I
"I have called to see Mr. Van Ostend, by appointment," said Father
Honore to the footman in attendance at the door of the mansion on the
Avenue.
He was shown into the library. Mr. Van Ostend rose from the armchair to
greet him.
"I am glad to see you, Father Honore." He shook hands cordially and drew
up a chair opposite to his own before the blazing hearth. "Be seated; I
have given orders that we are not to be interrupted. I cannot pretend
ignorance as to the cause of your coming--a sad, bad matter for us all.
Have you any news?"
"Only that he is here in New York."
Mr. Van Ostend looked startled. "Here? Since when? My latest advice was
this afternoon from the Maine detectives."
"I heard yesterday from headquarters that he had been traced here, but
he must be in hiding somewhere; thus far they've found no trace of him.
I felt sure, from the very first, he would return; that is why I came
down. He couldn't avoid detection any longer in the country, nor could
he hold out another week in the Maine wilderness--no man could stand it
in this weather."
"How long have you been here, Father Honore?"
"Three days. I promised Mrs. Googe to do what I could to find him; the
mother suffers most."
"I know--I know; it's awful for her; but, for God's sake, what did he do
it for!"
"Why do we all sin at times?"
"Yes, yes--I know; that's your point of view, but that does not answer
me in this case. He had every opportunity to work along legitimate lines
towards the end he professed to wish to attain--and he had the ability
to attain it; I know this from my experience with him. What could have
possessed him to put himself in the place of a sneak thief--he, born a
gentleman, with Champney blood in his veins?"
Father Honore did not answer his question which was more an indignant
ejaculation.
"You spoke of my 'point of view,' Mr. Van Ostend. I think I know what
that implies; you mean from the point of view of the priesthood?"
The man on the opposite side of the fire-lighted hearth looked at him in
surprise. "Yes, just that; but I intended no reflection on your opinion;
perhaps I ought to say frankly, that it implied a doubt of your powers
of judgment in a business matter like the one in question. Naturally, it
does not lie in your line."
Father Honore smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps you may recall that old
saying of the Jew, Nathan the Wise: 'A man is a man before he is either
Christian or Jew.' And we are men, Mr. Van Ostend; men primarily before
we are either financier or priest. Let us speak as man to man; put aside
all points of view entailed by difference of training, and meet on the
common ground of our manhood, I am sure the perspective and
retrospective ought to be in the same line of vision from that
standpoint."
Mr. Van Ostend was silent. He was thinking deeply. The priest saw this,
and waited for the answer which he felt sure would be well thought out
before it found expression. He spoke at last, slowly, weighing his
words:
"I am questioning whether, with the best intentions as men to meet in
the common plane of our manhood, to see from thence alike in a certain
direction, you and I, at our age, can escape from the moulded lines of
our training into that common plane."
"I think we can if we keep to the fundamentals of life."
"We can but try; but there must be then an absolutely unclouded
expression of individual opinion on the part of each." His assertion
implied both a challenge and a doubt. "What is your idea of the reason
for his succumbing to such a temptation?"
"I believe it was the love of money and the power its acquisition
carries with it. I know, too, that Mrs. Googe blames herself for having
fostered this ambition in him. She would only too gladly place anything
that is hers to make good, but there is nothing left; it all went." He
straightened himself. "What I have come to you for, Mr. Van Ostend, is
to ask you one direct question: Are you willing to make good the amount
of the embezzlement to the syndicate and save prosecution in this
special case--save the man, Champney Googe, and so give him another
chance in life? You know, but not so well, perhaps, as I, what years in
a penitentiary mean for a man when he leaves it."
"Are you aware that you are asking me to put a premium on crime?" Mr.
Van Ostend asked coldly. He looked at the priest as if he thought he had
taken leave of his senses.
"That is one way of putting it, I admit; but there is another. Let me
put it to you: if you had had a son; if he were fatherless; if he had
fallen through emulation of other men, wouldn't you like to know that
some man might lend a hand for the sake of the mother?"
"I don't know. Stealing is stealing, whether my son were the thief or
another man's. Why shouldn't a man take his punishment? You know the
everyday argument: the man who steals a loaf of bread gets nine months,
and the man who steals a hundred thousand gets clear. If the law is for
the one and not for the other, the result is, logically, anarchy.
Besides, the man, not he of the street who steals because he is hungry,
but the one who has every advantage of education and environment to make
his way right in life, goes wrong knowingly. Are we in this case to
coddle, to sympathize, to let ourselves be led into philanthropic drivel
over 'judge not that ye be not judged'? I cannot see it so."
"You are right in your reasoning, but you are reasoning according to the
common law, man-made; and I said we could agree only if we keep to the
fundamentals of life."
"Well, if the law isn't a fundamental, what is?"
"I heard Bishop Brooks once say: 'The Bible _was_ before ever it was
written.' And perhaps I can best answer your question by saying the law
of the human existed before the law of which you are thinking was ever
written. Love, mercy, long-suffering _were_ before the law formulated
'an eye for an eye,' or this world could not have existed to the
present time for you and me. It is in recognition of that, in dealing
with the human, that I make my appeal to you--for the mother, first and
foremost, who suffers through the son, her first-born and only child, as
your daughter is your only--" Mr. Van Ostend interrupted him.
"I must beg you, Father Honore, not to bring my daughter's name into
this affair. I have suffered enough--enough."
"Mr. Van Ostend, pardon me the seeming discourtesy in your own house,
but I am compelled to mention it. After you have given your final
decision to my importuning, there can be no further appeal. The man, if
living, must go to prison. Mrs. Champney positively refuses to help her
nephew in any way. She has been approached twice on the subject of
advancing four-fifths of the hundred thousand; she can do it, but she
won't. She is not a mother; neither has she any real love for her
nephew, for she refuses to aid him in his extremity. I mentioned your
daughter, because you must know that her name has been in the past
connected with the man for whom I am asking the boon of another chance
in life. I have felt convinced that for her sake, if for no other, you
would make this sacrifice."
"My daughter, I am glad to inform you, never cared for the man. She is
too young, too undeveloped. It is the one thing that makes it possible
for me to contemplate what he has done with any degree of sanity. Had he
won her affections, had she loved him--" He paused: it was impossible
for him to proceed.
"Thank God that she was spared that!" Father Honore ejaculated under his
breath. Mr. Van Ostend looking at him keenly, perceived that he was
under the influence of some powerful emotion. He turned to him, a mute
question on his lips. Father Honore answered that mute query with
intense earnestness, by repeating what, apparently, he had said to
himself:
"I thank my God that she never cared for him in that way, for otherwise
her life would have been wrecked; nor could you, who would lay down your
life for her happiness, have spared or saved her,--her young affections,
her young faith and joy in life, all shattered, and Life the iconoclast!
That is the saddest part of it. It is women who suffer most and always.
In making this appeal to you, I have had continually in mind his mother,
and you, the father of a woman. I know how your pride must have suffered
in the knowledge that his name, even, has been connected with hers--but
your suffering is as naught compared with that mother's who, at this
very moment, is waiting for some telegram from me that shall tell her
her son is found, is saved. But I will not over urge, Mr. Van Ostend. If
you feel you cannot do this, that it is a matter of principle with you
to refuse, there is no need to prolong this interview which is painful
to us both. I thank you for the time you have given me." He rose to go.
Mr. Van Ostend did likewise.
At that moment a girl's joyous voice sounded in the hall just outside
the door.
"Oh, never mind that, Beales; papa never considers me an interruption.
I'm going in, anyway, to say good night; I don't care if all Wall Street
is there. Has the carriage come?"
There was audible the sound of a subdued protest; then came a series of
quick taps on the door and the sound of the gay voice again:
"Papa--just a minute to say good night; if I can't come in, do you come
out and give me a kiss--do you hear?"
The two men looked at each other. Mr. Van Ostend stepped quickly to the
door and, opening it, stood on the threshold. Something very like a
diaphanous white cloud enwrapped him; two thin arms, visible through it,
went suddenly round his neck; then his arms enfolded her.
"Oh, Papsy dear, don't hug me so hard! You'll crush all my flowers. Ben
sent them; wasn't he a dear? I've promised him the cotillon to-night for
them. Good night." She pecked at his cheek again as he released her; the
cloud of white liberty silk tulle drifted away from the doorway and left
it a blank.
Mr. Van Ostend closed the door; came back to the hearth; stood there,
his arms folded tightly over his chest, his head bowed. For a few
minutes neither man spoke. When the clock on the mantel chimed a quarter
to nine, Father Honore made a movement to go. Mr. Van Ostend turned
quickly to him and put out a detaining hand.
"May I ask if you are going to continue the search this evening; it's a
bad night."
"Yes; I've had the feeling that, after he has been so long in hiding,
he'll have to come out--he must be at the end of his strength. I am
going out with two detectives now; they have been on the case with me.
This is quite apart from the general detective agency's work."
"Father Honore," Mr. Van Ostend spoke with apparent effort, "I know I am
right in my reasoning--and you are right in your fundamentals. We both
may be wrong in the end, you in appealing to me for this aid to restrain
prosecution, and I in giving it. Time alone will show us. But if we are,
we must take the consequences of our act. If, by yielding, I make it
easier for another man to do as Champney Googe has done, may God forgive
me; I could never forgive myself. If you, in asking this, have erred in
freeing from his punishment a man who deserves every bit he can get, you
will have to reckon with your own conscience.--Don't misunderstand me.
No spirit of philanthropy influences me in my act. Don't credit me with
any 'love-to-man' attitude. I am going to advance the sum necessary to
avoid prosecution if you find him; but I do it solely on that mother's
account, and"--he hesitated--"because I don't want her, whom you have
just seen, connected, even remotely, by the thought of what a
penitentiary term implies. I don't want to entertain the thought that
even the hem of _my_ child's garment has been so much as touched by a
hand that will work at hard labor for seven, perhaps fifteen, years. And
I want you to understand that, in yielding, my principle remains
unchanged. I owe it to you to say this much, for you have dealt with me
as man to man."
"Mr. Van Ostend, we may both be in the wrong, as you say; if it prove
so, I shall be the first to acknowledge my error to you. My one thought
has been to save that mother further agony and to give a man, still
young, another chance."
"I've understood it so."
He went to his writing table, sat down at it, and, for a moment, busied
himself with making out his personal check for one hundred thousand
dollars payable to the Flamsted Granite Quarries Company. He handed it
to Father Honore to look at. The priest read it.
"Whatever bail is needed, if an arrest should follow now," said Mr. Van
Ostend further and significantly, "I will be responsible for."
The two men clasped hands and looked understandingly into each other's
eyes. What each read therein, what each felt in the other's palm beats,
they realized there was no need to express in words.
"Let me hear, Father Honore, so soon as you learn anything definite;
I'll keep you posted so far as I hear."
"I will. Good night, Mr. Van Ostend."
* * * * *
On reaching the iron gates to the courtyard, the priest stepped aside to
give unimpeded passage to a carriage just leaving the house. As it
passed him, the electric light flashed athwart the bowed glass front,
already dripping with sleet, and behind it he caught a glimpse of a
girl's delicate face that rose from out the folds of a chinchilla wrap,
like a flower from its sheath. She was chatting gaily with her maid.