Miss Strange was not often pensive--at least not at large functions
or when under the public eye. But she certainly forgot herself at Mrs.
Provost’s musicale and that, too, without apparent reason. Had the music
been of a high order one might have understood her abstraction; but it
was of a decidedly mediocre quality, and Violet’s ear was much too fine
and her musical sense too cultivated for her to be beguiled by anything
less than the very best.
Nor had she the excuse of a dull companion. Her escort for the evening
was a man of unusual conversational powers; but she seemed to be almost
oblivious of his presence; and when, through some passing courteous
impulse, she did turn her ear his way, it was with just that tinge of
preoccupation which betrays the divided mind.
Were her thoughts with some secret problem yet unsolved? It would
scarcely seem so from the gay remark with which she had left home. She
was speaking to her brother and her words were: “I am going out to enjoy
myself. I’ve not a care in the world. The slate is quite clean.” Yet she
had never seemed more out of tune with her surroundings nor shown a mood
further removed from trivial entertainment. What had happened to becloud
her gaiety in the short time which had since elapsed?
We can answer in a sentence.
She had seen, among a group of young men in a distant doorway, one with
a face so individual and of an expression so extraordinary that all
interest in the people about her had stopped as a clock stops when the
pendulum is held back. She could see nothing else, think of nothing
else. Not that it was so very handsome--though no other had ever
approached it in its power over her imagination--but because of its
expression of haunting melancholy,--a melancholy so settled and so
evidently the result of long-continued sorrow that her interest had been
reached and her heartstrings shaken as never before in her whole life.
She would never be the same Violet again.
Yet moved as she undoubtedly was, she was not conscious of the least
desire to know who the young man was, or even to be made acquainted with
his story. She simply wanted to dream her dream undisturbed.
It was therefore with a sense of unwelcome shock that, in the course of
the reception following the programme, she perceived this fine young man
approaching herself, with his right hand touching his left shoulder in
the peculiar way which committed her to an interview with or without a
formal introduction.
Should she fly the ordeal? Be blind and deaf to whatever was significant
in his action, and go her way before he reached her; thus keeping her
dream intact? Impossible. His eye prevented that. His glance had caught
hers and she felt forced to await his advance and give him her first
spare moment.
It came soon, and when it came she greeted him with a smile. It was the
first she had ever bestowed in welcome of a confidence of whose tenor
she was entirely ignorant.
To her relief he showed his appreciation of the dazzling gift though he
made no effort to return it. Scorning all preliminaries in his eagerness
to discharge himself of a burden which was fast becoming intolerable, he
addressed her at once in these words:
“You are very good, Miss Strange, to receive me in this unconventional
fashion. I am in that desperate state of mind which precludes etiquette.
Will you listen to my petition? I am told--you know by whom--“(and he
again touched his shoulder) “that you have resources of intelligence
which especially fit you to meet the extraordinary difficulties of my
position. May I beg you to exercise them in my behalf? No man would be
more grateful if--But I see that you do not recognize me. I am Roger
Upjohn. That I am admitted to this gathering is owing to the fact that
our hostess knew and loved my mother. In my anxiety to meet you and
proffer my plea, I was willing to brave the cold looks you have probably
noticed on the faces of the people about us. But I have no right to
subject you to criticism. I--”
“Remain.” Violet’s voice was troubled, her self-possession disturbed;
but there was a command in her tone which he was only too glad to obey.
“I know the name” (who did not!) “and possibly my duty to myself should
make me shun a confidence which may burden me without relieving you. But
you have been sent to me by one whose behests I feel bound to respect
and--”
Mistrusting her voice, she stopped. The suffering which made itself
apparent in the face before her appealed to her heart in a way to rob
her of her judgment. She did not wish this to be seen, and so fell
silent.
He was quick to take advantage of her obvious embarrassment. “Should I
have been sent to you if I had not first secured the confidence of the
sender? You know the scandal attached to my name, some of it just, some
of it very unjust. If you will grant me an interview to-morrow, I will
make an endeavour to refute certain charges which I have hitherto let
go unchallenged. Will you do me this favour? Will you listen in your own
house to what I have to say?”
Instinct cried out against any such concession on her part, bidding
her beware of one who charmed without excellence and convinced without
reason. But compassion urged compliance and compassion won the day.
Though conscious of weakness,--she, Violet Strange on whom strong
men had come to rely in critical hours calling for well-balanced
judgment,--she did not let this concern her, or allow herself to indulge
in useless regrets even after the first effect of his presence had
passed and she had succeeded in recalling the facts which had cast a
cloud about his name.
Roger Upjohn was a widower, and the scandal affecting him was connected
with his wife’s death.
Though a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering
presence, the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character of his
progenitors, the wealthy Massachusetts Upjohns whose great place on the
coast had a history as old as the State itself, he yet had gifts and
attractions of his own which would have made him a worthy representative
of his race, if only he had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold
and heedless that she would have inspired universal aversion instead of
love, had she not been dowered with the beauty and physical fascination
which sometimes accompany a hard heart and a scheming brain. It was this
beauty which had caught the lad; and one day, just as the careful father
had mapped out a course of study calculated to make a man of his son,
that son drove up to the gates with this lady whom he introduced as his
wife.
The shock, not of her beauty, though that was of the dazzling quality
which catches a man in the throat and makes a slave of him while the
first surprise lasts, but of the overthrow of all his hopes and plans,
nearly prostrated Homer Upjohn. He saw, as most men did the moment
judgment returned, that for all her satin skin and rosy flush, the
wonder of her hair and the smile which pierced like arrows and warmed
like wine, she was more likely to bring a curse into the house than a
blessing.
And so it proved. In less than a year the young husband had lost all his
ambitions and many of his best impulses. No longer inclined to study,
he spent his days in satisfying his wife’s whims and his evenings in
carousing with the friends with which she had provided him. This in
Boston whither they had fled from the old gentleman’s displeasure; but
after their little son came the father insisted upon their returning
home, which led to great deceptions, and precipitated a tragedy no one
ever understood. They were natural gamblers--this couple--as all Boston
society knew; and as Homer Upjohn loathed cards, they found life slow
in the great house and grew correspondingly restless till they made
a discovery--or shall I say a rediscovery--of the once famous grotto
hidden in the rocks lining their portion of the coast. Here they found
a retreat where they could hide themselves (often when they were thought
to be abed and asleep) and play together for money or for a supper in
the city or for anything else that foolish fancy suggested. This was
while their little son remained an infant; later, they were less easily
satisfied. Both craved company, excitement, and gambling on a large
scale; so they took to inviting friends to meet them in this grotto
which, through the agency of one old servant devoted to Roger to the
point of folly, had been fitted up and lighted in a manner not only
comfortable but luxurious. A small but sheltered haven hidden in the
curve of the rocks made an approach by boat feasible at high tide;
and at low the connection could be made by means of a path over the
promontory in which this grotto lay concealed. The fortune which Roger
had inherited from his mother made these excesses possible, but many
thousands, let alone the few he could call his, soon disappeared under
the witchery of an irresponsible woman, and the half-dozen friends who
knew his secret had to stand by and see his ruin, without daring to
utter a word to the one who alone could stay it. For Homer Upjohn was
not a man to be approached lightly, nor was he one to listen to charges
without ocular proof to support them; and this called for courage, more
courage than was possessed by any one who knew them both.
He was a hard man was Homer Upjohn, but with a heart of gold for those
he loved. This, even his wary daughter-in-law was wise enough to detect,
and for a long while after the birth of her child she besieged him with
her coaxing ways and bewitching graces. But he never changed his first
opinion of her, and once she became fully convinced of the folly of
her efforts, she gave up all attempt to please him and showed an open
indifference. This in time gradually extended till it embraced not only
her child but her husband as well. Yes, it had come to that. His love no
longer contented her. Her vanity had grown by what it daily fed on, and
now called for the admiration of the fast men who sometimes came up
from Boston to play with them in their unholy retreat. To win this, she
dressed like some demon queen or witch, though it drove her husband into
deeper play and threatened an exposure which would mean disaster not
only to herself but to the whole family.
In all this, as any one could see, Roger had been her slave and
the willing victim of all her caprices. What was it, then, which so
completely changed him that a separation began to be talked of and even
its terms discussed? One rumour had it that the father had discovered
the secret of the grotto and exacted this as a penalty from the son who
had dishonoured him. Another, that Roger himself was the one to take the
initiative in this matter: That, on returning unexpectedly from New York
one evening and finding her missing from the house, he had traced her to
the grotto where he came upon her playing a desperate game with the one
man he had the greatest reason to distrust.
But whatever the explanation of this sudden change in their relations,
there is but little doubt that a legal separation between this
ill-assorted couple was pending, when one bleak autumn morning she
was discovered dead in her bed under circumstances peculiarly open to
comment.
The physicians who made out the certificate ascribed her death to
heart-disease, symptoms of which had lately much alarmed the family
doctor; but that a personal struggle of some kind had preceded the fatal
attack was evident from the bruises which blackened her wrists. Had
there been the like upon her throat it might have gone hard with the
young husband who was known to be contemplating her dismissal from
the house. But the discoloration of her wrists was all, and as bruised
wrists do not kill and there was besides no evidence forthcoming of the
two having spent one moment together for at least ten hours preceding
the tragedy but rather full and satisfactory testimony to the contrary,
the matter lapsed and all criminal proceedings were avoided.
But not the scandal which always follows the unexplained. As time passed
and the peculiar look which betrays the haunted soul gradually became
visible in the young widower’s eyes, doubts arose and reports circulated
which cast strange reflections upon the tragic end of his mistaken
marriage. Stories of the disreputable use to which the old grotto
had been put were mingled with vague hints of conjugal violence never
properly investigated. The result was his general avoidance not only by
the social set dominated by his high-minded father, but by his own less
reputable coterie, which, however lax in its moral code, had very little
use for a coward.
Such was the gossip which had reached Violet’s ears in connection with
this new client, prejudicing her altogether against him till she caught
that beam of deep and concentrated suffering in his eye and recognized
an innocence which ensured her sympathy and led her to grant him the
interview for which he so earnestly entreated.
He came prompt to the hour, and when she saw him again with the marks of
a sleepless night upon him and all the signs of suffering intensified in
his unusual countenance, she felt her heart sink within her in a way she
failed to understand. A dread of what she was about to hear robbed her
of all semblance of self-possession, and she stood like one in a dream
as he uttered his first greetings and then paused to gather up his own
moral strength before he began his story. When he did speak it was to
say:
“I find myself obliged to break a vow I have made to myself. You cannot
understand my need unless I show you my heart. My trouble is not the one
with which men have credited me. It has another source and is infinitely
harder to bear. Personal dishonour I have deserved in a greater or less
degree, but the trial which has come to me now involves a person more
dear to me than myself, and is totally without alleviation unless you--”
He paused, choked, then recommenced abruptly: “My wife”--Violet held
her breath--“was supposed to have died from heart-disease or--or
some strange species of suicide. There were reasons for this
conclusion--reasons which I accepted without serious question till some
five weeks ago when I made a discovery which led me to fear--”
The broken sentence hung suspended. Violet, notwithstanding his hurried
gesture, could not restrain herself from stealing a look at his face. It
was set in horror and, though partially turned aside, made an appeal
to her compassion to fill the void made by his silence, without further
suggestion from him.
She did this by saying tentatively and with as little show of emotion as
possible:
“You feared that the event called for vengeance and that vengeance would
mean increased suffering to yourself as well as to another?”
“Yes; great suffering. But I may be under a most lamentable mistake. I
am not sure of my conclusions. If my doubts have no real foundation--if
they are simply the offspring of my own diseased imagination, what
an insult to one I revere! What a horror of ingratitude and
misunderstanding--”
“Relate the facts,” came in startled tones from Violet. “They may
enlighten us.”
He gave one quick shudder, buried his face for one moment in his hands,
then lifted it and spoke up quickly and with unexpected firmness:
“I came here to do so and do so I will. But where begin? Miss Strange,
you cannot be ignorant of the circumstances, open and avowed, which
attended my wife’s death. But there were other and secret events in its
connection which happily have been kept from the world, but which I must
now disclose to you at any cost to my pride and so-called honour. This
is the first one: On the morning preceding the day of Mrs. Upjohn’s
death, an interview took place between us at which my father was
present. You do not know my father, Miss Strange. A strong man and a
stern one, with a hold upon old traditions which nothing can shake.
If he has a weakness it is for my little boy Roger in whose promising
traits he sees the one hope which has survived the shipwreck of all for
which our name has stood. Knowing this, and realizing what the child’s
presence in the house meant to his old age, I felt my heart turn sick
with apprehension, when in the midst of the discussion as to the terms
on which my wife would consent to a permanent separation, the little
fellow came dancing into the room, his curls atoss and his whole face
beaming with life and joy.
“She had not mentioned the child, but I knew her well enough to be
sure that at the first show of preference on his part for either his
grandfather or myself, she would raise a claim to him which she would
never relinquish. I dared not speak, but I met his eager looks with my
most forbidding frown and hoped by this show of severity to hold him
back. But his little heart was full and, ignoring her outstretched arms,
he bounded towards mine with his most affectionate cry. She saw and
uttered her ultimatum. The child should go with her or she would not
consent to a separation. It was useless for us to talk; she had said her
last word. The blow struck me hard, or so I thought, till I looked at my
father. Never had I beheld such a change as that one moment had made in
him. He stood as before; he faced us with the same silent reprobation;
but his heart had run from him like water.
“It was a sight to call up all my resources. To allow her to remain
now, with my feelings towards her all changed and my father’s eyes fully
opened to her stony nature, was impossible. Nor could I appeal to law.
An open scandal was my father’s greatest dread and divorce proceedings
his horror. The child would have to go unless I could find a way to
influence her through her own nature. I knew of but one--do not look at
me, Miss Strange. It was dishonouring to us both, and I’m horrified now
when I think of it. But to me at that time it was natural enough as a
last resort. There was but one debt which my wife ever paid, but one
promise she ever kept. It was that made at the gaming-table. I offered,
as soon as my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had
gone tottering from the room, to gamble with her for the child.
“And she accepted.”
The shame and humiliation expressed in this final whisper; the sudden
darkness--for a storm was coming up--shook Violet to the soul. With
strained gaze fixed on the man before her, now little more than a shadow
in the prevailing gloom, she waited for him to resume, and waited
in vain. The minutes passed, the darkness became intolerable, and
instinctively her hand crept towards the electric button beneath which
she was sitting. But she failed to press it. A tale so dark called for
an atmosphere of its own kind. She would cast no light upon it. Yet she
shivered as the silence continued, and started in uncontrollable dismay
when at length her strange visitor rose, and still, without speaking,
walked away from her to the other end of the room. Only so could he go
on with the shameful tale; and presently she heard his voice once more
in these words:
“Our house is large and its rooms many; but for such work as we two
contemplated there was but one spot where we could command absolute
seclusion. You may have heard of it, a famous natural grotto hidden in
our own portion of the coast and so fitted up as to form a retreat for
our miserable selves when escape from my father’s eye seemed desirable.
It was not easy of access, and no one, so far as we knew, had ever
followed us there.
“But to ensure ourselves against any possible interruption, we waited
till the whole house was abed before we left it for the grotto. We went
by boat and oh! the dip of those oars! I hear them yet. And the witchery
of her face in the moonlight; and the mockery of her low fitful laugh!
As I caught the sinister note in its silvery rise and fall, I knew what
was before me if I failed to retain my composure. And I strove to
hold it and to meet her calmness with stoicism and the taunt of her
expression with a mask of immobility. But the effort was hopeless, and
when the time came for dealing out the cards, my eyes were burning in
their sockets and my hands shivering like leaves in a rising gale.
“We played one game--and my wife lost. We played another--and my wife
won. We played the third--and the fate I had foreseen from the first
became mine. The luck was with her, and I had lost my boy!”
A gasp--a pause, during which the thunder spoke and the lightning
flashed,--then a hurried catching of his breath and the tale went on.
“A burst of laughter, rising gaily above the boom of the sea, announced
her victory--her laugh and the taunting words: ‘You play badly, Roger.
The child is mine. Never fear that I shall fail to teach him to revere
his father.’ Had I a word to throw back? No. When I realized anything
but my dishonoured manhood, I found myself in the grotto’s mouth staring
helplessly out upon the sea. The boat which had floated us in at high
tide lay stranded but a few feet away, but I did not reach for it.
Escape was quicker over the rocks, and I made for the rocks.
“That it was a cowardly act to leave her there to find her way back
alone at midnight by the same rough road I was taking, did not strike
my mind for an instant. I was in flight from my own past; in flight from
myself and the haunting dread of madness. When I awoke to reality again
it was to find the small door, by which we had left the house, standing
slightly ajar. I was troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed
it. But the impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to
my room, leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to
exercise my will than from any thought of her.
“Miss Strange” (he had come out of the shadows and was standing now
directly before her), “I must ask you to trust implicitly in what I tell
you of my further experiences that fatal night. It was not necessary for
me to pass my little son’s door in order to reach the room I was making
for; but anguish took me there and held me glued to the panels for what
seemed a long, long time. When I finally crept away it was to go to the
room I had chosen in the top of the house, where I had my hour of hell
and faced my desolated future. Did I hear anything meantime in the halls
below? No. Did I even listen for the sound of her return? No. I was
callous to everything, dead to everything but my own misery. I did not
even heed the approach of morning, till suddenly, with a shrillness no
ear could ignore, there rose, tearing through the silence of the house,
that great scream from my wife’s room which announced the discovery of
her body lying stark and cold in her bed.
“They said I showed little feeling.” He had moved off again and spoke
from somewhere in the shadows. “Do you wonder at this after such a
manifest stroke by a benevolent Providence? My wife being dead, Roger
was saved to us! It was the one song of my still undisciplined soul, and
I had to assume coldness lest they should see the greatness of my joy.
A wicked and guilty rejoicing you will say, and you are right. But I
had no memory then of the part I had played in this fatality. I had
forgotten my reckless flight from the grotto, which left her with no aid
but that of her own triumphant spirit to help her over those treacherous
rocks. The necessity for keeping secret this part of our disgraceful
story led me to exert myself to keep it out of my own mind. It has only
come back to me in all its force since a new horror, a new suspicion,
has driven me to review carefully every incident of that awful night.
“I was never a man of much logic, and when they came to me on that
morning of which I have just spoken and took me in where she lay and
pointed to her beautiful cold body stretched out in seeming peace under
the satin coverlet, and then to the pile of dainty clothes lying neatly
folded on a chair with just one fairy slipper on top, I shuddered at her
fate but asked no questions, not even when one of the women of the house
mentioned the circumstance of the single slipper and said that a search
should be made for its mate. Nor was I as much impressed as one would
naturally expect by the whisper dropped in my ear that something was
the matter with her wrists. It is true that I lifted the lace they had
carefully spread over them and examined the discoloration which extended
like a ring about each pearly arm; but having no memories of any
violence offered her (I had not so much as laid hand upon her in the
grotto), these marks failed to rouse my interest. But--and now I must
leap a year in my story--there came a time when both of these facts
recurred to my mind with startling distinctness and clamoured for
explanation.
“I had risen above the shock which such a death following such events
would naturally occasion even in one of my blunted sensibilities, and
was striving to live a new life under the encouragement of my now fully
reconciled father, when accident forced me to re-enter the grotto where
I had never stepped foot since that night. A favourite dog in chase of
some innocent prey had escaped the leash and run into its dim recesses
and would not come out at my call. As I needed him immediately for the
hunt, I followed him over the promontory and, swallowing my repugnance,
slid into the grotto to get him. Better a plunge to my death from the
height of the rocks towering above it. For there in a remote corner,
lighted up by a reflection from the sea, I beheld my setter crouched
above an object which in another moment I recognized as my dead
wife’s missing slipper. Here! Not in the waters of the sea or in the
interstices of the rocks outside, but here! Proof that she had never
walked back to the house where she was found lying quietly in her bed;
proof positive; for I knew the path too well and the more than usual
tenderness of her feet.
“How then, did she get there; and by whose agency? Was she living when
she went, or was she already dead? A year had passed since that delicate
shoe had borne her from the boat into these dim recesses; but it might
have been only a day, so vividly did I live over in this moment of awful
enlightenment all the events of the hour in which we sat there playing
for the possession of our child. Again I saw her gleaming eyes, her
rosy, working mouth, her slim, white hand, loaded with diamonds,
clutching the cards. Again I heard the lap of the sea on the pebbles
outside and smelt the odour of the wine she had poured out for us both.
The bottle which had held it; the glass from which she had drunk lay now
in pieces on the rocky floor. The whole scene was mine again and as I
followed the event to its despairing close, I seemed to see my own wild
figure springing away from her to the grotto’s mouth and so over the
rocks. But here fancy faltered, caught by a quick recollection to which
I had never given a thought till now. As I made my way along those
rocks, a sound had struck my ear from where some stunted bushes made
a shadow in the moonlight. The wind might have caused it or some small
night creature hustling away at my approach; and to some such cause
I must at the time have attributed it. But now, with brain fired by
suspicion, it seemed more like the quick intake of a human breath. Some
one had been lying there in wait, listening at the one loophole in the
rocks where it was possible to hear what was said and done in the heart
of the grotto. But who? who? and for what purpose this listening; and to
what end did it lead?
“Though I no longer loved even the memory of my wife, I felt my hair
lift, as I asked myself these questions. There seemed to be but one
logical answer to the last, and it was this: A struggle followed by
death. The shoe fallen from her foot, the clothes found folded in her
room (my wife was never orderly), and the dimly blackened wrists which
were snow-white when she dealt the cards--all seemed to point to such
a conclusion. She may have died from heart-failure, but a struggle had
preceded her death, during which some man’s strong fingers had been
locked about her wrists. And again the question rose, Whose?
“If any place was ever hated by mortal man that grotto was hated by me.
I loathed its walls, its floor, its every visible and invisible corner.
To linger there--to look--almost tore my soul from my body; yet I did
linger and did look and this is what I found by way of reward.
“Behind a projecting ledge of stone from which a tattered rug still
hung, I came upon two nails driven a few feet apart into a fissure of
the rock. I had driven those nails myself long before for a certain
gymnastic attachment much in vogue at the time, and on looking closer,
I discovered hanging from them the rope-ends by which I was wont to
pull myself about. So far there was nothing to rouse any but innocent
reminiscences. But when I heard the dog’s low moan and saw him leap
at the curled-up ends, and nose them with an eager look my way, I
remembered the dark marks circling the wrists about which I had so often
clasped my mother’s bracelets, and the world went black before me.
“When consciousness returned--when I could once more move and see and
think, I noted another fact. Cards were strewn about the floor, face up
and in a fixed order as if laid in a mocking mood to be looked upon by
reluctant eyes; and near the ominous half-circle they made, a cushion
from the lounge, stained horribly with what I then thought to be blood,
but which I afterwards found to be wine. Vengeance spoke in those ropes
and in the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering
pillow. The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat
the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such
that any deed which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared
not only warrantable but obligatory. Alas! I knew of but one person
in the whole world who could cherish feeling to this extent or possess
sufficient will power to carry her lifeless body back to the house and
lay it in her bed and give no sign of the abominable act from that day
on to this.
“Miss Strange, there are men who have a peculiar conception of duty. My
father--”
“You need not go on.” How gently, how tenderly our Violet spoke. “I
understand your trouble--”
Did she? She paused to ask herself if this were so, and he, deaf perhaps
to her words, caught up his broken sentence and went on:
“My father was in the hall the day I came staggering in from my visit to
the grotto. No words passed, but our eyes met and from that hour I
have seen death in his countenance and he has seen it in mine, like two
opponents, each struck to the heart, who stand facing each other with
simulated smiles till they fall. My father will drop first. He is
old--very old since that day five weeks ago; and to see him die and not
be sure--to see the grave close over a possible innocence, and I left
here in ignorance of the blissful fact till my own eyes close forever,
is more than I can hold up under; more than any son could. Cannot you
help me then to a positive knowledge? Think! think! A woman’s mind is
strangely penetrating, and yours, I am told, has an intuitive faculty
more to be relied upon than the reasoning of men. It must suggest some
means of confirming my doubts or of definitely ending them.”
Then Violet stirred and looked about at him and finally found voice.
“Tell me something about your father’s ways. What are his habits? Does
he sleep well or is he wakeful at night?”
“He has poor nights. I do not know how poor because I am not often with
him. His valet, who has always been in our family, shares his room and
acts as his constant nurse. He can watch over him better than I can; he
has no distracting trouble on his mind.”
“And little Roger? Does your father see much of little Roger? Does he
fondle him and seem happy in his presence?”
“Yes; yes. I have often wondered at it, but he does. They are great
chums. It is a pleasure to see them together.”
“And the child clings to him--shows no fear--sits on his lap or on
the bed and plays as children do play with his beard or with his
watch-chain?”
“Yes. Only once have I seen my little chap shrink, and that was when my
father gave him a look of unusual intensity,--looking for his mother in
him perhaps.”
“Mr. Upjohn, forgive me the question; it seems necessary. Does your
father--or rather did your father before he fell ill--ever walk in the
direction of the grotto or haunt in any way the rocks which surround
it?”
“I cannot say. The sea is there; he naturally loves the sea. But I have
never seen him standing on the promontory.”
“Which way do his windows look?”
“Towards the sea.”
“Therefore towards the promontory?”
“Yes.”
“Can he see it from his bed?”
“No. Perhaps that is the cause of a peculiar habit he has.”
“What habit?”
“Every night before he retires (he is not yet confined to his bed) he
stands for a few minutes in his front window looking out. He says it’s
his good-night to the ocean. When he no longer does this, we shall know
that his end is very near.”
The face of Violet began to clear. Rising, she turned on the electric
light, and then, reseating herself, remarked with an aspect of quiet
cheer:
“I have two ideas; but they necessitate my presence at your place. You
will not mind a visit? My brother will accompany me.”
Roger Upjohn did not need to speak, hardly to make a gesture; his
expression was so eloquent.
She thanked him as if he had answered in words, adding with an air of
gentle reserve: “Providence assists us in this matter. I am invited to
Beverly next week to attend a wedding. I was intending to stay two days,
but I will make it three and spend the extra one with you.”
“What are your requirements, Miss Strange? I presume you have some.”
Violet turned from the imposing portrait of Mr. Upjohn which she had
been gravely contemplating, and met the troubled eye of her young host
with an enigmatical flash of her own. But she made no answer in
words. Instead, she lifted her right hand and ran one slender finger
thoughtfully up the casing of the door near which they stood till it
struck a nick in the old mahogany almost on a level with her head.
“Is your son Roger old enough to reach so far?” she asked with another
short look at him as she let her finger rest where it had struck the
roughened wood. “I thought he was a little fellow.”
“He is. That cut was made by--by my wife; a sample of her capricious
willfulness. She wished to leave a record of herself in the substance
of our house as well as in our lives. That nick marks her height. She
laughed when she made it. ‘Till the walls cave in or burn,’ is what she
said. And I thought her laugh and smile captivating.”
Cutting short his own laugh which was much too sardonic for a lady’s
ears, he made a move as if to lead the way into another portion of
the room. But Violet failed to notice this, and lingering in quiet
contemplation of this suggestive little nick,--the only blemish in a
room of ancient colonial magnificence,--she thoughtfully remarked:
“Then she was a small woman?” adding with seeming irrelevance--“like
myself.”
Roger winced. Something in the suggestion hurt him, and in the nod he
gave there was an air of coldness which under ordinary circumstances
would have deterred her from pursuing this subject further. But the
circumstances were not ordinary, and she allowed herself to say:
“Was she so very different from me,--in figure, I mean?”
“No. Why do you ask? Shall we not join your brother on the terrace?”
“Not till I have answered the question you put me a moment ago. You
wished to know my requirements. One of the most important you have
already fulfilled. You have given your servants a half-holiday and by
so doing ensured to us full liberty of action. What else I need in the
attempt I propose to make, you will find listed in this memorandum.” And
taking a slip of paper from her bag, she offered it to him with a hand,
the trembling of which he would have noted had he been freer in mind.
As he read, she watched him, her fingers nervously clutching her throat.
“Can you supply what I ask?” she faltered, as he failed to raise his
eyes or make any move or even to utter the groan she saw surging up
to his lips. “Will you?” she impetuously urged, as his fingers closed
spasmodically on the paper, in evidence that he understood at last the
trend of her daring purpose.
The answer came slowly, but it came. “I will. But what--”
Her hand rose in a pleading gesture.
“Do not ask me, but take Arthur and myself into the garden and show us
the flowers. Afterwards, I should like a glimpse of the sea.”
He bowed and they joined Arthur who had already begun to stroll through
the grounds.
Violet was seldom at a loss for talk even at the most critical moments.
But she was strangely tongue-tied on this occasion, as was Roger
himself. Save for a few observations casually thrown out by Arthur, the
three passed in a disquieting silence through pergola after pergola,
and around beds gorgeous with every variety of fall flowers, till they
turned a sharp corner and came in full view of the sea.
“Ah!” fell in an admiring murmur from Violet’s lips as her eyes swept
the horizon. Then as they settled on a mass of rock jutting out from
the shore in a great curve, she leaned towards her host and softly
whispered:
“The promontory?”
He nodded, and Violet ventured no farther, but stood for a little while
gazing at the tumbled rocks. Then, with a quick look back at the house,
she asked him to point out his father’s window.
He did so, and as she noted how openly it faced the sea, her expression
relaxed and her manner lost some of its constraint. As they turned to
re-enter the house, she noticed an old man picking flowers from a vine
clambering over one end of the piazza.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“Our oldest servant, and my father’s own man,” was Roger’s reply. “He is
picking my father’s favourite flowers, a few late honeysuckles.”
“How fortunate! Speak to him, Mr. Upjohn. Ask him how your father is
this evening.”
“Accompany me and I will; and do not be afraid to enter into
conversation with him. He is the mildest of creatures and devoted to his
patient. He likes nothing better than to talk about him.”
Violet, with a meaning look at her brother, ran up the steps at Roger’s
side. As she did so, the old man turned and Violet was astonished at the
wistfulness with which he viewed her.
“What a dear old creature!” she murmured. “See how he stares this way.
You would think he knew me.”
“He is glad to see a woman about the place. He has felt our
isolation--Good evening, Abram. Let this young lady have a spray of your
sweetest honeysuckle. And, Abram, before you go, how is Father to-night?
Still sitting up?”
“Yes, sir. He is very regular in his ways. Nine is his hour; not a
minute before and not a minute later. I don’t have to look at the clock
when he says: ‘There, Abram, I’ve sat up long enough.’”
“When my father retires before his time or goes to bed without a final
look at the sea, he will be a very sick man, Abram.”
“That he will, Mr. Roger; that he will. But he’s very feeble to-night,
very feeble. I noticed that he gave the boy fewer kisses than usual.
Perhaps he was put out because the child was brought in a half-hour
earlier than the stated time. He don’t like changes; you know that,
Mr. Roger; he don’t like changes. I hardly dared to tell him that the
servants were all going out in a bunch to-night.”
“I’m sorry,” muttered Roger. “But he’ll forget it by to-morrow. I
couldn’t bear to keep a single one from the concert. They’ll be back
in good season and meantime we have you. Abram is worth half a dozen of
them, Miss Strange. We shall miss nothing.”
“Thank you, Mr. Roger, thank you,” faltered the old man. “I try to do my
duty.” And with another wistful glance at Violet, who looked very sweet
and youthful in the half-light, he pottered away.
The silence which followed his departure was as painful to her as to
Roger Upjohn. When she broke it it was with this decisive remark:
“That man must not speak of me to your father. He must not even mention
that you have a guest to-night. Run after him and tell him so. It is
necessary that your father’s mind should not be taken up with present
happenings. Run.”
Roger made haste to obey her. When he came back she was on the point of
joining her brother but stopped to utter a final injunction:
“I shall leave the library, or wherever we may be sitting, just as the
clock strikes half-past eight. Arthur will do the same, as by that time
he will feel like smoking on the terrace. Do not follow either him or
myself, but take your stand here on the piazza where you can get a
full view of the right-hand wing without attracting any attention to
yourself. When you hear the big clock in the hall strike nine, look up
quickly at your father’s window. What you see may determine--oh, Arthur!
still admiring the prospect? I do not wonder. But I find it chilly. Let
us go in.”
Roger Upjohn, sitting by himself in the library, was watching the hands
of the mantel clock slowly approaching the hour of nine.
Never had silence seemed more oppressive nor his sense of loneliness
greater. Yet the boom of the ocean was distinct to the ear, and human
presence no farther away than the terrace where Arthur Strange could be
seen smoking out his cigar in solitude. The silence and the loneliness
were in Roger’s own soul; and, in face of the expected revelation
which would make or unmake his future, the desolation they wrought was
measureless.
To cut his suspense short, he rose at length and hurried out to the spot
designated by Miss Strange as the best point from which to keep watch
upon his father’s window. It was at the end of the piazza where the
honeysuckle hung, and the odour of the blossoms, so pleasing to his
father, well-nigh overpowered him not only by its sweetness but by the
many memories it called up. Visions of that father as he looked at all
stages of their relationship passed in a bewildering maze before him.
He saw him as he appeared to his childish eyes in those early days of
confidence when the loss of the mother cast them in mutual dependence
upon each other. Then a sterner picture of the relentless parent who
sees but one straight course to success in this world and the next. Then
the teacher and the matured adviser; and then--oh, bitter change! the
man whose hopes he had crossed--whose life he had undone, and all for
her who now came stealing upon the scene with her slim, white, jewelled
hand forever lifted up between them. And she! Had he ever seen her more
clearly? Once more the dainty figure stepped from fairy-land, beauteous
with every grace that can allure and finally destroy a man. And as he
saw, he trembled and wished that these moments of awful waiting might
pass and the test be over which would lay bare his father’s heart and
justify his fears or dispel them forever.
But the crisis, if crisis it was, was one of his own making and not to
be hastened or evaded. With one quick glance at his father’s window, he
turned in his impatience towards the sea whose restless and continuous
moaning had at length struck his ear. What was in its call to-night that
he should thus sway towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic
force? He had been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its
every mood and all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to
melancholy dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in
its effect upon his spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and
implacable--a sound rather than a sight--it seemed to hold within its
invisible distances the image of his future fate. What this image was
and why he should seek for it in this impenetrable void, he did not
know. He felt himself held and was struggling with this influence as
with an unknown enemy when there rang out, from the hall within, the
preparatory chimes for which his ear was waiting, and then the nine slow
strokes which signalized the moment when he was to look for his father’s
presence at the window.
Had he wished, he could not have forborne that look. Had his eyes been
closing in death, or so he felt, the trembling lids would have burst
apart at this call and the revelations it promised.
And what did he see? What did that window hold for him?
Nothing that he might not have seen there any night at this hour. His
father’s figure drawn up behind the panes in wistful contemplation of
the night. No visible change in his attitude, nothing forced or unusual
in his manner. Even the hand, lifted to pull down the shade, moves
with its familiar hesitation. In a moment more that shade will be down
and--But no! the lifted hand falls back; the easy attitude becomes
strained, fixed. He is staring now--not merely gazing out upon the
wastes of sky and sea; and Roger, following the direction of his glance,
stares also in breathless emotion at what those distances, but now so
impenetrable, are giving to the eye.
A spectre floating in the air above the promontory! The spectre of
a woman--of his wife, clad, as she had been clad that fatal night!
Outlined in supernatural light, it faces them with lifted arms showing
the ends of rope dangling from either wrist. A sight awful to any eye,
but to the man of guilty heart--
Ah! it comes--the cry for which the agonized son had been listening! An
old man’s shriek, hoarse with the remorse of sleepless nights and days
of unimaginable regret and foreboding! It cuts the night. It cuts its
way into his heart. He feels his senses failing him, yet he must glance
once more at the window and see with his last conscious look--But what
is this! a change has taken place in the picture and he beholds, not
the distorted form of his father sinking back in shame and terror before
this visible image of his secret sin, but that of another weak, old man
falling to the floor behind his back! Abram! the attentive, seemingly
harmless, guardian of the household! Abram! who had never spoken a word
or given a look in any way suggestive of his having played any other
part in the hideous drama of their lives than that of the humble and
sympathetic servant!
The shock was too great, the relief too absolute for credence. He, the
listener at the grotto? He, the avenger of the family’s honour? He, the
insurer of little Roger’s continuance with the family at a cost the one
who loved him best would rather have died himself than pay? Yes! there
is no misdoubting this old servitor’s attitude of abject appeal, or the
meaning of Homer Upjohn’s joyfully uplifted countenance and outspreading
arms. The servant begs for mercy from man, and the master is giving
thanks to Heaven. Why giving thanks? Has he been the prey of cankering
doubts also? Has the father dreaded to discover that in the son which
the son has dreaded to discover in the father?
It might easily be; and as Roger recognizes this truth and the
full tragedy of their mutual lives, he drops to his knees amid the
honeysuckles.
“Violet, you are a wonder. But how did you dare?”
This from Arthur as the two rode to the train in the early morning.
The answer came a bit waveringly.
“I do not know. I am astonished yet, at my own daring. Look at my hands.
They have not ceased trembling since the moment you threw the light upon
me on the rocks. The figure of old Mr. Upjohn in the window looked so
august.”
Arthur, with a short glance at the little hands she held out, shrugged
his shoulders imperceptibly. It struck him that the tremulousness she
complained of was due more to some parting word from their young host,
than from prolonged awe at her own daring. But he made no remark to this
effect, only observed:
“Abram has confessed his guilt, I hear.”
“Yes, and will die of it. The master will bury the man, and not the man
the master.”
“And Roger? Not the little fellow, but the father?”
“We will not talk of him,” said she, her eyes seeking the sea where
the sun in its rising was battling with a troop of lowering clouds and
slowly gaining the victory.