MONEY, HEAPS OF MONEY.
Mark Claghorn, standing by the window of that room at Stormpoint which
was especially set aside as his own, but which, in its luxurious
fittings, bore rather the traces of the all-swaying hand of the mistress
of the mansion, gazed moodily out toward the tomb, speculating, perhaps,
as to the present occupation of the soul that had once been caged in the
bones that crumbled there.
To whom entered Mrs. Joe, who silently contemplated him awhile, and
then, approaching, touched his shoulder. He turned and smiled, an act
becoming rare with him. "Mark," she said, "I am getting old."
"You look as young as my sister might," he said.
"That's nonsense," but she smiled, too. Barring some exaggeration, she
knew that his words were true.
"Even so," she urged seriously, "you have wandered enough. You might
stay here for my sake."
"Mother, I will stay here for your sake."
"Only that, my son? You know I want more than that."
"Yes," he said, "you want too much. Let us have it out. Believe me, your
pleasant dream of a political career for me is hopeless. Granted that I
could buy my way to high office--though I do not think so--could I ever
respect myself, or command respect? Where, then, would be the honor?"
"I never thought of buying."
"No, not in plain terms. But at my age, together with the fact that I am
a stranger, at least a newcomer, in this State, money would be my only
resource--perhaps a hopeless one, in any case. The rich man must learn
his lesson, which is, that wealth bars the way to honor."
"Our senior Senator is rich."
"I do not speak of moderately rich men. Suspicion is even directed
(unjustly, I believe) against such men. But the whole State knows that,
politically, our Senator has risen from the ranks. Perhaps he has been
compelled to buy that which is his due--who can tell? But all know that
at least he has earned the distinction he has won."
"And could you not earn it?"
"No. I am not merely moderately rich. I should be 'held up' by every
rogue that glories in the name of politician. If I refused to buy, and
refuse I must, I should have no chance whatever. Gold besmirches many
things. A rich man is of necessity defiled, let him keep his hands as
clean as he can."
Mrs. Joe sighed.
"You have not been willing to realize the facts which influence my
life," he went on. "We must look facts in the face. Political
distinction is not for me. For your sake I would try, were I not assured
that your disappointment would be inevitable. He laid his hand upon her
shoulder. He spoke very kindly.
"Mark," she said--there were tears in her eyes--"I wish you were happy."
"If I am content----"
"But you are not. Oh, Mark, seek happiness. Marry."
He smiled grimly. "I wish I could," he said.
"Mark, you say my dream is hopeless. I surrender it. Is yours less
hopeless? You wear your life away. Is it worthy to wait for a man to
die?"
He made no answer.
"Dear," she said, and the word moved him deeply, for though he knew how
much he was beloved of his mother, a term of tenderness was rare from
her lips--"Dear, you know what she wrote me."
"You showed me the letter. She gave me the same advice long ago."
"It is the right thing to do. Paula loves you. Natalie is lost to you.
You do not know where she is; she does not intend that you shall know.
She will not marry you now, even though death were to free her from the
bonds she has assumed. She is right. Mind, Mark, I say no word of
censure. I believe in her purity as I do in Paula's--but the world will
talk. That which she has done cannot be kept secret, but her motive must
remain a secret. Had the man died----"
"Enough!" he said sternly. "You say you believe in her as you do in
Paula. No shadow of suspicion can ever cross my mind or yours. We need
not consider the world----"
"But, my son, she will consider it. She does consider it. Her letter to
me shows it. That letter was no easy one for a woman to write. Do you
think she would even indirectly have disclosed your secret to me, except
that she believed it necessary for your good? I do not doubt, Mark, that
she has renounced your love even to you. Is it not unworthy to----"
"To love without hope? Perhaps it is. But since the fact is not
generally known--here, as in some other things, the sin consists in
being found out." He laughed. "You know you didn't find out; you were
told."
"Yes; in the hope, I verily believe, that the disclosure would wound you
and so kill your love."
"It wounded, certainly," he said bitterly. "Perhaps, if you give it
time, the wound may yet be as fatal as you wish--as she wished." He
laughed again very grimly. "Strange creatures, women," he said. "Their
self-sacrifice includes the sacrifice of every one but self."
"That is cruel! From no possible point of view can her life be a happy
one."
"How you quarrel about a man and cling together against a man!" he said,
smiling down upon the lady, who had no other answer than the shrug
which, when it moves feminine shoulders, implies that masculine density
is impenetrable. His smile broke into laughter.
It aroused her secret indignation; but encouraged her, too. If he could
laugh, her case was not hopeless.
"Mark, let us be sensible. You should marry and have children. What else
is open to you, the rich man? You have no faith in the world, none in
friendship, none in love. Consider what your life must be if, at this
age, all purer sources of feeling are dried up! In marriage you will
find them all reopened. Your family will be your world. You need
children. I need them. We are rich; yes, horribly rich. What is all this
worth to us? You are the last of a race, honorable since the tenant of
yonder grave first set foot upon this soil; honorable before that time.
Shall that race die in you? My son, that old-world notion of Family is
estimable. This country needs that it be cherished. The wealth will not
be so new in the next generation. Your sons will not be strangers in the
land of their fathers. You shall so train them that in them you shall
reap the distinction denied to you. You say I am yet young. I am not
old, and may still live to see my grandsons honored by their fellow men.
By your own confession nothing remains to you but marriage. Love is
offered you daily, by one most sweet and most lovable. Paula----"
He stopped her by a gesture. Her unwonted energy had impressed him. She
had spoken well. "You have uttered many truths," he said, "but what you
say of Paula is not kind, nor do you know----"
"Mark! on my honor as a woman, I believe that Paula loves you." Then she
left him.
He remained long musing. Why should he not make his mother happy? It was
true, waiting for a man to die was a pitiful occupation. And even should
the man die there would be no hope for him. It was a year since Natalie
had hidden herself with her burden and Tabitha Cone. Hidden herself, as
he well knew, from him. She had written both him and his mother. She had
not feared to again acknowledge her love; but she had prayed him to
forget her. And she had told him that Paula loved him; she had shown him
that his duty required him to love Paula in return; finally, she had,
almost sternly, bade him cease to hope.
Perhaps his mother was right. Perhaps Paula loved him--as much as she
could love. He loved her in the same cool fashion. He was used to her.
She was very beautiful, completely amiable, kind and gentle. Not very
brilliant, yet if simple-minded, not a fool. Marriage would bring out
all there was of Paula, and that might be much more than was generally
suspected. And whatever it was it would be lovable. He knew he was
living the life of a fool. Why live that life consciously? Why not make
his mother completely happy; Paula and himself happier; as happy as they
could be?
He turned to his desk and opened a hidden drawer therein. From this he
took a small packet of papers. "A man about to die or marry should set
his house in order," he muttered, as he spread the papers open. There
was the first letter Natalie had ever written him; a reply to his letter
of condolence concerning her father's death. He glanced over it and
slowly tore it into fragments. He did the same with the few others
written by her, all except the last he had received. This was in answer
to a letter into which he had thrown all the strength of his soul,
lowering, if not completely breaking down, the last barriers of reserve
behind which those who feel deeply hide their hearts.
He could not complain that in her answer she had not been equally frank.
"From the innermost depths of my soul I love you, and if more can be, I
honor you still more--and because I so love and honor you I must not see
you again. I have loved you since the day I first saw you in the
Odenwald. I loved you when I became the betrothed of another. I hoped
then you would find a way to free me from the promise I had given. I
aver before Heaven that I tried with all my strength to be a faithful
wife. I loved my husband; alas! not as I know now, with a wife's love,
but I believed it. Yet--let me confess it--at the very bottom of my
heart slept my love for you, not dead as I had thought it. I have sinned
against you, against him who was my husband, against myself. We must all
suffer for my sin. You are strong. I must gather all the strength I can
for the duty that my guilt has laid upon me--to bear my fate and to make
a ruined life as endurable as unremitting care can make it. My sin was
great. Consider my expiation! I must always see before my eyes my
handiwork.
"You love me. Do you think that ever a doubt of your love crosses my
mind? You will always love me. I know it. But, if you see me no more
that love will, in time, become a tender reminiscence--not worth a tear,
rather a smile--of pity let it be, for the lives that are wrecked. But
from this day forth let your own life present a fair ideal to be
realized. One has grown up beside you whose fate is in your hands. The
fashioning of her destiny lies with you. To be a happy wife and mother,
the lot for which nature intended her, or to live the barren life of a
religious devotee; and knowing her as I do, I know that for you,
embittered and distrustful by reason of your burden of inordinate
wealth, she is supremely fitted to make your life serene and cheerful in
return for the felicity you will bring to her.
"Adieu, for the last time. I shall not forget you, but shall love you as
long as I live, and as warmly as I love you now. But deliberately, and
with unalterable resolve, I have chosen my lot. Nothing, not even the
hand of death, can render me fit to be more to you than the memory of
one who has lived her life."
He slowly tore the letter into fragments as he had torn the others.
Perhaps his mouth twitched as he did so. He looked upon the little heap
of paper on his desk. "The Romance of a Rich Young Man," he muttered,
and smiled at the conceit. Then he gathered the fragments in his hand
and strewed them upon some tinder in the chimney and applied a match.
"Gone up in Smoke," he said aloud.
"Did you speak?" asked his mother, who had entered the room.
"I repeated the title of a novel I am going to write," he said. "I
wanted to hear how it would sound."
"You must live a romance before you can write one, Mark."
"True," he answered dryly. "I need experience. Where is Paula?"
"Oh, Mark!"
He kissed her. "Yes," he said, "I will do what I can to make you happy,
and--gain experience."
Mrs. Joe's eyes beamed through her tears.
"She is in the library."
Leaving the room by the window, which opened upon a veranda, he walked
toward the library, the windows of which opened upon the same veranda.
The library windows were divided in the centre, like doors. They were
open now, and the thick French plate reflected like a mirror. In the
open window pane he saw, as in a mirror, a portion of the interior.
Paula was there, and Paula's head nestled against the breast of Father
Cameril, and the good Father's arm encircled her while his lips pressed
hers.
Mark stole silently away.
He found Mrs. Joe awaiting him in the room he had left. "Be very kind to
her, mother," he said. "She will have something to tell you."
"But you have been so quick----"
He smiled. "I shall not be the hero of the tale. Father Cameril is the
lucky man. After all, it is better. I could not have made her happy as
she deserves to be. I am glad I was prevented from offering her----" He
hesitated.
"Your heart," said Mrs. Joe.
"An insult," he answered curtly, as he left the room, strolling toward
Eliphalet's tomb.
And at Eliphalet's tomb he recognized that Natalie had been wise. Now
that it was lost to him he knew that his last long-neglected chance for
happiness was gone. Happiness! Perhaps the word meant too much, but in
Paula's companionship he could at least have found, in time, contentment
and cheerfulness, and are these not happiness, the highest happiness?
What now was left him? Money, heaps of money! It barred the way to
honorable ambition; its heavy weight lay on his heart, breeding therein
suspicion of the love or friendship of all men and women. For him life
must be a solitude. He could never lie beside a wife assured that he had
won her for himself. He knew that the deadly poison of distrust must
ever and ever more thoroughly taint his being, distorting his vision and
rendering the aspect of all things hateful. Yet how many thousand men,
whose clothes and dinners were assured them, would be glad to change
places with him! "But all I have are clothes and food," he muttered.
"We are all poor critters!" Deacon Bedott had spoken words of wisdom.
"But the poorest of all is the Rich Man, Deacon," he said.
And then bethought him that by this time Paula and Father Cameril would
have made their great announcement. "Little Paula!" he murmured. "Well,
she shall have joyous wedding bells, at least, and smiling faces. For
the rest let the fond Father look to it!"