A promise having been exacted that the "triad" should accompany her to
the early railway train, Devota went swiftly down a rear staircase to
the side corridor running in front of the library. The door was open,
and from the threshold she looked in. The room was well lighted; the
typewriting machine at rest, the desk covered with official documents,
and from a file at one side a sheaf of telegrams rustled as the air
surged through the window. The sole occupant of the apartment was the
secretary, Mr. Walton, seated before a tray-laden table. He had dined,
and was dallying with a gilded liqueur glass in which iced Chartreuse
sparkled like splintered emeralds.
Doubtless Governor Armitage was the centre of attraction in the
drawing-room, and the auspicious moment had passed beyond recall. A
premonition of defeat impaired her self-control, and shrinking from
observation, Devota walked down the corridor to an arched door, whence a
flight of steps led to the flower garden.
Avoiding the stone terrace in front, where an electric globe shone, she
turned into a winding path bordered on both sides with wheeled boxes
filled with tall pink oleanders in profuse bloom. A mid-summer full moon
lighted every corner of the sloping lawn, bringing into velvety relief
the shadow vignettes traced by leaf and vine across the smoothly clipped
grass, and adding a silvery lustre to beds of lilies that lifted their
white lips to drink from Hersé's cool, dripping palms.
Among Mr. Churchill's valued curios he numbered a quaint sun dial of
black lava, fashioned ages ago in an Ægean isle riven by volcanic
throes.
The gnomon had been destroyed, and erosion by time and storm partly
erased the Greek characters on the base, but doubtless some pagan Le
Nôtre once deemed it an ornamental altar to the great sun god. A prosaic
new gardener at "The Oleanders" found it more useful as a mere pedestal,
whereon he had placed a terra cotta vase filled with luxuriant
nasturtiums that wove over the whole a fringe of scarlet and orange.
Devota stood beside the dial, and silently wrestled with emotions
habitually held in bondage by an iron will. The night had grown very
still; only a faint breath of air now and then pilfered and strewed the
attar of oleanders and lilies, and from rock-ribbed shore rose the
solemn, monotonous ocean hymn, the immemorial recessional chanted by
shattered waves.
An overwhelming sorrow seized and shook the lonely woman standing by the
dial. She threw up her arms, as if in mute appeal to some tragic fate,
and her fingers gripped and wrung each other; then the clenched hands
fell upon the crown and garlands of nasturtiums, and she closed her eyes
to shut out torturing retrospective visions.
[Illustration: _An overwhelming sorrow seized and shook the lonely woman
by the dial_]
The pungent smoke of a cigar suddenly arrested her attention, and over
the sward slowly walked the Governor. As he passed a drooping deodar he
disappeared, but a moment later a great cluster of rose oleander smote
his bared black head, and he stood inhaling its fragrance. His upturned
face showed unusual pallor, and an expression of profound sadness that
failed to soften its dominant sombre sternness. An audible sigh escaped
him, and throwing away his cigar he moved forward toward the terrace.
The sight of the graceful figure immediately in front of him was
evidently an unpleasant surprise, and for an instant he wavered, tempted
to turn aside, then advanced. When quite near he bowed, and without
pausing, would have passed her, but she stepped at once to meet him.
Her voice was steady, though strained, and her words crisp and measured:
"If Governor Armitage can grant me a few moments in which to lay before
him a matter of importance to others, I shall be glad for reasons that
he will readily understand are not personal."
"If it is Miss Lindsay's wish, my time and services are certainly at her
command."
The moon shone full on both faces, and each had suddenly contracted and
hardened. The Governor threw back his head and folded his arms behind
him; Devota's right hand clutched the edge of the dial, and with her
left she drew from beneath the violets in her girdle a slip of telegram
paper.
"Having twice refused to become a member of Mrs. Churchill's house-party
for this week, I was much annoyed, perplexed and pained when most
unexpectedly I found myself reluctantly obliged to come here for a few
hours. In the midst of preparations for my long absence, I was summoned
to a grief-stricken family whose pitiable condition of abject misery and
terror no verbal picture can exaggerate. My old friend, Mrs. Ronald
Clinton, is prostrated by sickness and sorrow, and unable to leave the
room where her baby girl is critically ill, probably dying; while in the
same house the aged mother-in-law raving with brain fever calls for the
son who is sentenced to be hung next week. Neither his wife nor his
mother can visit the distant prison to say good-bye to the doomed man;
In her despair, Amy Clinton, having exhausted all other means of saving
her husband, has seized the fatuous belief that my prayer might possibly
have some effect. It was in vain that I refused to come, assuring her
that I was the very last person to send as envoy to your Excellency, who
had declined her own appeal when she knelt at your feet. She persisted
in her frantic pleadings because of an inexplicable telegram from Ronald
Clinton, telling her the prison chaplain was sure I could secure help
for him. On what grounds he based this preposterous advice Amy was
absolutely ignorant, as neither of us can learn even the name of the
chaplain. Knowing the futility of my mission, I yielded at last to her
frenzied prayers--I drank the cup of bitter humiliation--and as my last
sacrifice on the altar of friendship for a broken-hearted wife and
mother, I surrendered my self-respect, my womanly pride. Read this
message to the wife, and then I feel assured you will realize what a
terrible ordeal has finally forced me into your presence."
She held the telegram toward him, and taking the paper he read it
carefully more than once. Refolding it, he bowed and returned it, but
the locked lips yielded no comment. She tore the slip into shreds, and
her hands trembled as she asked:
"Can your Excellency imagine why this mournful and mortifying task was
laid on my unwilling shoulders, by the chaplain who is an utter
stranger?"
He looked intently into her beautiful eyes, and his voice lowered to a
key of icy sternness.
"If Miss Lindsay desires the name of the chaplain, I can gratify her
wish. Peyton Knox has recently officiated in the prison chapel."
A hot wave crimsoned her cheeks, and she shrank as if from a blow, but
as the color ebbed, she drew herself proudly to her full height.
"As any other total stranger claiming every citizen's right of petition,
I reluctantly intrude upon your leisure, and I appeal to you as a man,
as a gentleman, as the highest official of my State, to grant some mercy
to a doomed criminal. For humanity's sake--oh, Governor Armitage, for
the sake of a ruined and helpless family, I ask--I beg--that you will
pardon Ronald Clinton and save two women from insanity! Be merciful; oh,
be merciful, as every Governor can be if he so wills."
He watched her steadily, and once he drew a long, deep breath as if
sorely oppressed; but her anxiously searching gaze discovered no
relaxation. She suddenly leaned forward, and her exquisitely curved lips
quivered:
"You will not deny my prayer! You will pardon Ronald?"
Slowly he shook his head.
"Miss Lindsay, I shall never pardon him. At all costs I must be
absolutely just."
"You will not spare his life? when your office empowers you to set him
free? You cruelly elect to order his wife widowed, and his babes
disgraced!"
"Should I forget the widow and fatherless little ones of Norman Hewitt
whom Ronald Clinton deliberately and brutally murdered? The wrongs of
the dead are too often buried with him, and sickly sympathy--posing as
philanthropic Christian clemency--is lavished on branded Cains set free
to defy human and divine law, and repeat crimes that should have
forfeited their blackened lives."
"Your Excellency's standard of justice is more righteous than that of
Abel's God, Who instead of slaying his murderer granted him long life in
which to purify his guilty soul and mend his ways!"
"Disclaiming any approach to irreverence, permit me to remind you that
the experiment of pardon was not repeated; and the severest penal code
ever compiled came directly from the Divine lawgiver, whose chosen
people demanded 'a life for a life.'"
"Hanging poor Amy's husband could not compensate Mrs. Hewitt for the
loss of hers. The exaction of blood tax is a legal survival of savagery.
Justice is not the sole divine attribute--mercy is coordinate. Try to
remember that Talmudic prayer of Jehovah: 'Be it my will that my mercy
overpower my justice!' As Governor, the issue of life or death lies in
the hollow of your hand, and for the last time I beg of you not to
listen to the barbarous prompting of a cruel revenge. Think of the awful
responsibility of hurling an unprepared soul into eternity. Think of the
blessed relief that only you can give to tortured, despairing human
hearts who can look to no one but you for succor."
"I have never pardoned a convicted criminal, and I never will. I cannot
conscientiously exercise the 'gubernatorial prerogative' of riding
roughshod over the mature, deliberate verdict of twelve sane,
dispassionate men empowered to sift all testimony, and carefully guard
for their guidance only indubitable evidence. The sanctity of jury
verdicts has been so frequently violated by reckless use of pardoning
power, that the value of blood-bought jury trial has dwindled into a
mere mockery, an arena for spectacular professional jugglers. Ample
legal machinery has long been provided for the rehearing and unbiased
review of all criminal cases, whenever new witnesses or new and vital
facts cast any doubt on the wisdom or justice of judge and jury. Courts
of appeal and review should have power to correct wrongs that juries
sometimes inflict upon the innocent, but the preposterous assumption of
infallible prescience and 'altruistic clemency' by a President or a
Governor is an ideal aspiration that I do not permit myself to indulge.
This popular form of annulling jury verdicts is a fatal blow at the very
foundation of penal jurisprudence; and the exasperating quibbles of
subtle attorneys--the systematically delayed execution of verdicts and
the too frequent veto of death sentences--all contribute to the
deplorable increase of lynching. Pardon my taxing your patience for this
enumeration of my reasons for preferring to leave justice to competent
and unprejudiced courts."
She threw out one hand with a repellent gesture.
"Capital punishment is merely revengeful, judicial murder, utterly
futile as a corrective method. Taking a second human life avails nothing
as requital for the destruction of the first victim. It is indefensible
cruelty in an age pluming itself on higher humanitarian standards."
"Miss Lindsay, legal punitive statutes are not designed as retaliatory
sacrifices to revenge, but as deterrents to crime, simply because dread
of speedy retribution is the most powerful motive that can restrain the
criminal masses. Maudlin sentimentality that just now inveighs against
execution of judicial penal decrees, is a danger signal that points to
public degeneracy in a people who regard mawkish sympathy with culprits
as an advanced phase of civilization; and to whom the condonation of
crime is more humanitarian than its extirpation."
His slowly uttered words rang with the measured precision of a
sculptor's chisel upon stone, and the inquisitorial eyes, no longer
sombre, now glowed as they looked steadily into hers. For an instant a
spasm of keen pain shivered the composure of her haughty face, and her
voice rose into a bitter, half-strangled cry:
"No mercy from you! I might as well pray to that growling sea yonder,
watching hungrily for the next drowning wretch. I knew mine was a fool's
errand, yet pity conquered repugnance, and it seemed so incredible, so
monstrous that any man could coolly point to the gallows as sole answer
to the heart-rending petition of an almost frantic family."
He pressed a hand over his brow, pushed back the thick, close-cut black
hair, and after a moment he answered in an altered tone of profound and
tender regret:
"My fellow monster, the sea, is spared after-pangs that are my portion.
Do you imagine that any argument could avail to change my convictions of
official duty, when in a fiery ordeal I felt compelled to deny the
wailing wife who brought her pretty little ones to cry in their father's
behalf? Try to realize what must have been the feelings of a man not
wholly petrified, when he lifted from his office floor the kneeling form
of an aged, white-haired woman who could only gasp between sobs: 'As you
hope for mercy when your naked soul fronts God on His judgment seat,
spare my son's life! Remember the mother who cradled you in her
arms--for her sake, for God's sake, be merciful to me--save my boy from
the gallows.' Miss Lindsay, the terrible curse is that the wages of sin
are paid too often to the helpless innocent. I could not pardon Ronald
Clinton, whose crime was deliberately planned murder, but learning of
illness in his family, I sent a telegram at four o'clock to-day staying
the execution of his sentence until restoration to health permits his
mother and wife to spend a day with him in prison. Sometimes when I long
for rest, the vision of those heart-broken women and two lovely children
clinging to my knees, robs me of sleep."
"You spared him only long enough to say good-bye to those who, if
possible, would die to save him! Is that deemed a mercy--or refinement
of cruelty? Your telegram was sent at four o'clock? If news of the
reprieve had only arrived before I left my house, this needless journey
would have been averted; I should have been spared this keen humiliation
on the eve of quitting a country I shall probably see no more."
From a silvered sea rose the metrical rippling of waves crooning a
"_berceuse_" to drowsy lands cradled by foam-laced surf. For a moment
silence had followed the woman's words, and in that brief pause Governor
Armitage's luminous, watchful eyes noted a swift and subtle change. The
face whitened, hardened to its usual rigid coldness; all trace of
emotion vanished as utterly as the light from an extinguished lamp in
some lovely transparent globe, and the strained expression of her
unflinching eyes gave place to one of baffling, inflexible quietude; the
habitual mask temporarily loosened, was readjusted.
When she spoke her clear, even tone showed no hint of cadence that had
sunk it to passionate protest.
"In ending an interview intolerably repugnant to my womanly instincts,
permit me to say that, although conspicuously futile as regards the sole
object of this visit to Mrs. Churchill, I shall avail myself of the
unexpected opportunity to offer you an apology for the grievous wrong of
which I was once guilty. Simple justice demands this admission, and in
addition I frankly express my pleasure in finding that my judgment was
wholly erroneous. I tender sincere congratulations that your vindication
was so triumphant; and I bid your Excellency good-night."
As she turned away he threw out a detaining hand.
"Understanding fully what such gracious words cost you, I value them
correspondingly, and hope my thanks will be as acceptable as your
apology. Will you pardon me if I venture to ask, if you had known that
Peyton Knox was the chaplain who dictated the prison telegram, would
your sympathy for poor Clinton's family have sufficed to bring you into
my presence?"
"Certainly not."
"You had regained sufficient faith in my integrity to believe that in
matters involving conscientious scruples, I should prove callous even to
Miss Lindsay's appeals?"
The starry glint in his eyes brightened, and a bitter smile curled his
lips. She met his gaze with cool, proud calmness.
"The number of mangled offerings Governor Armitage has long laid before
the pet fetich he labels 'Duty,' allows no margin for any one to doubt
that the sacrificial axe needs no whetting for the next victim on the
official scaffold. That I was predestined to defeat I knew as well
before I came as now, but the sanctity of one's motive can sometimes
nerve one to drain even a loathsome draught."
Only a few feet of sward separated them, and while she stood apparently
as devoid of emotion as the sun dial, he knew from the quivering of the
diamonds in the cross, and the fiery flashes of the opals rising and
falling at her throat that her heart throbbed fiercely.
"Have you chanced to remember the day of the month, and that it is also
the thirteenth annual anniversary?"
"Yes, the thirteenth. Barring all superstition, which of course you
scout, how could this disagreeable meeting have failed to be unlucky? It
is true I have passed my springtime, but decrepitude has not yet
attacked my memory, and it warns me now that I have unduly trespassed on
your Excellency's time."
She bowed, stooped to gather up the train of heliotrope chiffon, and
moved in the direction of the house, but he stepped before her.
"One moment, Miss Lindsay. May I ask why you refused to marry Hoyte
Kingdon?"
"Refused to marry him? Can you think it possible any sane woman could be
so hopelessly fatuous as to decline an offer of his hand, of his exalted
position? How incredible the suggestion that an opportunity of marriage
so brilliant would not have been seized with avidity, by even the most
ambitious of husband hunters!"
"Hoyte told me of his persistent but unsuccessful effort to win your
affection."
A defiant gleam leaped into her eyes as she stood at bay, and in the
brilliant moonlight the coil of opals around her lovely neck seemed a
writhing serpent of flame.
"Though women are satirized as unworthy custodians of their suitor's
confidential proposals, it appears that manly friends have no
compunction in violating the seal of secrecy. Why did I fail to marry
Hoyte Kingdon? Since your Excellency indulges such sympathetic
solicitude in his behalf, it will comfort you to know that I sometimes
share your wonder at my lack of wisdom in ignoring a prize coveted by
many others. I respected Hoyte, admired his handsome personality, his
very brilliant talent, his diplomatic career; and certainly the position
he occupied as ambassador at Court was alluring to my ambition and
tempting in various aspects. I liked him immensely, and I wished very
much to love him, but despite my heroic efforts I could not find him
essential to my happiness. Is it not unfortunate that one cannot
successfully whistle love to come, as one signals to a terrier or a
roaming canary? Since the days of poor Psyche elusive love plays
hide-and-seek in devious and baffling ways. Hoyte now has a beautiful
and charming wife who makes him supremely happy and graces the
conspicuous diplomatic circle in which he has attained the highest
honors. We expect to spend Christmas with Hoyte and his wife after our
return from Bangkok. I am sure his guardian angel was alert when he
barred my heart against Ambassador Kingdon's magnetism."
Leaning forward, the Governor's eyes seemed to search her soul, and his
voice thrilled like a viol's chord.
"Did no tender, regretful memory hold fast the lock that refused to
yield?"
For an instant she put her hand upon the jewelled collar to loosen some
stricture that caught her throat, but her tone was firm, her eyes fixed
on his.
"Governor Armitage ought to know that women are not retrospective, that
like other butterflies the present suffices and we flee from 'regret' as
the real vampire that robs us of bloom and is so detrimental to curves
of beauty. We shrink from dead years--spectre-peopled--as one shuns
midnight prowls in a cemetery where graves may suddenly yawn over
fleshless horrors."
"Across the chasm of thirteen years you still prefer to make no signal
of reconciliation?"
"Scourged by a sense of justice quite as keen as your own, I have
apologized for a great wrong you once suffered at my hands. I owed you
that acknowledgment, and now the debt is cancelled fully, and the ghost
of that one regret is eternally at rest since I have the gratifying
assurance that the harsh misjudgment of an impulsive girl had no power
to spoil your life, or retard your eminently successful career."
"Failure in love affairs can 'spoil' no lives of those who maintain
consciousness of moral rectitude, and a justifiable self-respect; but
occasionally such keen disappointments prove beneficent tonics in
teaching a wise discrimination between sham and reality, shadow and
substance. Sooner or later men and probably women learn that the only
human tie that even death cannot dissolve, the one reliable chain that
no treacherous weak link can impair--is that binding the mother's heart
to her child. In desperately bitter trials mother-love is the
strengthening angel that sustains, and when the world turned its back
upon me, my blessed mother was my sole solace and defender."
"Because knowing something of the truth she could not doubt. To her at
least you had given facts withheld even from----"
"Pardon me. She was as absolutely ignorant as you, as all others who
accused me. When that whirlwind of slander overwhelmed me I told her
only what I made known to the woman who was my betrothed. When with
tears streaming over her face she took me in her arms and asked: 'My
boy, are you guilty?' I could say only that I was entirely innocent, but
bound by a solemn oath never to betray facts committed to me under seal
of professional confidence; facts that involved two broken-hearted women
and a noble old man, my friend in fatherless, needy boyhood whom I had
sworn to shield from disgrace and ruin. My mother lifted my face, looked
steadily into my eyes and raised one hand: 'My son, you swear to me on
your honor as a gentleman, on the honor of my boy Royal, that this is
true--that you would be a traitor to divulge the facts proving your
innocence?' She kissed me when that oath passed my lips, and from that
hour she abstained from all questioning; she clung tenderly to me,
believing in my innocence as she believed in the existence of her God.
You had the same assurance, all that I could honorably give. Mother-love
held through all assaults, no link gave way;--but yours? The chain
snapped at the first taut strain--crumbled like sand."
She had grown very white, and unconsciously her fingers lifted the
quivering fiery stones that bound her throbbing throat.
"Let the ashes of long dead injuries rest over all that once disquieted
you. If you had only trusted me I should have held the secret inviolate
even to the gates of death."
"The shameful secret was not mine to divulge. 'Trusted you?' I trusted
you to trust the honor of the man you had promised to make your husband.
When on my knees I swore to you that my innocence, temporarily
discredited, must inevitably be established some day by those for whose
sins I was branded, do you recollect quite all you gave me in return?
That thirteenth of July you hurled my ring at my feet, denounced me as a
despicable hypocrite--as a leper unfit to defile your presence; you
denied me even the right of acquaintanceship, vehemently forbade the
privilege of recognizing you by word or sign. Even then I partly forgave
your frantic, passionately bitter accusation, because I realized how
revolting to your pure, womanly instincts was the grievous slander. You
cast me out of your life as a disgraced villain who had forfeited all
right to associate with gentlemen. No alternative was mine; I submitted
to your cruel edict. Very soon the pall that seemed to blot out all hope
for me, was suddenly and strangely lifted by that tragic deathbed
revelation which cleared me of all blame, and left no shadow to sully my
name. I stepped back to the plane of honorable manhood. Since the day of
that complete vindication, twelve long years have passed. I waited, not
patiently, but I waited watching for some message, some signal from the
woman who had promised to become my wife, and who owed me a renewal of
confidence. Knowing me innocent you have elected to keep me under ban."
The concentrated bitterness of his deliberately uttered indictment, and
the merciless searchlight in his eyes had no power to shiver the pallid
rigidity of the face proudly uplifted.
"Having forfeited all claim to your kind or friendly remembrance, how
could you, who know my nature, expect me to invite intolerable
humiliation from your rejection of any overture I offered that involved
confession of wrong? I had no right to assume that a message from me
would be acceptable, and as far as I knew, your life was so serene and
satisfying that any echo thirteen years old would prove only an
intrusive discord. Our alienation was complete and you carefully shunned
any opportunity to end it."
"Had you allowed me the liberty of approach? I obeyed your command, I
followed the line you dictated, I rigidly refrained from word or letter
and I accorded you the silence you demanded. My mother urged me to
venture some overture for reconciliation, and just before her death I
found a letter she had addressed to you in my behalf. Self-respect
forced me to expostulate, and at her bedside I burned that letter. At
least I am entitled to your thanks that in no degree have I attempted to
invade the territory, from which I was so ignominiously ejected."
"In saying good-night, and also an eternal good-bye, I beg your
Excellency's acceptance of my thorough appreciation of, and thanks for
your courteous and consistent compliance with my wishes."
She turned away quickly, but his hand fell upon her shoulder.
"Devota! Devota!"
"Governor Armitage exceeds even his official rights, and usurps a
privilege I grant no man. Do not touch me.
He shook her gently as one might a wayward child, and her haughty repose
could no longer defy the tender, glowing eyes so close to her own.
"How much longer do you intend to impale us both on the iron cross of
your cruel, despotic pride? Since the responsibility for our meeting
here is yours, not mine, I will speak at last, and you shall listen. For
a time, after you forsook me, I bore up bravely, sustained by the belief
that my banishment was temporary, because I felt assured that
vindication, though tardy, was inevitable. Sooner than I dared to hope
that woful tragedy removed all suspicion from me, lifted me back at once
to the position of which my slanderers had robbed me, and I exulted in
the anticipation of our speedy reunion; watched the hour of every mail
delivery. After you went abroad the second time I realized that my doom
was permanent, that your proud obstinacy would prevent you from ever
lifting a finger to recall me, and then I grew desperately bitter. About
six years ago I was tempted to find some relief by a change of
conditions that were reducing me to callous cynicism. I set to work
diligently to cultivate an affection for a very lovely woman I thought
it possible I might win by persistent devotion. I longed to forget, to
supplant you, to cast you out of my life as completely as you had exiled
me; but despite all efforts when I tried to picture her as mistress of
my home, as sharing my name, my heart revolted. Your haunting face rose
before me, your dear, beautiful hands seemed to steal into mine as in
the days when they belonged to me. I abandoned such futile struggles and
accepted the lonely lot that could not be averted. So long as you
remained Miss Lindsay I had the right to recall all that was so precious
thirteen years ago. Then came the supreme trial; it was the general
opinion of your social world that Kingdon had won his suit, and that the
day of his marriage was not distant. I knew he was worthy, was the most
admired and envied man in our State, and it seemed incredible you should
not accept the glittering future he offered. You cannot realize the
maddening torture that seizes a man, when he thinks that the one woman
in all the world who holds his heart in the hollow of her hand will be
clasped in the arms of another entitled to call her his wife! So keen
was my suffering that I think the damned would not have changed places
with me. Then Kingdon suddenly altered the date of sailing, and in
bidding me good-bye told me you had twice rejected him. Business had
called me to your city, and after his farewell visit that night I could
not bear the noise and bustle of the hotel. I walked about the parks and
up and down the streets, and though the sleet was falling I wandered to
the avenue where your great stone house towers above all others.
Standing on the pavement in front I listened to the city clock clanging
two A.M. A light shone from an upper window; elsewhere all was dark.
Only granite walls shut me from sight of one whose precious lips had
felt the touch of mine. As I stood in the pelting sleet, over the
silence of the night I heard a sound that seemed to come from the
opening heavens. An organ roll thrilling that 'Adagio' no fingers but
yours had ever adequately interpreted to me. Our Adagio--yours and
mine--sanctified by blessed associations with the hallowed days of our
betrothal. As I listened, the dreary lost years rolled away as a black
curtain, and in the limelight of memory I saw again all our surroundings
on that last happy evening when you played for me; the misty purple of
mountain heights, the ferny gorges where scarlet rhododendrons flared
their torches, the clustering honeysuckle whose chalices swung in the
breeze, and you--my promised bride--seated at the piano, the sunset glow
burnishing your hair, your white dress and floating blue ribbons. I knew
your touch; the passionately tender, closing chords drifted like a
whisper from our past, like an answer from your soul to the call of
mine, and it told me why Kingdon could never claim you. Ah! tears
gathered, dripped; happy tears. I knew then you could not forget, and
since that night I have found grim comfort in the belief that only your
inexorable, merciless pride stood between us. Sweetheart of my young
manhood, darling of my lonely, weary old heart, will you crucify us both
until death ends all?"
She had withdrawn from his detaining hand, shrinking back to the support
of the dial, but the surging torrent of his words stirred frozen depths
never before beyond control. Tears glittered in her eyes, and her lips
fluttered like wind-swept rose leaves.
"You believe my pride separates us now? No, no; not pride. Can't you
understand that my bitter humiliation is the barrier that shuts me out?
The lofty distinction you have attained is the dividing wall I could
never scale. In the dark days of calumny I forsook you; when most you
needed loyalty I refused to share your disgrace. Now, as the popular
idol, at whose feet the noblest public tributes are laid, you must
accept my confession that I am not worthy to share your honors. I was
weighed in the balance and found wofully wanting. The verdict of the
scales thirteen years ago cannot be reversed by an eternity of regrets."
"Hush, hush! we bury the past. Twice at the polls the people gave me
their confidence, and gratefully I hold the solemn responsibility as a
precious trust to be sacredly guarded, but public applause is starving
diet to a hungry heart. My darling, between you and me remains no
question of confession or absolution, and to-night blots out those
terribly bitter years. It is my right to readjust the balance; in one
scale I lay all civic honors, the other holds my life-long Sweetheart
outweighing every other earthly treasure. I ask at your hands the one
blessing lacking in my career. Give me, oh, give me at last the only
real crown that can glorify a man's life--the tender love of a faithful,
pure wife! I will no longer be denied."
He stepped closer, took her cold, quivering hands in his warm palms, and
she hid her face against his arm.
[Illustration: "_Roy--my own Roy._"]
"You have suffered from my frantic accusations on that dreadful July
day, but you will never understand the intolerable bitterness of my
punishment, scourged all these dreary, mournful years by keen, torturing
self-reproach. Roy--my own Roy--I am not worthy, but the world is empty
and desolate for me without the one love of my life."
Transcriber Notes:
Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
Throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe".
Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the
speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. Thus
the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in
the List of Illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the
same in the List of Illustrations and in the book.
Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
unless otherwise noted.