoals that presented themselves in the ebb tide of her fortunes six months before the completion of her contract on theDaily Citizen. Would she ever forget the—yes, tragedy of that moment? She thought not.
Everything had gone along so smoothly. Her fears had been lulled. There was no sign to point the coming of the disaster. Yes, that was it. There had been overconfidence. The complications at her sister's death had been forgotten. There had been no unpleasant developments to remind her of the pitfalls with which she was surrounded. So she had grown careless in her confidence. In the warmth of her girl's heart, her rapidly growing love for the little life in her charge, she found herself spending every moment of her spare time with the child she intended to teach to call her "mother."
They were happy days. The joy of them still remained. Nor, for all the trouble they had caused her, did she regret a single one of them. But her indiscretion grew, and so the blow fell.
It was on a Sunday. In the afternoon. She remembered it well; a glorious sunny day in early summer. She was pushing the baby coach along the sidewalk of the broad country road toward the city. She had paused to readjust the sunshade over the child's head. When she looked up it was to discover a light, top buggy, drawn by a fast trotter, rapidly approaching. Mr. Meakin was driving it, and beside him sat his little, chapel-going wife.
They saw her and promptly pulled up; and instantly Monica knew that trouble was knocking at her door. Mrs. Meakin did not like her. She did not approve of her husband's secretary; and Mrs. Meakin was one of those narrow, straight-laced puritans, who never cease to thank Providence that they are so pure.
"Why, it's Miss Hanson," she promptly exclaimed. "And—oh, the lovely baby. Why——" She looked at Monica's scarlet face and broke off.
Mr. Meakin took up the greeting in the cordial fashion of a man who is well disposed.
"Say, Miss Hanson, it's a hot day for you to be pushing that coach. You surely ought to be around an ice cream parlor with one of your beaus. Not out airing some friend's kid."
But Monica's confusion only increased under the sharp eyes of Mrs. Meakin, which never left her face.
"A baby can't have too much of this beautiful air," she said helplessly.
"Why doesn't its mother look after it?" demanded Mrs. Meakin.
"She's—she's busy."
Monica's attempts at evasion were so feeble, she had so little love for subterfuge, that, to a mind as prone to suspicion as Mrs. Meakin's, the word "mystery" quickly presented itself.
"Whose is it?"
The inevitable question seemed to thunder into the wretched girl's ears.
Whose is it? Whose is it? It was useless to lie to this woman, whom she knew had no love for her. So on the spur of the moment she did the only thing that seemed possible, seeing Mr. Meakin was her employer. But she did it so badly that, even while she spoke, she knew her doom was sealed.
"She belongs back there." Monica pointed at the distant farm house.
"That house?" cried Mrs. Meakin sharply. "Why, that's Mrs. Gadly's. I——" She turned abruptly to her husband. "We'd better drive on, or we'll be late back for supper, and that will make us late for chapel."
With a flourish of his whip, and a cheery good-bye, Mr. Meakin set his "three-minute" trotter going again, and Monica was left to her dismay.
She knew. She needed no instinct to tell her. It had all been written in Mrs. Meakin's icy face. The woman would find out all about the baby she had seen her husband's secretary with. She would smell out the whole trail with that nose which was ever sharp for an evil scent.
She continued her walk thinking hard all the while, and finally took the child back to its nurse at the usual time.
Mrs. Gadly met her at the front door, and Monica put a sharp question.
"Has Mrs. Meakin been here?"
"She surely has, mam," replied the woman, smiling. "And a God-fearin' woman she is. I've known her years an' years. I didn't jest know you was her good man's secretary. She's a lady, she is; a real, elegant lady. An' she was all took up with the baby, an' the way I'd looked after him. She said as it was a great thing for a woman who 's lost her baby to have the care of another woman's child, kind o' softens the pain. An' when I told her as you paid me so liberal for it——Why, mam, you ain't faint? Ah, it's the sun; you best come right inside and set down."
It had been a terrible moment for Monica. She knew that her career in San Sabatano had suddenly terminated. The God-fearing Mrs. Meakin would have no mercy on her, particularly as she was her husband's secretary.
She returned to her apartments that evening with her mind made up to a definite course; and, on the Monday morning following, before she went to her office, she looked up her contract with theDaily Citizen. She took it with her. She knew that the thing she was about to do was a tacit admission of the child's parentage. But she intended it so to be, since truthful explanation was denied her.
Mr. Meakin was amiability itself. But there was evident relief in the sigh with which he accepted the return of the girl's contract.
"I'm real sorry, Miss Hanson, real sorry," he said sincerely. "But I guess you're right, seeing things are as they are. You see, Mrs. Mea—you see, San Sabatano has notions. I'd just like to say right here, though, I'm the loser by your going. I'm the loser by a heap. An' whenever you're wanting a reference I'll hand you a bully one. Just you write me when you need it. Meanwhile the cashier'll hand you a check for salary, right away."
Yes, whatever his wife's attitude toward her, Mr. Meakin stood her good friend, for, on her departure, the cashier handed her a check for three months' salary—which she had not earned!
After she left San Sabatano her fortunes, for a while, became more than checkered. Her "ups" were few, and her "downs" were considerably in the ascendant. For a long time her youth prevented her obtaining work in which there was any scope for her abilities and ambitions, consequently the salaries were equally limited in their possibilities. Often she had to accept "free lance" stenography and typing, and not infrequently auxiliary clerk work of a humdrum and narrowing order. But to none of these things would she definitely commit herself, nor would she permit them to shut out the sun of her ambitions. She would keep on working, and watching, and waiting, for that opportunity which she felt was bound to come in the end.
Thus, with each reverse in the stern battle she was fighting, she grew wider in her knowledge of life as it was. Her upbringing had blinded her, and her own simple honesty and faith had further narrowed her focus. But these things were passing, and her view widened as the months lengthened into years.
But her trials were many. Not the least of them was when, as Miss Hanson, it was discovered she was always accompanied by a boy with blue eyes and fair hair, practically the color of her own. Nor was there any chance of quieting the voice of scandal, when it was known that the particular child always called her "mother."
Twice this occurred in boarding houses of an ultra-respectable tone, which, on the whole, was not so damaging as it was annoying. But when her supposed offence attacked her livelihood, as, on more than one occasion, it very soon did, it was with heartache and grief that Monica realized that a drastic change must be brought about.
She knew that, for his own sake, she must temporarily part with the boy. It was imperative that she earn the money necessary for his education, and, with this scandal attaching to her, that would very soon be made impossible. Furthermore, she realized that he was rapidly growing to years of childish understanding when it would be hopeless, and even dangerous, to attempt to answer the multiplicity of questions regarding his supposed father which flowed from his lips, without giving a damaging impression to his young mind. Later, when he grew up, she would tell him the false story which she had hardened her heart to, and trust to Providence that it might satisfy, and have no evil consequences.
It was a terrible blow to part from him. She loved the boy, whom she had had christened Frank Burton, with all the profound affection of her ardent nature. He was possibly more precious to her than her own son might have been, if only for the fact of the pains she was at to keep him, and the trials which his upbringing brought her.
Then, too, she was never quite without a haunting fear that at any time some unforseen circumstance might arise and snatch him from her care. Besides these things, the boy inherited all his mother's generous nature; all her loyalty; and, in a hundred other ways, reminded her of the sister she had loved. To Monica he was the sweetest creature in the world, and the parting with him came well-nigh to breaking her heart.
But it proved itself for the best. It almost seemed as if Frank's going were in some way responsible for the change of fortune which so quickly followed. Within a month, Monica secured an excellent position in a Chicago wheat broker's office at the biggest salary she had ever earned. Furthermore, she remained in this place for a year, with unqualified success. Thence she went to another wheat operator's office. Then on, from post to post, always advancing her interests, and always in the wheat world. Truly the boy's going away to school seemed like the first stepping-stone to the successful career she so ardently desired.
So Frank's education was completed in the manner Monica most desired. Her experience in the world of wheat inspired her with definite ideas as to his future; ideas in which, fortunately, he readily concurred.
No one knew better than Monica the fortunes to be won from the soil, and she was at pains to impress on his young mind that such fortunes were far more honestly and easily earned than in the commercial world to which she belonged.
Therefore at the age of fifteen Frank repaired to an agricultural institution to learn in theory that which, later, he was to test in practice.
It was during his career at the agricultural college that Monica first became the secretary of Alexander Hendrie, the greatest wheat grower and operator in the west of Canada. He was a man she had known by reputation for several years, ever since she first stepped within the portals of the wheat world. She had never come into actual contact with him before, but his name was a household word wherever wheat was dealt in. Besides being a big operator on the Winnipeg and Chicago markets, he owned something like thirty square miles of prairie land in Alberta under wheat cultivation, and was notorious for his scrupulous honesty and hard dealing. It was a saying in the world of which he was the uncrowned king that it was always safe to follow where he led, but only to follow. Of course he was a millionaire several times over, but there was no ostentation, no vulgar display with him. He lived a sparing, hard-working life, and in such an employ Monica felt that she had reached the goal of her career.
The manner of her meeting with him was curious, and almost like the work of Fate. But the manner of her engagement as his secretary was still more curious, yet characteristic of the man.
It happened on the railroad. She was returning from the west coast with her then employer, Henry Louth, one of the most daring of the Chicago wheat men. Perhaps a better description of him would have been "reckless," but the newspapers reported him as daring—until after his death.
Like many another speculator in the past, this man had become disastrously involved in a wild endeavor to corner wheat. But he found, as others had found before him, instead of completing the corner he hoped to make, he had only created a Frankenstein which threatened him with destruction. So far did he suddenly find himself involved that only financial assistance on an enormous scale could have saved him from ruin. His thoughts turned at once to Alexander Hendrie, who was then in Vancouver. He was the only man who could afford him adequate help. There was nothing for it but a desperate rush across the continent on his forlorn hope, and he undertook the journey at once, accompanied by Monica.
But like the majority of forlorn hopes inspired by ill fortune, the journey ended in dire disaster. When Louth put his proposition to the millionaire he learned to his horror that this man was actually the head of the syndicate who had been his undoing. It was an absurd blending of comedy and tragedy, yet the situation was wholly characteristic of the methods of Alexander Hendrie. The work had been carried out with all the subtlety of the astute mind which had lifted the man to his present position. It had been carried out by secret agents, and never for one moment had his name been allowed to figure in the affair. But it was Hendrie who was responsible for the shattering of the edifice of monopoly Louth had so recklessly attempted to set up; and the latter set out on his return journey a broken and beaten man.
Monica would never forget that journey, and all it meant to her. While the train was held up by a heavy snowfall at a place called Glacier, in the Rocky Mountains, Henry Louth, in his private car, took the opportunity of shooting himself. The sensation, the hubbub, the excitement the affair caused was intense; and Monica attended him during his dying moments, afterwards watching at his bedside until his body was removed by the authorities.
It was during this latter period, when the excitement had died down, and all was quiet again, that a large man entered the car from another part of the train. He came straight to the bedside and looked gravely at the dead man. Then he turned to the beautiful woman beside the bed, and looked at her with unsmiling eyes.
She knew him at once, and returned his look unflinchingly. It was Alexander Hendrie. She recognized the strong, rugged face of the man, and his abundant fair hair.
In a moment a cold resentment at the intrusion rose up in her, and, for the life of her, she could not restrain the impulse to give it expression.
"Well?" she inquired. "Are you satisfied?"
"How?"
The man displayed no emotion. His ejaculation was the expression of a mind preoccupied.
"You—you are responsible for this."
Monica's challenge came with biting coldness. But Hendrie only shook his head.
"Wrong. Guess you don't understand. Maybe most folks—who don't understand—will say that. But I'm not responsible for—that." He indicated the dead man with a contemptuous nod. "I was on a legitimate proposition to prevent the consumers of wheat being plundered. I'm losing money by what I've done. Guess he hadn't the grit to stand the racket of his dirty game. Men like him are well out of it."
Monica dropped her eyes from the steady gaze of the iron man before her. Somehow she felt ashamed of her impulsive accusation. In his concise fashion he had given her a new understanding of what had happened.
"I hadn't seen it that way before," she said, almost humbly.
Hendrie nodded.
"You were his secretary," he said, with a subtle emphasis.
"Yes."
Again the man nodded.
"I've heard of you."
Then he turned as if about to go. But he did not go. He paused, and again his steady eyes sought hers.
"Guess he's dead. I need another secretary. You can have the job."
This was Monica's first encounter with a personality which had a strange and powerful attraction for her.
Two weeks later she found herself in her new position, established in the millionaire's palatial offices in Winnipeg at, what was for her, a princely salary.
At the end of nearly two years she was still with him, a privileged, confidential secretary; and at last the woman in her was crying out against the head which had for so long governed her affairs. The woman in her had been too strenuously subjected in her eighteen years of a commercial career. She had shut her ears to every cry of rebellion for the sake of her quixotic pledge. But now they were too loud, too strong to be any longer ignored, and their incessant pleading found an almost ready ear.
Alexander Hendrie had offered her marriage. He had done more. This apparently cold commercial machine had shown her a side of his nature which the eye of his world was never permitted to witness. He had thrown open the furnace doors of his masterful soul, and she had witnessed such a fire of passionate love that left her dazed and powerless before its fierce intensity.
And she—she had needed little urging. The wonderful attraction of this personality had ripened during her two years of service. She no longer worked with every faculty straining for the handsome salary he gave her; she worked for the man. Her whole heart was wrapped up in his achievement. Yes, she knew that he stood before even her love for the boy whom she had taught to call her "mother."
That was her trouble now. That was the one all-pervading drop of gall in her cup of happiness. Dr. Strong had warned her, and now she was torn by the hardness of her lot as she gazed upon the frowning crags which loomed up on her horizon.
She rose and crossed the room to her bureau. She picked a letter up that was lying on the top of it. It was the last letter she had received from young Frank, from the farm he was on, not far from Calford, just outside the little township of Gleber. She read it through again. One paragraph particularly held her attention and she read it a second time.
"I've met such a bully girl. Her name's Phyllis Raysun. She's just about my own age. It was at a dance, at a farm twenty miles away. We danced ten dances together. Oh, mother, you will like her. She's fine. Pretty as anything, with dark eyes and dark hair——"
Monica went back to her seat at the window. There was a smile in her eyes, but there was trouble in them, too. She understood that Frank was grown up. He was grown up, and like all the rest of young people his thoughts were turning toward girls and matrimony.
Frank was still in ignorance of the facts of his birth. She, Monica, was his "mother," so far as he knew, and he understood that his father was dead. This was the belief she had brought him up to. This was the belief she hoped to keep him in. But now, all too late, she was realizing through such letters as these that a time must soon come when he would want to know more; when the preliminary lies her sister had forced her into must be augmented by a whole tissue of falsehood to keep the secret of his mother's shame from him.
Her determination to shield her sister was still her principal thought.
At all costs her promise to the dying woman must be kept. There should be no weakening. She would carefully prepare her story. Lies—it would all be lies. But she could not help it. She felt they were lies for which there was a certain justification, lies which possessed no base object, but rather the reverse.
But now had come this fresh complication in the person of Alexander Hendrie. Here was something she had never even dreamed of. He became something more than a complication. He was a threat. She could not marry him. She must definitely refuse him. And then——
Despair took hold of her and wrung her heart. Marriage she knew was forever denied her. She had known it while she dressed herself and prepared to receive the man she loved that afternoon. She had known it even while she rejoiced in her own attractiveness, and the thoughts of the love she had inspired.
She turned to the window with a deep sigh and stared hopelessly out of it at the keen winter sunshine.
To contemplate marriage with a man as passionately in love as Alexander Hendrie, a man as strong, as masterful as he, with the existence of her boy to be explained away, would be rank madness. It was hopeless, impossible. It could not be.
No, she knew. She needed no prompting. Her course lay clear before her. She dared not sacrifice the hard struggles of those eighteen years for this love which had at last come into her life. She knew now how she had sacrificed herself on the altar of affection when she pledged herself to the care of her sister's child. That sacrifice must go on to the end, come what might. It was hard, hard, but she resolutely faced the destiny which she had marked out for herself.
That was why she had not telephoned to her employer to put him off. That was why she had specially prepared her toilet to receive him. She would definitely refuse to marry him. But she would rather lacerate her already wounded heart by the painful delight of an interview, than shut out of her life this one passionate memory under the cold seal of an envelope.
It was her woman's way, but it was none the less sincere, none the less strong.
Had Monica only known it her weakness lay in the very strength of that loyalty which held her to her promise to her dead sister. She was far too honest to deal successfully in affairs which demanded the smallest shadow of subterfuge. At the best she could only hope to lie blunderingly, and to blunder in falsehood leads to sure disaster.
So she had no real understanding of that which lay before her, the endless troubles she was preparing for herself and those belonging to her. The pity of it. One could almost imagine the Angel of Truth wringing his hands, and weeping for the mistaken honesty which clung to a quixotic promise given eighteen years ago to a dying woman.
It was a nervous, troubled woman who started at the clang of the bell at her outer door. She turned with terrified eyes to the silver clock which stood on her bureau. It was four o'clock. Four o'clock to the minute; and instinctively her hands went up to her hair, and nimble fingers lightly patted it.
For a moment she stood irresolutely staring before her. She seemed in desperate doubt, as though laboring under desire to greet her visitor, while instinctively fearing the outcome of his visit. The next moment her silken skirts rustled as she hurriedly passed out to her front door.
Alexander Hendrie followed her into the sitting-room, and promptly its femininity gave way to the atmosphere which his personality seemed to shed upon all that encountered it.
It was not an essentially refined personality, it was too rugged, too grimly natural, too suggestive of Nature in her harsher moments to possess any of the softer refinements of life. A bald, broken crag set in the midst of a flower garden of perfect order would rob its surroundings of its delicate charm and trifling beauties. So it was with the man, Hendrie, in the essentially feminine room which was Monica's care. He dwarfed the refinements of it with a magnetic claim for his own rugged picturesqueness.
He was a man of something over six feet in height. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh upon his muscular, erect form, which was clad in the simple fashion of a well-tailored man who takes but little interest in his clothes. But these things were almost lost sight of in the absorbing interest of his rather plain face.
An artist painting the picture of a Viking of old would have reveled in such a face, and such a wealth of waving fair hair. He would have caught the look of confidence, the atmosphere of victory which lay in every detail of the strong mold in which his features were cast.
It was a face full of faults, yet it was such a combination of strength and mentality that no eye trained to the study of physiognomy could have resisted it. The lines in it were pronounced. Yet every line was a definite indication of the power behind it. There was a contemplative light shining in the keen gray eyes which told of perfect control of all emotions; there was a definite indentation between the fair, ample brows, which suggested a power of concentration. The nose was broad and pronounced, with curiously sensitive nostrils. The cheekbones were lean and broad. The mouth was broad, too, but firmly closed, and quite free from the least suggestion of animal sensuality. Yet it was a hard face; not hard in the sense of cruelty, it was hard in its definite, almost relentless purpose.
Monica realized something of all this as she brought a large rocker forward for his use; and her heart failed her as she remembered the mission that had brought him to her apartment.
"You're pretty comfortable here, Monica," he said, glancing round with a faintly approving smile, as he dropped into the rocker.
The woman followed his glance with a responsive smile.
"Thanks to you," she said readily, without noting one detail of the tastefully arranged furnishings which had brought forth his comment.
The man's brows went up in swift inquiry.
"How?"
Monica sat down. She was glad of the support, but her manner was perfectly easy.
"The generous salary you pay me—of course."
Hendrie shook his head.
"I never pay generous salaries. Those who receive my salaries earn them."
Monica laughed. Slowly confidence was returning.
"That's so like you," she said. "I wonder if I earn $5000 a year. I have often worked twice as hard for half the sum."
"Quite so. But what was the work? From my point of view you earn the money, and perhaps more, by carrying the confidence I always know I can place in you. But, say, don't let's discuss the economy of commerce. Guess I came here on a different errand."
Monica averted her gaze. She looked out of the window she was facing.
"Yes," she said, with a sudden return of all her old apprehensions.
The man leaned forward in his chair. His hands were clasped together, and his forearms pressed heavily on his knees. There was a faint flush on his cheeks, and the usual contemplative light had passed from his eyes, leaving them alight with a growing fire of passion.
"Tell me," he cried suddenly, a deep note in his voice. "Have you anything to say to me? Anything about our talk the other night?"
Monica kept her eyes averted. She was summoning all her courage, that she might the more successfully bruise and beat down her own love for this man.
She shook her head without daring to face him. She knew, she felt the heat of passion shining in his gray eyes.
"It—it—can't be," she said, stumbling fatally.
She waited, hardly knowing what to expect. As the man remained silent the beatings of her heart seemed to have suddenly become so loud that she thought he must surely hear them; and hearing them, would understand the cowardice she was laboring under.
Had she dared to look at him she must have seen the marked change her refusal had brought about. The same passionate fire was in his eyes, there was the same flush upon his cheeks. But there was an added something that was quite different from these things, something which she might have recognized, for she had witnessed it many times before in her intercourse with him. It was the fighting spirit of the man slowly rising, the light of battle gathering.
He smiled, and his smile was strangely tender in a man of his known character.
"Is that all?" he asked at last. "Is that your—final word?"
"Yes," she almost gasped, and desperately faced him.
Then she abruptly rose from her seat and moved toward the window. She had seen more in his eyes than she could face, and still remain true to her decision.
"But's—it's insufficient, Mon."
The man rose from his chair and followed her. He came near, and stood close behind her. She could feel his warm breath on the soft flesh which was left bare by the low neck of her costume. She trembled, and stood helplessly dreading lest he should recognize the trembling. Then she heard his low voice speaking, and her whole soul responded to the fire that lay behind his words.
"I love you, Mon. I love you so that I cannot, will not give you up. I love you so that all else in my life goes for nothing. All my life I've reveled in the constant joy of anticipation of the success I have achieved. All my life I have centered my whole soul on these things, and trained brain and body for a titanic struggle to the top of the financial ladder. And now, what is it, if—if I can't win you, too? Mon, it's simply nothing. Can't you understand what I feel when I say that? More than all the wealth and position I've dreamed of all my life I want you—you. What is it? Why? Tell me why it—can't be."
But Monica could not tell him. She knew she could not; and she knew that she could not go on listening to the strong man's pleadings without yielding.
Suddenly, in something like desperation, she turned and faced him.
"I tried to make it plain to you the other night," she cried, with a complaint that made her voice almost harsh. "I tried to tell you then that I could not marry you. But you wouldn't listen to me. You laughed my refusal aside. You told me you would not give me up. I can only reiterate what I tried to tell you then. Why—why urge me when I say I—I cannot marry you?"
"Cannot?"
"Yes—cannot, cannot!"
In desperation Monica added emphasis to her negative.
"There can only be one reason for 'cannot,'" said Hendrie, with an abrupt return to calmness. "Are you married? Have you a husband living?"
The woman's denial flashed out without thought.
"I am not married. I never have been married."
In a moment she realized the danger of so precipitate a denial. The man's face lit more ardently than ever, and he drew closer.
"Then you must take that word back, and say you—'will not.' But you can't say that," he smiled gently. "Why should you? Yes, I know you don't dislike me. You've always seen me as I am. I'm no different. Say, Mon, I'm not here to bully you into marrying me. I'm here to plead with you. I who have never in my life pleaded to man or woman. I want you to give me that which I know no money can ever buy, no position can ever claim. I want your love. I want it because I love you, and without you nothing is worth while."
He was very near her now. He was so near that Monica dared not move. She could only stand helplessly gazing out of the window. As she remained silent he urged her again, placing one powerful hand gently upon her shoulder.
"Tell me, do you dislike the hard, unscrupulous financier that men are only too ready to villify?" he asked, with a gentle smile of confidence. "Do you?" His hand moved till it dropped to the woman's soft, rounded upper arm.
"Mon," he continued, "I want you so much. Tell me you don't—dislike me."
Monica's courage was swiftly ebbing. The task she had set herself was too hard for her. She was too simply human to withstand the approach of this great love. The touch of the man's hand, so gentle, so almost reverent, had sent the blood coursing through her veins in a hot, passionate tide. All her love for him surged uppermost, and drove her headlong to a reckless denial.
"No," she cried, in a low voice. "How could I dislike you? What does it matter to me what men say of you? You have been the essence of goodness to me—oh!"
The exclamation came without fear, without resentment. It was the suddenness of it all. In a moment she lay crushed in the man's powerful arms; his tall figure towered over her, and his plain face looked ardently down into hers while he poured out a passionate torrent of words into her willing ears.
"Then I'll take no refusal," he cried, with a ring of triumph and joy in his deep voice. "Look up, Mon, look up, my dear, and tell me that you don't love me. Look up, and tell me with your eyes looking right into mine, and I'll believe you, and let you go. Look up, my darling, and tell me. You can't—you can't. Say—it's useless to try. Quit it, Mon, quit it. You love me, I know. I feel it here, right here in my heart, here, Mon, here," he cried triumphantly. "Right where your beautiful head is resting."
He moved one hand from about her, and deliberately lifted her face so that he could gaze down upon the eyes hidden beneath the deeply fringed lids.
"Come, Mon," he cried tenderly. "Speak up. Say, I can't just hear you. I want to hear you say you don't love me, you hate me for this. No? Then you must kiss me."
He bent his head, and drew her face up to his. And an exquisite joy flooded Monica's heart as he rained burning kisses upon her lips, her eyes, her hair.
So they remained for many minutes. He, speaking words which were ample caresses, she, listening like one in a wonderful, heavenly dream.
But at last she stirred in his arms, and finally released herself. Then, with flushed face and bowed head, she flung herself upon the ottoman beside her with something almost like a sob.
Hendrie waited for a moment. Then he drew up a chair and sat down, and deliberately removed the hands in which her face was buried.
"What is it, Mon?" he inquired anxiously, but in his firm, decided way.
"I—I don't know," she cried, with the desperate helplessness of a child. "You—you've made me love you, and—and it's all wrong—all wrong."
Hendrie smiled confidently.
"Is it? Ah, well, you do love me. That's all that matters—really."
She stared at him with suddenly widening eyes. Then she, too, smiled a tender, shy smile that still was full of trouble.
"I'm afraid—I do," she said. "But I didn't mean you to know——"
"Afraid?"
Hendrie's smile was good to see. But it passed quickly, and he went on in the manner of a man always accustomed to dictate.
"Now listen, Mon. We are going to be married without unnecessary delay. How soon can you be ready?"
In a moment Monica realized the utter folly of what she had done. In a moment it swept over her, threatening and almost paralyzing her faculties. She paled. Then a deep flush leaped into her cheek, and, in a fever of apprehension, she pleaded for a respite.
"No, no, not yet," she cried, with a sudden energy which quite startled her lover. "I cannot marry you until—until—— You see," she blundered on, "there are so many things. I—I have responsibilities. There are——"
Hendrie mercifully broke in upon her, and perhaps saved her from betraying in her hysterical apprehension those very things she wished to keep from him.
"Don't be scared, Mon," he said quickly. "It's for you to say. It's right up to you. I shan't rush you. See. Think it over. I've got to go west to-morrow. Guess I'll be away a week. Say, this day week. You'll get it all fixed by then. I'll get right back and you can tell me when you'll marry me. You see, I just want you—whenever you're ready."
It was impossible to withstand him, and, in desperation, Monica realized that it was worse than useless to pit her reason against a love she desired more than all the world. She felt utterly helpless, like one swept off her feet by an irresistible tide. There was a recklessness, too, in her blood now, a recklessness flowing hotly through veins which for so long had been left unstirred in their perfect calm, and somehow the joy of it had intoxicated her reason and left her unable to adequately control it.
Later it would be different. When he had gone she would be able to think soberly, and she knew she would have to think hard to repair the damage of these moments. She would wait till then when the toll was demanded of her, and now—now? These moments were too sweetly precious to deny. She would not, she could not deny them. So, while she knew that every fraction of the penalty would be demanded of her later, she thanked her God for this love that had come to her, and abandoned herself to its delight.
It was a changed woman who restlessly paced the narrow limits of her sitting-room four days later. Monica was awaiting another visitor; again she was awaiting the ominous clang of the bell at the front door. But her feelings were very different now. The timid shrinking, the mere thrill of troubled apprehension with which she had awaited the coming of the man who had changed all those things into a wild, reckless joy, was nothing to the desperation with which she contemplated the coming visit. She knew that the penalty was about to be exacted, the toll, for the stolen moments when she had permitted the woman in her to taste of the sweets which surely she had a right to.
The sober moments she had anticipated had come; oh, yes, they had come as she knew they inevitably must come. She had faced the consequences of the weakness she believed herself to have displayed in all their nakedness, and she saw before her such a tangle, the contemplation of which had set her head whirling, and filled her heart with despair.
She was torn between her loyalty to the living, and her duty to the dead. She was torn between that which she knew she owed to herself, and all those other obligations which could be summed up as part of the strong moral side of her nature. She was seeking a central path which might satisfy in some degree each of the opposing claims. She was committing that fatal mistake of seeking the easiest road, with the full knowledge that it was a mistake. She had tasted life, and now she was powerless to continue the sacrifice she had for such long years marked out for herself.
The habit of years was strong upon her. There was something almost superstitious in the way she clung to the promise she had so rashly given her sister. She could no more outrage that than she could deny the love that had come to her so late. Therefore she saw nothing but that perilous middle course open before her.
She had sent for her boy, the man—yes, he was a man now—whom she had been at such pains to bring up with lofty aspirations, and a fine sense of love, and honor, and duty. She told herself she was going to lie to him, lie to him with all the heartless selfishness of an utterly weak and worthless woman. She tried to smother her conscience by reminding herself that she had always seen the necessity of ultimately lying to him, and now only the motive of the lies was changed. She told herself these things, but she did not convince herself. She knew that originally her contemplated lies were that he might be kept from the knowing of his mother's shame, and as such might even have found justification in the eyes of the Recording Angel. Now it was different; their motive was purely one of self, and for such there could be no justification.
So she was desperate. All that was best in her was warring with the baser human side of a really fine nature. She suffered agonies of torture while she waited for the coming of the man who would gaze at her with wide, frank, trusting eyes, while she lied something of his simple faith and youthful happiness away.
Was there wonder that she dreaded his coming? Could it be otherwise? She could see no other course than the one she had decided upon. She was blinded by her newly found love for the man, Hendrie; she was blinded by her promise to a dead woman. Frank must be persuaded into the background. He must remain hidden, lest the breath of scandal reach Hendrie, and she be robbed of the happiness she so yearned for. He must be made the sacrifice for her selfish desires.
In the midst of her desperate thought, the signal rang out through the apartments. Oh, that bell; how she hated its brazen note. But now that the moment of her trial had come there was no shrinking, no hesitation. She passed swiftly to the door and opened it, and, in a moment, was engulfed in a bear-like embrace by a great, fair-haired young giant who, tall as Monica was, quite towered over her.
"Why, mother," he cried, as he finally released her, "I never had such a rush to get here so soon. Guess your wire set me on the dead jump. I drove twenty-five miles to the depot in under three hours, to catch the east-bound mail, and nearly foundered old Bernard's best team. But I'd made up my mind to——"
Monica's eyes shone with admiration and love.
"That's so like you, Frank, dear," she cried. "Come right in and sit down. You're such an impulsive boy. But I'm glad you've come—so glad."
The delight at the sight of her beloved boy had almost died out of Monica's eyes as she finished speaking. It had all come back to her—the meaning of his visit.
Frank flung himself into the same rocking chair in which Alexander Hendrie had sat, and gazed up at the beautiful woman he called "mother" with a radiant smile on his handsome, ingenuous face.
"Gee, I'm tired," he exclaimed. "Two nights and a day in the train. I didn't come sleeper. I didn't want to rush you too much. So I just dozed in the ordinary car where I sat."
In spite of everything Monica's delight in this fatherless boy was wonderful. All her love was shining in her eyes again as she exclaimed—
"Oh, Frank! You didn't come sleeper? Why not? You shouldn't have considered the expense."
The boy laughed joyously.
"That's so like you, Mon, dear," he promptly retorted. He always called her "Mon" in his playful moods, declaring that she was far too young and pretty to be called "mother." "You really are an extravagant woman to have a growing and expensive family."
"Growing?" Monica laughed happily. "I hope not. Goodness! You always find it more convenient to sit down when you're talking to me."
The boy nodded.
"That's because I'm tired—and hungry," he said lightly. "You see I haven't eaten since breakfast. Got any lunch?"
"Lunch? Of course. Oh, Frank, really you're not to be trusted looking after yourself. Of course I've a lunch ready for you. It's just cold. I don't trust the janitor's cooking except for breakfast."
"Bully! I know your lunches. Come along."
The boy sprang from his seat, and, seizing Monica about the waist, was for rushing her off to the dining-room.
Monica abandoned herself to the delights of the moment. The boy could not have been more to her if he had really been her son. Her eyes were full of a maternal adoration. He was so tall, she thought; and his bright, shrewd, good-natured blue eyes full of half-smiling seriousness. Was there ever such a face on a boy? How handsome he was with his finely cut, regular features, his abundant fair hair, which, since he had been on the farm, had been allowed to run riot. And then his hugely muscular body. Eighteen! Only eighteen! Little wonder, she thought, this Phyllis Raysun was ready to dance so often with him.
"You're much too boisterous," she chided him, smiling happily.
"Never mind. Mon," he cried, "take me to the ban—— Oh, I forgot. Your wire was 'rushed.' You wanted to see me at once. That's why I nearly killed Bernard's team. There's—there's nothing wrong, is there?"
The blue eyes were serious enough now. He had come to a standstill, with his arms still about Monica's waist, half way across the room.
But now it was Monica's turn to urge. All the joy had gone out of her eyes. He had reminded her of the tissue of falsehood she had prepared for him. No, no, she could not tell him yet, and, with all a coward's procrastination, she put him off.
"I'll—I'll tell you about it when you've eaten," she said hastily. "We've—we've got to have a serious talk. But not—now. Afterwards."
Frank gave her a quick, sidelong glance.
"Righto," he said simply. But a shadow had somehow crept into his eyes. So deep was the sympathy between these two that he promptly read something of the trouble underlying her manner.