aware of the fact that the whole incident would only draw his adventure
into further notoriety. “Somebody’s made a good story of it,” he
laughed. “I did meet a--a girl in the woods and she stayed at my camp
until her guides found her, that’s all. I don’t even know who she was,”
he finished truthfully.
Percy Endicott wriggled away, glad to be let off so easily; and after a
word with Kane, Gallatin went quietly out.
He reached the street and turning the corner walked northward blindly,
in dull resentment against Percy Endicott, and the world that he
typified. Their story of his adventure, it appeared, was common
property, and was being handed with God knows what hyperbole from one
chattering group to another. It didn’t matter about himself, of course.
He realized grimly that this was not the first time his name had
played shuttlecock to the fashionable battledore. It was of her he was
thinking--of Jane. Thank God, they hadn’t found a name to couple with
his. What they were telling was doubtless bad enough without that, and
the mere fact that his secret was known had already taken away some of
the idyllic quality with which he had invested it. He knew what fellows
like Ogden Spencer and Larry Kane were saying. Had he not himself
in times past assisted at the post mortems of dead reputations, and
wielded his scalpel with as lively a skill as the rest of them?
Two months had passed since that day in the woods when he had lost
her, but there wasn’t a day of that time when he had not hoped that
some miracle would bring them together again. In Canada he had
made inquiries at the camps he had passed, and poor Joe Keegón,
who had spent a day with her guides, had come in for his share of
recrimination. The party had come from the eastward, and had made
a permanent camp; there were many people and many guides, but no
names had passed. Joe Keegón was not in the habit of asking needless
questions.
One thing alone that had belonged to her remained to Gallatin--a small
gold flask which bore, upon its surface in delicate script, the letters
J.L. On the day that they had broken camp Joe Keegón had silently
handed it to him, his face more masklike than ever. Gallatin had thrust
it into his coat-pocket with an air of indifference he was far from
feeling, and had brought it southward to New York, where it now stood
upon the desk in the room of his boyhood, so that he could see it
each day, the token of a great happiness--the symbol of an ineffable
disgrace.
It seemed now that Gallatin had not needed that reminder, for since
he had been back in the city he had been working hard. It surprised
him what few avenues of escape were open to him, for when he went
abroad and did the things he had always done, there at his elbow was
the Bowl. But his resolution was still unshaken, and difficult as he
found the task, he went the round of his clubs at the usual hours and
joined perfunctorily in the conversation. Always companionable, his
fellows now found him reticent, more reserved and less prone to make
engagements. Bridge he had foresworn and the card room at the Cosmos
saw him no more. He stopped in at the club on the way home as he had
done to-day, sometimes leaving his associates with an abruptness which
caused comment.
But already he was finding the trial he had set for himself less
difficult; and as the habit of resistance grew on him, he realized that
little by little he was drifting away from the associations which had
always meant so much to him. He had not given up the hope of finding
Jane. From a chance phrase, which he had treasured, he knew that New
York was familiar to her and that some day he would see her. He was as
sure of that as though Jane herself had promised it to him. She owed
him nothing, of course, for in the hour of his madness he had thrown
away the small claims he had upon her gratitude, and the only memory
she could have of him was that which had been expressed in the look of
fear and loathing he had last seen in her eyes. To her, of course, time
and distance had only magnified that horror and he knew that when he
met her, there was little to expect from her generosity, little that he
would even dare ask of it except that she would listen while he told
her of the enemy in his house and of the battle that was still raging
in his heart. He wanted her to know about that. It was his right to
tell her, not so much to clear himself of blame, as to justify her for
the liberality of her confidence before the tide of battle had turned
against him--against them both.
Time and distance had played strange tricks with Jane’s image and at
times it seemed very difficult for Gallatin to reconstruct the picture
which he had destroyed. Sometimes she appeared a Dryad, as when he had
first seen her, running frightened through the wood, sometimes the
forlorn child with the injured ankle, sometimes the cliff-woman; but
most often he pictured her as when he had seen her last, running in
terror and dismay from the sight of him. And the other Jane, the Jane
that he knew best, was hidden behind the eyes of terror. The memory
was so vague that he sometimes wondered whether he would even know her
if he met her dressed in the mode of the city. Somehow he could not
associate her with the thought of fashionable clothes. She had worn no
hat nor had she needed one. She belonged to the deep woods, where dress
means only warmth and art means only artificiality. He always thought
of her hatless, in her tattered shirtwaist and skirt, and upon Fifth
Avenue was as much at a loss as to the kind of figure he must look for
as though he were in the land of the great Cham.
Yes, he would know her, her slender figure, her straight carriage, the
poise of her head, her brown hair, her deep blue eyes. No fripperies
could conceal them. These were Jane. He would know them anywhere.
VIII
CHICOT, THE JESTER
Philip Gallatin had been mistaken. He did not know Jane when he saw
her. For, ten minutes later, he met her face to face in one of the
paths of the Park--looked her in the face and passed on unknowing. Like
the hound in the fable, he was so intent upon the reflection in the
pool that he let slip the substance. He was conscious that a girl had
passed him going in the opposite direction, a girl dressed in a dark
gray tailor-made suit, with a fur at her neck and a dark muff swinging
in one hand--a slender girl beside whom two French poodles frisked and
scampered, a handsome girl in fashionable attire, taking her dogs for
an airing. He walked on and sat down on a bench which overlooked the
lake. The sun had fallen below the Jersey hills and only the tops of
the tall buildings to the eastward held its dying glow. The lawns were
swathed in shadow and the branches of the trees, already half denuded
of their foliage, emerged in solemn silhouette like a pattern of Irish
lace against the purpling sky. A hush had suddenly fallen on the
distant traffic and Gallatin was alone.
Out of the half-light an inky figure came bounding up to him and
sniffed eagerly at his knees. It was a black poodle. Gallatin patted
the dog encouragingly, upon which it whined, put its paws on his lap
and looked up into his face.
“Too bad, old man,” he said. “Lost, aren’t you?” Then, as the memory
came to him, “By George, your mistress will be hunting. I wonder
if we can find her.” He turned the nickel collar in his fingers and
examined the name-plate. There in script was the name of the owner, and
an address. Gallatin thrust the crook of his stick through the dog’s
collar and rose. He must find Miss Jane Loring or return the animal to
its home. Jane Loring? Jane--?
He stopped, bent over the excited dog and looked at the name plate
again. Jane Loring--“J. L.” Why--it was Jane’s dog! He had passed
her a moment ago--here--in the park. More perturbed even than the
wriggling poodle, he rose and hurried along the path down which he had
come. There could be no mistake. Of course, it was Jane! There was no
possible doubt about it! That blessed poodle!
“Hi! there! Let up, will you?” he cried, as the dog twisted and
squirmed away from him. A whistle had sounded shrilly upon Gallatin’s
left and before he knew it the dog had escaped him and was dashing
hotfoot through the leaves toward the spot where a dark figure with
another dog on a leash was rapidly moving.
Gallatin followed briskly and came up a moment later, in the midst of
the excitement of reunion and reconciliation.
“Down, Chicot, down, I say,” the girl was commanding. “Aren’t you
ashamed of yourself to be giving so much trouble!” And as Gallatin
approached, breathlessly, hat in hand, “I’m ever so much obliged. I
ought to have had him in leash. He’s only a puppy and--” She stopped,
mouth open, eyes wide as she recognized him. He saw the look she gave
him and bowed his head.
“Jane!” he said, humbly. “Jane!”
The dogs were leaping around them both and Chicot was biting joyously
at his gloved hand, but Miss Loring had drawn back.
“You!” she said.
“Yes,” softly. “I--I’m so glad to see you.”
He held his hand before him as though to parry an expected blow.
“Don’t,” he muttered. “Give me a chance. There’s so much I’ve got to
say,--so much----”
“There’s nothing for you to say,” she said decisively. “If you’ll
excuse me--I--I must be going at once.”
She turned away quickly, but the dogs were putting her dignity in
jeopardy for the puppy still nosed Gallatin’s hand and showed a
determination to linger for his caress.
“You’ve _got_ to listen,” he murmured. “I’m not going to lose you
again----”
“Come, Chicot,” said the girl in a voice which was meant to be
peremptory, but which sounded curiously ineffective. Chicot would not
go until Gallatin caught him by the collar and followed.
“You see,” he laughed, “you’ve got to stand for me--or lose the puppy.”
But Miss Loring had turned abruptly and was moving rapidly toward the
distant Avenue. Gallatin put on his hat and walked at her side.
“I want you to know--how it all happened to me--up there in the woods,”
he muttered, through set lips. “It’s only justice to me--and to you.”
“Will you please leave me!” she said, in a stifled voice, her head
stiffly set, her eyes looking straight down the path before her.
“No,” he replied, more calmly. “I’m not going to leave you.”
“Oh, that you would dare!”
“Don’t, Jane!” he pleaded. “Can’t you see that I’ve got to go with you
whether----”
“My name is Loring,” she interrupted coldly, strongly accenting the
word.
“Won’t you listen to me?”
“I’m entirely at your mercy--unfortunately. I’ve always thought that a
girl was safe from intrusion here in the Park.”
“Don’t call it that. I’ll go in a moment, if you’ll only hear what I’ve
got to say.”
“You’d offer an apology for--for _that_!” She could not find a tone
that suited her scorn of him.
“No--not apology,” he said steadily. “One doesn’t apologize for the
things beyond one’s power to prevent. It’s the _miserere_, Jane--the
_de profundis_----”
“It comes too late,” she said, but she stole a glance at him in spite
of herself. His head bent slightly forward, he was gazing, under
lowered brows directly before him into the falling dusk. She remembered
that look. He had worn it when he had sat by their camp-fire the night
they had heard the voices.
“Yes, I know,” he went on slowly. “Too late for you to understand--too
late to help, and yet----”
“I beg that you will not go on,” she broke in quickly. “It can do no
good.”
“I must go on. I’ve got so much to say and such a little time to say it
in. Perhaps, I won’t see you again. At least I won’t see you unless you
wish it.”
“Then you’ll not see me again.”
He turned his head and examined her soberly.
“That, of course, is your privilege. Don’t be too hard, if you can help
it. Try and remember me, if you can, as I was before----”
“I shall not remember you at all, Mr. Gallatin.”
He started as she spoke his name. “You knew?”
“Yes, I knew. You--your name was familiar to me.”
“You mean that you had heard of me?” he asked wonderingly.
She knew that she had said too much, but she went on coldly.
“In New York one hears of Philip Gallatin. I knew--there in the woods.
I discovered your name by accident--upon your letters.”
She spoke shortly--hesitantly, as if every word was wrung from her by
an effort of will.
“I see,” he said, “and what you heard of me--was not good?”
“No,” she said. “It was not good. But I had known you two days then,
and I--I thought there must--have been some mistake--until--” she broke
off passionately. “Oh, what is the use of all this?” she gasped. “It’s
lowering to your pride and to mine. If I have said more than I meant to
say, it is because I want you to know why I never want to see you--to
hear of you again.”
He bowed his head beneath the storm. He deserved it, he knew, and there
was even a bitter pleasure in his retribution, for her indifference had
been hardest to bear.
“I understand,” he said quietly. “I will go in a moment. But first I
mean that you shall hear what I have to say.”
She remembered that tone of command. He had used it when he had lifted
her in his arms and carried her helpless to his camp-fire. The memory
of it shamed her, as his presence did now, and she walked on more
rapidly. Their path had been deserted, but they were now approaching
the Avenue where the hurrying pedestrians and vehicles proclaimed the
end of privacy. A deserted bench was before them.
“Please stop here a moment,” he pleaded. “I won’t keep you long.” And
when she would have gone on he laid a hand on her arm. “You must!” he
insisted passionately. “You’ve got to, Jane. You’ll do me a great wrong
if you don’t. I’ve kept the faith with you since then--since I was mad
there in the wilderness. You didn’t know or care, but I’ve kept the
faith--the good you’ve done--don’t undo it now.”
A passer-by was regarding them curiously and so she sat, for Gallatin’s
look compelled her. She did not understand what he meant, and in her
heart she knew she could not care whose faith he kept, or why, but she
recognized in his voice the note of a deep emotion, and was conscious
of its echo in her own spirit. Outwardly she was as disdainful as
before, and her silence, while it gave him consent, was anything but
encouraging. As he sat down beside her the puppy, “Chicot,” put his
head upon Gallatin’s knees and looked up into his eyes, so Gallatin put
his hand on the dog’s head and kept it there.
“I want you to know something about my people--about--the Gallatins----”
“I know enough, I think.”
“No--you’re mistaken. We are not all that you think we are. Let me go
on,” calmly. “The Gallatins have always stood for truth of speech and
honesty of purpose, and whatever their failings they have all been
called honorable men. Upon the Bench, at the Bar, in the Executive
chair, no word has ever been breathed against their professional
integrity or their civic pride. My great grandfather was a Justice of
the Supreme Court of the United States, my grandfather a Governor of
the State of New York, my father----”
Miss Loring made a gesture of protest.
“Wait,” he insisted. “My father was a great lawyer--one of the greatest
this City and State have ever known--and yet all of these men, mental
giants of their day and generation--had--had a weakness--the same
weakness--the weakness that I have. To one of them it meant the loss
of the only woman he had ever loved--his wife and his children;
to another the sacrifice of his highest political ambition; to my
father a lingering illness of which he subsequently died. That is my
pedigree--of great honor--and greater shame. History has dealt kindly
because their faults were those of their blood and race, for which
they themselves were not accountable. This may seem strange to you
because you have only learned to judge men by their performances. The
phenomenon of heredity is new to you. People are taught to see the
physical resemblances of the members of a family to its ancestors--but
of the spiritual resemblance one knows nothing--unless--” his voice
sunk until it was scarcely audible, “unless the spiritual resemblance
is so strong that even Time itself cannot efface it.”
The girl did not speak. Her head was bowed but her chin was still
set firmly, and her eyes, though they looked afar, were stern and
unyielding.
“When I went to the woods, I was--was recovering--from an illness.
I went up there at the doctor’s orders. I _had_ to go, and I--I got
better after a while. Then _you_ came, and I learned that there was
something else in life besides what I had found in it. I had never
known----”
“I can’t see why I should listen to this, Mr. Gallatin.”
“Because what happened after that, you were a part of.”
“_I?_”
“It was you who showed me how to be well. That’s all,” he finished
quietly. He rubbed the dog’s ears between his fingers and got some
comfort from Chicot’s sympathy, but went on in a constrained voice. “I
was hoping you might understand, that you might give me charity--if
only the charity you once gave to the carcass of a dead deer.”
There was a long silence during which he watched her downcast profile,
but when at last she lifted her head, he knew that she was still
unyielding.
“You ask too much, Mr. Gallatin,” she said constrainedly. “If you were
dead you might have my pity--even my tears, but living--living I can
only--only hold you in--abhorrence.”
She rose from the bench quickly and shortened in the leashes of her
dogs.
“You--you dislike me so much as that?” he asked dully.
“Dislike and--and fear you, Mr. Gallatin. If you’ll excuse me----”
She turned away and Gallatin started up. Dusk had fallen and they were
quite alone.
“I can’t let you go like this,” he whispered, standing in front of
her so that she could not pass him. “I can’t. You mean that you fear
me because of what--happened--My God! Haven’t I proved to you that it
was madness, the madness of the Gallatin blood, which strikes at the
happiness of those it loves the best? I love you, Jane. It’s true.
Night and day----”
“You’ve told me that before,” she broke in fearlessly. “Must you insult
me again. For shame! Let me pass, please.”
It was the assurance of utter contempt. Gallatin bowed his head and
drew aside. There was nothing left to do.
He stood there in the dusk, his head uncovered, and watched her slender
figure as it merged into the darkness. Only the dog, Chicot, stopped,
struggling, at his leash, but its mistress moved on hurriedly without
even turning her head and was lost in the crowd upon the street.
Gallatin lingered a moment longer immovable and then turned slowly
and walked into the depths of the Park, his face pale, his dark eyes
staring like those of a blind man.
Night had fallen swiftly, but not more swiftly than the shadows on
his spirit, among which he groped vaguely for the elements that had
supported him. He crept into the night like a stricken thing, his
feet instinctively guiding him away from the moving tide of his
fellow-beings--one of whom had just denied him charity--without which
his own reviving faith in himself was again in jeopardy. For two months
he had fought his battle silently with her image in his mind--the
image of a girl who had once given him faith and friendship, whose
fingers had soothed him in fever, and whose eyes had been dark with
compassion--the girl who had taught him the uses of responsibility and
the glorification of the labor of his hands. That silent battle had
magnified the image, vested it with sovereign rights, given it the
gentle strength by which he had conjured, and he had fought joyfully,
with a new belief in his own destiny, a real delight in conquest. His
heart glowed with a dull wrath. Was it nothing that he had come to her
clean-handed again? The image that he had conjured was fading in the
sullen glow in the West out of which she had come to him. Was this
Jane? The Jane he knew had sorrowed with the falling of a bird, mourned
the killing of a squirrel and wept over the glazed eyes of a dead deer.
Was this Jane? This disdainful woman with the modish hat and cold blue
eye, this scornful daughter of convention who sneered at sin and
mocked at the tokens of repentance?
The image was gone from his shrine, and in its place a Nemesis sat
enthroned--a Nemesis in dark gray who looked at him with the eyes of
contempt and who called herself Miss Loring. He was resentful of her
name as at an intrusion. It typified the pedantry of the conventional
and commonplace.
The arc lamps died and flared, their shadows leaping like gnomes in and
out of the obscurity. High in the air, lights punctured the darkness
where the hotels loomed. Beside him on the drive gay turnouts hurried.
The roar of the city came nearer. Arcadia was not even a memory.
The Pride of the Gallatins was a sorry thing that night. This Gallatin
had bared it frankly, torn away its rugged coverings, that a woman
might see and know him for what he was--the best and the worst of him.
Even now he did not regret it; for bitter as the retribution had been,
he knew that he had owed her that candor, for it was a part of the
lesson he had learned with Jane--the other Jane--among the woods. This
Jane remembered not; for she had struck and had not spared him, and
each stinging phrase still pierced and quivered in the wound that it
had made.
Out of the blackness of his thoughts reason came slowly. It was her
right, of course, to deny him the privileges of her regard--the
rights of fellowship--this he had deserved and had expected, but the
carelessness of her contempt had been hard to bear. Mockery he had
known in women, and intolerance, but no one of his blood had ever
brooked contempt. His cheeks burned with the sudden flush of anger and
his hand upon his stick grew rigid. A man might pay for such a thing as
that--but a girl!
His muscles relaxed and he laughed outright. A snip of a girl that
he’d kissed in the woods, who now came out dressed in broadcloth and
sanctimony! How should it matter what she thought of him? Absurd little
Puritan! Girls had been kissed before and had lived to be merry over
it. He was a fool to have built this enchanted fabric into his brain,
this castle of Micomicon which swayed and toppled about his ears. Miss
Loring, forsooth!
He took out his cigarette case in leisurely fashion and struck a match,
and its reflection sparkled gayly in his eyes. He inhaled deeply and
bent his steps toward the nearest lights beyond the trees.
IX
THE LORINGS
The house of Henry K. Loring, Captain of Industry and patron saint of
one or more great businesses, was situated on that part of Central Park
East which Colonel Van Duyn called Mammon’s Mile. The land upon which
it was built was more valuable even than the sands of Pactolus; and
the architect, keenly conscious of his obligations to the earth which
supported this last monument to his genius, had let no opportunity
slip by which would make the building more expensive for its owner.
Column, frieze, capital and entablature, all bore the tokens of his
playful imagination, and the hipped roof which climbed high above
its neighbors, ended in a riot of finial and coping, as though the
architect nearing the end of his phantasy (and his commission) had
crowded into the few short moments which remained to him all the
ornament that had been forbidden him elsewhere. The edifice had reached
the distinction of notice by the conductors of the “rubber-neck” busses
on the Avenue and of the reproach of Percy Endicott, whose scurrilous
comment that “it contained all of the fifty-seven varieties” had now
become a by-word down town.
But the lofty hall and drawing-room of the house failed to fulfill
the dire prediction of its ornate exterior, for here the architect,
as though with a sudden awakening of the artistic conscience, had
developed a simple scheme in an accepted design which somewhat atoned
for his previous prodigality. A portrait of the master of the house,
by an eminent Englishman, hung in the hall, and in the drawing-room
were other paintings of wife and daughter, by Americans and Frenchmen,
almost, if not equally, eminent. The continent of Europe had been
explored in search of tapestries and ornaments for the house of this
new prince of finance, and evidences of rare discrimination were
apparent at every hand. And yet with all its splendor, the house lacked
an identity and an ego. It was too sophisticated. Each object of art,
beautiful in itself, spoke of a different taste--a taste which had
been bought and paid for. It was like a museum which one enters with
interest but without emotion. It was a house without a soul.