He went down to the lawn, lighted a cigar, and began to smoke, striding
nervously back and forth. A smart pair of horses hitched to a trap
whirled into the carriage-drive and stopped in the porte-cochere. In
the rays from the overhead lamp Mostyn saw Buckton alight and ascend
the steps to the veranda. A half-smoked cigar cast into the shrubbery
emitted a tiny shower of sparks. Mostyn saw the young man peering in at
the window of the lighted drawing-room. He noted the spick-and-span
appearance, the jaunty, satisfied air of expectancy, and his blood
began to boil with rage.
"My God!" he groaned. "She may be falling in love with him--if she has
not _always_ loved him, and he now knows it. She may have told him so.
And when they are alone together, as they will be in a few minutes on
the road, what more natural than that he should caress her? I would
have done it with any man's wife if I had felt an inclination. I am the
joke of the town and must bear it. I must stand by and let my wife and
another man--"
Buckton was at the door speaking to the maid who had answered his ring.
"No; tell her, please, that I'll wait out here on the lawn." Mostyn
remarked the note of curbed elation in the voice, and saw Buckton turn
down the steps.
A match flared in the handsome face as another cigar was lighted.
Fearing that he might have been seen from the drive, Mostyn was
compelled to step forward and greet the man with the conventional
unconcern he had been able to summon to his aid on former occasions.
"Hello," he heard himself saying, automatically, as he strode across
the grass to the other smoker. "Fine evening for your shindig."
"Tiptop," Buckton said, with a sort of restraint Mostyn inwardly
resented. "Couldn't have turned out better. Sorry you've cut out the
giddy whirl, old man. As I passed your bank this morning I thought of
asking you, but you have refused so many times that--"
"Oh no." Mostyn heartily despised the role he was playing. "I am no
longer good at that sort of thing."
"Had your day, I see," Buckton laughed, significantly. "You certainly
kept the pace, if all tales are true. The sort of thing we do these
days must be tame by comparison."
"Oh, I don't know," Mostyn returned, with enforced carelessness. "Men
are the same the world over. I have not yet had a chance to
congratulate you on your recent good fortune."
"Thanks, old man." Buckton puffed his smoke into the still moonlight.
"It certainly was a lift to me. I was never cut out for business, and I
was at the end of my row. I confess I am not complaining now. I am just
at the age to know how to spend money."
The talk languished. Both men seemed suddenly burthened by obtrusive
self-consciousness. Buckton twisted his mustache nervously and flicked
at the ashless tip of his cigar, glancing toward the house. "Oh, I
quite forgot to deliver Miss Kitty's message to Irene--to Mrs. Mostyn,
I should say. She was to drive out with us, but at the last minute Dr.
Regan found that he could get off and asked her to go in his car."
"Arranged between them," Mostyn thought, darkly. "I know the trick.
Regan doesn't care a rap for Kitty. It is part of the game, and I am
the tool."
"I understand you have a new car yourself," Mostyn said, aloud.
"Yes, and experts tell me that it is the best in town. I'll run around
and take you out some day. But I really care more for horses. It may be
due to my Virginia blood. I wouldn't swap this pair for all the cars in
town. For a trip like this to-night horses come handy. There are some
rough places between here and my home."
"It does away with the chauffeur," Mostyn said, inwardly, as his tongue
lay dead in his mouth. He glanced toward the open doorway. "Irene may
be ready," he remarked, moving toward the house.
"Yes, I see her coming down the stairs," answered Buckton, dropping his
cigar, a look of boyish eagerness capturing his face. "I'll run on and
help her with her wraps. So long, old man."
Mostyn made some inarticulate response of no import in particular, and
dropped back, allowing Buckton to stride on to the veranda, his hat
jauntily swinging at his side. Irene was now in the doorway, poised
like a picture in a frame.
Slinking farther away beneath the trees and behind shrubbery, Mostyn
heard the greetings between the two, and saw them shaking hands,
standing face to face. Irene looked so young, so different from the
calculating woman who had just asserted her financial and marital
rights in her chamber. No wonder that her escort was fascinated when
she had so long been withheld from him! Mostyn told himself that he
well knew the "stolen-sweets" sensation. He peered above a clump of
boxwood like a thief, upon grounds to which he was unaccustomed, and
watched them as they got into the trap. Irene's rippling laugh, and
Buckton's satisfied response as he tucked the robes about her, seemed
things of Satanic design. They were off. The restive pair, with
high-reined, arching necks, trotted down the drive to the street, and a
moment later were out of sight.
Mostyn went into the house, back to the desolate dining-room, and sat
down in his chair at the head of the table. The maid who came to
receive his order and turn on a fuller light had a look in her eyes
which indicated that she was aware of his mood. He would have resented
it had he dared, but it was only one of many things which had of late
grated on him but could not be prevented.
"Has Mr. Mitchell had his supper?" Mostyn asked, applying himself
reluctantly to the simple repast before him.
"Yes, sir, and gone up to his room," the girl answered. "He is out of
sorts to-day. I have never seen him so troublesome. He has threatened
to discharge us all."
"Don't mind him." Mostyn's voice sounded to him as if uttered by some
tongue other than his own. He half fancied that the maid, for reasons
peculiar to her class, had a sort of contempt for him. She, as well as
the other servants, no doubt thought of him as having married for
money, Mitchell's fortune being so much larger than his own diminished
and ever-lessening capital.
Supper over, he went back to the veranda. Should he go to the club, as
he sometimes did to pass an evening? He had a feeling against it. He
did not care for cards or drinking, and they were the chief amusements
indulged in by the habitual loungers about the rooms. There might be
some summer play on at one of the theaters, but as a rule they were
very poor at that season of the year, and he knew he had a frame of
mind which could not be diverted. At this juncture he became conscious
of something of an almost startling nature. It was an undefinable, even
maternal feeling that he ought to stay with his child. He shrugged his
shoulders and smiled at the sheer absurdity of the idea, yet it clung
to him persistently. He tried to analyze it; it eluded analysis. It had
haunted him before, and the time had always been when Irene was away.
Was it some strange psychic sympathy or bond of blood between his
motherless offspring and himself? Was his guilty soul whispering to him
that he was responsible for the deserted human bud, and that he, man
though he was, should give it the care and love denied it?
Obeying an impulse he could not put down, he turned into the house and
softly ascended the stairs. The door of the nursery was open. A
low-turned light was burning in a night-lamp on the bureau. The nurse
was below eating with the other servants. He was alone and unobserved.
The child was asleep in its little white bed, and he crept forward and
looked down upon it. The night being warm, little Richard was not
covered, and, with his shapely legs and fair breast exposed, he lay
asleep. There was a suggestion of a smile on the beautiful face, the
pink lips were parted, the dainty fingers were clutched as if holding
some dream-object tight in their clasp.
With a sigh that was almost audible the father turned away. At the door
he glanced back, having noted the intense warmth of the room. The
nurse, as many of her tropical race are apt to do, had forgotten to
ventilate the chamber. The two windows were closed. Angrily he crept
across the carpeted floor and noiselessly raised the sashes as high as
they would go, feeling the fresh air stream in. With a parting glance
at the sleeper he withdrew.
Descending the stairs, he went out on the lawn again. Even that scrap
of Nature's realm had a tendency to soothe his snarled sensibilities.
It might have been the dew which was rising and cooling his feet, or
the pale, blinking stars, the sedative rays of which seemed to
penetrate to his seething brain. He remembered John Leach's sermon that
day in the mountains at the cross-roads store. The fellow had found
something. He had found the way of the life spiritual, and it had come
to him through sin, suffering, humiliation, and final self-immolation.
Mostyn recalled the resolutions he had made under the influence of the
man's compelling eloquence; he recalled the breaking of the
resolutions. He thought of Dolly Drake, and groaned in actual pain of
body and soul. He told himself that he had then deliberately trampled
under foot his last spiritual opportunity. "Dolly Drake, Dolly Drake!"
the words, unuttered though they were by lips which he felt were too
profane for such use, seemed to float like notes of accusing music.
Saunders had said she was more beautiful than ever. She might have been
his but for his weakness. Perhaps she still thought of him now and
then. If she could know of this unconquerable despair, she would pity
him. How sweet such pity as hers would be! A sob struggled up within
him and threatened to burst; he felt the sharp pain of suppression in
his breast. It was as if his soul was urging his too-callous body to
weep. Dolly was as unobtainable as the heaven of the tramp preacher's
vision. For Mostyn only protracted evil was now available, and that was
sickening to his very thought.
He wondered, seeing that it was now ten o'clock, if he could go to
sleep. In deep sleep he would be able to forget. He decided to try. He
went up to his room, and, aided only by the moonlight, which fell
through the windows, he undressed and threw himself down on his bed.
For an hour he was wakeful. He was just becoming drowsy when he heard
voices in the nursery across the hall. He recognized the sharp,
scolding voice of the nurse, and the timid reply of the child. Rising,
Mostyn went to the open door of the nursery and looked in.
"What is it?" he asked.
"He is begging to go to your bed," the woman answered, peevishly.
"You've spoiled him, Mr. Mostyn. He wants to do it every night. He is
getting worse and worse."
A thrill of delight, yearning delight, passed over the father. He stood
silent for a moment, ashamed to have even the black servant suspect
what he so keenly desired.
"Daddy, Dick wants you," a voice soft, tremulous, and unspeakably
appealing came from the little bed.
"Hush, and go to sleep!" the nurse called out. "You are a bad boy,
keeping us awake like this."
"No, let him come," Mostyn said, in a voice which was husky, and shook
against his will. "Come, Dick!"
The little white-robed form slid eagerly from the bed and fairly ran to
the arms which were hungrily outstretched. With the soft body against
his breast, a confident arm about his neck, the father bore him to his
room and put him down on the back side of the wide bed.
"Now you will sleep, won't you?" he said, his voice exultantly tender.
"Yes, Daddy." Dick stretched his pretty legs out straight. Silence
filled the room; the mystic rays of moonlight falling in at the window
seemed to bring with them the despondent murmur of the city outside.
The deep, fragrant breathing of the child soon showed that he was
asleep. Cautiously Mostyn propped himself up on his elbow and looked
into the placid face. "He has my brow," he mused, bitterly; "my hands;
my ears; my long ringers, with their curving nails; my slender ankles
and high-instepped feet; and, my God! he has my telltale sensual lips.
Here am I in the throes of a hell produced by infinite laws. What is to
prevent him--the helpless replica of myself--from taking the way I
took? The edge of the alluring abyss will crumble under his blind tread
as it crumbled under mine, and this--this--this cloying horror which is
on me to-night may be my gift to him--for whose sake I would die--yes,
die!"
Silently Mostyn left the bed and took a seat on the broad sill of one
of the windows overlooking the lawn.
"What will be the end?" he asked himself. "It can't go on like this. I
am not man enough to stand it. If I were not afraid of death, I
would--no, I wouldn't"--he glanced at the bed--"I am responsible for
his being here. He is the flower of my corruption. God may desert him,
but I won't. I will protect him, love him, pity him, care for him to
the end."
A cold drop fell on his hand and trickled through his fingers. He was
weeping.