The colonel's visits now followed John Gault's with businesslike
regularity. One week from the afternoon when the younger man had paid
his last call, Colonel Reed had made his customary appearance and
proffered his customary request.
With each succeeding gift of money his spirits seemed to rise, his
gracious bonhomie to become more pronounced. Upon this occasion he
had said cheerfully, as he dropped the pieces of gold into his old
chamois-skin purse:
"It's these unconscionable tradespeople that eat up our resources! Why
can't a provident government arrange things so that we don't have to
pay butchers and bakers and milkmen? Life would be so much better worth
while if we could spend our money on clothes and books and entertaining
our friends than in paying bills. Now, this"--jingling the gold in the
purse--"goes to a son of Belial who sells us groceries on tick."
"Very kind of him, I should say," said the other. "Aren't you rather
lucky to have such good credit?"
"Well, that's what I think," said the colonel, throwing back his head
and laughing like an old prince in whom the joy of life and the desire
of the eyes still burned strong; "but Viola thinks credit is a trap set
by the king of all the devils."
"Women are apt to be cautious about that sort of thing."
"I don't know about all women, but Viola is. She is more afraid of
credit than she is of smallpox. But I say to her: 'My dear, look where
we would have been without it! And as long as these good, charitable
souls will give us food and drink for nothing, for goodness' sake let
them do it. Don't let's try and suppress such a worthy impulse.' Not,
of course," said the colonel, growing suddenly grave and squaring his
shoulders, "that we don't intend to pay them. We always do. Sometimes,
it is true, we're rather slow about it; but eventually things are
squared off to everybody's satisfaction. How else could we have the
credit?"
He asked this question with an air of triumph that, to the listener,
seemed to have something in it of conscious cunning. Gault answered
with a commonplace about the advantage of inspiring so great a trust in
the vulgar mind. The colonel was openly gratified.
"Oh," he said, as he moved toward the door, "there's something in the
name of Ramsay Reed yet. But not enough," he added, laughing with a
mischievous appreciation of the humor of his misfortunes, "to let a
grocery bill run on indefinitely. There was a day when my name was good
for any length of time--but that was thirty years ago."
Then he left, smiling and happy, and on the way home bought a pot of
pâté de foie gras, a bottle of claret, and a handkerchief with an
embroidered edge for Viola. At the grocery store on the corner of the
street where he lived he stopped and paid twenty dollars on his bill,
and then fared up the street with rapid strides, all agog with pleasure
at the thought of Viola's delight in his present, and the jolly little
supper they would have on the end of the kitchen table.
The man who had made these innocent pleasures possible was far from
enjoying those sensations of gratification said to be experienced by a
cheerful giver.
He had begun to know very dark hours. His first great love, come
tardily and reluctantly, at an age when the heart is almost closed to
soft influences and the mind is hardened with much worldly contact,
had come poisoned with torturing suspicions, with shame for his own
weakness, with fears of the truth.
Had he been a stronger man he would have torn up by the roots this
passion for a woman he dared not trust, have gone away and tried to
forget. But the lifelong habit of self-indulgence was too powerful
to be broken. He did not want to try and live without the charm and
torment of Viola's presence. Had he been weaker he would have yielded
to the spell, never dared to question, and gone on blindly into the
purgatory of those who love and doubt. All his life he had retained an
ideal of womanhood--a creature aloof from the coarseness of worldly
ambition and vulgar greed. Now he found himself bound to one the breath
of whose life seemed to be tainted with duplicity and sordid intrigue.
At times his state of uncertainty became intolerable. Then he resolved
to go to her, take her hands in his, and looking into her eyes, ask
for the truth. But the world's lessons of a conventional reserve,
a well-bred reticence, asserted their claims, and he found himself
contemplating, with ironical bitterness, this picture of his own
simplicity. If they were deceiving him, how they would laugh--laugh
together--at the folly of the pigeon they were plucking so cleverly! A
life's experience, caution, cynicism, had gone down into dust before a
girl's gray eyes. Could she be false and those eyes look into his so
frankly and honestly? Could those lips, that folded on each other in
curves so full of innocence and truth, be ready with words of hypocrisy
and deceit? When he was with her such thoughts seemed madness; when he
was away from her his belief seemed a miserable infatuation.
After the colonel's last appearance he again determined to try and see
her alone. This, he discovered, was not as easy of accomplishment as it
had been on his first attempt. Arriving at the house at four o'clock,
he rang repeatedly, but was not able to gain admittance. At last a
small boy, who had been studying him through the bars of the gate,
volunteered the information that the lady was out.
Gault turned away, and coming down the flagged walk, asked the child if
he knew what direction she had taken.
"I dunno that," said the boy, "but she went out with her basket, and
when she goes with her basket she generally stays a long while."
Gault rewarded him for his information with a piece of money, and
turned down the street toward the other side of town.
It was a windy afternoon. The trades were just beginning, and their
clear, chill sweep had already borne away some of the evil odors which
hung about the old portion of the city. Gault could feel the touch of
fog in their buoyant breath, and knew that long tongues of it like
white wool were stealing in through the Golden Gate. The city was
putting on its summer aspect--a gray glare, softened by the mingling of
dust and haze that rode the breezes. Bits of paper, rags, and straws
were collected at corners in little whirling heaps. Presently the
mightier winds would come, winging their way across miles of heaving
seas to rush down the street in a mad carouse, carrying before them the
dirt and refuse and odors and uncleanness which mark the dwelling of
man.
He had walked some distance when, rounding a corner, a sharp gust
seized him. In its fierce exultation it threw a whirlwind of dust into
his eyes, so that, for a moment, he did not see that she was coming
toward him. Then he caught a glimpse of the approaching figure and
recognized it. She did not see him, but was engaged in her customary
amusement of looking into the gardens. There was an air of unmistakable
alertness and gaiety about her. Her hand tapped the tops of the
fence-rails as she came, and she looked at the floral display behind
them with happy eyes. Her scanty black skirt was sometimes whirled
round her feet, showing her small ankles and narrow russet shoes. Once
she had to put up her hand to her hat,--a white sailor bound with a
dark ribbon,--and the frolicsome wind swept all the loosened ends of
her hair forward and lashed her skirts out on either side. She had a
basket on one arm, and holding this firmly, leaned back almost on the
wind, laughing to herself.
At the same moment she caught sight of him. The wind dropped suddenly,
as if conscious that she should not be presented in such boisterous
guise to a lover's eye, and her figure seemed to fall back into lines
of decorous demureness; only the color and laughter of her recent
buffeting still remained in her face.
"Is it you?" she cried. "Did you see me in the wind? Isn't it fun?"
They met, and he took her hand. She was all blown about, but fresh
as a flower that has shaken off the dew. The contrast between them,
between what might be called their different ranks in society, was much
more clearly marked in the open light of the street than in the ragged
homeliness of her own parlor.
While he was essentially the man of luxurious environment and assured
position, she presented the appearance of a working-girl. Even the
delicacy and refinement of her face could not counteract the suggestion
of her dress. Beauty when unadorned may adorn the most, but it cannot
give to ill-made old clothes the effect of garments made by a French
modiste. John Gault was used to women who wore this kind of clothes--so
used, in fact, that he hardly knew what made Viola appear so different
from the other girls of his acquaintance. The contrast in their looks
seemed to mark more clearly the contrast in their positions, seemed to
purposely accentuate that wide gulf set between them.
Gault took her basket from her and dropped into place at her side. The
high rows of houses protected them from the wind, and only as they
crossed the open spaces at the intersection of streets did it catch
them, and, for a moment, play boisterously with them.
The girl seemed in excellent spirits. He had noticed this with every
recurring visit. Looking back upon her as she was when he had first
known her, care-worn, pale, and quiet, she seemed now like a different
person. Her glance sparkled with animation, her voice was full of
that thrilling quality which some women's voices acquire in moments
of happiness. She was a hundred times more fatally alluring than she
had been in the beginning. He knew now that while he was with her his
reason would always be in abeyance to his heart.
"You seem to be in very good spirits," he said to her, not without a
feeling of personal grievance that some cause of which he was ignorant
should add so to her lightness of heart.
"I am," she answered. "I'm in very good spirits. I'm quite happy. It's
something lovely to feel so gay in your heart, isn't it?"
"I don't know; maybe I've never felt so."
"Oh, what nonsense!" she cried, looking at him reproachfully. "You, who
have always had just what you wanted! I used to be afraid of you at
first. It seemed rather awful to know anybody who'd always had things
go exactly their way."
He ignored the remark and said:
"What's making you happy? Tell it to me, and then perhaps I'll get a
little reflection of it."
"I don't know that it's any one especial thing. Happiness comes when
lots of little things fit nicely together. I never had one big thing in
a lump to make me happy. I tell you what's doing a good deal toward it.
Father and I are"--she made an instant's pause and then said--"doing so
much better; financially, I mean. It's such a relief! You don't know."
He turned and looked at her and met her eyes. They looked rather
abashed, and then fell away from the scrutiny of his.
"You don't think it queer of me to tell you that, do you?" she asked.
"I tell you a good many things I wouldn't say to other people."
"I am proud that you should have such confidence in me."
"Well," she continued, with a quick sigh of relief, "we've been
lately--that is, just about when we first knew you, and before
that--really quite badly off. And my father being so sanguine, and
having once been so differently situated, it's very hard on him--very
hard."
She paused, and he felt that she was looking at him for confirmation of
her remark.
"Very; I quite understand," he answered.
"And, really, it was dreadful. It's trying for old people--so much
anxiety. And then, just at the very worst, things suddenly brightened.
Just about a month or six weeks ago the luck changed. You must have
been the mascot."
This time he looked at her, but her glance was averted.
"Go on," he said, thinking that his voice sounded strange.
"Because it was after we knew you that things began to get better. I
was angry with my father that first day when he asked you in, because
I didn't want you to see how--how straitened we were. There's a pride
of poverty, you know; well, I suppose I must have a little bit of it.
Everything was at its worst then. But now it's all different. You've
been the mascot."
He again felt her eyes surveying him, but found it impossible to look
at her. In his heart he was afraid of what he might read in her face.
"Don't you like being a mascot?" she queried, in her happy girl's
voice. "You don't look as if you did."
"I'm proud and flattered, probably too much so for speech."
"I'm glad, because that's what you were. There's no getting out of it.
I'll tell you how it happened. My father used to own a great deal of
stock in mines and companies and things, and when everything went down
so fast, he sold almost all of it. But some he kept. He had it put away
in the drawers of his desk up-stairs in his room, and about two months
ago it began to go up, and now it pays dividends and we get them. Isn't
that good luck?"
She was close to him, looking into his face. He turned his head this
time and confronted her with a steady gaze. In the harsh afternoon
light every curve and line of her countenance was revealed. Her eyes
were full of light and joy. His glance met and held them for one
searching moment, then turned away baffled.
"Very good luck. I congratulate you," he said.
"You may well," she answered. "I'd given up expecting good luck ever
any more in this world. I believe in it, and my father's had come
and gone almost before I was born, and mine--mine hasn't come yet, I
suppose."
"Unless you discover some more old stock in the pigeonholes of the
desk."
"Oh, I don't think that's likely. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the
same place."
"What was the stock? Mining stock?"
She seemed in doubt for a moment, then said:
"Yes, I think so--yes, surely, mining stock."
"Do you remember the name of the mine?"
He glanced at her as she walked beside him. She appeared to be
cogitating.
"I don't believe I do," she answered at length. "To tell you the truth,
I don't believe my father mentioned it to me. I'm very stupid about
business. I've never had any necessity to know about it, and so I've
never learned."
"How long had it been lying in the desk?"
"Oh, years and years! Probably twenty. It was a relic of the days when
everything was booming."
"If he's been paying assessments on it all these years, he ought
certainly to be repaid now."
He was scrutinizing her sharply. Her profile was toward him, and at
this remark he saw the color mount into her cheek, and that curious
appearance of immobility come over her face which denotes a sudden,
almost electric stoppage and then concentration of mental activity. She
raised her head and said, without looking at him:
"Assessments are a yearly or semi-yearly payment, aren't they?"
"Yes, or quarterly--according to the way the stock is drawn."
"But isn't there some that is non-assessable? I've surely heard that
expression."
"In other States, but in California--well, possibly there might be."
"I'm sure there must be. This of my father's must have been." She
came quite close to him in her earnestness, and looked at him with an
expression of uneasiness on her face.
"It must have been that kind," she insisted; "probably you never heard
of this mine."
"Probably I never did," he answered grimly.
They walked on for a few moments in silence. There was a visible drop
in her spirits. Stealing a side glance at her, he could see that she
was looking down, evidently in troubled thought. Suddenly she raised
her head and said:
"Well, I don't really know anything about it. Only I do hope one thing,
and that is that it will go on paying."
"Don't bother about that," he said; "it will."
"What makes you think it will?"
He turned on her roughly and said:
"Don't you think it will?"
"I'd like to think so," she answered, abashed by his unusual manner;
"but I've learned that it's foolish to hope. I try not to."
He gave a short, disagreeable laugh and said:
"Oh, not in this case. Hope as much as you like."
"You're very cheering," she answered; "but I don't see how you can be
so sure."
"It seems to me you're very pessimistic--especially for a young woman
who has just found a drawerful of paying stock."
His manner in making this remark was so impregnated with angry
bitterness that Viola, chilled and repelled, made no response. In
silence they walked onward till a turn in the street brought them in
sight of the house.
At the gate she said rather timidly:
"Would you like to come in?"
He had been carrying the basket, and now found the depositing of it in
a place of safety an excuse to enter; for even in his present state of
morose ill humor he could not forego the pleasure of a few more moments
of her society.
In the cold, half-furnished house their footsteps echoed with a
strangely solitary effect. She preceded him into the parlor, and moved
about with the confident tread of the chatelaine, pulling up the
blinds, putting the basket out of sight, and laying aside her hat and
gloves. There were some thin flowered muslin curtains hanging over the
bay-window, and she arranged the folds of these with deft, proprietary
touches, and then stepped back and studied the effect.
After watching her for a moment the visitor said in a tone of restored
amiability:
"Aren't those something new?"
She looked at him with quick, grateful recognition of his change of
mood.
"Yes; do you like them? I changed my mind about a dozen times before I
bought them. Even now I don't know whether I'm entirely satisfied."
"Oh, you ought to be," he said, as he drew near and eyed the curtains
with the air of a connoisseur; "I'm sure you couldn't have chosen
anything prettier."
Viola's spirits rose to the level they had been at when he met her
earlier in the afternoon. Her eyes brightened and her face took on its
most animated expression.
"They're another outward and visible sign of the rise in mining stock,"
she continued. "I'm so glad you noticed them without my having to make
you do so."
"Do you want to know why I did?"
"Because they were pretty, of course."
"Not at all. I was looking at you as you arranged them, and wondering
why a pair of curtains should be so much more interesting than I was."
"What made you think they were?"
"Because you were devoting yourself to them and coldly ignoring me."
"That was because I was a little bit frightened of you. You were so
cross just now, before we came in, that I didn't know what to say to
you."
"I cross? What a calumny! I was in my sweetest humor."
She looked at him mischievously.
"If you call that your sweetest humor, all I can think is that you're
not as clever as you pretend to be."
"I'm afraid I'm not. For example, I'm not clever enough to understand
you--a little girl like you, scarcely half my age."
"Am I really such a sphinx?"
"You are to me."
"I like that," she said, smiling, and gathering up the edge of the
curtain in a frill; "I don't want everybody to see through me. But
you're different."
"How am I different?"
"You're more a friend than other people--more a friend than anybody
else I know. Tell me what you don't understand about me, and I'll
explain it. I won't leave myself a single secret."
Though he was standing close to her, looking down at her, he suddenly
dropped his voice to the key that was the lowest she could hear.
"If I only dared to ask, and you would only tell the truth."
"Dared to ask!" she repeated blankly, alarmed and upset by his singular
change of manner.
"And you would tell the truth," he added, and heard his own voice sound
suddenly husky and shaken. "Tell it to me now!"
"I always do," she stammered.
"No matter what it is," he continued, as if he had not heard her--"no
matter how it may hurt me or injure you."
The color ran over her face and as quickly ebbed away, leaving her
pallid. It might have been the confession of innocence or the confusion
of guilt. She looked nervously from side to side, raised her eyes to
his, and dropped them again.
"There are always a few things a person can't tell," she almost
whispered.
He gave an ugly laugh, and put his arm half round her as if to draw
her to him, then drew back as quickly, and turning away, walked to the
window. Viola did not seem to have noticed the attempted caress. There
was a moment of penetrating silence. He wondered if she could hear his
heart beat.
Then she said:
"Why do you say such strange things? I always tell you the truth."
To his listening ear her voice sounded affectedly naïve. He answered
without moving:
"Of course you do. So do all women since the days of Eve."
"But you don't seem to believe me."
"You mustn't jump at such hasty conclusions."
"Have you heard anything about me that would make you think I was
deceitful?"
"I have never spoken of you to any one except your father."
"I can't understand you at all to-day. You're so changeable and moody,
and sometimes so ill-humored."
"What a dreadful afternoon you've had! I'm sorry." Then, with an abrupt
change of tone: "Who picks up the leaves of the deodar and ties them up
in those neat little bundles?"
"I do--do you believe me?" She spoke with a sharpness he had never
heard her use before.
He broke out into sudden laughter that this time sounded genuine.
Turning from the window, he came toward her and took her hand.
"Are you angry?" he asked. "I don't wonder. Say the most disagreeable
things you can think of, and they won't be more than I deserve."
For the second time this afternoon she beamed over his restoration to
good humor.
"I'm not a very good person to quarrel with," she said, looking at him
with soft, forgiving eyes, "though, as you see, I've got a temper."
He gave her hand a little pressure and relinquished it, taking up his
hat.
"Accept a hundred apologies from me for my rudeness. Good-by."
"You _were_ disagreeable," she admitted, as they went together into
the hall. "You seemed as if you didn't believe half I said to you, and
actually as if our good luck made you angry."
Gault had opened the door, and his face was turned from her.
"Oh, don't think that," he answered, as he stepped out on to the porch;
"whatever gives you happiness adds to mine. Adios, señorita."
The door closed after him, and Viola stood alone in the hall, smiling
to herself. She made as if to watch him through one of the narrow panes
of glass which formed small windows on either side of the portal, then
suddenly drew back and shook her head.
"That would be bad luck," she said, "and I'm too happy to risk bad
luck."
* * * * *
It was a few days later than this that an opera company of some fame in
southern France was encouraged by a successful Mexican season to run
up to San Francisco. Californians are notoriously fond of music, and
the small opera companies which wander through the West, not daring to
measure their talents with the Eastern stars, generally can count on a
profitable season by the Golden Gate. Bad scenery, absurd costumes, and
indifferent acting do not damp the ardor of the Californian, who will
go anywhere and undergo any small discomfort to hear passable singing.
Mrs. Gault, who went every year or two to New York and found her ideas
there, as she did her hats and dresses, derided the local taste for
hearing unknown prima donnas as Leonora and Gilda. But her husband and
Letitia overruled her in at least this one particular, and when opera
came up from Mexico or across from New Orleans, she always went with
them, and tried to look as bored as her animated features and lively
style would permit.
This particular season, a short one of three weeks given by an Italian
company that had been touring Mexico during the winter, opened with
a performance of "Rigoletto." For the first night Mortimer Gault
procured one of the lower boxes, leaving it to his wife to fill it with
such company as she desired, provided a seat was left for him in the
background, where he could hear and would not have to talk. The party,
which consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Gault, Letitia, John, Tod McCormick,
and his sister Pearl, was late in arriving, and it was not until the
interval between the second and third acts that they found time to
look about the house. Letitia and Pearl were in the front of the box,
the latter on the inner side nearest the audience, with John Gault
sitting behind her in the shadow of the curtain. While Letitia looked
about the house through her lorgnon she could hear the animated chatter
of Pearl, interspersed with comments from Maud Gault and Tod.
"Do you see that woman in the box opposite--the pale one with the piece
of blue velvet twisted in her hair? She came up with the company, and
her husband is a professional gambler in Mexico and makes heaps of
money. You can ask Tod if you don't believe me."
Tod said it was all true, and that she was a "peach," a form of
encomium that, in his vast appreciation, he was fond of applying to
every member of the other sex that came within range of his admiring
eye.
"In the box above, where the two good-looking men are, that little red,
squeezed-looking woman is Lady Jervis, who used to be Tiny Madison ever
so long ago. She went abroad and married Sir Somebody or other Jervis,
and she's out here now with a syndicate."
"What is she doing with a syndicate?" Mrs. Gault asked. "Is she going
on the stage?"
"No; they're buying mines or railroads or something. Her husband's in
it, and all the others, they say, are English lords. That's part of the
syndicate with her now, in the box."
"What part of the syndicate?" said Tod. "The head, or the feet, or the
middle?"
"Don't get gay, Tod," said his sister, severely; "I don't like small
boys when they're too funny. Down there in the audience, near the
middle of the parquet, is the woman whose husband is something or other
in Central America. He's enormously rich, and she comes up here once a
year and buys clothes. They say she used to be on the stage, and she
looks just like it; she has such a lot of paint round her eyes and
such vaudeville hair. But you ought to see her children! They're quite
black, just like little negroes. Major Conway, who lived down there
a good deal, says that Central American children are all dark when
they're young, and then it wears off as they grow older."
"Do they use sapolio?" inquired Tod.
Pearl treated this inquiry with fitting scorn, and continued:
"There's Bertha Lajaune, over there by the pillar. Do you think she's
so beautiful? I must say I don't. I heard the other day that she was a
Jewess, and that her mother had one of those pawnbroking places south
of Market Street, and that they'd only just moved away a few years
when she married old Marcel Lajaune."
As Pearl rattled on thus, assisted by Tod and Mrs. Gault, Letitia let
her lorgnon follow on the track of their comments, idly passing from
face to face as their light talk touched on it.
She looked curiously at the wife of the Mexican gambler, a romantically
handsome woman, with a skin like a magnolia-petal, and a frame of
ebony hair setting off a face of Madonna-like softness. The lady in
the box above was not pretty at all, Letitia thought. She had a broad,
good-humored red face, an impudent nose, and a frizz of blond hair
crimped far down on her forehead in the English fashion. Her black
evening dress showed a section of white neck, and a piece of reddened
arm was visible between her short sleeves and the edge of her long
gloves. Letitia had been too young to remember her as Tiny Madison,
and wondered how a Californian could come to look so like a British
princess.
The Central American lady was much more interesting. She was like a
lily among the gipsy-looking dark women and small, beady-eyed men of
her suite. She was thin, pale, and haggard, with artificially reddened
hair and heavy eyelids much painted. Her eyes from under these looked
out with an air of languid world-weariness. She had some immense
diamonds round her throat, and the fan she lazily moved twinkled with
them.
Letitia studied her for some interested minutes, then passed on to
Bertha Lajaune, of whom everybody had heard and most people were
talking. She was accounted by many the most beautiful woman in San
Francisco, and had risen from an unpenetrated obscurity by her
marriage with a rich French wine merchant. Letitia disagreed with
Pearl. She thought Mme. Lajaune quite as beautiful as people said she
was. To-night, in a gorgeous toilet of pale lavender with a good deal
of silver and lace about it, she had the appearance of an ennuyéd
princess. Her pale skin, classic features, and large light eyes, with
an extraordinarily wide sweep of lid, seemed to stamp her as one
designed by nature to wear a crown. Letitia was about to turn and
draw John Gault's attention to her, when the lorgnon, in its transit,
suddenly commanded two faces just below--Colonel Reed's and Viola's.
They were not looking her way, and Letitia riveted the glass on them.
The colonel was sitting up and looking about alertly. He was instinct
with life, enjoyment, and animation. With his neck craned out of his
collar, he was surveying the audience, now and then turning to impart
some hasty comment to Viola. He had the eager, happy air of a man who
is in his element.
Viola was sitting back rather listlessly, with her hands clasped in her
lap. She was dressed simply but prettily in gray, and wore no hat. The
color was the one most perfectly suited to harmonize with her eyes and
hair. Among the handsome and well-dressed women that surrounded her,
she preserved the same suggestion of distinction and superiority that
Letitia had recognized when she saw her in her own ragged drawing-room.
Holding out the glass, Letitia turned to Gault, who was sitting silent
in the shelter of the curtain, and said:
"Colonel Reed's sitting down there."
He gave the slightest possible start, and moving forward, looked in the
direction she indicated.
"So he is," he said in an uninterested tone, "and with his daughter."
Unfortunately, Tod McCormick, who had drawn up as close to Letitia as
his chair would permit, heard this short dialogue and pricked up his
ears.
"Colonel Reed," he said vivaciously, "and his daughter? Where?"
He bent forward, his lean neck stretched out, his weazened visage full
of a curiosity that was only naïvely boyish, but that on his ugly and
insignificant features acquired a mean and disagreeable air.
"By gracious!" he said, after surveying the colonel with a knowing
grin. "At the opera, in the best seats, dressed like the lilies of the
field--oh, you old rascal!"
He wagged his head at the colonel with a look of wicked knowledge that
he was extremely fond of assuming.
"What do you mean?" said Letitia, twisting round on her chair so that
she could see him. "What makes you call him a rascal?"
"Oh, old rogue! old rogue!" repeated Tod, as though he had secret and
masonic intelligence of serious misdeeds in the colonel's past. "And
that's his daughter? Ain't she a peach!"
John Gault moved uneasily and looked back into the shadows of the box.
Letitia, feeling uncomfortable, said hurriedly:
"Yes, indeed. She's prettier than anybody here, I think."
"Except you, Tishy," said Tod, but, it must be admitted, in an absent
tone. He leaned farther forward, his eyes on the girl in the seat
below, the smile on his face changing from one of whimsical malice to
the slow, pleased grin of affected admiration.
"Well, she can draw my salary! She can have the key of my trunk!"
"Have you ever seen her before?" asked Letitia.
"No, but I've heard of her. Everybody's heard of her."
"It's very odd; I never did till the other day."
"You mightn't have. The boys, I mean. All of a sudden, every feller's
begun askin' every other feller if he knows Colonel Reed's daughter.
She's sort of in the air, like microbes."
"Why should she be?"
Tod shrugged.
"Oh, a girl as pretty as that can't be expected to blush unseen down in
South Park forever."
John Gault rose suddenly and went to the back of the box, where he
joined his brother, who was silently digesting his pleasure in the
music. Tod, quite unconscious of any offense, was glad to be left in
sole possession of Letitia, and rambled on, repeating tag-ends of
gossip that had lodged in his shallow brain.
"The colonel's a great old chap. He likes the 'long green.' He once had
plenty of it, and once you get the habit of having it, it's worse than
morphine to get cured of. The colonel ain't got cured."
"He hasn't got a cent," said Letitia, "so I don't see but that he's got
to get cured."
"There's two good ways of getting money when you ain't got it--just
two," said Tod, oracularly.
"And what are those?"
"Stealing and borrowing. And if you steal you know there's always a
risk about being an expense to your country; and no self-respecting man
wants that. But borrowing! Get a good, quiet, peaceable victim,--the
kind that don't make a fuss, likes to have his leg pulled, thrives on
it, misses it when you leave off,--and you're on velvet. I should judge
the colonel had found just the right kind."
"What a horrid thing to say, Tod!"
"Horrid! The colonel doesn't think it's horrid. I wonder who he's
corralled. Three years ago he took hold of my father. It was great, the
way he worked the old man. You know, people haven't been able to trace
Jerry McCormick through life by the quarters he's dropped. It did my
heart good to see the way the colonel managed him. I guess he must have
got nearly a thou' out of him before my father shut down."
"I shouldn't think his daughter would like that," said Letitia, feeling
a chill at her heart.
Tod raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. His faith in the pride and
fine feelings of young women who were poor did not appear strong. But
in spite of his assumption of a blasé cynicism, he was a kindly soul at
heart.
"Oh, she mightn't know," he said; "it's so easy to fool women."
Letitia was silent for a moment. Then she commented, as if speaking to
herself:
"I suppose it would be easy for her father to fool her?"
"Easy as lying."
"Do you suppose he borrows that way from other men?"
Tod directed upon her an incredulous side glance. Then, meeting the
anxious inquiry of her eyes, he broke into a broad smile.
"Well, I should snicker," he said, in an amused tone.
The curtain rose here, and further dialogue was cut off, for Letitia
was a lover of singing, and when the music began again, sank into
a rapt and immovable silence. During the other entr'actes the
conversation was general, and any more confidences on the subject of
Colonel Reed and his daughter were impossible.
In the foyer, on the way out, the party became scattered. Crowds
surging from the main aisle pressed forward and separated Mrs. Gault,
her husband, and Pearl McCormick from the other three, who had stopped
in an angle of space near the stairway for Letitia to adjust her
cloak. As Gault was shaking it out preparatory to laying it across her
shoulders, her attention was caught by the figures of Colonel Reed and
Viola, who emerged from the entrance of a side aisle just in front of
them.
The colonel's eye fell on Gault, his face beamed with recognition and
pleasure, and, with a word to Viola, he started forward to greet him.
Viola gave a vexed exclamation and caught him by the arm, evidently
with the intention of deterring him. But the old man, flushed with the
excitement of once more finding himself in the familiar scenes of light
and revelry, seized her hand, and, drawing her with him, came forward.
Viola, thus forcibly overruled, advanced, her face full of distressed
embarrassment.
Gault, who had been occupied with the cloak, had not seen this little
pantomime, and the first intimation he had of the colonel's proximity
was his loud and patronizing greeting. He turned quickly and saw the
old man, bland and majestic as ever, and beside him Viola, pained
and uncomfortable, the object of Tod's admiring stares, and only too
plainly dragged forward by her ill-inspired father. His face flushed
with annoyance, aroused alike by the false position in which the girl
was placed, and by the revelation thus made to Letitia that he had not
been frank when he had led her to believe that he did not know Colonel
Reed's daughter.
His indignation found expression in his cold and almost curt reply to
the colonel's greeting. There was no mistaking its import. It spoke so
plainly of annoyance that even the easy affability of the old man was
disturbed. He looked taken aback, and for a moment evidently did not
know what to say. Tod looked from one man to the other, grinning at the
embarrassment of a situation he did not understand. For a moment there
was a most disagreeable pause. Letitia knew that recognition would
betray the fact that she had met Viola, but the mortification of the
girl's position made her bold.
"How do you do, Miss Reed?" she said; and then, as a brilliant
afterthought, "Do you like music?"
"Very much," Viola managed to answer; "and it was good, wasn't it?"
"It was A1," said Tod, not by any means intending to be left out; "and
that prima donna, ain't she a peach?"
"Mme. Foedor is a lovely Gilda. She looks so young. Most of them are
too old and matronly," continued Letitia, fastening the clasps of her
cloak, and wondering if this exceedingly uncomfortable conversation was
to be prolonged.
Viola's reply put an end to her uneasiness:
"Lovely! I never saw her before, or the opera, either. But we must go.
Father, we'll miss the car if we don't hurry. Good night. Good night,
Mr. Gault."
She took the old man by the arm and tried to draw him toward the side
entrance. But the vision of Letitia in all the glory of evening dress
had been the last touch to the colonel's enjoyment on this momentous
evening. He seemed to have forgotten the repulse he had just received,
and hung back from his daughter's persuasive hand, looking with courtly
admiration at Miss Mason. She was keen enough to see that he would
again overrule his daughter and add further to the embarrassment of the
meeting, and sweeping her cloak round her, she said:
"We must go too, or we'll never find the others. Good night." And
with a little smiling nod she turned with her attendant cavaliers and
plunged into the crowd.
Tod, squeezing along beside her in the throng, said querulously:
"Why didn't you introduce me? I'd have given that old man a song and
dance, and he'd have asked me down there."
But Gault, on her other side, said nothing. Once, as the crowd jostled
her against him, she stole a glance in his direction, and found him
looking away with frowning brows and a morose expression. She wondered
if he had realized that her remarks to Viola indicated a previous
acquaintance. If he had he would certainly be angry with her.
Pearl and Tod were dropped on the way back, but Gault drove home with
the others. He said he had been suffering from insomnia lately, and a
walk would tire him out. Once in the house, Mortimer led him back into
the dining-room to try a new wine that had been made on the vineyard of
a mutual friend. Letitia and Maud were left alone in the drawing-room,
where the former, expressing fatigue, threw herself down in a long
chair, and the latter moved about turning down lamps, and here and
there arranging with a housewife's hand the disarray of tumbled
cushions and carelessly disposed draperies. Finally she passed out of
the room, and Letitia, still sitting where she had dropped, heard her
skirts rustling softly as she ascended the stairway.
Letitia did not move. She wanted to see John before he left. If he had
noticed her greeting of Viola Reed he would undoubtedly speak of it,
and she would be given a chance to explain. With any other man but John
it would have been nothing. But John was so peculiar, so reserved about
his own affairs, so resentful, so terribly resentful, of anything like
intrusion or interference. Letitia as she waited felt, much to her own
surprise, that she was growing nervous, that her heart was beginning to
beat uncomfortably hard and her breath to come uncomfortably short.
Suddenly she heard his voice, in the room beyond, bidding Mortimer
good night. She sat up quickly, and then as quickly looked down so as
to give her figure the air of repose and indifference which was so far
from her state of mind. He entered the room, and seeing her, said:
"Oh, Tishy, are you still there?"
The tone of his voice struck on her ear as singularly cold and aloof.
Her nervousness increased, for she sincerely feared his anger.
"Yes," she answered; "I--I--wanted to speak to you."
"What had you to say?" he asked, stopping before her, but not sitting
down.
It did not occur to her, in her state of trepidation, that the obvious
abstraction and coldness of his manner might be the result of causes
that she did not know. She at once leaped to the conclusion that he had
realized she had made Viola's acquaintance in some underhand way, and
that he was now bitterly incensed with her.
"I wanted to explain to you how--how--I came to know Viola Reed."
The remark dispelled all his indifference in an instant. The sudden
concentrating of his attention upon her in a piercing look and a sharp,
penetrating fixity of observation added a hundredfold to Letitia's
agitation.
"I--I--knew you'd be angry and probably misunderstand. You're always
so--so reticent and queer about your own affairs. I didn't see any harm
in trying to know Miss Reed. It was better, anyway, than letting Maud
go, and she was so set upon it."
Letitia raised her eyes pleadingly, then dropped them quickly. His were
blazing. But it was too late to go back now. He took a chair, drew it
up before her, and sat down.
"Just explain to me what you mean," he said quietly. "You and Maud have
been trying to make the acquaintance of Miss Reed--is that it?"
"We did more than try. We did it--I did it. I wouldn't let Maud. I was
afraid she'd do something. Maud sometimes hasn't got as much tact--as
much tact as she ought to have."
"How did you do it?"
"I just went there."
"You went there? You went into that lady's house--intruded, without
invitation or acquaintance--forced your way in as if you were a
peddler? I can't believe that of you, Letitia. You had some excuse for
going there."
Letitia rose to her feet. She did it unconsciously.
"I didn't exactly intrude; though I'll tell you the truth, John--I'll
not hide anything. I do think it was mean. I thought it after I got in
and saw how--how poor and miserable everything was. I felt mortified at
what I'd done. I wouldn't have gone in the beginning if I'd thought it
was as bad as that. But I had an excuse. I bought jam and four plants.
That's one of them on the stand."
"Bought jam and plants! What are you talking about? I don't understand
you."
"She sells them,--jam and plants,--and I bought three dozen pots and
four plants."
"You went there and bought these things from her in her own house?"
"Yes," Letitia answered, and went on helplessly, in order to say
something: "Four plants for two dollars. It was very cheap."
There was a moment's pause. Then the man said in a suppressed voice:
"You patronized her in her poverty--pried into her home, bought things
from her, gave her money! Good God!"
He dropped his voice and turned away, unable to finish. Letitia came
toward him. She knew that in this interview the happiness of her life
was at stake, and yet that she must be true to herself.
"I did give her money, but not as you mean. I was sorry for her and
wanted to help her. I wouldn't have hurt her any more than you would.
It was because of you I went there. It was because we heard you were so
interested in her. But after I got there I was ashamed and sorry, and
I tried not to make her feel it."
"So you gave her two dollars for four plants! It takes a woman to know
how to humiliate a woman!"
"I saw she wasn't the kind of person Maud thought she was," continued
Letitia, going blindly on. "I was certain they made a mistake in saying
the things they did about her. Even if you were giving them money, even
if you were supporting them, she wasn't that kind."
"Who told you I was supporting them?"
"Oh, I don't know--people say it. And maybe I did do her an injustice
in going there and spying on her, as you say. But you are the one who
has done her a real injustice--the kind of injustice that hurts."
"I!" he exclaimed, too surprised to defend himself. "What have I done?"
"You've kept it all so secret that you made people think there was
something wrong about it."
"Letitia," he cried, in a tone of warning, "take care! You've meddled
enough already."
"You hid away your friendship with her as if it were shameful. You
acted as if you were ashamed of her and of your knowing her--as if
there was something wicked about her, so you couldn't even speak of
her to me or any other woman that you knew well. When I asked you about
her, though you were too much of a man of honor to tell me a lie, you
were not too much of a man of honor to act one. You gave her father
money, but you were ashamed to acknowledge that you even knew her."
"We've had enough of this conversation," he said, now trembling with
rage. "Let it end."
He turned to leave the room, but Letitia's voice arrested him, and he
stood with his back to her, listening.
"You ought to have known enough to trust her," she continued
desperately, for she was singing the swan-song of her hopes. "You've
only got to look into her face to see what she is. No matter what
people say about her and her father, no matter what silly stories are
repeated, even if there _were_ other men who gave the colonel money--"
Letitia stopped. Gault had wheeled suddenly round upon her, and the
expression of his face made the words die on her lips.
"Other men!" he repeated. "Who said that?"
"Tod," she faltered.
"Who were they?"
"I--I--don't know; he didn't tell their names."
"What did he say?"
"He said--he said--" she stammered, bewildered by her own pain and
sympathy for his obvious suffering. "No, it was I. I asked him if
the colonel got money from other men, and he--he didn't say much; he
laughed and said, 'Well, I should snicker!'"
"Thank you," answered Gault, in a low voice. "Good night."
He turned and left the room, and a moment later the hall door closed
behind him with a muffled bang.
For a space Letitia stood motionless as a statue, a tall and splendid
figure in her gleaming dress, on which fine lines of interwoven
silver-work caught and lost the light. Then, rousing herself, she moved
about heavily but methodically, putting out the remaining lights. When
they were all extinguished she crossed the hall and slowly ascended the
stairway, the silken whisperings of her skirts being the only sound in
the sleeping house.
V
The season had worn itself away to June. The winds were an established
fact, and blew from the ocean down the long clefts of the streets out
into the bay beyond. Outside the Golden Gate the fog lay along the
horizon like the faint gray shores of a distant country. When the winds
dropped at sundown, it came creeping in, drawing its white cloak over
the water, across the dunes, and finally down the streets and round
the houses. All night it brooded close over the city, sleeping on its
crowded hills, and in the morning lay brimming in every hollow till the
valleys looked like cups crowned high with a curdling white drink.
When the sun had driven it back to its cloud-country on the horizon,
there were wonderful mornings, all blue and gold. The warm rays licked
up the night's moisture, and for a few clear, still hours had the world
to themselves. They burned the land dry and parched. The hills at the
mouth of the bay turned fawn-color, and looked like lean, crouching
lions with hides that fell away from their gaunt bones. The sea and
sky were a hard-baked blue, with the little sails of boats and the
strenuous green leafage of tropical plants seeming as if inlaid in the
turquoise background. The gardens about South Park grew dustier and
drier. Only the aloes appeared to have sap enough to retain any color,
and against the faded monochrome of the surrounding shrubs they shone
a strong, cold gray-blue. In the Western Addition the gardens were
watered and bloomed extravagantly, till the ivy geraniums hung from the
window-boxes like pieces of pink carpet, and the heliotropes dashed
themselves in purple spray to the second stories.
Fashionable people were leaving town daily. Some were going to the
redwoods, where the forest glades are dim and still and full of a chill
solemnity, like the aisles of old cathedrals. Others were en route for
one of the twin towns which tip the points of the crescent that holds
Monterey Bay between its horns. Many were repairing to the country
houses which have sprung up in scattered clusters down the line of the
railroad to the Santa Clara valley. Here they found the warmth and
idleness which Californians love. All summer the vast expanse of the
valley, shut in from wind and fog by a rampart of hills, brooded under
perpetual sunshine. In the motionless noons its yellow fields, where
the shadows of the live-oaks lie round and black, swam in quivering
veils of heat, and the smell of the tar-weed rose heavy and aromatic,
like the incense from a hundred altars.
The Mortimer Gaults, being fashionable folk, had broken up their
household and gone their several ways--Letitia first, with many trunks,
to make visits at hotels and country houses. Mrs. Gault, like other San
Francisco matrons, did not close her house, but made quick flights into
the country, which she sincerely hated, and then came back thankfully
to town, where she dwelt in comfort with two servants, and, when her
husband was not with her, ate meals of choice daintiness, which were
laid on a square of drawn-work on the end of the dining-room table.
John Gault had not been able to see Letitia before her departure, which
was not so strange, as she left shortly after the night at the opera.
In the one or two small gatherings which took place at the Mortimer
Gaults' before the family exodus, he had been unable to participate--at
least, that was what he wrote to Maud. She, it is needless to state,
knowing of that evening interview after the opera, had tried to elicit
from Letitia an account of what had taken place. In this, however, she
was unsuccessful. Letitia was at first stubbornly silent, then cross.
But she accepted an invitation to stay with the McCormicks at their
country place, the Hacienda del Pinos, in the Napa valley; and Maud
felt that her extraordinary and inexplicable sister was, for once in
her life, behaving like a rational human being.
Gault's reluctance to see Letitia had been the whim of a nature
harassed past bearing. He had gone from her that evening in frenzy with
her, himself, and a world where life was so unlivable and being alive
so remorseless a tragedy. The man who had never had a serious check in
his easy course from birth to middle age had now suddenly found himself
the central figure in one of those maddening dilemmas which blight or
make the lives of less fortunate individuals.
The time had come when the situation called for a determined step. But
what step he could not decide. What particular course of action would
end the whole matter most satisfactorily for himself was the question
that besieged him. He hardly gave a thought to Viola. He was the victim
of either a repulsively sordid plot, or else he was a man cruelly lured
by fate into a position from which it seemed impossible to extricate
himself without misery of one sort or another. At one moment he saw
himself as the gullible victim of a clever pair of adventurers, and
laughed fiercely at the scruples which prevented him from holding them
at their own valuation. At the next he was sickened at the manner in
which he was degrading himself and her by giving way to the meanest and
most dastardly suspicions.
He longed to think that he wronged her, and yet, so fearful was he
of being hoodwinked, so inclined to distrust himself and the rest
of the world, that he could not rise up and believe in her, though
his love bade him. Once he thought of going to Tod and asking him to
explain his conversation with Letitia, and then revolted at the idea
of exposing Viola and his own weakness to the vulgar curiosity of
the shallow-brained youth. The only possible ground for believing in
Viola's innocence was that her father was deceiving her, and it seemed
to Gault that the old man had neither the subtlety nor the desire to
deceive anybody.
After suffering these torments for some days he suddenly came to a
decision. He resolved that he would have an interview with Viola, in
which, if she did not voluntarily tell him the truth, he would demand
it from her. He would at first try to beguile her into an explanation,
and if she evaded this, he would, directly and without circumlocution,
force her to tell him. He knew it was brutal, but he was past
consideration for any one. He had thought of this before, but merely
from the comfortable distance of casual speculation. His attitude now
was one of determination. His self-indulgent, indolent nature had been
goaded to a point where it could act more easily than it could endure.
Once having made up his mind, he was more at rest than he had been
for weeks. He did not give much thought to the manner of attacking
the subject, merely saying to himself that he was sure she could be
induced to reveal all she knew by diplomacy. Of only one thing he felt
convinced, and he felt this with the conviction that one has of the
mandates of destiny--that the next time he saw her alone he would learn
from her all there was to learn. Beyond this he shrank from looking.
While he had no desire to put off the interview that two months before
would have seemed an impossibility, he was deliberative and unhurried.
Thinking that the afternoon was the best time to find her by herself,
he went to the house near South Park at four o'clock, a week after he
had seen her at the opera. She was out, and on a second visit at a
similar hour the result was the same. He had pushed his card under the
door, and had hoped that she might have acknowledged the visits by a
note; but she made no sign.
At the end of the second week he went again, in the evening, and
found her, as usual, sitting with her father. She mentioned her
disappointment at missing him, and said that the afternoon was a bad
time to find her, as she was almost always either busy or out. This
seemed to him to plainly indicate that she did not wish to encourage
his afternoon visits. He began to wonder if she was endeavoring to
avoid seeing him alone. If she was, she must have had some inkling
of what he contemplated. The thought spurred him to a feverish
determination to have the explanation with her at the earliest
opportunity. Heretofore she had appeared to him a factor which, if he
chose to be hard enough, he could always manage. Now, if she were to
oppose him with strategy and evasion, the difficulties of solving the
problem would be increased a hundredfold.
But if Viola seemed desirous of escaping a tête-à-tête, the colonel
was more assiduous than ever in seeking the society and bounty of his
obliging friend. The sum to which he now stood indebted to Gault he
described as being "quite formidable." He constantly spoke of repaying
it, and made many vague allusions to promising enterprises that were
destined to enrich his old age.
Two days after the evening visit the colonel appeared as usual, and
this time produced a sheet of paper upon which was written a statement
of his indebtedness. It was copied out in his clear, fine hand, each
sum scrupulously set down with its corresponding date, and at the end
of the column of figures the total--$510. Slapping his breast-pocket,
he remarked that a duplicate of the memorandum lay there for his
benefit and the stimulating of his memory.
"And when the days of the lean kine are over," he said, "we will wipe
it all out--clean the slate."
His friend disclaimed any eagerness as to the arrival of these golden
days, accommodated the colonel with his customary sum, and saw the
old man go striding out in lofty satisfaction. Left by himself, he
idly looked over the colonel's memorandum. It was a full statement,
the dates preceding each sum, and at the top bearing the legend,
"Memorandum of moneys loaned by John Gault to Ramsay Reed."
He threw the paper into a drawer of his desk and thought no more about
it, though he could not forbear smiling at the old man's studied
preciseness.
After considerable reflection, Gault decided that the best way to bring
matters to the crisis he desired was to ask Viola to accord him an
interview. He would manage to make the request at some moment when the
old man was either not listening--which was unusual--or had preceded
him into the hall in the moment of departure. If Viola refused, as he
had some reason to think she might, he would have to arrange another
plan, but, for the present, this was the most feasible one he could
think of.
It was late for a cross-town visit when he started from his club. The
evening, too, was one of the most disagreeable of the season. The city
lay soaked under a blanket of fog. On the West Side there was so much
life and activity on the streets, so much light and sound and pressure
of shifting humanity, that, to a certain extent, the dreariness of the
weather was overcome; but in the dark desolation of the old quarter
the chill weight of the fog lay like a veil of mystery over the silent
streets.
Gault passed down narrow alleys where his own footsteps were the only
sound, and where the light of the rare lamps seemed smothered by the
dense atmosphere. On the broad thoroughfare the old mansions looked
like vast, dim ghosts of a lordly past, rising vague and mournful
from huddled masses of wet foliage. Underfoot the hollows in the worn
asphaltum gleamed with water, and lengths of brick wall, touched by the
beam of an adjacent lamp, shone as though rain were falling.
Turning out of this wider way into the cross-streets, he could hear
in the silence the fog dripping off angles in slowly detaching drops.
The old wooden pavements oozed water beneath the pressure of his foot.
Sometimes from a crack in a sagging shutter an inquisitive yellow
ray shot into the recesses of a tangled garden, gilding the shining
leaves of great thirsty plants that drank in the reluctantly distilled
moisture. Now and then a hurrying figure passed him with collar up and
hat drawn down, but for the most part the streets were deserted, and
even at this comparatively early hour the dwellers in the district
seemed to be retiring, as most of the houses showed lights only in the
upper stories.
In the Reeds' house there were the usual edges of light shining through
the cracks and slits of the old blinds. In answer to his ring there
was the usual moving of this light into the hall, where it shone out
suddenly through the two narrow panes of glass that flanked the door.
When the door opened there was the usual picture of Viola shading the
light with one hand, that shone rosily, and looking questioningly out.
She seemed gladly surprised to see him, but the old days of her
embarrassment were over. She helped him hang his coat, which was beaded
with moisture, over the back of a chair, and then paused to arrange
the wick of her lamp as he preceded her into the drawing-room. In the
doorway he stopped and looked questioningly about. The colonel was not
there.
"Where is your father?" he said, as she followed him, carrying her lamp.
"My father?" She set the lamp on the table, still occupied with the
recalcitrant wick. "Oh, he's out. He hardly ever goes out in the
evening, but to-night he wanted to see Mr. Maroney, who is only here
from New York for a few days. Such a dreadful night, too! There--I
don't think it will smoke any more."
Gault, who had absently taken the colonel's chair, made no response. So
the opportunity he had been planning for had come! He felt a sensation
of sickening repulsion at the task he had set himself. Already his
heart seemed to have begun to beat like a hammer and his mouth felt
dry. Without consciousness of what he looked at, his eyes moved about
the room and rested on a black coat which was hanging over the back of
a chair. On the edge of the table were a pair of scissors, a thimble,
and some spools of thread.
Viola took the vacant chair near these and put on the thimble.
"You'll not mind if I go on sewing?" she said. "I never thought of your
coming to-night, and so I was fixing this. It will only take a few
moments to finish it."
"What is it?" Gault asked, in order to say something, noticing that the
garment seemed heavy and difficult for her to handle.
"My father's coat--the one he wears every day," she answered. "I was
mending it while he had his other one on. He gets fond of clothes, and
it's next to impossible to get them away from him."
She turned the coat about every now and then, her needle assaulting
it, and catching splinters of light as it darted in and out. Gault
leaned back, watching her. She bent her face over the work as she
sewed, presenting to his gaze the fine white parting down the middle
of her head, and the close-growing threads of her hair, here and there
transmuted into filaments of gold. There was an air of serenity, of
quietness and peace, about her, that seemed to tell of an inner sense
of happiness.
As he sat back staring at her, and wondering, with that breathless
beating of his heart growing stronger, what he should say, she suddenly
raised her head and, looking straight into his eyes, said:
"What are you thinking about?"
Her face, with the lamplight shining full on it, seemed to radiate a
soft, pervasive content. She asked the question with the indescribable
charm of glance and smile of the woman who knows that her lightest word
gives pleasure. The increase in her beauty and attraction which he had
felt rose from the consciousness that she was loved.
"I wasn't thinking about anything much," he said evasively. "I'd like
to sit on here this way, not thinking or worrying or caring, but just
watching you."
"There is no reason why you shouldn't do it; only it doesn't sound very
amusing."
"It isn't amusing."
"I know it isn't," she said contritely, "and I'm so sorry that I have
to do this old coat; but it will be done soon, and then we can talk.
Just a minute--just a minute!"
She spoke in a busy tone, and went on turning the coat about, jerking
at the buttons, and plunging her hands into the pockets.
Gault felt that the pleasure of thus sitting and looking at her was
sapping his resolution. He felt himself drifting away, aimless and
irresponsible, on the current of the moment. The duties of past and
future were lost sight of in the dreamy satisfaction of watching the
light on her hair and the movements of her hands.
He rose suddenly and walked to the window, with a remark about seeing
if the fog was lifting. As he turned, he saw her take a folded paper
from one of the coat-pockets, and, standing looking out of the window,
heard the crisp rustling of the paper as she unfolded it. There was
a moment of perfect silence, and then he heard again the same light
rustling, which sounded curiously loud and intrusive to his irritated
nerves.
He turned toward her, wondering why she did not speak. She was sitting
with the opened paper in her hands, her eyes riveted on it. As he drew
near, he saw that the rustling rose from the fact that her hands were
trembling violently, causing the paper to vibrate.
She heard his approaching step and looked up. At the sight of her face
he stopped.
"What is it?" she cried, rising suddenly to her feet and holding it out
toward him.
He glanced at it. It was the colonel's duplicate memorandum. Without
aid or provocation the hour of revelation had come.
His first impulse was to seize it. But she drew it back from him,
repeating in a high, strained voice:
"What is it? I don't understand. What is it?"
"It's nothing--nothing but a business paper. Give it to me."
He did not know what to say or do--the scene had changed so suddenly
and horribly. Her face looked at him, pale, bewildered, quivering with
a terrified surmise. Without a moment's memory of what he had come for,
he felt as if all he wanted was to get the paper and hide it.
"Give it to me!" he demanded authoritatively. "It doesn't concern you."
"It does," she cried, "it does! But what is it? What does it mean?"
She looked back at it, and her eyes ran down the list of figures, and
then were raised to his, full of a piercingly anguished inquiry.
"It's nothing but a business matter between your father and me; and you
don't understand business."
"I do understand--I understand this!" she answered; and then, with a
sudden cry of shame and pain, she threw the crumpled paper on the table
and covered her face with her hands. "Oh, how could he!" she whispered.
"How could he!"
Gault looked at her, mute and motionless. From the moment he had seen
her face as she read the paper, he knew that every suspicion he had had
was groundless. He was ashamed to speak, almost to move. The sound of
his own voice was hateful to him. He stood helplessly looking at her,
shaken with pity, passion, and remorse. Finally he said gently:
"Look at me, Viola."
She obeyed him like a child. Her face was drawn; her eyes, after the
moment of meeting his, sank.
"Any man would have done what the colonel did. It's nothing of the
least importance."
"Perhaps not to you," she answered in a hardly audible voice; "but to
me!"
He looked away and tried to speak lightly:
"It is of no importance whatever to me, and I don't see why it should
be of any to you."
"Oh, Mr. Gault, what do you think I am, that you should say that?"
"A foolish girl who takes a trifling matter too seriously," he answered
quickly.
"No--a woman who has been hurt and humiliated. It may have been of no
importance to you that you were giving us the clothes we wore and the
food we ate--but oh! to me--"
Her voice broke, and she turned her face away.
He made an impatient movement with his head.
"Come, don't let's talk about that anymore. You're not yourself.
Besides, whatever insignificant matter you're worrying about was not of
your doing."
"No," she said, turning on him passionately, "but the responsibility
rests on me; for whatever my father may have done that was wrong
or foolish was for me. There is an excuse for him. You--other
people--outsiders--don't know. He hasn't wanted these things for
himself. It was all done for me. I was his idol, and it has almost
broken his heart that his money and position were gone before I was old
enough to profit by them. He always wanted to be rich again, but it was
for me. He wanted me to have everything--pretty clothes to wear, and
good things to eat, and theaters and amusements, like other girls. He
tried to keep up with his old bonanza friends who were tired of him and
had no use for him, because he thought their wives might be kind to me
and ask me to their houses. He has forgotten himself and what he owed
to me, but it was because he loved me so much."
"Viola dear," he said pleadingly, "I understand all this. No one blames
the colonel."
She did not seem to hear him. Her mood was past control.
"When we first met you things were at their worst. We were in terrible
need. We had had some money--quite a good deal--three years before; it
was for a mortgage on the house, or something; but it had all gone,
mostly in Pine Street. Yours must have gone there, too. Everything he
has had of late years goes there, because he is determined to make a
second fortune for me before he dies. And he never will--poor old man!
he never will. I did what I could and made a little, but he couldn't
bear it, because he hated to think I worked at anything. So that was
why he went to you. We were in despair when we knew you first--we were
starving."
"Dear child, why go over all this? It's only a pain to us both."
He tried to take her hands, but she drew them back and made a gesture
as though pushing him away.
"I didn't know where it came from. I believed him. Oh, Mr. Gault, if
he told me what was not true, you can't blame him. You've never known
what it feels like to have some one you love wanting the necessaries of
life. You could beg for them--steal for them! And when I told you those
things about the mining stock, what did you think I meant? What did you
believe?"
She spoke less to him than to her own dazed and miserable
consciousness, which moment by moment saw new matter for humiliation in
the deception of which she had been the victim.
But Gault, with the guilt of his own hateful suspicions weighing upon
him, feared that she had realized his previous state of mistrust, and
said fervently:
"If I did believe what was a wrong to you, forgive me, Viola. I was a
blind fool."
She raised her head like a stag and transfixed him with a sudden
glance. Unprepared for the innocence of her point of view, he met the
look shamefacedly, and in an instant she guessed what he had suspected.
In one terrible moment, illuminated with a blasting flash of memory,
she understood his attitude in the past, and heard again the words that
had puzzled and surprised her. Horror and despair seemed to choke her.
She drew away from him, her eyes full of tragic accusation, murmuring
almost under her breath:
"You--that I believed in, and trusted, and loved!"
"I was a fool--a brute! I know it. All I can say is to ask you to
forgive me."
"I can't forgive--or forget. Never--never!"
He tried again to take her hands, but she drew back from him with what
seemed a fierce repugnance, and cried wildly:
"Go--you and my father, what have you done to me? I can't forgive
him, either! How can I? You've dragged me down, between you. You've
destroyed me and broken my heart."
"Viola," he cried desperately, "listen to me. You don't know my side.
Listen to me while I tell you."
"There's nothing to say. I don't want to hear. I know enough. Go--go
away from me! Oh, my father! My poor father! How could you! How could
you!"
She burst into tears--the most terrible tears that he had ever seen.
Throwing herself into the colonel's chair, she lay huddled there, her
face pressed into the arm, her slender figure shaken by the explosive
force of her grief.
To his broken words and appeals she made no answer. He doubted whether
she heard him. The storm of feeling, stronger than he had ever supposed
her capable of, swayed her as a blast sways a sapling. Finally he bent
over her and rested his cheek on her hair, whispering:
"I want to do everything you ask me. But before I go, say you forgive
me."
She raised herself and pushed him away. Her face was almost
unrecognizable, blurred and swollen with tears.
"Go--go!" she cried. "That is all I want of you. You've done enough
harm to me. Do what I ask now."
He attempted to bend over her and say some last words of farewell, but
she turned her face away from him and pressed it into the upholstered
arm of the chair. He kissed her hair, and stood for a moment looking
at her, then turned and crossed the room. At the door he stopped and
looked back.
"Good-by," he said hesitatingly.
A smothered good-by came from her. He waited, hoping for some word
of forgiveness or recall. Instead, she said once more, this time
pleadingly:
"Oh, go! please go--I want to be alone."
He obeyed her--softly opened the door into the hall, put on his coat,
and let himself out into the cold and fog-bedewed night. As he fumbled
with the gate he heard a quick, swinging step coming from the darkened
end of the street. It approached rapidly, and into the dense aureole
of light shed by a lamp half-way up the block, a tall, muscular figure
emerged from the surrounding blackness. Gault recognized the walk and
the square, erect shoulders. With as little noise as possible he opened
the gate, and, turning in the opposite direction, passed into the
darkness with a stealthy tread.
The colonel let himself in with his latch-key, pulled off his coat
in the hall, and entered the drawing-room with the buoyancy that
characterized all his movements. As was often the case in these days of
prosperity, he carried a paper bag full of fruit and a box of candy for
Viola.
To his eye, dulled by the darkness without, the room looked brilliantly
illuminated and seemed to welcome him with the warm and cheery note
of home. Viola was standing with her back to him, her elbow on the
chimney-piece. When she heard his step on the walk she had made a
violent effort to control herself, had tried to rub away the stains of
her tears, and had turned the paper flower on the lamp-globe so that
the light, as it fell upon her, was subdued.
The colonel was in good spirits. He laid his packages on the table and
began opening them.
"Wasn't that Gault that I saw coming away as I came down the street?"
he asked.