"And now," he went on, eager that she should begin to see what he was
leading her up to--"and now I couldn't borrow a thousand dollars in all
Boston, unless it was from some one who gave it to me as a charity. I've
borrowed from every one--every penny for which I could offer
security--and I owe--I owe hundreds of thousands. Do you see now how bad
it is?"
"I do see how bad it is, papa. I admit it's worse than I thought. But
all the same I know that when people have high reputations other people
trust them and help them through. Banks do it, don't they? Isn't that
partly what they're for? It was Pierpoint & Hargous who helped Lulu
Sentner's father. They stood behind him. She told me so. I'm positive
that with your name they'd do as much for you. You take a gloomy outlook
because you're ill. But there's no one in Boston--no one in New
England--more esteemed or trusted. When one can say, 'All is lost save
honor,' then, relatively speaking, there's very little lost at all."
He got up from the table and went to his room. After these words it was
physically impossible for him to tell her anything more. He had thought
of a means which might bring the fact home to her through the day by a
process of suggestion. Packing a small bag with toilet articles and
other necessaries, he left it in a conspicuous place.
"I want Reynolds to give it to my messenger in case I send for it," he
explained to her, when he had descended to the dining-room again.
She was still sitting where he left her, at the head of the table, pale,
pensive, but not otherwise disturbed.
"Does that mean that you're not coming home to-night?"
"I--I don't know. Things may happen to--to prevent me."
"Where should you go?--to New York?"
"No; not to New York."
He half hoped she would press the question, but when she spoke it was
only to say:
"I hope you'll try to come home, because I'm sure you're not well. Of
course I understand it, now I know you've had so much to upset you. But
I wish you'd see Dr. Scott. And, papa," she added, rising, "don't have
me on your mind--please don't. I'm quite capable of facing the world
without money. You mayn't believe it, but I am. I could do it--somehow.
I'm like you. I've a great deal of self-reliance, and a great deal of
something else--I don't quite know what--that has never been taxed or
called on. It may be pride, but it isn't only pride. Whatever it is,
I'm strong enough to bear a lot of trouble. I don't want you to think of
me at all in any way that will worry you."
She was making it so hard for him that he kissed her hastily and went
away. Her further enlightenment was one more detail that he must leave,
as he had left so much else, to fate or God to take care of. For the
present he himself had all he could attend to.
Half-way to the gate he turned to take what might prove his last look at
the old house. It stood on the summit of a low, rounded hill, on the
site made historic as the country residence of Governor Rodney. Governor
Rodney's "Mansion" having been sacked in the Revolution by his
fellow-townsmen, the neighborhood fell for a time into disrepute under
the contemptuous nickname of Tory Hill. On the restoration of order the
property, passed by purchase to the Guions, in whose hands, with a
continuity not customary in America, it had remained. The present house,
built by Andrew Guion, on the foundations of the Rodney Mansion, in the
early nineteenth century, was old enough according to New England
standards to be venerable; and, though most of the ground originally
about it had long ago been sold off in building-lots, enough remained to
give an impression of ample outdoor space. Against the blue of the
October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was
not without a certain stateliness--rectangular, three-storied, mellow,
with buff walls, buff chimneys, white doorways, white casements, white
verandas, a white balustrade around the top, and a white urn at each of
the four corners. Where, as over the verandas, there was a bit of
inclined roof, russet-red tiles gave a warmer touch of color. From the
borders of the lawn, edged with a line of shrubs, the town of Waverton,
merging into Cambridge, just now a stretch of crimson-and-orange
woodland, where gables, spires, and towers peeped above the trees,
sloped gently to the ribbon of the Charles. Far away, and dim in the
morning haze, the roofed and steepled crest of Beacon Hill rose in
successive ridges, to cast up from its highest point the gilded dome of
the State House as culmination to the sky-line. Guion looked long and
hard, first at the house, then at the prospect. He walked on only when
he remembered that he must reserve his forces for the day's
possibilities, that he must not drain himself of emotion in advance. If
what he expected were to come to pass, the first essential to his
playing the man at all would lie in his keeping cool.
So, on reaching his office, he brought all his knowledge of the world
into play, to appear without undue self-consciousness before his
stenographer, his bookkeeper, and his clerks. The ordeal was the more
severe because of his belief that they were conversant with the state of
his affairs. At least they knew enough to be sorry for him--of that he
was sure; though there was nothing on this particular morning to display
the sympathy, unless it was the stenographer's smile as he passed her in
the anteroom, and the three small yellow chrysanthemums she had placed
in a glass on his desk. In the nods of greeting between him and the men
there was, or there seemed to be, a studied effort to show nothing at
all.
Once safely in his own office, he shut the door with a sense of relief
in the seclusion. It crossed his mind that he should feel something of
the same sort when locked in the privacy of his cell after the hideous
publicity of the trial. From habit as well as from anxiety he went
straight to a mirror and surveyed himself again. Decidedly he had
changed since yesterday. It was not so much that he was older or more
care-worn--he was different. Perhaps he was ill. He felt well enough,
except for being tired, desperately tired; but that could be accounted
for by the way in which he had spent the night. He noticed chiefly the
ashy tint of his skin, the dullness of his eyes, and--notwithstanding
the fact that his clothes were of his usual fastidiousness--a curious
effect of being badly dressed more startling to him than pain. He was
careful to brush his beard and twist his long mustache into its usual
upward, French-looking curve, so as to regain as much as possible the
air of his old self, before seating himself at his desk to look over his
correspondence. There was a pile of letters, of which he read the
addresses slowly without opening any of them.
What was the use? He could do nothing. He had come to the end. He had
exhausted all the possibilities of the situation. Besides, his spirit
was broken. He could feel it. Something snapped last night within him
that would never be whole, never even be mended, again. It was not only
the material resources under his control that he had overtaxed, but the
spring of energy within himself, leaving him no more power of
resilience.
An hour may have passed in this condition of dull suspense, when he was
startled by the tinkle of his desk telephone. It was with some effort
that he leaned forward to answer the call. Not that he was afraid--now;
he only shrank from the necessity of doing anything.
"Mr. Davenant would like to see you," came the voice of the stenographer
from the anteroom.
There was nothing to reply but, "Ask Mr. Davenant to come in." He
uttered the words mechanically. He had not thought of Davenant since he
talked with Olivia on the stairs--a conversation that now seemed a
curiously long time ago.
"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. Guion," the visitor said,
apologetically, with a glance at the letters on the desk.
"Not at all, my dear fellow," Guion said, cordially, from force of
habit, offering his hand without rising from the revolving chair. "Sit
down. Have a cigar. It's rather a sharp morning for the time of year."
The use of the conventional phrases of welcome helped him to emerge
somewhat from his state of apathy. Davenant declined the cigar, but
seated himself near the desk, in one of the round-backed office chairs.
Not being a man easily embarrassed by silences, he did not begin to
speak at once, and during the minute his hesitation lasted Guion
bethought him of Olivia's remark, "That sort of Saxon-giant type is
always good-looking." Davenant _was_ good-looking, in a clear-skinned,
clear-eyed way. Everything about him spoke of straight-forwardness and
strength, tempered perhaps by the boyish quality inseparable from fair
hair, a clean, healthily ruddy complexion, and a direct blue glance that
rested on men and things with a kind of pensive wondering. All the same,
the heavy-browed face on a big, tense neck had a frowning, perhaps a
lowering expression that reminded Guion of a young bull before he begins
to charge. The lips beneath the fair mustache might be too tightly and
too severely compressed, but the smile into which they broke over
regular white teeth was the franker and the more engaging because of the
unexpected light. If there was any physical awkwardness about him, it
was in the management of his long legs; but that difficulty was overcome
by his simplicity. It was characteristic of Guion to notice, even at
such a time as this, that Davenant was carefully and correctly dressed,
like a man respectful of social usages.
"I came in to see you, Mr. Guion," he began, apparently with some
hesitation, "about what we were talking of last night."
Guion pulled himself together. His handsome eyebrows arched themselves,
and he half smiled.
"Last night? What _were_ we talking of?"
"We weren't talking of it, exactly. You only told us."
"Only told you--what?" The necessity to do a little fencing brought
some of his old powers into play.
"That you wanted to borrow half a million dollars. I've come in to--to
lend you that sum--if you'll take it."
For a few seconds Guion sat rigidly still, looking at this man. The
import and bearing of the words were too much for him to grasp at once.
All his mind was prepared to deal with on the spur of the moment was the
fact of this offer, ignoring its application and its consequences as
things which for the moment lay outside his range of thought.
As far as he was able to reflect, it was to assume that there was more
here than met the eye. Davenant was too practised as a player of "the
game" to pay a big price for a broken potsherd, unless he was tolerably
sure in advance that within the potsherd or under it there lay more than
its value. It was not easy to surmise the form of the treasure nor the
spot where it was hidden, but that it was there--in kind satisfactory to
Davenant himself--Guion had no doubt. It was his part, therefore, to be
astute and wary, not to lose the chance of selling, and yet not to allow
himself to be overreached. If Davenant was playing a deep game, he must
play a deeper. He was sorry his head ached and that he felt in such poor
trim for making the effort. "I must look sharp," he said to himself;
"and yet I must be square and courteous. That's the line for me to
take." He tried to get some inspiration for the spurt in telling himself
that in spite of everything he was still a man of business. When at last
he began to speak, it was with something of the feeling of the
broken-down prize-fighter dragging himself bleeding and breathless into
the ring for the last round with a young and still unspent opponent.
"I didn't suppose you were in--in a position--to do that."
"I am." Davenant nodded with some emphasis.
"Did you think that that was what I meant when I--I opened my heart to
you last night?"
"No. I know it wasn't. My offer is inspired by nothing but what I feel."
"Good!" It was some minutes before Guion spoke again. "If I remember
rightly," he observed then, "I said I would sell my soul for half a
million dollars. I didn't say I wanted to borrow that amount."
"You may put it in any way you like," Davenant smiled. "I've come with
the offer of the money. I want you to have it. The terms on which you'd
take it don't matter to me."
"But they do to me. Don't you see? I'd borrow the money if I could. I
couldn't accept it in any other way. And I can't borrow it. I couldn't
pay the interest on it if I did. But I've exhausted my credit. I can't
borrow any more."
"You can borrow what I'm willing to lend, can't you?"
"No; because Tory Hill is mortgaged for all it will stand. I've nothing
else to offer as collateral--"
"I'm not asking for collateral. I'm ready to hand you over the money on
any terms you like or on no terms at all."
"Do you mean that you'd be willing to--to--to _give_ it to me?"
"I mean, sir," he explained, reddening a little, "that I want you to
have the money to _use_--now. We could talk about the conditions
afterward and call them what you please. If I understood you correctly
last night, you're in a tight place--a confoundedly tight place--"
"I am; but--don't be offended!--it seems to me you'd put me in a
tighter."
"How's that?"
[Illustration: "I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT I'M WILLING TO PAY THE PENALTY"]
"It's a little difficult to explain." He leaned forward, with one of his
nervous, jerky movements, and fingered the glass containing the three
chrysanthemums, but without taking his eyes from Davenant. So far he was
quite satisfied with himself. "You see, it's this way. I've done
wrong--very wrong. We needn't go into that, because you know it as well
as I. But I'm willing to pay the penalty. That is, I'm _ready_ to pay
the penalty. I've made up my mind to it. I've had to--of course. But if
I accepted your offer, you'd be paying it, not I."
"Well, why shouldn't I? I've paid other people's debts before now--once
or twice--when I didn't want to. Why shouldn't I pay yours, when I
should like the job?"
Davenant attempted, by taking something like a jovial tone, to carry the
thing off lightly.
"There's no reason why you shouldn't do it; there's only a reason why I
shouldn't let you."
"I don't see why you shouldn't let me. It mayn't be just what you'd
like, but it's surely better than--than what you wouldn't like at all."
Taking in the significance of these words, Guion colored, not with the
healthy young flush that came so readily to Davenant's face, but in
dabbled, hectic spots. His hand trembled, too, so that some of the water
from the vase he was holding spilled over on the desk. It was probably
this small accident, making him forget the importance of his rôle, that
caused him to jump up nervously and begin pacing about the room.
Davenant noticed then what he had not yet had time for--the change that
had taken place in Guion in less than twenty hours. It could not be
defined as looking older or haggard or ill. It could hardly be said to
be a difference in complexion or feature or anything outward. As far as
Davenant was able to judge, it was probably due, not to the loss of
self-respect, but to the loss of the pretense at self-respect; it was
due to that desolation of the personality that comes when the soul has
no more reason to keep up its defenses against the world outside it,
when the Beautiful Gate is battered down and the Veil of the Temple
rent, while the Holy of Holies lies open for any eye to rifle. It was
probably because this was so that Guion, on coming back to his seat,
began at once to be more explanatory than there was any need for.
"I haven't tried to thank you for your kind suggestion, but we'll come
to that when I see more clearly just what you want."
"I've told you that. I'm not asking for anything else."
"So far you haven't asked for anything at all; but I don't imagine
you'll be content with that. In any case," he hurried on, as Davenant
seemed about to speak, "I don't want you to be under any misapprehension
about the affair. There's nothing extenuating in it whatever--that is,
nothing but the intention to 'put it back' that goes with practically
every instance of"--he hesitated long--"every instance of embezzlement,"
he finished, bravely. "It began this way--"
"I don't want to know how it began," Davenant said, hastily. "I'm
satisfied with knowing the situation as it is."
"But I want to tell you. In proportion as I'm open with you I shall
expect you to be frank with me."
"I don't promise to be frank with you."
"Anyhow, I mean to set you the example."
He went on to speak rapidly, feverishly, with that half-hysterical
impulse toward confession from the signs of which Davenant had shrunk on
the previous evening. As Guion himself had forewarned, there was nothing
new or unusual in the tale. The situations were entirely the
conventional ones in the drama of this kind of unfaithfulness. The only
element to make it appealing, an element forcibly present to Davenant's
protective instincts, was the contrast between what Guion had been and
what he was to-day.
"And so," Guion concluded, "I don't see how I could accept this money
from you. Any honorable man--that is," he corrected, in some confusion,
"any _sane_ man--would tell you as much."
"I've already considered what the sane man and the honorable man would
tell me. I guess I can let them stick to their opinion so long as I have
my own."
"And what _is_ your opinion? Do you mind telling me? You understand that
what you're proposing is immoral, don't you?"
"Yes--in a way."
Guion frowned. He had hoped for some pretense at contradiction.
"I didn't know whether you'd thought of that."
"Oh yes, I've thought of it. That is, I see what you mean."
"It's compounding a felony and outwitting the ends of justice and--"
"I guess I'll do it just the same. It doesn't seem to be my special job
to look after the ends of justice; and as for compounding a
felony--well, it'll be something new."
Guion made a show of looking at him sharply. The effort, or the
pretended effort, to see through Davenant's game disguised for the
moment his sense of humiliation at this prompt acceptance of his own
statement of the case.
"All the same," he observed, trying to take a detached, judicial tone,
"your offer is so amazing that I presume you wouldn't make it unless you
had some unusual reason."
"I don't know that I have. In fact, I know I haven't."
"Well, whatever its nature, I should like to know what it is."
"Is that necessary?"
"Doesn't it strike you that it would be--in order? If I were to let you
do this for me you'd be rendering me an extraordinary service. We're
both men of business, men of the world; and we know that something for
nothing is not according to Hoyle."
Davenant looked at him pensively. "That is, you want to know what I
should be pulling off for myself?"
"That's about it."
"I don't see why that should worry you. If you get the money--"
"If I get the money I put myself in your power."
"What of that? Isn't it just as well to be in my power as in the power
of other people?"
Again Guion winced inwardly, but kept his self-control. He was not yet
accustomed to doing without the formulas of respect from those whom he
considered his inferiors.
"Possibly," he said, not caring to conceal a certain irritation; "but
even so I should like to know in case I _were_ in your power what you'd
expect of me."
"I can answer that question right away. I shouldn't expect anything at
all."
"Then you leave me more in the dark than ever."
Davenant still eyed him pensively. "Do I understand you to be suspicious
of my motives?"
"Suspicious might not be the right word. Suppose we said curious."
Davenant reflected. Perhaps it was his mastery of the situation that
gave him unconsciously a rock-like air of nonchalance. When he spoke it
was with a little smile, which Guion took to be one of condescension.
Condescension in the circumstances was synonymous with insolence.
"Well, sir, suppose I allowed you to remain curious? What then?"
They were the wrong words. It was the wrong manner. Guion looked up with
a start. His next words were uttered in the blind instinct of the
haughty-headed gentleman who thinks highly of himself to save the
moment's dignity.
"In that case I think we must call the bargain off."
Davenant shot out of his seat. He, too, was not without a current of hot
blood.
"All right, sir. It's for you to decide. Only, I'm sorry. Good-by!" He
held out his hand, which Guion, who was now leaning forward, toying with
the pens and pencils on the desk, affected not to see. A certain lack of
ease that often came over Davenant at moments of leave-taking or
greeting kept him on the spot. "I hoped," he stammered, "that I might
have been of some use to you, and that Miss Guion--"