IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH.
The day after Justin's escape from the river, he went about with an
unusually thoughtful face. There was something on his mind, and, with a
variation of his usually methodical habits, he several times left his
desk to go to the bank door and look up and down the street.
About the middle of the afternoon Miss Gastonguay came down Main Street
with her usual gait, that aimed at being a stride but ended in a trot
when she went quickly, on account of the shortness of her limbs. In the
middle of the street, carefully keeping abreast of her, was the white
pony, neither harnessed nor saddled, and following her about simply for
purposes of entertainment.
When she stopped he stopped, when she hurried on he made haste to
thread his way among the various vehicles in the street and catch up to
her. Upon arriving in front of a green-grocer's, he took on an air of
joyful assurance, and approached the curbstone.
"Piggy," said Miss Gastonguay, amiably; then calling for a handful of
apples, she spread them in the gutter before him.
While he was eating them, she looked across at the bank. "If they
haven't closed, I might go and get some money," she grumbled. "That
girl Chelda spends it like water," and she hurriedly approached the
brick building.
"So this is what you have been doing with my money," she said to the
paying teller as she stood before his wicket and gazed about the
freshly decorated bank.
The young man smiled respectfully, then, as he handed her a roll of
bills, observed, "The cashier asked me to let him know if you came in.
Would it be too much trouble for you to step in his office?"
Without saying a word she walked to the glass door beyond, and rapped
briskly on it.
"Come in," said Justin; then seeing who it was he sprang up. "Miss
Gastonguay, I have been wishing to see you."
"Indeed,--the road to French Cross is still open."
Justin's pale face grew red. "I should have considered it an honour to
call, but there are certain reasons why I preferred seeing you here.
Will you sit down?"
"Thanks, I had rather stand. I am in a hurry,--is your head better?"
"Yes, thank you."
"A great mistake to jump into the river for that beggar's child. Better
to have let it drown."
"I scarcely think you would have approved of that,"--then he surveyed
her earnestly. "What I have to say may take some time. You had better
be seated."
She dropped into a chair, and, folding her hands before her on the
table, stared out the window.
She did not like him. She was annoyed at being compelled to sit and
listen to him, yet Justin was full of satisfaction, and there was even
an expression of wistfulness about his thin lips as his next sentence
fell from them.
"In the first place, I have to thank you for your kindness to my wife
the other day."
"No kindness at all," she said, gruffly. "She can come again sometime,
if she likes. I dare say it is dull at your house for her."
"Dull, yes,--poor child. Miss Gastonguay, I see you are impatient to be
gone, and I will be brief. Long ago you had a brother--"
"A brother, yes,--what of it?" and Miss Gastonguay brought her eyes to
bear sharply upon him.
Justin was leaning forward on the table now. He had become the strict
man of business; he had a tale to unfold to her that she should hear
even though he compelled her to it.
"I had a brother Charles," she snapped at him when he did not
speak,--"Chelda's father, now dead."
"I refer to another brother," he said, calmly, "a younger brother."
Miss Gastonguay's face showed uncontrollable emotion. No one in
Rossignol but this young man would have dared mention the name of this
brother to her. Years ago he had been cast off by his family as an
incorrigible black sheep. It was not known what had become of him. His
name had been dropped, and even in gossiping Rossignol there were many
people who did not know of his existence. She tried to rise and fling
herself from the room, but she found herself trembling so violently
that she was obliged to sit still to gather strength.
"Your brother Louis," pursued Justin, in measured tones, "named from
the founder of the house."
"A villain,--a scoundrel," muttered Miss Gastonguay, flashing him a
furious glance,--"a disgrace to the name, a boy that should have been
strangled in his cradle."
"But never by the hand of his sister," murmured Justin, with a strange
softening of his tone, "his little sister Jane, whom he loved."
Miss Gastonguay turned fiercely on him. "Young man, what are you
talking about? What do you know of this affair? Have some of your
strict Puritans been telling you to discipline a victim many years
your senior, by tearing open this old sore?"
"No, no,--Miss Gastonguay, hear me patiently. I have a message to you
from this brother."
"I will not hear it--" and her stern face grew sterner.
Justin sighed, and leaned back in his chair. "Let me recapitulate,--you
remember my father, Sylvester Mercer--"
"Open that window, will you?" interrupted Miss Gastonguay, "this room
is stifling."
Justin hastily threw up one of the glass sashes, and allowed the cool
river wind to blow into the room. Was the stoical maiden lady about to
faint? He judged not, and therefore continued his sentence. "My father,
who was cashier of this bank before me--"
"And worth half a dozen young prigs like yourself," mumbled Miss
Gastonguay, as she mopped her face with her handkerchief. "I liked
him--"
"I know you do not care for me nor for my mother," said Justin, firmly,
"yet I also know that, honest as you try to be, words are sometimes but
disguises for your thoughts."
"Therefore, when I say I hate you, you know I love you," observed Miss
Gastonguay, ironically. The fresh air had revived her, and she felt
mistress of herself again.
Justin smiled. "No, I know better than that; however, let me proceed.
When I was a lad, my father, finding that I did not care for study, had
me enter this bank where I could be trained under his supervision."
"You'll never be as clever as he was," observed Miss Gastonguay, grimly.
"Granted," said Justin, with a slight inclination of his head. "You
cannot say any good thing about my father that my heart will not echo.
I loved him, and revere his memory. You will perhaps remember that,
beside being a man of business, he was foremost in the charitable work
of the town--"
"Yes, yes; I remember. What are you boring me with all this for?"
"Kindly have patience and you will see. One of his invariable habits
was to visit every Sunday the old red prison in the woods beyond your
house."
Miss Gastonguay's head suddenly became more erect, though her fingers
trifled nervously with her handkerchief.
"I was often his companion. Among the prisoners I had many
acquaintances. My father taught me not to despise these men whose
unhappy lives had flung them for a time into such a place--"
"He was wrong," said Miss Gastonguay, angrily. "Wrong--wrong."
"Just before my father's death, he called me to his bedside, and
told me that in leaving the world he had a sacred trust to impose on
me. I would in his place be entrusted with the custody, the loaning,
exchange, or issue of money for a certain individual whom I might
hear from or see only at long intervals. This person I was to serve
faithfully, without curiosity or suspicion, except in the improbable
event of my being required to do anything that would be against my
conscience."
"Conscience!" ejaculated Miss Gastonguay. "You Puritans worship your
consciences."
"I accepted the trust," said Justin, "and I have kept it."
"For some prison bird," she said, dilating her nostrils. "Your father
always was soft-hearted. He believed a kind whisper in the ear would
reform the prince of darkness himself."
"It was four years after my father's death," continued Justin, "before
I saw this stranger for whom my father was a kind of agent--"
"I dare say," she said, sneeringly, "a wonder you ever saw him at all."
"And then he reminded me, strangely enough, of a man I had once seen
for a brief space of time in--"
"The old prison, of course."
"Yes."
"And you told him of it," she said, tauntingly.
"No, I did not. The last time I saw that man was in California six
weeks ago."
"An ill-starred journey. You had better have stayed at home."
"I married that man's daughter, Miss Gastonguay."
She paused for a moment, and caught her breath with a choking sound.
Then she exclaimed, indignantly: "Shame to you to perpetuate the breed!
Close that window, will you? You young people have your veins full of
hot blood. We old ones grow chilly."
Justin obediently closed it, then, reseating himself, gazed at her with
a compassion and even a tenderness that her abusive words could neither
change nor dissipate.
"Yesterday, when I received that blow in the river," and he lightly
touched his plastered forehead, "I seemed to see in a flash the
possibilities of the future in case of my death. My young wife
frightened and alone--"
"Where is her father?"
"He said that he was going to Australia; and I made up my mind
yesterday to speak to you,--to tell you that, spoiled child as she may
appear, she is a worthy daughter of your house."
"What kind of a life is her father leading now?"
Justin took off his glasses and passed his handkerchief over his
troubled eyes. "I do not know, but I am sure he solemnly promised my
father that after his escapade here it would be an honest one. Knowing
his family's wealth, I have thought that possibly he might be receiving
money from them--"
"There is not a Gastonguay that would throw him a dime if he were
starving," she said, with disdain.
"But his daughter," said Justin, and his whole face glowed with such
sincerity of love that his companion turned her head away, "the
innocent, beautiful girl whom I married in haste, partly because my
whole soul was bound up in her, and partly because I wished to snatch
her while still young and docile from an environment that might at some
future day mean--"
"Disgrace," supplied Miss Gastonguay, when he hesitated, "bald, black,
nasty disgrace that you wish now to attach to my unspotted name,--or,"
she went on, irrelevantly, "is it the money you are after? We rich
people can see snares and pitfalls where you poor ones would not
suspect them. We are so beset and encompassed by sticky fingers that
would make some of our gold pieces adhere to them that we walk with
garments drawn gingerly aside. What looks to you a very pretty and
flattering appeal from youth to old age, may to me look no better than
one of the cunningly adjusted gins your Bible speaks of. I have the
honour to wish you good afternoon, young man," and she rose from her
seat and made him a low, old-fashioned courtesy.
Justin rose too, and respectfully prepared to open the door for her.
"May God bless you, Miss Gastonguay. My heart is lighter now that I
have committed my darling's interests to you,--you know that I am not
thinking solely of material interests. If I am cut off suddenly you
will see that a woman's love and tenderness are not wanting. And I have
a token for you from that brother. I will not offer it to you now, but
when you are ready to receive it, I have it here--" and he pointed
toward a safe in a corner.
Miss Gastonguay rushed by him and out of the bank like a flash, so that
even the clerks who were used to her odd ways followed her with a smile.
An hour later, when Justin had his key in the lock of the outer door,
she came back. Her face was calm now, and she spoke politely. "Give me
that token, or whatever it is. No, I will not go in your office. Go get
it, I will wait here," and she stepped inside the door.
Justin looking over his shoulder, to keep a watchful eye on the
entrance door, hastened to his room, unlocked his safe, withdrew a
small parcel and came back.
Miss Gastonguay tore off the folds of tissue-paper. There was nothing
but a little shoe inside,--a little shoe of white velvet ornamented
with gilt buttons.
"Our mother was a proud woman," she said, calmly, as she surveyed it.
"Louis and I were shod in velvet, while our playmates had to be content
with leather. We always played together," she went on, holding up the
shoe, and speaking in a voice of unnatural calm. "He was a handsome
little lad. Though I was much older, he used to put his arm around my
neck and call me his little Jane."
Justin silently pointed to the tiny sole. On it was written in a
faltering hand, "Little Jane's shoe,--carried over half the world by
her unworthy Louis."
"Oh, my God," she said, suddenly. "I loved him so!" and staggering
against the wall she burst into violent and painful weeping. "My poor
lost brother--and I would have died for him-- Go away, young man, don't
look at me in my misery."
Justin's own eyes were full of tears. In distressed sympathy he went
for a glass of water that she would not drink. "Go away, go away," she
said, waving her hands at him, so that at last he was obliged to take
his station on the street where the white pony stood gazing at him in
reproachful anxiety.
In a quarter of an hour Miss Gastonguay came out. Her face was more
stern than usual, but bore no traces of tears, and without a word
to him, and looking neither to the right nor to the left, she took
the road to French Cross, followed by the pony with sympathetically
drooping head.