“Leave Maisie?” he cried incredulously.
She smiled at him, more in control of herself now than he.
“No. I am taking Maisie with me,” she said with deliberate calmness.
“But you can’t! I will not allow it!”
“Perhaps you propose to sit here all day and watch her?” she asked,
with biting sarcasm. Then, with a sudden change of tone, indignation
flamed up in her. “What is she to you?--Is she any more to you than
I am?--Do you see her from one month’s end to another?--Do you ask
after her? Do you write to her? Do you take the faintest interest in
her?--No!--Once you leave this flat and go to your hateful paper, you
forget her as utterly as you do me!” Her eyes blazed at him. “Maisie
and I are all the world to each other, Jack! And we will not be
separated! We go together!”
The violence of this outburst from the woman whose docility he had
so long accepted as naturally as he did that of his staff upon the
_Rostrum_ shocked him profoundly. At the same time, a blinding passion
of jealousy surged up in him.
“You shall not go!”
“I shall!” There was no mistaking the determination in her voice. “The
moment your back is turned!”
The room seemed to reel about him. The hitherto so solid foundations
of his existence had broken up suddenly beneath him. He could not have
suspected so great a capacity for emotion in himself. He pressed his
hand against his brow, closed his eyes tight in the sickening shock.
“Who is it?” he asked hoarsely. “The man?--His name?”
Her eyes seemed to be probing the depth of his wound as they looked
into his, but they showed no compassion.
“I cannot tell you.” Her tone was unshakably firm.
There was again a silence, in which he fought for mastery over himself.
He looked at her in uncomprehending despair.
“Betty! Betty, tell me why?--For God’s sake, tell me why!--You used to
love me. Tell me why you’ve changed!”
She evidently was also fighting to keep his emotion from communicating
itself to her. He thought, as he waited for her answer, that her head
never looked more nobly beautiful.
“Do you remember, Jack? Ten years ago?--Ten years to-day?--You said to
me: ‘You cannot live without love!’ You were right.” A sob, that almost
escaped its check, came into her voice. “I cannot live without love.”
He looked for yet another moment upon the sad dignity of her face,
upon the quivering, sensitive mouth, upon the eyes that brimmed with
tears--then, with an impulsive movement, he sprang forward, seized her
two hands in his. The tears were in his eyes also, and in his voice.
“Oh, Betty, Betty darling! I remember! And I said ‘I love you! I love
you! Trust yourself to it whatever happens!’--Oh, Betty! Is it too
late? Is it too late?”
Her eyes looked deeply into his, incredulous at first of his sincerity,
then softening in a wonderful certitude, she let herself go into his
enfolding arms, her mouth drawn wistfully close to his, yet still, for
a moment, withheld. All pride went out of her suddenly. She implored,
like a soul that has an unbelievable chance of life.
“Oh, Jack! You do love me?--You love me still!--Oh, Jack, Jack!”
She buried her head upon his shoulder, her body shaking with sobs.
He caressed her, soothingly.
“My dear! My beloved! My dear, dear Betty! Of course I love you! You
and Maisie are all I have in the world--and it’s mostly you!--Oh,
I know I’ve been a fool! I’ve thought only of my selfish ambition.
But, dear, try me again! I’ll be so much kinder to you, so much more
thoughtful.--And we’ll forget all this. Never remember it. I won’t even
ask you the man’s name.”
She half-raised her head from his shoulder, swallowed tearfully.
“There--there wasn’t any man!” she said, and broke down again into a
passion of sobs that would not cease.
* * * * * *
As he expected, the young man was waiting for him. Maisie was waiting
also, standing very tall and rigid by the window, in all the dignity
of youth measuring swords with the parental generation. He thought, as
he came into the centre of the room, how like her mother she was--her
mother twenty years ago, when she had faced _her_ father. He nearly
smiled at the remembrance, checked himself with a thought of the matter
in hand. This, of course, was quite different!
The young man rose to meet him. They shook hands with the amount of
stiffness proper to the occasion. He found himself suddenly wishing
that Betty were here, after all. He had been hasty in telling her to
keep out of the way. She could handle Maisie more tactfully than he
could. Very reasonable woman, Betty--she had seen his point of view at
once. These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind as he invited the
young man to a chair, seated himself. There was an awkward silence.
He and the young man broke it at the same instant.
“You wanted to speak to me----?”
“I think you understand, sir----”
Both stopped likewise at the same instant to make way for the other,
and both failed to recommence.
Maisie stepped forward impatiently, stood between them, towering
superbly.
“I don’t see why you want all this icy ceremony, both of you,” she
said scornfully. She turned to her father. “Jim wants to marry me,
Father--and I want to marry Jim. And that’s all there is to it!”
“Indeed!” He raised his eyebrows in mild sarcasm. “I wonder you thought
it necessary to inform me of such a trifling matter.”
“We thought it better to tell you.” Maisie was cheerfully unscathed.
“Much obliged, I am sure. I’m very interested. I expect you will both
of you want to marry lots more people before you’ve finished. I shall
always be willing to lend a sympathetic ear when you care to tell me of
the latest.”
“Father!” broke out Maisie indignantly. He felt that he had scored.
“This is serious!”
“It always is,” he said philosophically. “And you, young man? I suppose
you are burning to add your testimony of the solemnity of this occasion
to Maisie’s?” He felt that if he could only keep it up on this tone he
was safe. Maisie was apt to be so damnably stubborn and unmanageable
once he failed to maintain superiority. As for the young man--well, of
course, he was only a young man. He could soon manage _him_!
This young man, however, was no whit abashed.
“I am, sir,” he said, confidently. “Maisie and I are made for each
other!” he added, uttering the banality as though it were now for the
first time new-minted for the lovers’ lexicon.
“Really?--It is a happy chance, for certainly Maisie’s mother and
myself omitted to take you into account when we----”
“Father!”
“--named her at the baptismal font,” he continued, equably. He had
scored again.
The young man was impervious.
“Perhaps there are higher Powers than you, sir?” he ventured, with
polite deference.
“--Even if you are the editor of the _Daily Rostrum_!” added Maisie
viciously.
He resettled himself in his chair under this lively counter-attack.
“Well, let us drop these witticisms,” he said with some asperity. “Come
to business. Let’s hear your case, if you have one.”
“Certainly, sir. I ask your permission to marry Maisie.”
“I appreciate the courtesy. What is your income?”
The young man hesitated.
“Well--at present, sir----”
“Nothing, I suppose?” He was still keeping his end up, was
well-satisfied with the tartness of that question. He nearly smiled as
he watched the young man wriggle.
“I must confess, sir--but I have qualifications--and I am ambitious!”
“All young men are ambitious,” he replied, oracularly. “Let us hear the
qualifications!”
“I graduated with honours at my university----”
“Pooh! So did the man who sells my paper at the corner of the street!”
“--and I have great hopes of getting a good job.”
“Indeed!--Where?”
“On your paper, sir!”
He was staggered by the young man’s impudence.
“My compliments!--But, as I unfortunately fail to share those hopes, I
must regretfully refuse the permission you ask for!”
He had only just managed to keep his temper.
Maisie sailed forward to the attack.
“But, Father, you have often told me that when you married Mother you
were only a graduate with your first job on the _Rostrum_! We don’t
mind struggling--we should _like_ to struggle--just as you did!”
“Things were different then. That was a long time ago. In this year of
nineteen forty-two life is much more difficult than when your mother
and I were young.”
“It only seems so to you because you have got old. It isn’t difficult
to us young people!” said Maisie, smilingly positive.
He winced under the unconscious cruelty of this remark.
“Perhaps you will allow my experience to be the best judge,” he
said, snappily. “In any case, I refuse my permission! The idea is
ridiculous!--I do not think there is any more I need say, young man,”
he concluded, making a movement to rise from his chair.
Maisie pinned him down to it, both arms around him, kneeling at his
side, her face--Betty’s young face!--looking up to him in winsome
appeal.
“Father!” she said, and her voice was full of soft cajolery, “if any
one took Mother away from you, wouldn’t you feel it dreadfully?” He had
a sudden little flitting vision of a crisis ten years back. “Would life
be worth anything to you?--I mean it seriously.” She paused for a reply
he refused to give. “Well, Father--that’s just what life will be like
to Jim if you take me away from him!”
“I don’t see the necessity of the parallel,” he countered, feebly.
“Oh, yes, you do. And Father!--If any one took you away from
Mother?--What would life be like to her?--You know! _Just a dreary
blank!_--And that’s what my life will be like if you send Jim away from
me!”
“But----” he began.
She put her hand over his mouth, a deliciously soft young hand, with a
faint fragrance that reminded him----
“No!” she continued, inexorably. “Listen to me! I haven’t finished.
If any one took you from Mother, and she knew where to find you--what
would she do? You know! She would go to you, whatever was in the
way!--And, Father, that’s what I should do!--Father!” she said, and
her tone was full of solemn warning, “would you like to think of your
darling little Maisie starving somewhere in a top back room--and
hating you, _hating you_!” her voice suddenly became almost genuinely
vicious, “because you wouldn’t give her husband a chance to earn his
living? Would you like to sit day after day, not knowing where she
was, wondering all sorts of things--with Mother sitting on the chair
opposite and not daring to say a word--day after day, and year after
year, and never hear from her any more?--And all because you were a
stubborn, foolish old man who had forgotten what real love was!”
“But, Maisie----” he did not himself know what he was going to say.
She snuggled up close to him, looked up into his face.
“Dadsie!” she said, and the voice was the voice of the child Maisie who
had so often looked up from his knee with just that irresistible smile
which had brought strange tears to his eyes then as it did now--sudden
tears he could not quite keep back. “Dadsie!” she said once more and
her tone went straight to his heart. “You do love your little Maisie,
don’t you? And you want to make her happy--all her life you have wanted
to make her happy and you’re going to make her happy now. You are
going to give her Jim, her man--like you are Mother’s man--a chance
to make good. You are going to give us both a chance to make good
together--like you and Mother have made good together. You are still
going to be Maisie’s dear, good, kind, generous father whom she will
always love--aren’t you, Dadsie?”
The young man stood up.
“Sir,” he said, “I’ve lost my father. And if I could choose another
one--I should like it to be you!”
The older man warmed suddenly at the unmistakable sincerity of
his tone. He was a good lad, after all--very like himself, he
thought--twenty years ago!
“Dadsie!” implored Maisie, her arms still about him. “Dadsie!--Say
yes!--Just think it’s Mother and you starting for the first time!”
Something broke down in him--almost the barrier against unmanliness. He
blew his nose quickly and his smile had a twist in it as he looked into
Maisie’s eyes.
“That’s not fair!” he said. “But you’ve won. You shall have your
chance.--You can start to-morrow, young man, but, mind--to work!” He
stood up, went to the door.
“Betty!” he called as he opened it.
She stood there--smiling at him. He guessed suddenly that she had been
there all the while.
“Well?” she said, her eyes happy.
He glanced round to where the two young lovers had stood. But they had
vanished together into the garden.
“I’ve been an old fool, my dear!” he said, smiling.
“You’ve been an old dear!” she replied, putting an arm about him and
coming with him into the room. “You couldn’t have made me a better
birthday present!” Her eyes, also, were full of tears.
“Forty to-day!” he said, “and it only seems like yesterday since you
and I----”
“And you still love me?” she queried, in a tone that had no doubt,
looking up into his face.
“I still love you,” he replied, happily positive. “Just as I did then!”
Arms about each other, he led her in front of the big mirror over the
fireplace and they smiled at the reflected picture of their union.
“She called me an old man,” he said, a little ruefully, patting his
hair before the mirror. “I’m getting a bit gray, too.” He looked at
her. “But you, dear, you haven’t got a gray hair--and in my eyes you
are just as beautiful as ever!”
She shook her head slowly at him in delight.
“And you are just as handsome!”
He smiled down upon her.
“Maisie accused me of being too old to remember what true love was,” he
said. “Do you think so, dear?--Have we forgotten?”
“Darling!” she whispered, as she snuggled close against him.
They kissed, believing that their kiss was just the kiss of twenty
years ago. It wasn’t. It was a symbol of infinitely more.
* * * * * *
He sat tapping his foot impatiently on the carpet of the ante-room to
the council-chamber of the _Daily Rostrum_. Behind the closed door
a meeting of the chief proprietors was in secret deliberation. He
glanced at his watch, his dignity fretting at this unwonted exclusion,
an unacknowledged anxiety unsettling his nerves. He knew himself to
be on the threshold of a new epoch. An enterprising, young-blooded
syndicate was acquiring the _Daily Rostrum_, was even then in conclave
with the old proprietors, agreeing upon the final terms. They had sent
for him--had asked him (oh, most courteously!) to give them yet five
minutes.
But he was resentful of those five minutes. Young Henry Vancoutter
(not so very young now, though--he must be forty!--Let me see--twenty
years----), the chief proprietor, ought to have treated him with more
consideration. He deserved better than to be left cooling his heels
while the destinies of his paper--_his_ paper, for he if any one had
made it, had lived for it for forty years, had been its unchallenged
autocrat for thirty--were in the balance. The old man would never
have done it, he thought, resentful of this rising generation. Never
once was old Vancoutter lacking in the respect due to him, the prince
of editors who had made his property one of the most valuable in the
journalistic world.
He wondered what the future would bring. Doubtless the policy of the
paper would be changed--that was only natural, of course. They must
go ahead with the times (he nerved himself for an effort that he felt
would be a tax upon his strength). Yes--perhaps they had fallen a bit
behind of late. The circulation was not what it was--not half what it
had been fifteen years ago. They had made rather a virtue of being a
trifle old-fashioned, appealing to conservative instincts. Not in the
old days, certainly--but for the last twenty years. And undoubtedly
they had suffered from it. He must look up the side-lines a bit--the
radio-service to private subscribers, for example. He drifted on to a
vague calculation of the initial cost for the service of wirelessed
cinema-pictures of current events, mingled with advertisements, with
which their go-ahead rival the _Lightning News_ was making so great
success with hotels and flat communities. His jaw set. He would beat
them on their own ground. He would show the world that the editor of
the _Rostrum_ was still alive, was still a power.
Yes--he was not done yet. He could not--no one could--conceive the
_Rostrum_ without him. He was the paper itself. There was not the
faintest possibility of his being replaced. It was unthinkable as
practical near politics, as unimaginable as death itself. Such a day
was, thank God, still remote. Old proprietors or new, there was no
question that he was the indispensable editor. But he would have to put
his shoulder to the wheel.
He wondered what Betty would think of the changes. Poor old Betty! She
was getting very frail, but (he thought, cheerfully) considering that
she was sixty to-day she was a wonderful woman. He glanced at his watch
again, fidgeted with impatience. She would be waiting for him in the
car outside--very nice of the old dear to come down for him every day
as she had done for now, let me see, was it five or six years past?
Ever since he had had his illness. Dear old Betty! He warmed himself
with the thought of the splendid fur coat he was going to buy her as a
birthday present that afternoon.
The door opened suddenly. Young Vancoutter uttered his name with a
smile, murmured an apology, beckoned him in.
He entered, glanced round upon the familiar faces and the new ones
gathered on each side of the long table. The new looked up at him with
interest, the old bent over blotting-pads on which they scribbled idly.
He seated himself.
Vancoutter spoke in his familiar crisp tones.
“Mr. Trenchard, I have to inform you that the board has come to very
satisfactory terms with the syndicate who are, in fact, now the new
proprietors of the _Daily Rostrum_.” The speaker paused for a moment,
cleared his throat. “You will, of course, readily understand that
these new proprietors wish to have complete control of their property
and that their ideas of editorial management may not coincide with
ours--with those which you have so successfully and so worthily upheld
for so many years.” He felt himself turn sick as he listened, pinched
his lips together lest his emotion should be remarked. A mantle of
ice seemed to compress him. Vancoutter continued, with an indulgent
smile: “We for our part, of course, have safeguarded the interests of
a man who has served us so brilliantly, whose association with our
paper----” ‘_Our paper_’! He almost smiled in bitter irony.“--has so
materially contributed to bring it to that pitch of influence at which
it is still maintained to-day. Therefore, as part of the purchase-price
paid by the new proprietors, ten thousand shares have been set aside
as your property--and, if you prefer it, the syndicate has engaged
itself to buy those shares of you, cash down, at the current market
valuation----”
He scarcely knew what followed. He had only the most indistinct
recollection of several other long-winded speeches whose flattery was
sincerely intended to soften the blow. He could not remember what he
himself had said--apparently, he had kept his dignity--had duly thanked
the old proprietors. Of all the welter of words, he clearly recalled
only--“The younger generation, Mr. Trenchard! A man of sixty-two owes
it to himself to retire!”--and they haunted him, rang over and over
again in his brain like the knell of his life.
At last he escaped, went stumbling blindly down the stairs, forgetting,
for the first time for forty years, the elevator. Betty was waiting for
him in the closed car, her head peering out of the window. He groped
for the door, almost fell into it. She helped him to the seat.
“My dear! What is the matter?” she said, white with alarm. “Are you
ill?”
He clenched his jaw in the agony of his humiliation.
“Sacked!” he said briefly, the tears starting to his eyes. “Sacked at a
moment’s notice!”
She stared at him, unable at first to grasp the full significance of
his words.
“Oh, no, Jack! No!” she said. “No! You can’t mean it! It’s not true?”
He nodded, gazing fixedly out of the window, away from her.
“It’s true!” he replied grimly. “My life’s finished!”
She felt timidly for his hand, pressed it without a word. He turned
and faced her. They looked for a moment into each other’s eyes, then
suddenly he crumpled into her arms, a dead-beat old man, and sobbed
like a child.
“Oh, Jack, dear! Jack!” she said, caressing the gray head upon which
her tears fell like rain. “At last we can be together!”
* * * * * *
They sat side by side on the porch of the country-house, overlooking
the wide lawns which swept down to a belt of trees and the river.
Along the bank two young couples were walking in a close and intimate
comradeship whose happiness was indicated by the bright young laughter
which floated at intervals, in the stillness of the sunny afternoon,
to the porch of the house. He watched them as they went, then turned
silently to his companion. Betty sat, sweetly placid, a little smile
just accentuating the loose wrinkles on the soft face, her eyes looking
perhaps after the young people, perhaps into happy thoughts. He thought
she was very beautiful as she sat there--and inestimably precious.
“Betty darling!” he said suddenly, lifting her hand to his lips, “to
think that you are seventy to-day!”
She turned and smiled at him, her pale-blue eyes darkening with
grateful love.
“Nineteen seventy-two, Jack!” she said, softly. “Do you remember----?”
His smile answered hers.
“Yes, dear. I remember----”
She checked him with a little gesture.
“Hush! Don’t speak!” she murmured, as though in awe.
They sat there, hand in hand, in silence, gazing over the lawns to
where their grandchildren wandered with the lovers of their choice,
in a quiet ecstasy for which they had no words. Love swelled in them,
filled them with the soundless harmonies wherein Life’s discords are
resolved.
* * * * * *
“Hush! Don’t speak!”
He opened his eyes. Betty was bending over him. Betty? He stared
at her, puzzled. Where were the soft wrinkles, the gray hair? This
was Betty--Betty as she used to be all that time ago. Then his
consciousness readjusted itself suddenly to its environment. He gazed
round on an unfamiliar bedroom where Betty moved with an air of
proprietorship.
“I have had such strange dreams, dear----” he said weakly.
She bent over him again, smiled.
“From the gate of horn?” she asked. How charming she looked!
He collected his thoughts with an effort--remembered, all at once.
“I hope so, dear--please God, they are!”
She rearranged his pillow, smoothed the sheet under his chin, smiled
again.
“Go to sleep, Jack--lots more sleep!” she commanded gently but
authoritatively.
Without strength or will to protest, he let himself relapse once more
into drowsiness. Suddenly he opened his eyes.
“What was the name of the man who wanted to marry Maisie?” he asked, as
though he had long been puzzling over the question.
“Maisie?” She looked at him in blank lack of comprehension.
“Our daughter!”
A beautiful smile of tenderness, of something ineffably feminine, came
into her eyes. What was it she gazed at in that instant of silence?
“Hush, dear. Don’t talk!” she said, softly, kissing him on the brow.
“Go and sit again by the gate of horn.”
THE WHITE DOG
Mr. Gilchrist was nervous and fidgety. He was alone, not merely in the
dining-room where he sat, but in the house; and solitude at night to
a man accustomed to find comfort and distraction in the presence of
others is a black desert where one starts at one’s own footsteps.