Mrs. Gray carried the note back to Lute, and brought up the answer,
which Alice read silently. Rebecca watched her; and then, with an
effort, she said:
"Alice, remember we are not to judge. We don't understand. We must
not judge. Good-night." She opened the door, and then looked at the
child, seated, speechless, with blank eyes, on the edge of the bed.
"Good-night, Alice. I--I'm sorry for you, poor girl!" and she came
back hastily and kissed her.
At that, even in her daze of horror, a glimmer of astonishment came
into Alice's face. But she did not look up or speak. When it grew
dark, she began mechanically to get ready for bed; she knelt down, as
usual, at the big chintz-covered winged chair and began to say her
prayers, her mind blind as to her own words: "Bless dear father--"
Then she cried out, suddenly and dreadfully, and covered her poor,
shamed head with her arms, and prayed no more. Then came a long fit of
crying, and then a dreary calm. Afterwards, as the night shut in with
rain and rumble of thunder, the shame lightened a little, for, though
she could not read it in the darkness, she held Lute's little note
against her lips and kissed it, and cried over it, and said his words
over to herself, and felt that at any rate there was one bright spot in
it all: Lute would never have any more anxieties. Of Robert Gray she
thought pitifully, but with not much understanding. Oh, dreadful,
dreadful! But he had loved his wife so much (so the child thought) he
would surely forgive her. Not knowing how little forgiveness counts
for when a star goes out. Sometimes, sitting there on the floor,
listening to the rain, she slept; then woke, with a numb wonder, which
darkened into cruel understanding. _Shame; shame_--but Lute wouldn't
be worried any more; Lute would be rich.
[Illustration: "SHE KNELT DOWN, AS USUAL, AT THE BIG CHINTZ-COVERED
WINGED CHAIR"]
So the night passed....
Rebecca Gray did not sleep. When the house was still she went
up-stairs, eager to be alone. She shut her bedroom door softly; then
she put her brass candlestick on the high bureau and looked about
her.... Everything seemed strange. Here was her old-fashioned bed
with its four mahogany posts like four slender obelisks; there was the
fine darn in the valance of the tester; the worn strip of carpet on
which she had knelt every night for all these twenty years; it was all
the same, but it was all different, all unfamiliar. The room was
suddenly the room where that woman had died; the old four-poster was
the bed of that heartbreaking night, with sheets rumpling under a
wandering hand and pillows piled beneath a beautiful, dying head; not
her own bed, smooth and decorous and neat, with her own fine darn in
the tester valance. She did not know the room as it was now; she did
not know herself; nor Robert; nor that--that--_that woman_. She sat
down, suddenly a little faint with the effort of readjusting a belief
of twenty-two years. "She was a wicked woman," she said, out loud; and
her astounded face stared back at her from the dim mirror over the
mantel-piece. After a while she got up and began to walk back and
forth; sometimes she drew a deep breath; once she laughed. "A wicked
woman!" ... Now he would know. Now he would see. And he would loathe
her. He would hate her. He would--her lip drooped suddenly from its
fierce, unconscious smile; he would--suffer. Yes; suffer, of course.
But that couldn't be helped. Just at first he would suffer. Then he
would hate her so much that he would not suffer. Not suffer? It came
over her with a pang that there is no suffering so dreadful as that
which comes with hating. However, she could not help that. Truth was
truth! All the years of her hungry wifehood rose up, eager for
revenge; her mind went hurriedly, with ecstasy, over the contrast; her
painful, patient, conscientious endeavor to do her best for him. Her
self-sacrifice, her actual deprivations--"I haven't had a new bonnet
for--for four years!" she thought; and her lip quivered at the
pitifulness of so slight a thing. But it was the whole tenor of her
life. _She_ had no vacations in the mountains; she would have liked
new valances, but she spent hours in darning her old ones to save his
money; she had turned her black silk twice; she had only had two black
silks in twenty years. All the great things she had done, all the
petty things she had suffered, rose up in a great wave of merit before
her; and against it--what? Hideous deceit! Oh, how he would despise
the creature! Then she winced; he would--suffer? Well, she couldn't
help that. It was the truth, and he had got to face it. She was
walking up and down, whispering to herself, a sobbing laugh on her
lips, when suddenly, as she passed the mirror, she had a dim, crazy
vision of herself that struck her motionless. A moment later she took
the candle, and with one hand clutching for support at the high
mantel-shelf--for her knees were shaking under her--held it close to
the glass and peered into the black depths. Her pale, quivering face,
ravaged with tears, stared back at her, like some poor ghost more ugly
even than in life. "_A wicked woman._" Yes--yes--yes; and he would
have to know it. But when he knew it, what then? If his eyes opened
to sin, would they open to--
"I have tried to make him comfortable," she said, faintly.
Suddenly she put the candle down and sank into a chair, covering her
face with her poor, gaunt hands....
And so the night passed.... The dawn was dim and rainy. It was about
four o'clock that Alice, sitting on the floor, sleeping heavily, her
head on the cushion of the chair, started, bewildered, at the noise of
the opening door. Rebecca, in her gray dressing-gown, one hand
shielding the flare of her candle, came abruptly into the room.
"Alice," she said, harshly, and stopped by the empty bed; then her eyes
found the figure on the floor ("you ought to be in bed"), she said, in
a brief aside; then: "Alice, I've been thinking it over. You can't
take that money."
"I don't understand," Alice said, confused with sleep and tears.
"You can't take that money. If you do, your father would have to know.
And he never must--he never must."
Alice pulled herself up from the floor and sat down in her big chair.
"Not take the money?" she said, in a dazed way; "but it's mine."
"That's why you needn't take it. Thank God it was left to you, not
just to 'her heirs.' Alice, I've gone all over it. I--I wanted you to
take it"--Rebecca's voice broke; "yes, I--did."
"Well, it's mine," Alice repeated, bewildered.
Rebecca struck her hands together. "Yours not to take! Don't you see?
You can save your father."
Alice, cringing, dropped her head on her breast with a broken word.
"Don't be a fool," the older woman said, trembling. "He's been your
father ever since you were born. And it would be a pretty return for
his love to tell him--"
Alice burst out crying; her step-mother softened.
"I am sorry for you, you poor girl. But, oh, Alice, think, _think_ of
your father!" She clasped her hands and stood, trembling; she took a
step forward, almost as if she would kneel.
"If he would feel so dreadfully," Alice said, at last, "why--we needn't
tell him where the money comes from."
"Now, Alice, that is absurd. Of course he would know. He would have
to know. A girl doesn't inherit L5000 without her father's knowing
where it comes from. And, anyway, Mr. Carter said that Mr. Gray would
have to make a statement and swear to it. Of course he would--know."
"Do you mean you don't want me to have it at all?" Alice said, blankly.
"I've just explained it to you," Rebecca said, her voice harsh with
anxiety. "You _can't_ have it."
"But it's my money; I have a right to it. And it would make all the
difference in the world to Lute. If he is going to take a girl--like
me, he ought to have the money, anyhow."
"And kill your father?" Rebecca said. "Alice! Don't you see, he must
go on believing that she is"--her voice grew suddenly tender--"that she
is 'a creature of light?'"
"I want Lute to have the money," Alice said.
"Alice!" the other exclaimed, with dismay, "don't you think of your
father at all? And--for your mother's sake."