"Why didn't you keep him longer? I'd like to have seen him. Look at
that pear," said the old man, holding up a yellow Bartlett that gleamed
like wax in the lamplight. "Did you ever see anything finer than that?
And there are people who say they don't like the Californian fruit."
Viola did not look at the pear, but he was too occupied in his
purchases to notice her.
"He ought to have stayed till I came in. You oughtn't to have let him
go. Poor old Gault, coming out in all this wet! It's a devil of a
night. You could cut the fog with a knife. What did he have to say for
himself?"
"Nothing much," said Viola.
"I don't think myself he's much of a talker. Now, see what I've brought
for you." Viola heard the tearing away of the wrappers that were folded
around the candy-box. "Look, young woman; isn't that tempting?"
The colonel held out the box. Viola did not turn. He drew it back, a
puzzled expression on his face.
"What's the matter?" he said. "Why don't you look at me? Don't you feel
well?"
She turned round slowly and made a feint to take the box. As the
colonel's glance fell on her face he gave a sharp exclamation and
started to his feet.
"What's happened?" he said. "What's the matter with you?"
She tried to tell him, but could not. The love and honor of him that
had been the faith of her life were still alive. She could not say
the words that would bring him to shame. Suddenly she pointed to the
crumpled paper on the table. The colonel snatched it and pulled it open
while she turned away. He recognized it at the first glance.
"Well," he said, holding his head high and looking at her with a
defiant air, "what of it?"
She made no answer, and he went on violently:
"What's there wrong about this to make you cry as if you'd lost
everything in the world, and Gault to sneak out of the house like a
thief?"
"What's wrong about it?" she burst out. "What's wrong about you to make
you ask such a question?"
"My dear, don't be so violent," said the colonel, trying to assume his
old jaunty manner. "It's all a very simple matter, easily explained."
"Then explain it, father--explain it. Oh, if there's anything to be
said, say it!"
"It's merely a business matter, a financial transaction between myself
and Gault--nothing that concerns you."
"Oh, father, it concerns me more than anything that has ever happened
to me in my life before."
Her tone wrung the colonel's soul. He tried to silence his pain and
fear by a sudden attempt to divert the blame from himself.
"Did that dog--that mean, underhanded sneak--come here to-night, when
he knew I was out, to show you that paper?"
His manner and words horrified her, and she shrank from him.
"I found the paper in your coat. He tried to take it from me. He never
breathed to me or let me suspect what you were doing. To-night, when I
found the paper, he tried to make me think it was all right, quite an
ordinary thing--that you had done what every one else would have done."
"Well, then, why do you get so worked up about it? Why should a
business transaction between him and me put you into such a state of
mind?"
"A business transaction? Oh, father, have you deceived yourself, or are
you trying to deceive me? What has been the matter with you? How could
you do it! How could you forget yourself that way--yourself and me!"
The colonel's bravado began to give way, but he tried to take a last
stand.
"If there was anything wrong, as you seem to think, in what I did, you
shouldn't blame me for it. I did it for you. I was trying to make you
comfortable and make things a little easier for you. I was only trying
the best way I knew to make you happy."
"Make me happy!" she repeated. "Did you think it would make me happy to
have a man think I was being sold to him?"
The words burst from her, vibrating with all the anguish of the last
two hours. They struck the colonel like a dagger in his heart.
"Oh, Viola!" he said. "Viola--don't!"
He began to tremble, and sat down, looking at her with an aghast,
protesting look. Whatever his idea had been in so openly using Viola's
name in his dealings with Gault, he had not meant that. Old age, bitter
poverty, trampled pride--all had combined to lower that high standard,
that proud self-respect, which his daughter had believed to be his. She
would never believe in them again.
"You oughtn't to say that, Viola," he said in a low voice; "you
oughtn't to say that to me."
She did not stir, and he said again, after a moment's pause:
"It's not right for you to say that. I thought I was doing for the
best. I may have done foolishly, but it was because I loved you."
He spoke heavily, sitting inert and sunken, with the lamplight pouring
over his wrinkled face and white hair.
Suddenly Viola ran toward him. She put her arms round his neck, close
and warm, and her tears fell on his hair, on his face, on his coat. She
hugged his head against her breast and kissed it wildly, sobbing over
and over:
"Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father!"
The old man patted her head and said gently:
"Don't--don't go on that way. You didn't say anything. I've forgotten
it already."
But she knew he had not, and continued sobbing out passionate, broken
sentences:
"I didn't mean it--I spoke without thinking. Oh, please forget it!
Don't look like that! I didn't mean it--I didn't mean it for a minute."
He tried to soothe and comfort her, but he himself was very quiet. When
she had sobbed herself into a state of apathetic exhaustion, he helped
her up-stairs to her room, and prowled up and down in the passageway,
every now and then listening at her door till he heard her caught
breaths regulate themselves into the long, regular ones of heavy sleep.
Then he went into his own room. He did not go to bed, but sat
motionless, shrunk together, staring at the light. His love for his
daughter had been dear to him, but a thousand times dearer had been
his realization of her love for him. When all the world had turned its
back on him, the knowledge that he was still believed in, watched for,
cherished by this one young girl had made life as well worth living
as it had been in the days of his glory. And now he had lost that--it
was gone forever. He was an old man, and to-night he had received his
death-blow.
The day after his scene with Viola was the happiest John Gault had
known for many months. The memory of her pain, of her tears, of her
humiliation, could not outweigh the joy he felt in her exculpation.
Even his own shame at the meanness of the part he had played was pushed
aside by this pervasive, irradiating, uplifting sense of happiness. No
cloud, no shadow of disbelief, could ever come between them now. He
could love her without mistrust, without fear, without suspicion. He
would absorb her, envelop her, inwrap her in the might of his passion.
He had wronged her bitterly, but with what limitless tenderness, what
depths of devotion, would he make up for it! He was troubled by no
doubts as to her feeling for him. The memory of the light in her eyes
as they met his, of the flush on the cheek, were enough. Viola was his
when he chose to claim her.
Still, the deliberative habits of his curiously sensitive and
conventional nature were stronger than the force of his last and
deepest attachment. Three days followed his interview with Viola, and
he had not yet gone to see her. He could not bring himself to intrude
upon her. Her girl's passion of shame and grief seemed a sanctuary
into which no man's coarse eye should look. He thought of her with a
deep, almost reverential tenderness, but he did not feel as if he ought
to see her till the first anguish of her discovery had spent itself.
Then--then--he would take her in his arms, and there would be nothing
to say, only to ask her to forgive him, to hear her say it, and then
happiness--happiness--happiness--on to the end of time.
On the fourth day he decided to send her some flowers. But after he had
bought them it seemed to him so meaningless, so banal, to send such a
formal offering, one that he had sent so often to women for whom his
sentiments were so widely different, that he suddenly changed his
mind, and ordered the flowers to be sent to his sister-in-law, who was
just then in town. When he walked away from the florist's he looked
rather ashamed of himself and of his burst of sentiment. But what did
he want to send her flowers for? He wanted to see her, to take her
hands in his and look down deep into those beautiful gray eyes and
say--perhaps not say anything. She and he understood.
He made up his mind that he would go on the morrow, and on this
decision he went to sleep with a light heart. In the morning he was
awakened by a messenger to say that his brother Mortimer had returned
from the country seriously ill. He was at the house on Pacific Avenue
inside an hour. Mortimer had come home a week before with a bad cold
which had developed into a dangerous case of pneumonia. Maud Gault was
helpless and distracted. Her brother-in-law spent the day in attending
to the numerous duties which crop up with sickness, and in the evening
telegraphed for Letitia.
For the four following days Mortimer Gault hung between life and death,
brooded over by a frantic wife, three doctors, two nurses, a fond
sister-in-law, and an extremely anxious brother. The tie between the
two men was very close--John had never realized how close till those
four days of desperate anxiety were over. During this time, as he sat
either by his brother's bedside or in one of the rooms adjoining, or
made hasty visits to his office, he thought of Viola and wondered if
she was puzzled by his lengthened absence. He did not think that she
would misunderstand it. Like many men, he took it for granted that her
knowledge of his character and affairs had been as thorough as the
knowledge his superior insight and experience had given him into all
that pertained to her.
On the sixth day after his brother's summons Mortimer was pronounced
out of danger. This was the first opportunity John had had of seeing
Viola.
At four o'clock he alighted from the car that had carried him across
town to the old quarter about South Park. As he passed through the
dingy side streets holiday reigned in his heart. Life in the past
seemed dun and dreary compared to what it had become under the
influence of the still, almost rapt joy which now possessed him. An
immense, deep tenderness seemed to well from his heart over all his
being. His love for Viola seemed to have made him see and feel all that
was love-worthy in others--in the children that ran across his path or
played in chattering groups in the gutters, the women he met trudging
home with baskets on their arms, the lean-shanked boys playing ball in
the deserted gardens, the tousled young matrons exchanging gossip from
open upper windows. He had never noticed these people before, save with
cold repugnance; now he seemed to be able to see into them and note
their justifiable ambitions, their unselfish struggles, their smiling,
patient courage. The thought passed through his mind that perhaps
this exalted, unusual affection was the love of the future state, the
happiness that awaits the liberated soul.
He turned the last corner and came in sight of the house. For the first
few advancing steps he did not realize what gave it an unfamiliar look.
Then, as he approached, he saw that the vines which had hung in bunches
about the bay-window were cut away. There were frilled white curtains
in the lower windows. He drew near, staring astonished through his
glasses, each step revealing some innovation.
They were evidently renovating the whole place. The two thick-set brick
posts that supported the gate had been painted. The steps to the porch
had been mended with new wood. Then, as he put his hand forward to
unlatch the gate, he saw a woman--a broad-backed, red-necked woman in
a blue print dress--kneeling on the ground just below the bay-window,
evidently gardening. The sight surprised him into immobility, and for a
moment he stood motionless, gazing at the back of her head, where her
hair was twisted into a tight and uncompromising coil about as big as a
silver dollar.
The next moment he pressed the latch, and the gate opened with a click.
The woman started and turned round. Evidently greatly surprised at
the figure her glance encountered, she straightened herself from her
stooping posture, eying him curiously and wiping her earthy hands on
her apron.
"Is Miss Reed in?" he said, advancing up the flagged walk.
"Miss Reed?" said the woman "No. She ain't here any more."
Gault stopped.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "Colonel Reed lives here."
"Not now," said the woman, struggling to her feet. "He did until last
week. We bought the place off of him just seven days ago, and moved in
Tuesday."
"Do you mean that he has sold it and gone away?"
"That's it. We rushed it through, both of us. He wanted to sell 'bout
as much as we wanted to buy, so there wasn't much time wasted on either
side."
"Had he thought of selling it for any length of time?"
"I can't rightly say as to that. We've had our eyes on it for the past
five years. My husband--he's Robson, the dry-goods dealer, on Third,
just below here--was pretty well satisfied that the colonel couldn't
hang on to it forever. 'Bout three years ago he offered him three
thousand. But the old man wouldn't hear of it. Said he wouldn't even
raise a mortgage on it, as it was all he had to leave to his daughter
when he died. But we knew he couldn't hold out much longer. He didn't
have no work, nor nothing to live on. Miss Reed she made a little, but
not enough to run everything, and--"
"Yes--I know all about that. When did you say they left?"
"On Monday, and we moved in Tuesday. Saturday the old man came round to
Mr. Robson's place and said he'd let him have the house for anything
he chose to give. There ain't nothing mean about Mr. Robson. He could
'a' beat the colonel down to 'most anything, but he said he'd give him
two thousand cash down, and the old man just jumped at it. Mr. Robson
said it would 'a' been business to get the colonel to a lower figure,
and he said he supposed he would 'a' done it if it hadn't been for the
daughter. She was sick, and the old man said he'd got to have money to
take her away."
"Sick?--seriously sick?"
"Well, as to that I can't say. But she was about the peakedest-looking
girl I ever seen. I was awful sorry for them."
"Where have they gone?"
"I ain't able to say."
"But you surely have some idea of where they've moved to? Didn't they
say something about their intentions? Didn't the colonel tell your
husband in reference to the transfer of the money?"
"They didn't neither of 'em say a word. They're the most close-mouthed
pair I ever ran into. My husband paid the money down in cash the day we
moved in. They took it, and that's all I know about them."
"Can't you tell me some one about here who may know more--some of the
tradespeople--butchers, grocers, that sort of thing?"
"You might try Coggles, the grocer at the corner. I think they had an
account with him. But they didn't deal regular with any one else."
Gault thanked her and turned to go. She followed him down the walk,
anxious to be agreeable, for his manner and appearance had impressed
her immensely.
"If I hear anything about them I'll let you know," she said affably.
"Thanks; it's very good of you," he answered, opening the gate. But he
had no intention of giving her either his name or address, as he did
not for a moment think that this disappearance of the Reeds was other
than temporary.
At the corner he stopped and inquired for them at Coggles the grocer's.
Coggles himself answered his inquiries. He had even less information to
give than Mrs. Robson. A week before the colonel had paid such small
amounts as he yet owed, and had casually mentioned the fact that he had
sold his house and was about to leave the city. This was all Coggles
knew. He showed some desire to talk over the colonel's pecuniary
difficulties, but Gault cut him short and left the store.
Gault walked away, feeling dazed and hardly master of himself. It had
been so absolutely unexpected that he did not yet send his mind back
over their past intercourse to ask what she might have been thinking
since he saw her last. As is the case of the man in love, he had seen
the situation only from his own side. But he did not for a moment doubt
that he would hear from her within the next few days.
He was still with his brother a good deal of the time, and the days
that followed passed with the swiftness which characterizes hours
filled with various anxieties. Four days after learning of her flight,
two weeks from the evening that he had seen her last, the janitor at
his office handed him a small but heavy package. It had been left early
in the morning by a boy, the janitor said, who had merely asked if
this was Mr. John Gault's office, and had then hastened away.
An instinct told him it was from her, and he shut himself into his
inner office before he opened it. It was a rough wooden box, and
contained the money given by him to the colonel--five hundred and ten
dollars in gold coin. Lying on the top was a slip of paper bearing the
words: "Good-by. VIOLA."
Still he could not but believe that she would soon reveal her
whereabouts. The move was occupying her, and such an operation would
seem a gigantic undertaking to her youthful inexperience. That she
should treat him this way was thoughtless, cruel even, but she had been
deeply wounded, and her hurt was evidently still sore. He could only
wait patiently.
He did so for two weeks, his uncertainties growing into fears,
his conviction of her intention to communicate with him gradually
weakening. Uneasiness gave place to alarm. For the first time the
haunting thought that she had gone from him purposely, fled forever
from his love, entered his mind.
Finally, unable to endure the anxiety that now beset him, he
commissioned a private detective agency to run to earth the boy who had
brought the money. He supposed it had come directly from her, and that,
through the boy, without drawing her into the affair, her hiding-place
could be discovered.
The finding of the boy was not so simple a matter as might have been
supposed. It required a week's search to locate him. He was the only
son of a poor widow living near South Park, who had done the Reeds'
washing. Before her departure Miss Reed had commissioned him to deliver
the package at Mr. Gault's office at a certain date, and at an hour
when there would be no chance of his coming into personal contact with
Mr. Gault himself.
Gault snatched at this meager information, and lost no time in seeking
out the widow in her own home. She was a good-natured and loquacious
Irish-American,--Mrs. Cassidy by name,--and was full of terror at
the thought that detectives had been occupied in discovering her
place of abode. Her fears, however, were soon allayed, and she became
exceedingly discursive. But when it came to information of Viola, she
could tell no more than the others.
Before Miss Reed had left the city she had given the package to the
boy, with the instructions that he should not deliver it till the day
set by her, some time after her departure. Of her own volition Mrs.
Cassidy stated that she thought Miss Reed did not want any one to know
where she went. Mrs. Cassidy had conferred with others of her kind
in the locality, and the silent and hasty departure of the Reeds
had been matter of comment. The shrewd Irishwoman saw that there was
a mysterious romance here, and her glance dwelt with compassionate
curiosity upon the gentleman who was sufficiently interested in the
pretty girl they had all known by sight to employ detectives to hunt
for her.
The finding of the boy and the interview with Mrs. Cassidy broke down
the last of Gault's hopes. He now knew that Viola had intentionally
fled from him. At first, when no word came from her, and Mrs. Robson's
description of her as ill was fresh in his mind, he had a terrible
fear that she might have died. But a later judgment convinced him that
had this been the case he would have heard from the colonel. Viola
was living--hiding somewhere from him, restraining her father from
communicating with him, which, Gault knew, would be the old man's wish
and intention.
And now, with the blankness of her absence deadening his heart, for
the first time he began to understand what she must have thought and
felt--began to see the situation with her eyes. He thought of her,
loving and believing in him as he knew she had always done, suddenly
waking to the knowledge that he had suspected her. He saw her living
over again those conversations in which he had half revealed his
groundless doubts, had tried to find confirmation of them in the
halting admissions of her puzzled ignorance. And with her comprehension
of the light in which he had been regarding her came that _coup de
grâce_ of all doubts in his favor--the giving of the money.
With a clearness of vision that was like clairvoyance, he seemed to be
able to read down into the depths of her consciousness, to see into the
hidden places of the nature he had once thought so jealously secretive.
In the gnawing bitterness of his remorse he realized that she had
believed herself tricked, that the hand she had thought stretched
to her in kindly fellowship in reality concealed a trap. Where she
had looked for protection, support, and love, she had found what now
presented itself to her as a sinister and cruel craftiness. Her best
friend had turned out to be her most unrelenting enemy.
In the loneliness of that long summer he came face to face with
despair. He had lost her by his own mad folly. Remorse for the wrong he
had done her alternated in his thoughts with an unquenchable longing
to see her again. His heart craved for her, even if only for a single
moment's glimpse. A younger man would have shaken off the gloom of his
first great disappointment, have told himself that there were other
eyes as sweet and hearts as true. But with him the elasticity of youth
was gone. There was no forming of new ties, no delight in fresh faces.
Life had offered him supreme happiness, and he had let it pass by him.
Like the base Indian, he had "thrown a pearl away richer than all his
tribe."
The summer held the city in its spell of wind and fog. Acquaintances
who encountered one another on its wide thoroughfares said town was
empty--not a soul left in it. The Mortimer Gaults took themselves
away for rest and recuperation to balsamic mountain gorges among the
redwoods. Letitia returned to the hotels and the Hacienda del Pinos.
John Gault was left alone with his empty heart. If she had died it
would have been bearable. The inevitableness of death makes us bow to
its blows with broken submission. But she was alive--poor, sick, her
love disprized, her pride trampled on, driven away from all that was
familiar and friendly to her by fear of him.
The winds beat and tore through the city, buffeting the passers-by and
sweeping street and alley. Then, as the color deepened toward evening,
their stress and clamor suddenly ceased, a burst of radiance ran from
the Golden Gate up the sky, glazing the level floor of the bay and
flaring on all the western windows. It stayed for a space, seeming to
immerse the town in an atmosphere of beaten gold, as if for one brief
half-hour it was transformed into the glistening El Dorado of the early
settlers' dreams. Then the fog stole noiselessly in, and the houses
crowding to the summits of the hills, the rose-red clouds, and the
clear purple distances were blotted out.
That went on day by day till the autumn came. The winds dropped and
the sun shone all day. In the country the air was clear and heavy with
sweet, aromatic scents. All the fields were parched and sun-dried like
hemp; only the thick-growing, bushy trees defied the drought, remaining
green and hardy. The great hills were scorched to a smooth yellow,
with a few green tree-tufts slipped down into their valleys where the
watercourses were not quite dry.
In town it was all still and golden and hot. The city, queening it on
its hills, rose in an atmosphere of crystal clearness from a girdle of
sapphire sea. In the evening the smoke lay lightly over it, and the
sun glared through like a great, inquisitive eye. Poor people in the
old districts were ill from lack of rain and from unclean sewers. Rich
people were coming back, looking sunburnt and healthy from their summer
in the open air.
The Gaults came up out of their lounging-place in the redwoods, robust
and blooming, Mortimer quite restored to health, and Maud two shades
darker with her country tan. Letitia, with three trunks of ruined
millinery, appeared from the hotels, and the town house was once more
alive.
They had seen little of John since they left for the country, and it
was not strange that Maud Gault, after his first visit, should have
said to her husband:
"What's the matter with John? All of a sudden he looks quite old."
"Nothing," said the loyal Mortimer; "only a fellow can't be expected to
look young forever. John's not like a woman: he doesn't keep the same
age for twenty years."