With the letters buttoned inside his coat he left the hospital and set out for Helen's, on whom he had promised to call that afternoon. At this moment he had not for Lillian Drew that understanding, sympathy even, which he was later to attain; he did not then consider that she, too, might have had a very different ending had her beginning been more fortunately inspired. For such a sympathy he was too dazed by the narrowness of his escape from vindication and of the Mission's from destruction. Had the letters been signed by Morton's full name, then the house surgeon, in trying to learn who Philip Morton was, would certainly have started a scandal there would have been no stopping. But now his secret was safe: Lillian Drew would menace him no more, and the two women who knew his story would keep it forever locked in their hearts.
He chanced to reach the Chambers's home at the same moment as Mr. Chambers, who bowed coldly and passed upstairs. As Mr. Chambers went by the drawing-room door he saw Helen and Mr. Allen at the tea-table. He entered and shook hands cordially with Mr. Allen.
"How are you, Allen?" he said. "But I just stopped for a second. I'll try and see you before you go."
At this moment a footman handed Helen David's card. "Don't you think, Helen," her father asked quietly, "that you're letting that fellow make himself very much of a bore?" Without waiting for an answer he passed out.
"Will you show Mr. Aldrich up," Helen said to the waiting footman. Mr. Allen had begun, before her father's entrance, to draw near the question he had come to put. She shrunk from answering it, so David's coming was doubly welcome.
"A minute, please," Mr. Allen called to the servant. "Now, Helen, is this treating me fair?" he demanded in a whisper. "You know I want to see you. Can't you send down word that you're engaged?"
"He's in the house—I'm here—I can't deny him," she said rapidly. "Besides, for a long while I've been wanting you to meet him. Show him up, Mitchell."
"Well, if I must meet him, I suppose I must," Allen said with a shrug, sharpness cutting through his even tone. "But I warn you, Helen—I'm going to outstay him."
A moment later David entered the room. He was crossing eagerly with a hand held out to Helen, when he saw Allen beside the tea-table. He suddenly paused. Allen slowly rose, and for a space the two men stared at each other.
"So," Allen said, with slow distinctness, "You're Mr. David Aldrich?"
David went pale. He knew, from what Helen had told him of Allen, that he was in the power of a man whose ideas of justice and duty made him merciless. For a moment David had, as on the night Allen had forced him to unmask, a glimpse of the inside of a cell.
"I am," he said.
Helen had looked from one to the other in surprise. "What—you know each other?"
David turned to her. "You remember I told you that about a year ago I broke into a man's house. It was his house."
"What!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, your protégé is a thief!"
There was a vibration of triumph in Allen's voice. An old idea had flashed back upon him. He had often thought that if he could, by some striking example, show Helen the futility of her work, show her that the people whom she thought were improving were really deceiving her, then her belief in her efforts would be shattered and she would abandon them—would come nearer to him. This man Aldrich here summed up to her the success of her ideas.
"I think I shall leave you for a while," Allen said.
He moved toward the door.
David knew where Allen was going. Helpless to save himself, he stood motionless, erect, and watched Allen start from the room.
Helen, very pale, blocked Allen's way. "You intend to have him arrested. It's in your face."
"I certainly do."
"You must not!" cried Helen, desperately. "Why, he took nothing—you yourself told me he took nothing."
"That doesn't make him any less a thief," returned Allen. "He had good reason for not taking anything—he was frightened away."
He started to pass around her, but she caught his arm. "You must not! You'll be committing a crime!"
He looked at her almost pitingly. "Really, Helen, he must have hypnotised you. You know he's a thief. I caught him in the act; he's confessed to you. What more can you want?"
She gazed steadily up into his face. "Won't you let him go if I assure you that in arresting him you'll be making the mistake of your life?"
"No. Because I know that you, in believing that, are mistaken."
She was silent a moment; her brown eyes never left his face. "Won't you let him go because I, a friend, ask it as a favour?"
"You are making it very hard for me," he said in genuine distress. "You know it's a duty to society to put such men where they can do no harm."
"Nothing can prevent your arresting him?" she asked slowly.
"It's my duty," he said.
Her face was turning gray with despair, when her eyes began to widen and her lips to part, and she drew in a long, slow breath and one hand crept up to her bosom. She looked about at David.
"Will you please wait for me in the library," she said; and she added immediately to Allen, "I'll give you bond for his return when you want him."
David bowed and left the room.
Helen caught the back of a chair. The hand above her heart pressed tightly. "You have left me but one thing more to say for him," she said in a low voice.
"And that?" asked Allen.
"I love him."
He stepped back and his face went as pale as her own. Several moments passed before words came from him.
"You love Mr. Aldrich?" asked a strange whisper.
"I love him," she said.
Again several moments passed before he spoke, and when he did speak his words were to himself rather than to her.
"And this is my answer?"
"Forgive me—because it came this way," she begged.
There was silence between them.
"He is safe," he said. He continued gazing at her several moments, then without speaking again he left the room.
For several minutes after Allen had gone, Helen sat, her face in her hands, waiting for the refluence of her strength. Then she walked back to the library, where she found David pacing restlessly to and fro. He saw that she was very white and that she was trembling, and forbearing to question her he led her to a deep easy-chair before the open wood fire. But she saw his suspense and at once told him that Allen would be silent.
Gently, reverently, David laid his hand upon her hair, and of all the things in his heart he could only say, "You saved me."
She drew his hand down and held it against her cheek and gazed up into his eyes. He sat down on the arm of her chair. They had both been through too great a strain to fall into easy converse, and for several minutes each was filled with quivering thoughts. Presently David remembered what he had forgotten since entering the house—his experience at St. John's Hospital. He told her the story, and when he had ended he drew out the packet containing the yellow letters, the photograph and the two notes of five years before.
"Well, they'll make no more trouble," he said, and started toward the fire-place.
She laid a hand upon his arm. "What are you going to do?"
"Burn them."
She shook her head and held out her hand. "No—you must not. Give them to me."
He laid them in her hand. "But why do you want them?"
"Didn't you ever think, David, that there may come a time, years from now, when you may want to clear your name? Well, these letters will help. I shall keep them for that time. They're precious to me, because they contain your good name."
She slipped the soiled and worn packet into the front of her dress. In the silence that followed, her mind, as it was constantly doing these days, reverted to her father's business practices, and again she was beset by the necessity of telling David her new estimate of her father. She gathered her strength, and, eyes downcast, told him briefly, brokenly, that her father was not an honest man. "So you see," she ended, "I have no right to any of these things about me—I have no right to stay here."
David had suffered with her the shame of her confession. He took her hands. "Oh, I wish I had the right to ask you to come to me, Helen!"
She raised her eyes. "I'm coming to you," she said.
"But I'd be a brute to let you. You can leave your father, and yet keep almost everything of your present life except its wealth—your friends, your position, your influence, your honour. I can't let you give up all these things—exchange them for my disgrace. I can't let you become the wife of a thief! I love you too much!"
"But I'm ready for it!"
"I can't do it, Helen! I can't!"
She gazed at his pain-drawn, determined face—her eyes wide, her lips loosely parted, her face gray. "And you never will?" she whispered.
"I can't!" he groaned huskily.
His arm dropped from the chair back about her shoulders, and they sat silently gazing into each other's eyes. They were still sitting so when the library doors rolled back and Mr. Chambers appeared between them. David sprang up, and Helen also rose. Mr. Chambers gave back a pace as to a blow, and his hand gripped the door. For a moment he stared at them, then he quietly closed the door and crossed the room.
Rigidly erect, he paused in front of Helen, his face pale and set and harsh, and looked squarely into her face. He turned a second to David; his gray eyes were like knives of gray steel. Then his gaze came back to Helen.
"What's this mean?" his quiet voice grated out.
Helen's face was like paper and her eyes, held straight into his, had a fixed, wild stare. She gathered her strength with a supreme effort.
"I'm going to marry him," she said.
For a moment he merely stared at her. Then he reached out a hand that trembled, caught her arm and shook her lightly.
"Helen?" he cried. "Helen?"
"I'm going to marry him," she repeated, with a little gasp.
"You're—really—in—your—senses?"
"I am."
He loosed his hold, and studied her strained face. "You are!" he whispered, in low consternation.
David's defiant hatred of Mr. Chambers was beginning to rise. He was willing that Mr. Chambers should feel pain; but Helen's suffering because of himself, this would not let him keep silent.
"But, Helen, you know you're——"
She stopped him with a touch on his shoulder. "This is my moment. I've been expecting it. It is I that must speak."
Mr. Chambers slowly reddened with anger. "Marry that thief? You shall not!" he cried.
Her face was twitching, tears were starting in her eyes. "Forgive me for saying it, father," she besought tremulously, "but—can you prevent me?"
"Your reason, your self-respect, should prevent you. Have you thought of the poverty?"
She put a hand through David's arm. "I have. I'm ready for it."
"And of the disgrace?"
"I'm ready for it."
He paled again. He saw the utter social ruin of his daughter, and it gave him infinite pain—and he saw the social injury to himself. She would sink from her present world, and her sinking would be the year's scandal; and that scandal he would have to live with, daily meet face to face.
"Yes," he said slowly, "but your act will also disgrace your family, your friends. You are willing to disgrace me?"
For three weeks conscience had demanded one attitude toward him, love another. "Please let's not speak of that!" she begged.
"You're willing to disgrace me?" he repeated.
She did not answer for a moment; then "Forgive me—I am," she whispered.
"And you're decided—absolutely determined?"
She nodded.
"My God, Helen!" he burst out, "to think that you, with open eyes, would destroy yourself and dishonour your father!"
"Forgive me!" she begged.
He turned to David, his face fierce with rageful contempt. "And Aldrich! Let me say one thing to you. Any man in your situation who would ask a decent woman to marry him is a damned cad!"
Helen raised a hand to stop the retort that was on David's lips. "It is I that insist on marriage—he refuses me," she said quietly.
Mr. Chambers stared long at her, astounded as he had never before been in his life. "There's something behind all this," he said, abruptly.
She was silent.
Even in this tense moment his readiness did not desert him. Sometimes one is stronger than two, sometimes weaker. This time one would be weaker.
"Mr. Aldrich," he said quietly, "would you be so kind as to leave us. There are matters here to be talked over only between Helen and me."
Helen felt the moment before her she had for a month been fearing—felt herself on the verge of the greatest crisis of her life. "Yes—please do, David. It's best for us two to be alone."
She gave David her hand. He pressed it and silently withdrew.
Mr. Chambers stepped close to Helen and gazed searchingly into her face. "There's something back of this. You're telling me all?"
"I can't—please don't ask me, father!"
"You propose—he refuses," he said meditatively. He studied her face for several moments. "I think I know you, my child.—I would have staked my fortune, my life, that you would never have given yourself to any but a man of the highest character."
His face knitted with thought; he began to nod his head ever so slightly. "I recall now that there were some queer circumstances connected with his taking the money. His motives, what he did with it, did not seem particularly plausible to me."
His eyes fairly looked her through. His mind, trained to see and consider instantly all the factors of a situation, and instantly to reach a conclusion, sought with all its concentration the most logical explanation of this mystery.
After a moment he said softly: "So—he didn't take the money after all?"
She gazed at him in choking fascination.
"If he had taken it, if he was what he seems to be, you would never have offered to marry him," he went on in the same soft voice. "I've guessed right—have I not?"
She did not answer.
"Have I not?" he repeated, dominantly.
It seemed to her that the words were being dragged from her by a resistless power. "Yes," she whispered. The next instant she clasped her hands. "Oh, why did I tell!" she cried.
"I guessed it," he said.
They looked silently at each other for a space. When he spoke his tone was quiet again.
"Since I know the main fact I might as well know the minor ones. Why did he pretend to be guilty?"
She hesitated. But he knew the essential fact—and, besides, he was her father, and she had the daughter-desire for her father to appreciate what manner of a man this was whom she loved. So she told the story in a few sentences.
"It's remarkable," he said in a voice that showed he had been affected deeply. "I can see that it was a deed to touch a woman's heart. All the same—he's not the match I'd prefer for you."
He was thoughtful for several moments. He knew the quality of Helen's will—knew there was no changing her determination to marry David. The problem, then, was to arrange so that the marriage would bring the minimum disgrace.
"No, he's not the match I'd prefer for you. Still, if he'll publicly admit and establish his innocence, I'll have not a word to say against him."
"But we've agreed that he can't do that," she said. "I've already made plain to you that to clear himself would be to destroy St. Christopher's."
"Nothing can change that decision?"
"No."
Mr. Chambers again thought for a minute. "I think you exaggerate the effect of the truth on St. Christopher's. However, for the moment, I'll grant you're right. From what you told me I gather Mr. Aldrich has some rather large philanthropic ideas. Well, if he will clear himself, I'll settle upon you any amount you wish—ten million, twenty million. That will enable him to carry out his ideas on any scale he may like. The good he can do will more than balance any injury that may be done to St. Christopher's. On the one hand, he will have, and you with him, powerless disgrace. On the other, clear name, love, fortune, unlimited power to do good."
She slowly shook her head. "It's all thought over—he can't do it."
"And nothing can change your determination to marry him?"
She held out a hand to him. "No. Forgive me, father," she whispered.
He gazed steadily at her—and again his quick mind was searching for a solution to the situation. He pressed her hand. "I want to think. We'll speak of this again."
He started out, but she stepped before him. "Wait—there's something I must say. But first, you must never tell what you've just found out."'
He did not answer.
His silence stirred a sudden new fear. She crept close to him and peered up into his face. "Father—you're not going to tell, are you?"
Again he was silent.
Her face paled with consternation. She drew a long breath, and her voice came out a thin whisper. "You are going to tell, father! I see it."
He looked into her wide brown eyes and at her quivering face. "I think, Helen, you can leave the proper action to my discretion."
She swayed slightly, and then her whole body tightened with effort. "You are going to make his innocence public," she said, with slow accusation. "You can't deny it."
"I am," he said shortly.
She stepped a pace nearer him. "You must not! You must not!" she cried.
His jaw tightened and his brows drew together. "I shall!—you hear me?"
"But, father—it isn't your secret. You haven't the right."
"I have the right to protect my own daughter and myself!"
"But to destroy others?" she implored. "You know it will ruin hundreds. Have you the right to do that?"
"A man's first duty is to those nearest him."
"But don't you see?—you destroy hundreds to save yourself, and me!"
"You have my answer," he said.
She looked at him despairingly. "Then nothing can stop you?"
"Nothing." His face was firm, his voice hard. "And now, Helen, I'm going," he said shortly. "There's nothing more to be said."
Helen caught his arm. "Not yet!" She gazed at him, her face gray and helpless.... Then the crisis gave her inspiration. A new view of the situation flashed into her mind. She considered it for several moments.
"Father," she said.
"Well?"
She spoke slowly, with a frantic control, with the earnestness of desperation. "Listen, father. Suppose you tell—what will be the use? David will deny your story. I, who shall be with him, I shall deny the story. And there is the decision of the court. All say the same. On your side, you have no proof—not one bit. The world will say you made up the story just to save yourself. The world will honour you less, because it will say you've tried to save yourself by disgracing Mr. Morton.... Don't you see, father?—it will do you no good to tell!—don't you see?"
He gazed at her, but did not answer.
"The story will create a great scandal—yes," she went on. "For you to accuse Mr. Morton—you know how that will injure St. Christopher's before the public—you know how it will lessen the Mission's influence in the neighbourhood. The story will do great ill—so very great an ill! But it will not help you a bit, father—not a bit!"
She paused a moment. "Please do not tell it father! Please do not ... I beg it of you!"
He did not reply at once. He realised the truth of what she had said—but to yield was hard for the Chambers's will, and it was hard to accept the great dishonour. He swallowed with an effort.
"Very well," he said.
"Then you'll say nothing?" she asked eagerly.
"No."
"Oh, thank you!—thank you!" she cried, her voice vibrating with her great relief.
They looked into each other's eyes for a long space. "I hope this is all," he said.
"There's one more thing," she answered, and tried to gather herself for another effort. Her breast rose and fell, and she was all a-tremble. "There is something else—something I must say—something that has been upon my heart for weeks. Say that you forgive me before I say it, father!"
"Go on!"
Her voice was no more than a whisper. "I have learned that the stories ... about your not being honest ... are true."
His face blanched. "So—you insult your own father!"
"Don't make it any harder!" she besought piteously.
"You do not understand business matters," he said, harshly.
She did not hear his last words. "This is the other thing—I'm going to leave home," she went on rapidly. "Perhaps I would not decide to do what I am going to do, if I thought I could help you—to be different. But I know you, father; I know you will not—be different; you do not need me—you are strong and need no support—you will have Aunt Caroline. So I am going to go.
"I'm going to leave home because it seems to me that I have no right to it—to it and the other things of my life. You understand. So I want to ask you not to send any of these things to me. I want nothing—not a cent."
He was silent a moment. The determination in her face again kept him from argument or intercession. He saw that to her this break was a great, tragic, unchangeable fact, and so it also became to him.
"But how are you going to live?" he asked.
"I have the money mother left me—that's enough."
Despite the tragedy of the moment a faint smile drew back the corners of his mouth. "That's two thousand a year—that doesn't begin to pay for your clothes."
"I shall wear different clothes. It will be enough."
"Very well." His face became grim. "And I have my reason why I cannot give you anything! Do you realise, Helen, that you are driving me, in order to protect my reputation, to disown you publicly if you marry Mr. Aldrich?"
She did not reply. "But don't forget," he went on after a moment, "that you are escaping my fortune only temporarily. It will all go to you on my death."
"No—no! I don't want it!"
"But you can't escape it, if I choose to leave it to you."
"If you do," she said slowly, "I shall use it to make restitution, as far as I can, to the people it—it came from." She added, almost breathlessly, "Why not do that now, father? It's the thing I've been wanting to ask you, but have not dared."
"I have not noticed any lack of daring," he observed grimly.
There was a brief silence. "Then this is all," she said.
Suddenly she stretched out her arms to him, and tears sprang into her eyes. "Forgive me, father!—forgive me!"
Standing very erect, his hands folded before him, he gazed fixedly into her imploring face while his mind comprehended their new relations.
She dared a step nearer and laid a hand upon his arm. "Forgive me—won't you please, father?" she whispered.
His face twitched, and he put his hands on her shoulders almost convulsively. "You're taking my heart out!" he said huskily.
"Forgive me!" she sobbed. "I can't help it! I'm the way God made me."
"And God made you very much like your mother," he said, his mind running back to scenes not unlike this. He drew her to him and she flung her arms about his neck and they kissed.
"I love my father—I always shall—it's the business man that"—but her voice trailed away into sobs.
They drew apart. "We shall never speak of this matter again," she said tremulously. She held out her hand. "Good-bye ... father. I shall see you again—yes. But this is the real good-bye."
He took her hand. "Good-bye," he said.
They gazed steadily into each other's eyes. "Good-bye," she repeated in a low voice, and, head down, walked slowly from the room.
He sat long before the fire while upon him his new situation pressed more heavily, more sharply. It was the bitterest hour of his life. Upon him bore the pain of impending public disgrace, the pain of the loss of his daughter—and cruellest of all, the pain of being judged by the one person of his heart, disowned by her. And this last bitterness was given a deep-cutting, ironic edge as he realised afresh that, to protect himself, he must disown her—that, cast off by her, he must make it appear to the world that he had cast her off.
And how the world would take this! His imagination saw in the papers of some near day, across the first page in great black head-lines, "Miss Helen Chambers Marries Ex-Convict—Disowned and Disinherited By Her Father—Social World Horrified!" The irony of it!
But even in this hour, pained as he was by Helen's judgment, he felt no regret for those deeds for which he had been judged. For thirty years and more he had had one supreme object—to take from life, for himself, all that life could be made to yield. All his faculties were pointed to, attuned to, acquisition. His instinct, his long habit, his mighty will, his opportunity-making mind, his long succession of successes, the irresistible command of his every cell to go on, and on, and on—all these united in a momentum that allowed him neither to recoil from what he had done nor to regard it with regret. He felt pain, yes—but mixed with his pain was no other feeling, no impulse, that would swerve his life even a single degree from its thirty-years' direction.
In five minutes the long, heavy express was due to pull out of the station and go lunging westward through the night. Kate's and Rogers's hand luggage was piled in Kate's seat, and across the aisle and a little ahead, in Rogers's seat, were the two travellers, side by side. Facing them sat David and the Mayor, the latter just back from his brief honeymoon, and standing in the aisle was Tom.
"Well, got everything you need for the trip?" asked the Mayor, in tones that filled the sleeper.
"There's enough in our trunks and in those bags"—Rogers nodded backward towards Kate's seat—"for a trip to the moon. Aldrich tried to buy out New York."
"There's nothin' like havin' too much," declared the Mayor. "Oh, say there, captain," he cried to the porter who had just brushed by. "See here."
The porter turned back. "Yes suh." There was even more than the usual porterly deference in his manner, as he instantly measured the authority in the Mayor's florid person and took note of the silk hat and the imposing beflowered vest. "Yes suh."
"These here two people are friends o' mine. You want to see that they get everything that's comin' to 'em, and a few more besides. Understand?"
"Yes suh."
The Mayor, with some effort, got into and out of a trouser pocket, and held forth a dollar. "If you ain't bashful, take that. And stick it some place where your willingness'll know you've got it.
"There's nobody'll treat you as white as a well-tipped nigger," he remarked as the porter passed on. He leaned forward and laid a hand on Rogers's knee, his smiling face redly brilliant under the Pintsch light. "Just as soon as you get your bellows mended and some meat on your bones, I'm goin' to write you a letter handin' you some straight advice."
The edge of his glance slyly took in Kate. "No, I ain't goin' to wait. I'll tell you now and be in the price o' the stamp. Friend—get married!"
Kate rose abruptly, walked back to her seat and began to fumble about the baggage.
The Mayor nodded his head emphatically. "There's nothin' like it!"
The cry, "All aboard," sounded through the car, and they rose. The Mayor said good-bye, and after him Tom. Then David took Rogers's thin hand. The two men silently gazed at one another for a long moment; each realised he might never again look into the other's face.
"Good-bye, old man," breathed David, gripping his hand. "I hope it's going to be as you hope. God knows you deserve it!"
Rogers's large eyes clung to him. "I've never had a friend like you!" he said slowly. "Good-bye—and if it's to be the long good-bye, then ... well, good-bye!"
He broke off, then added: "You're going to try to help change some things we both know are wrong. Never forget one thing: the time to reform a criminal is before he becomes one. Save the kids.—God bless you!"
The car began slowly to move. They gripped hands again, and David hurried back to Kate, whom the Mayor had just left and who was kissing Tom good-bye. David took her hand, and on gazing into her dark eyes and restrained face, it rushed upon him anew how much joy she had brought him and how much misery he had given her; and suddenly he was without a single word to say farewell.
"Good-bye," she said with a forced calmness.
"Forgive me!" he burst out in a whisper. "Your heart will tell you what I'd like to tell you. Forgive me!"
Her head sank forward in affirmation. "But you've done nothing."
There was no time to reply to that. "God bless you, Kate!—Good-bye!" he cried in a low voice. He ran out of the rapidly moving car and swung himself to the platform—unconscious that Kate's eyes had followed him to the last.
He joined the Mayor, and together with Tom they walked out of the station and into the street, talking of the friends they had just left. But the Mayor, who had met the party at the station, and consequently had not had a confidential word with David, was bubbling with his own affairs, and he quickly left Kate and Rogers to travel their way alone.
"Friend," he said with joyful solemnity, slipping his arm through David's, "I'm the biggest fool that ever wore pants!"
"Why?"
"For not lettin' Carrie marry me before."
"Then you're happy?"
"Happy?" A great laugh rose from beneath the Mayor's vest, and he gave David a hearty slap upon the back. "Yes, sir! Happy!—that's me!
"Yes, sir," he went on, after they had boarded a car, "I've got only one thing agin Carrie, and that is that she didn't rope me in before. Say, she's all right—she'sIt. No siree, friend, there ain't nothin' like gettin' married!"
The Mayor continued his praise of his present state till David and Tom bade him good night and left the car. As they walked through the cross street a sense of loneliness began to settle upon David; so that when Tom slipped a hand through his arm he drew the hand close against his side.
"You're not going to leave me, are you?"
"Me?" Tom hugged the arm he held. "Not till you turn me out!"
They walked in silence for a block. "Pard," Tom began in a low voice, "I don't know why you've been so good to me. I don't know nuttin', an' I'm a lot o' trouble. Mebbe sometimes you t'ink I don't appreciate all what you've done for me. But I do. When I t'ink about when I tried to steal your coat a year ago, an' den when I t'ink about now—I certainly do appreciate. I'm goin' to work hard—an' I'm goin' to study hard—an' I'm goin' to do what you tell me. If I do, d'you t'ink I'll ever make somebody?"
David pressed the arm closer. "My boy, you're going to make a splendid man!"
Tom looked up; tears were in his eyes. "Pard—I'd die tryin'—for you!" he said.
When they reached the apartment house that held their new home, David sent Tom upstairs and set out for St. Christopher's Mission. His sense of loneliness made his mind dwell upon Mr. Chambers's offer of millions; for earlier in the evening a messenger had brought a note from Helen which gave the substance of her talk with her father. He would not have returned an answer different from hers—yet in this moment he ached for those things which had been refused in his name, and the aching drew him to look upon that for which he had given them up.
He paused across the street from St. Christopher's and gazed at the brilliant windows of the club-house and at the great window in the chapel that glowed in memory of Morton. Then he crossed the street and entered the club-house. A few young men and women were coming down the stairway, and a few struggling late-comers were mounting to the floors above. He stood irresolute, then noticing that farther down the hall the door of the assembly room was open, he cautiously joined the little knot of people who stood about it.
The room was crowded with men and women, all in their best clothes. David quickly gathered from the talk of the officers on the platform, all women, that this was a meeting of the Women's Club, held for the double purpose of installing new officers and entertaining the members' husbands. He had been gazing in but a few minutes when the new president, a shapeless little woman, was sworn into office. The audience demanded a speech, and her homely face glowing with happiness and embarrassment, she responded in a few halting, grammarless phrases. "I hope I can do my duty," she ended, "so good that Dr. Morton, who got us to make this club, won't never be ashamed when he looks down on it."
Her other sentences had been applauded, but this last was received in that deep silence which is applause at its highest; and it came to David afresh that Morton was still the soul of St. Christopher's. All the while that other officers were being installed this closing sentence and its significance persisted in his mind, and so engrossed him that he was startled when the folding chairs began to be rattled shut and stacked in one corner of the room. A little later a piano and a violin started up, and part of the fathers and mothers began stumbling about in a two-step, and part crowded against the walls and made merry over the awkwardness and disasters of the dancers.
David slipped out of the building. Clearer than ever before had come to him a realisation of the responsibility of sacrifice: when one gives, the gift no longer belongs to one—it belongs to those who have builded their lives upon it.
Across the street, he looked back. Only once before had the Morton Memorial window seemed to him more significant, more warm and powerful in its inspiration—and that was on the day of his discharge from prison when it had first flashed upon his vision. Above the glowing window the chapel's short spire, softened by the round-hanging poetry of night, seemed to his imagination to be the uplifted, supplicatory hands of the neighbourhood.... Well, their Morton was safe.
When David reached home he found that Tom was in bed and fast asleep. He walked through the scantily furnished rooms. They were still strange to him, for this was his first night in them—and their strangeness, and the fresh loss of two of his best friends, and the sense, which grew heavier and darker, that he and Helen must remain apart, sharpened his loneliness to a racking pain. He tried to dissipate it by thinking of the ground he had gained—progress that a year ago, when all men refused him a chance, he would have thought impossible; by thinking of the greater achievements the future held. But he could not beget even an artificial glow of spirits; his success seemed but ashes. So he ceased to struggle, and gave himself over to his dejection.
He turned down the gas in his little sitting-room, and raising the shade of a window he sat down and gazed into the street. It was always a quiet street—and now, at half past ten, only an occasional figure moved darkly along its sidewalks. Far above the line of opposite housetops, in a moonless sky, gleamed thousands of white stars. Leaning back in his easy chair, and gazing up at the remote points of light, he went over anew the problem of his relations with Helen, and he asked himself again if he had decided rightly. Yes, he had done right to save her.... And yet, how he longed for the thing she was willing to give! How empty his life seemed without it—what a far, far stretch of loneliness!
His gloom was pressing heavier and heavier upon him, when suddenly there came a ring of his bell. Wondering who could be calling on him at that hour, he crossed the room and opened the door. A tall figure, heavily veiled and wearing a long coat, stepped in. Despite the veil and the dusk of the room, he knew her instantly.
"Helen!" he exclaimed in an awed whisper.
She did not speak. He closed the door and turned up the gas, and he saw she carried a small travelling bag in one hand.
"Helen!" he said.
She set the bag on a chair, and drew her veil up over the front of her hat. Her face was pale, determined.
"I've come to stay," she said slowly.
He could only stare at her.
"I've come to stay," she repeated.
"Helen!" he breathed.
"I've left home—for good. I belong with you. I shall not go away."
"Helen!"
"We shall be married to-night."
He gazed wordless at her white face, and he vaguely realised what her mind had passed through since he had left her five hours before. A wild joy sprang ablaze within him—yet he held fast to his old decision. "But Helen——"
"I've thought it all over," she broke in. "Everything. Heretofore you've been the rock. Now I'm the rock—I can't be changed.... I understand that you've refused me because you want to save me, and I love you for it. But I have searched my soul—I know what I want, I know what I can bear, I know what is best for us both. I know, David!—I know! Since you would not take me, I have come here to force you to take me. You cannot avoid it. I shall not go away."
His heart thrilled at her words, at the steadfastness of her erect figure. "But Helen!—when I think of the disgrace that will fall upon you—oh, I can't let you!"
"The truth is not known about either of us," she returned, steadily. "If the truth were known and if justice were done, my father would be disgraced and I would share his disgrace, and you would be exalted. It would be I who would dishonour you. If I do get a part of your false disgrace, I only get what is due me.
"You have borne this disgrace for years," she went on. "Don't you think I have the strength to bear, supported by you and love, what you have borne alone?"
His heart drew him toward her with all its tremendous strength.
"I've come to stay!" she repeated.
He wavered. But his old decision had still another word. "There's one more thing, Helen. We can speak of it—we are no longer children."
"No," she said. Her mind fluttered back a month to when they had stood together at the window of the Mission, and she smiled tremulously. "I'm twenty-eight."
He remembered the day, too, and smiled. "And I'm thirty-one—and see, the gray hairs!"
His face sobered. "There's another thing—children. Would it be fair to them?—to be born into disgrace?"
A faint colour tinged her cheeks. "I have thought of everything—that too," she returned steadily. "In a few years you will have won the respect of all; it will be an honour, not a disgrace, to be your child."
Suddenly she stretched out her hands to him. "Oh, I want to share your sorrows, David! I want to share your sorrows! And there will be glories! I want to help in the good you are going to do. My life will count for most with you ... I've come to stay, David! I belong with you! I'm not going away! Take me!"
He sprang forward. "Oh, Helen!" his soul cried out; and he gathered her into his arms.
A few minutes later, when he returned from telephoning an old clergyman whom she knew well, she met him with a glowing smile. "I've been all through it—I shall love it,ourhome!"
He thought of the home she had just left. He caught her hands and gazed into her deep eyes. "Darling—you'll never regret this?" he asked slowly.
"I never shall."
"God grant it!"
"I never shall. This is the day when my life begins."
"And mine, too!" He drew her to him, and kissed her. "But we must go. He said he'd be waiting for us. Come."
She lowered her veil, and they stepped into the hall. In the darkness they reached for each other, their hands touched and clasped; and so, hand in hand, they went down the stairs and forth into the night—and forth into the beginning of life.