a derelict! Then society is made up of derelicts, discards from the
game of opportunity. Some of us are rich. We think we can afford to
be idle. Ambition doesn’t matter to such men as Dick, or Larry Kane,
or Egerton Savage. Their lines were drawn in easy places, their lives
were ready-made from the hour that they were born. But you! There’s no
excuse for you. You are not rich. As the world considers such things,
you’re poor and so you’re born for better things! You’ve got the
Gallatin intellect, the Gallatin solidity, the Gallatin cleverness----”
“And the Gallatin insufficiency,” he finished for her.
“A fig for your vices,” she said contemptuously. “It’s the little men
of this world that never have any vices. No big man ever was without
them. Whatever dims the luster of the spirit, the white fire of
intellect burns steadily on, unless--” she paused and glanced at him,
quickly, lowering her voice--“unless the luster of the spirit is dimmed
too long, Phil.”
He clasped his long fingers around one of his knees and looked
thoughtfully at the rug.
“I understand,” he said quietly.
“You don’t mind my speaking to you so, do you, Phil, dear?”
He closed his eyes, and then opening them as though with an effort,
looked at her squarely.
“No, Nellie.”
Her firm hand pressed his strongly. “Let me help you, Phil. There are
not many fellows I’d go out of my way for, not many of them are worth
it. Phil, you’ve got to take hold at once--right away. Make a fresh
start.”
“I did take hold for--for a good while and then--and then I slipped a
cog----”
“Why? You mean it was too hard for you?”
“No, not at all. It had got so that I wasn’t bothered--not much--that
is--I let go purposely.” He stopped suddenly. “I can’t tell you why. I
guess I’m a fool--that’s all.”
She examined his face with a new interest. There was something here she
could not understand. She had known Phil Gallatin since his boyhood and
had always believed in him. She had watched his development with the
eyes of an elder sister, and had never given up the hope that he might
carry on the traditions of his blood in all things save the one to be
dreaded. She had never talked with him before. Indeed, she would not
have done so to-night had it not been that a strong friendly impulse
had urged her. She made it a practice never to interfere in the lives
of others, if interference meant the cost of needless pain; but as she
had said to him, Phil Gallatin was worth helping. She was thankful,
too, that he had taken her advice kindly.
What was this he was saying about letting go purposely. What--but she
had reached the ends of friendliness and the beginnings of curiosity.
“No, you’re not a fool, Phil. You sha’n’t call yourself names.” And
then, “You say you weren’t bothered--much?”
“No. Things had got a good deal easier for me. I was beginning to feel
hopeful for the future. It had cost me something, but I had got my
grip. I had started in at the office again, and Kenyon had given me
some important work to do. Good old Uncle John! He seemed to know that
I was trying.”
He stopped a moment and then went on rapidly. “He turned me loose on a
big corporation case the firm was preparing for trial. I threw myself
into the thing, body and soul. I worked like a dog--night and day, and
every hour that I worked my grip on myself grew stronger. I was awake
then, Nellie, full of enthusiasm, my old love of my profession glowing
at a white heat that absorbed and swallowed all other fires. It seemed
that I found out some things the other fellows had overlooked, and a
few days before the big case was to be called, Kenyon asked me if I
didn’t want to take charge. I don’t believe he knew how good that made
me feel. I seemed to have come into my own again. I knew I could win
and I told him so. So he and Hood dropped out and turned the whole
thing over to me. I had it all at my fingers’ ends. You know, I once
learned a little law, Nellie, and I was figuring on a great victory.”
As Gallatin spoke, his long frame slowly straightened, his head drew
well back on his shoulders and a new fire glowed in his eyes.
“It was great!” he went on. “I don’t believe any man alive ever felt
more sure of himself than I did when I wound up that case and shut up
my desk for the day. If I won, and win I should, it would give Kenyon,
Hood and Gallatin a lot of prestige. Things looked pretty bright that
night. I began to see the possibilities of a career, Nellie, a real
career that even a Gallatin might be proud of.”
He came to a sudden pause, his figure crumpled, and the glow in his
eyes faded as though a film had fallen across them.
“And then?” asked Nellie Pennington.
“And then,” he muttered haltingly, “something happened to me--I had
a--a disappointment--and things went all wrong inside of me--I didn’t
care what happened. I went to the bad, Nellie, clean--clean to the
bad----”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Pennington softly, “I heard. That’s why I spoke to you
to-night. You haven’t been----”
“No, thank God, I’m keeping straight now, but it did hurt to have done
so well and then to have failed so utterly. You see the case I was
speaking of--Kenyon, Hood and Gallatin had turned the whole business
over to me, and I wasn’t there to plead. They couldn’t find me. There
was a postponement, of course, but my opportunity had passed and it
won’t come again.”
He stopped, glanced at her face and then turned away. “I don’t know
why I’ve told you these things,” he finished soberly, “for sympathy is
hardly the kind of thing a man in my position can stand for.”
Nellie Pennington remained silent. Her interest was deep and her wonder
uncontrollable. Therefore, being a woman, she did not question. She
only waited. Her woman’s eyes to-night had been wide open, and she
had already made a rapid diagnosis of which her curiosity compelled a
confirmation.
They were alone at their end of the room. Miss Loring and Mr. Van Duyn
had gone in to the bridge tables and Egerton Savage was conversing in
a low tone with Betty Tremaine, whose fingers straying over the piano,
were running softly through an aria from “La Bohème.”
“You know, Nellie,” he went on presently, “I’m not in the habit of
talking about my own affairs, even with my friends, but I believe it’s
done me a lot of good to talk to you. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
She nodded and then went on quickly. “The trouble with you is that
you don’t talk enough about yourself, Phil. You’re a seething mass
of introspection. It isn’t healthy. Friends are only conversational
chopping-blocks after all. Why don’t you use them? Me--for instance.
I’m safe, sane, and I confess a trifle curious.” She paused a moment,
and then said keenly:
“It’s a girl, of course.”
He raised his head quickly, and then lowered it as quickly again.
“No, there isn’t any girl.”
“Oh, yes, there is. I’ve known it for quite two hours.”
“How?” he asked in alarm.
She waved her fan with a graceful gesture. “Second sight, a sixth
sense, an appreciation for the fourth dimension--in short--the instinct
of a woman.”
“You mean that you guessed?”
“No, that I perceived.”
“It takes a woman to perceive something which doesn’t exist,” he said
easily.
She turned and examined him with level brows. “Then why did you admit
it?”
“I didn’t.”
She leaned back among her pillows and laughed at him mockingly. “Oh,
Phil! _Must_ I be brutal?”
“What do you mean?”
“That the girl--is here--to-night.”
“That is not true,” he stammered. “She is not here.”
Mrs. Pennington did not spare him.
“A moment ago--you denied that there was a girl. Now you’re willing to
admit that she’s only absent. Please don’t doubt the accuracy of my
feminine deductions, Phil. Nothing provokes me more. You may drive me
to the extreme of mentioning her name.”
Gallatin stopped fencing. It was an art he was obliged reluctantly
to confess, in which he was far from a match for this tantalizing
adversary. So he relapsed into silence, aware that the longer the
conversation continued the more vulnerable he became.
But she reassured him in a moment.
“Oh, why won’t you trust me?” she whispered, her eyes dark with
interest. “I do want to help you if you’ll let me. It _was_ only a
guess, Phil, a guess founded on the most intangible evidence, but I
couldn’t help seeing (you know a heaven-born hostess is Midas-eared and
Argus-eyed) what passed between you and Jane Loring.”
“Nothing that I’m aware of passed between us,” he said quietly. “She
was very civil.”
“As civil as a cucumber--no more--no less. How could _I_ know that she
didn’t want to go in to dinner with you?”
“You heard?”
“Yes, from the back of my head. Besides, Phil, I’ve always told you
that your eyes were too expressive.” His look of dismay was so genuine
that she stopped and laid her hand along his arm. “I was watching you,
Phil. That’s why I know. I shouldn’t have noticed, if I hadn’t been.”
“Yes,” he slowly admitted at last. “Miss Loring and I had met before.”
At that he stopped and would say no more. Instinct warned her that
curiosity had drawn her to the verge of intrusiveness, and so she,
too, remained silent while through her head a hundred thoughts were
racing--benevolent, romantic, speculative, concerning these two young
people whom she liked--and one of whom was unhappy. They had met
before, on terms of intimacy, but where?
Intimacies worth quarreling over were scarcely to be made in the brief
season during which Jane Loring had been in New York, for unlike
Mr. Worthington, Phil Gallatin was no cultivator of social squabs.
Obviously they had met elsewhere. Last summer? Phil Gallatin was
fishing in Canada--Canada! So was Jane! Mrs. Pennington straightened
and examined her companion curiously. She had heard the story of Phil
Gallatin’s wood-nymph and was now thoroughly awake to the reasons for
his reticence, so she sank back among her cushions, her eyes downcast,
a smile wreathing her lips, the smile of the collector of objects
of art and virtue who has stumbled upon a hidden rarity. It was a
smile, too, of self-appreciation and approval, for her premises had
been negligible and her conclusion only arrived at after a process of
induction which surprised her by the completeness of its success. She
was already wondering how her information could best serve her purposes
as mediator when Gallatin spoke again.
“We had met before, Nellie, under unusual and--and--er--trying
conditions. There was a--misunderstanding--something happened--which
you need not know--a damage to--to her pride which I would give my
right hand to repair.”
“Perhaps, if you could see her alone----”
“Yes, I was hoping for that--but it hardly seems possible here.”
Mrs. Pennington was leaning forward now, slightly away from him,
thinking deeply, thoroughly alive to her responsibilities--her
responsibilities to Jane Loring as well as to the man beside her.
It was the judgment of the world that Phil was a failure--her own
judgment, too, in spite of her affection for him; and yet in her breast
there still lived a belief that he still had a chance for regeneration.
She had seen the spark of it in his eyes, heard the echo of it in tones
of his voice when he had spoken of his last failures. She hesitated
long before replying, her eyes looking into space, like a seer of
visions, as though she were trying to read the riddle of the future.
And when she spoke it was with tones of resolution.
“I think it might be managed. Will you leave it to me?”
She gave him her hand in a warm clasp. “I believe in you, Phil, and I
understand,” she finished softly.
Gallatin followed her to the door of the library, unquiet of mind
and sober of demeanor. He had long known Nellie Pennington to be a
wonderful woman and the tangible evidences of her cleverness still
lingered as the result of his interview. There seemed to be nothing
a woman of her equipment could not accomplish, nothing she could not
learn if she made up her mind to it. In twenty minutes of talk she had
succeeded in extracting from Gallatin, without unseemly effort, his
most carefully treasured secret, and indeed he half suspected that
her intuition had already supplied the missing links in the chain of
gossip that was going the rounds about him. But he did not question her
loyalty or her tact and, happy to trust his fortunes entirely into her
hands, he approached the bridge-tables aware that the task which his
hostess had assumed so lightly was one that would tax her ingenuity to
the utmost.
Her last whispered admonition as she left him in the hall had been
“Wait, and don’t play bridge!” and so he followed her injunction
implicitly, wondering how the miracle was to be accomplished. Miss
Loring did not raise her head at his approach, and even when the others
at the table nodded greetings she bent her head upon her cards and made
her bids, carelessly oblivious of his presence.
Miss Jaffray hardly improved his situation when she flashed a mocking
glance up at him and laughed. “_Satyr!_” she said. “I could never have
believed it of you, Phil. You were such a nice little boy, too, though
you _would_ pull my pig-tail!”
“Don’t mind Nina, Phil,” said Worthington gayly. “Satyrical remarks are
her long suit, especially when she’s losing.”
Nina regarded him reproachfully. “There _was_ a time, Bibby, when you
wouldn’t have spoken so unkindly of me. Is this the way you repay your
debt of gratitude?”
“Gratitude!”
“Yes, I might have married you, you know.”
“Oh, Nina! I’d forgotten.”
“Think of the peril you escaped and be thankful!”
“I am,” he said devoutly.
“You ought to be.” And then to Miss Loring, “Bibby hasn’t proposed to
you yet, has he, Jane,” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Jane laughing. “Have you, Mr. Worthington?”
He flushed painfully and gnawed at his small mustache. Nina had scored
heavily.
“I hope he does,” Jane went on with a sense of throwing a buoy to a
drowning man, “because I’m sure I’d accept him.”
Worthington smiled gratefully and adored her in fervent silence.
“Men have stopped asking _me_ to marry them lately,” sighed Nina. “It
annoys me dreadfully.” She spoke of this misfortune with the same
careless tone one would use with reference to a distasteful pattern in
wall-paper.
“But think of the hearts you’ve broken,” said Gallatin.
“Or of the hearts I wanted to break but couldn’t,” she replied. “Yours,
for instance, Phil.”
“You couldn’t have tried very hard,” he laughed.
“I didn’t know you were a satyr then,” she said, pushing her chair back
from the table. “Your rubber, I think, Bibby. I’m sure we’d better
stop, Dick, or you’ll never ask me here again.”
XIII
MRS. PENNINGTON’S BROUGHAM
There was a general movement of dispersal, and Philip Gallatin, who had
now given up all hope of the opportunity Nellie Pennington had promised
him, followed the party into the hall, his eyes following Jane, who had
found her hostess and was making her adieux. He watched her slender
figure as she made her way up the stairs, and turned to Mrs. Pennington
reproachfully.
“Don’t speak, Phil,” his hostess whispered. “It’s all arranged. Go at
once and get your things.”
Gallatin obeyed quickly and when he came down he heard Mrs. Pennington
saying, “So sorry, Jane. Your machine came, but the butler sent it home
again. There was some mistake in the orders, it seems. But I’ve ordered
my brougham, and it’s waiting at the door for you. You don’t mind, do
you? I’ve asked Mr. Gallatin to see that you get home safely.”
“Of course, it’s very kind of you, dear.” She hesitated. “But it seems
too bad to trouble Mr. Gallatin.”
“I’m sure--I’m delighted,” he said, and it was evident that he meant it.
Jane Loring glanced around her quickly, helplessly it seemed to
Gallatin, but the sight of Coleman Van Duyn, waiting hat in hand,
helped her to a decision.
“It’s so kind of you, Mr. Gallatin,” she said gratefully, and then, in
a whisper as she kissed her hostess, “Nellie, you’re simply odious!”
and made her way out of the door.
Gallatin followed quickly, but Miss Loring reached the curb before him
and giving her number to the coachman, got in without the proffered
hand of her escort.
Angry though she was, Jane Loring kept her composure admirably. All the
world, it seemed, was conspiring to throw her with this man whom she
now knew she must detest. If fate, blind and unthinking, had made him
her dinner partner, only design, malicious and uncivil, could be blamed
for his presence now. She sat in her corner, her figure tense, her head
averted, her wraps carefully drawn about her, a dark and forbidding
wraith of outraged dignity, waiting only for him to speak that she
might crush him.
Gallatin sat immovable for a moment, conscious of all the feminine
forces arrayed against him.
“I make no apologies,” he began with an assurance which surprised her.
“I wanted to see you alone and no other chance offered. I suppose I
might say I’m sorry, but that wouldn’t be true. I’m not sorry and I
don’t want any misunderstandings. I asked Mrs. Pennington----”
“Oh!” she broke in wrathfully. “Many people, it seems, enjoy your
confidences, Mr. Gallatin.”
“No,” he went on, steadily. “I’m not given to confidences, Miss Loring.
Mrs. Pennington is one of my oldest and best friends. I told her it was
necessary for me to see you alone for a moment and she took pity on me.”
“Mrs. Pennington has taken an unpardonable liberty and I shall tell her
so,” said Jane decisively.
“I hope you won’t do that.”
“Have matters reached such a point in New York that a girl can’t drive
out alone without being open to the importunity of any stranger?”
“I am not a stranger,” he put in firmly, and his voice dominated hers.
“We met within the Gates of Chance, Miss Loring, on equal terms. I have
the right of any man to plead----”
“You’ve already pleaded.”
“You were prejudiced. I’ve appealed--to a higher tribunal--your sense
of justice.”
“I know no law but my own instinct.”
“You are not true to your own instincts then, or they are not true to
you.”
It was sophistry, of course, but she was a trifle startled at the
accuracy of his deduction, for she realized that it was her judgment
only that rejected him and that her instincts advised her of the
pleasure she took in his company. Her instincts then being unreliable,
she followed her judgment blindly, uncomfortably conscious that she did
it against her will, and angry with herself that it was so.
“I only know, Mr. Gallatin,” she said coldly, “that both judgment
and instinct warn me against you. Whatever there is left in you
of honor--of decency, must surely respond to my distaste for this
intrusion.”
“If I admit that I’m neither honorable nor decent, will you give me the
credit for speaking the truth?” he asked slowly.
“With reference to what?” scornfully.
“To this story they’re telling.”
“You brought it here, of course.”
“Will you believe me if I say that I didn’t?”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Simply because I ask you to.”
She looked out of the carriage window away from him.
“I believed in you once, Mr. Gallatin.”
He bowed his head.
“Even that is something,” he said. “You wouldn’t have believed in
me then if instinct had forbidden it. I am the same person you once
believed in.”
“My judgment was at fault. I dislike you intensely.”
“I won’t believe it.”
“You must. You did me an injury that nothing can repair.”
“An injury to your dignity, to your womanhood and sensibility----”
“Hardly,” she said scornfully, “or even to my pride. It was only my
body--you hurt, Mr. Gallatin--your kisses--they soiled me----”
“My God, Jane! Don’t! Haven’t you punished me enough? I was mad, I
tell you. There was a devil in me, that owned me body and soul, that
stole my reason, killed what was good, and made a monster of the love I
had cherished--an insensate enemy that perverted and brutalized every
decent instinct, a Thing unfamiliar to you which frightened and drove
you away in fear and loathing. It was not _me_ you feared, Jane, for
you trusted me. It was the Thing you feared, as I fear it, the Enemy
that had pursued me into the woods where I had fled from it.”
Jane Loring sat in her corner apparently unconcerned, but her heart was
throbbing and the hands beneath the wide sleeves of her opera kimono
were nervously clutched. The sound of his voice, its deep sonorous
tones when aroused were familiar to her. As he paused she stole a
glance at him, for as he spoke of his Enemy he had turned away from
her, his eyes peering out into the dimly lighted street, as if the
mention of his weakness shamed him.
“I’m not asking you for your pity,” he went on more steadily. “I only
want your pardon. I don’t think it’s too much to ask. It wasn’t the
real Phil Gallatin who brought that shame on you.”
“The real Phil Gallatin! Which is the real Phil Gallatin?” she asked
cruelly.
“What you make him--to-night,” he replied quickly. “I’ve done what I
can without you--lived like an outcast on the memories of happiness,
but I can’t subsist on that. Memory is poor food for a starving man.”
“I can’t see how _I_ can be held accountable. _I_ did not make you, Mr.
Gallatin.”
“But you can mar me. I’ve come,” he remembered the words of Mrs.
Pennington, “I’ve come to the parting of the ways. Up there--I gained
my self-respect--and lost it. The best of me you saw and the worst of
me. You knew me only for five days and yet no one in the world can know
me exactly as you do.”
“The pity of it----”
“The best of me and the worst of me, the man in me and the beast in me,
my sanity and my madness. All these you saw. The record is at least
complete.”
“I hope so.”
“I could not lie to you nor cheat you with false sentiment. I played
the game fairly until--until then.”
“Yes--until then.”
“You cared for me, there in the woods. I earned your friendship. And I
hoped that the time had come when I could prove--to you, at least, that
I was not to be found wanting.”
“And yet--you failed,” she said.
“Yes, I failed. Oh, I don’t try to make my sin any the less. I only
want you to remember the circumstances--to acquit me of any intention
to do you harm. I am no despoiler of women, even my enemies will
tell you so. That, thank God, was not a part of my heritage. I have
always looked on women of your sort with a kind of wonder. I have
never understood them--nor they me. I thought of them as I thought of
pictures or of children, things set apart from the grubby struggle for
material and moral existence. I liked to be with them because their
ways fell in pleasant places and because, in respecting them, I could
better learn to respect myself. God knows, I respected you--honored
you! Don’t say you don’t believe that!”
“I--I think you did----” she stammered.
“I tried to show you how much. You knew what was in my heart. I would
have died for you--or lived for you, if you could have wished it so.”
He paused a moment, his brows tangled in thought.
“I learned many things up there--things that neither men nor women nor
books had taught me, something of the directness and persistence of
the forces of nature, the binding contract of a man’s body with his
soul, the glorification of labor and the meaning of responsibility.
I was happy there--happy as I had never been before. I wanted the
days to be longer so that I could work harder for you, and my pride
in your comfort was the greatest pride I have ever known. You were my
fetich--the symbol of Intention. You made me believe in myself, and
defied the Enemy that was plucking at my elbow. I could have lived
there always and I prayed in secret that we might never be found. I
wanted you to believe in me as I was already beginning to believe in
myself. Whatever I had been--here in the world--up there at least I
was a success. I wanted to prove it thoroughly--to kill, that you
might eat and be warm--to hew and build, that you might be comfortable.
I wanted a shrine for you, that I might put you there and keep
you--always. I worshiped you, Jane, God help me, as I worship you now.”
His voice trembled and broke as he paused.
“I--I must not listen to you, Mr. Gallatin,” she said hurriedly, for
her heart was beating wildly.
“I worship you, Jane,” he repeated, “and I ask for nothing but your
pardon.”
“I--I forgive you,” she gasped.