LOUIE AND MISS PERCY
It was a rather wakeful night which Louie passed, but a happy one. With
Fred Lansing’s love, life, which had seemed so black and dreary, looked
very bright to her, although there was a feeling of humility in her
heart that her father’s debts should be paid by him. And yet the thought
that it was his great love which prompted it robbed the humility of much
of its bitterness, and it was a very happy young girl who went to Miss
Percy the next morning as she was taking her coffee in her room.
“I think I know what you have come to tell me,” Miss Percy said. “I saw
Fred last night, and I am very glad. I knew it was coming long ago. You
have won a noble man with, I may almost say, no faults, unless it be
that he is a little too chary of his real feelings, which make him seem
cold and proud when he is neither.”
“But it hurts me that he should pay the debts for me when I wanted to do
it myself,” Louie said.
“Yes, dear, I know,” Miss Percy replied; “but God has willed it
otherwise. He has taken away your voice for a time, and in its place has
given you this friend to do your work for you. He often opens one door
when he shuts another. He does not forget us when we feel the most
alone. The mother who leaves her little child in one room while she goes
into another, does not forget it. She hears its cry, and in time goes
back to it full of tenderness and love for the disquiet she has caused
it. So with God, he comes back to us when we have been shut in the
darkest of rooms, groping blindly for a ray of light. I found it so
once, when the darkness was so thick that I felt it covering me like a
pall, and in the whole world there seemed nothing worth living for,
because my twin-brother Brant was dead.”
Louie had never seen her in such a mood before, or heard her talk in
this way. She was very pale, and said her head ached; but when Louie
arose to leave her she bade her stay, and said:
“I am not myself this morning, but I want to talk to some one. I have
taken you for my sister. I will have no secrets from you. This is the
anniversary of my brother’s death. You know I had one, and lost him.”
Louie nodded, and Miss Percy continued: “Let me tell you about him, and
you will know better why I always wear black, and am sometimes so sad.
He was all the world to me, for we were orphans, and wards of Fred’s
father. Although my twin, he seemed younger than myself, with his fair,
boyish face, and I watched over him as if I had been his mother. Somehow
and somewhere—possibly at Monte Carlo, where we spent some weeks, he
acquired a taste for play. Perhaps it was born with him and he could not
help it, although he tried at times. It was a mania, stronger than his
will, and nothing could win him from it. I am afraid he was weak in some
respects, for he fancied himself an expert, able to cope with the most
experienced gamblers, and success turned his head. Some years ago he
made a trip West, promising me before he left that he would not touch a
card. But he broke his word; and at Butte, in Montana, he fell in with a
professional, who tempted him to play, letting him win at first, they
said, so as to lure him on, and then wiping him out. I believe that is
the term they used when telling me of it. He lost thousands and then
took his own life—shot himself through the temple—my fair-faced brother
whom I idolized. That was six years ago, when the dreadful news flashed
across the wires to Washington, ‘Brant Percy shot himself early this
morning. We await orders.’
“I could have died for him, I think, and in my first bitter anguish I
cursed the man who lured him to ruin. Cursed him and his. I don’t know
who he was, except that his name was _Tom Crary_, and he was well known
in that region as an accomplished gambler. Where he is now, if still
living and carrying on his nefarious work, I do not know, but I have
learned to pray for him since the bitterness is gone, and I hope my
curse has not followed him.”
“It has! It has!” Louie cried, stretching out her hands for something to
keep herself from falling, everything around her was so dark, and there
was such a buzzing in her head and nausea at her stomach.
Miss Percy was alarmed at the whiteness of her face and the strained
look in her eyes, and put out her hand to steady her as she saw her
falling in her chair.
“Don’t touch me,” Louie said, “I am only worthy to kneel in the dust at
your feet and beg your pardon for my father’s sin. It was he who played
with the young man in Butte. I didn’t know it till just before he died,
when he told me the story, but not the young man’s name, and I never
dreamed who it was. But, oh, Miss Percy, listen to me. Father didn’t
want to play at first, but the young man insisted; and when all was
lost, father offered to refund a part. He told me so, and he would not
lie with death resting on his pillow, and that young man’s face always
before him, as he said it was. He never gambled that way again, and he
repented bitterly and was so sorry, and died a good man. I know he did.
But your curse followed him, and has fallen so heavily on me, to whom
you have been so kind, but can never be again. I know it, and I must go
away from you all into the world alone and do the best I can. I wish I
could die as mother did! Oh, oh, this is worse than all the rest—that
father’s sin should confront me now, just as I was beginning to be
happy. I remember he never seemed to want to see you in Merivale, or
hear about you. He must have known who you were, and why didn’t he tell
me and save me from this humiliation. You can never want to speak to me
again, or look at me. But I didn’t know, and I could go down on my face
at your feet, but it would do no good. It would not bring your brother
back. Truly the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and I
can’t bear it.”
She had talked steadily until now, when she broke down and cried
bitterly, while Miss Percy sat for a moment immovable. The blow had
fallen heavily upon her, taking away all her strength and filling her
with dismay that the girl she had loved and cared for was the daughter
of the man whom, in her anguish, she had cursed as the cause of her
brother’s death. Then her strong principle and sense of justice came to
her aid. Louie was not to blame, and something in the girl’s distress
touched every chord of pity in her heart.
“Louie,” she said, winding her arm around her, “don’t give way like this
and blame yourself for what you could not help. It is a strange
Providence which has brought us together and drawn me so to you. God’s
hand is surely in it; and if you were my sister before, you are doubly
so now—taken in the place of my poor brother. Don’t cry so hard; you
frighten me.”
“I must, I must cry,” Louie said. “Please let me go to think it out and
decide what to do.”
She wrested herself from Miss Percy and left the room, meeting in the
corridor Fred, who was looking for her.
“Louie,” he said, “I want to take you to mother. I have told her, and
she is so glad.”
At sight of him Louie’s tears burst out afresh, but she did not repel
him. Something in his voice drew her to him, and with a great cry she
threw herself into his arms and sobbed:
“Just this once let me lean on you, and it shall be the last. I cannot
be your wife. I must not. Miss Percy will tell you why. Oh, Fred, I do
not mind telling you, now that it is all over, that I do love you and
always shall; but it cannot be.”
He did not at all understand her. He only knew she had called him Fred
and declared her love for him. Nothing else mattered, even if the
heavens fell. Neither Miss Percy nor mortal man should take her from
him; and he kissed her passionately again and again, while he tried to
find what had affected her so strangely.
She managed to tell him at last, while he listened, surprised and
shocked, but with his love in no sense abated for the girl, who, while
telling him all was over between them, clung to him as a drowning man
clings to a straw. Brant Percy had been his best boy friend. They had
been in school together for two years in Germany. They had travelled
over Europe, and been together at Yale until Brant, who never cared much
for books, left college and gave himself to the life which ended in his
tragic death. The last letter he ever wrote was addressed to Fred from
Butte.
“The gamest place out,” he said, “and no end of fun with the fellows who
think they know something about play. You must not tell Blanche that I
have backslidden. I promised her I would not touch a card while I was
gone, and I have not till I came here, where there is so much of it that
I caught the infection again, and it _is_ a disease which comes upon me
with such force that I cannot resist the temptation. I have been pretty
lucky, and last night tried my hand with an expert, Tom Crary, who is
looked upon as a champion player. Some say that the devil helps him;
others, that he is Satan himself, capable of seeing what his opponent
holds, and playing accordingly. But if so he is a very fascinating
Satan; in short, a perfect gentleman, with a face like a saint and
manners as winsome as a woman’s. I challenged him last night, and the
look of surprise he gave me was much like the look Goliath must have
given David when he saw the stripling coming out to fight with him. He
didn’t seem to want to play with me—evidently thought me too small fry
for his net. But I insisted, and won, too, much more than I lost. He did
not appear to care, and said to me, ‘Well, my boy, we are quits now. I
hope you are satisfied. Better let cards alone while you are in luck.’
That just fired my blood. I am not a boy, and I was not satisfied. It
was something to beat Tom Crary as I had done, and to-night we try it
again. He held off and said he’d had enough, till I hinted that he was
afraid because I knew some points of which he was ignorant. Then he
consented, and if I am not richer to-morrow by at least a thousand, and
maybe more, my name is not Brant Percy.”
Before this letter was received news came to Washington of poor Brant’s
death. His boasted skill had not prevailed against his experienced
adversary, and he had played the coward’s part by taking his own life.
With Miss Percy Fred had felt indignant at the man who had been
indirectly the cause of Brant’s death, and although he did not curse him
as she had done, he never thought of him without a feeling of horror.
And now it was proven that he was the father of the girl he loved more
than his life, and with his recollection of Mr. Grey he knew that he was
not the unprincipled man he had imagined Brant’s adversary to be. He,
like Brant, was infected with a disease he had not the strength to
resist, and his life had paid the penalty of his misdeeds. Louie was his
daughter, and he felt all his animosity against her father slipping from
him, and thought of him only as the courteous, gentlemanly man whom he
had known in Merivale.
“Louie,” he said, “you must not think I will give you up for anything
your father did. From what Brant wrote I can understand how headstrong
he was, and can see that your father tried to dissuade him from his
folly. Don’t cry so, you frighten me—and don’t talk of going away. Where
can you go. Your place is here with me,” and he folded her more closely
in his arms until her sobbing ceased and she lay very quiet, listening
to his words of love, with only an occasional long-drawn sigh and great
hot tears on her cheek.
She knew he meant all he said, but did not understand how he or anyone
could care for her now, and it was days before Miss Percy’s unchanged
kindness and Fred’s persistent love-making could win her back to
anything like herself.
“If anything more comes to me I shall die; and I should want to die now
but for you,” she said to Fred one day; and he knew then that the state
of morbid depression into which she had fallen was passing, and he
watched over her with all the care of a fond mother for the child which
has been hurt and is slowly recovering.
For this recovery Miss Percy did much, while Mrs. Lansing treated her as
if she were already her daughter.
In this manner the summer was passed in Switzerland, at different
points; and in September Italy was talked of as a place where to spend
the winter. Fred was anxious for the marriage to take place at once, but
Louie refused.
“So much has happened to me and so fast,” she said, “that I feel as if I
were weak in mind as well as body, and I must have time to rally and
know what I am doing.
“And then,” she added, with a quaver in her voice, “when I am married,
if I ever am, I want to go to Merivale and see the old place once more,
and the people, and father’s grave. Then I will go wherever you like,
and try to forget the past, which makes me sad.”
She put up her lips to be kissed, for she had learned Fred’s habit when
talking with her; and so the matter was settled for the present, and the
marriage deferred until some time in the spring, when it was to take
place in London, and the party was to sail at once for America.