The works of the old Cabot clock were worn out. During the days and
nights that followed its last tick Dolores often glanced up into its
non-committal face, reproachful that it would no longer mark off the
minutes. Time dragged, weighted by her doubt over the state of mind of
John.
Then, one night after twelve, when all the household was asleep, he
came back to her. He folded her against his heart. He took her lips. He
claimed her with full acknowledgment of his dependency.
“God forgive me,” he said. “It is too much for me.”
There was no need for him to explain. His white face, the pound of his
heart against hers, his inconsistent pleas for pardon that he might be
free to sin again, all helped her to understand. He was possessed by
the passion of an all-demanding love. He had fought a fight; had fought
and had failed.
And Dolores could not lament his defeat. Only one thing mattered, that
John’s love answered hers. She had called and he had heard. Against
his will he had come. Their acknowledgment, then, had not been a
regrettable impulse; had been, rather, what was to be. They loved, and
Heaven was in their hearts. They _loved_.
After the days of doubt, Dolores rested in blessed conviction. Never
before had she been given a chance at happiness. Here was her chance.
Suggestions of smiles formed about her lips. A new light, like the
gleam from deep-cut amethysts, shone from her eyes. A man like John
Cabot did not love lightly. And John Cabot loved her.
Next morning she awoke with the wish that her father might know how
well all was with her. Although a drizzling rain began to fall, she
decided against ordering Jack’s car. She preferred to go to Trevor
Trent simply, as they had lived, changed only by the glory from within.
She felt close to him while donning, for the first time in weeks, the
old blue serge suit whose purchase price he had spared from the poppy
paste. The long ride up-town in the Subway, the mudded walk and the
plain slab that marked the spot where she had left him to lie beneath
down-drifting leaves, brought her nearer.
Where is there comfort like confiding a rapturous secret to one’s own?
How long the orphaned girl sat beside the grave, oblivious of the rain
because her consciousness had gone to find and gladden that of the
parent whose last “please God” had been that she find a good love--how
drenched was the blue suit--how chilled her feet--she subtracted none
of her attention from him to realize. The adventure brought her content.
Sometime during the afternoon she returned to the great house on the
upper Avenue. So dulled she felt to outer perceptions that surprise
held her only a moment to meet the Frenchwoman, Annette, in the
elevator. She somehow forgot to listen to the maid’s explanation of
why she had not remained with madame. Later she was forced to hear
Morrison’s insistence that she needed a doctor, but made light of the
good woman’s anxiety. What mattered a slight fever or swollen tonsils
or a disinclination toward food to one blessed as was she?
As developed, however, these symptoms mattered much in the heightening
of her happiness. The housekeeper’s responsibility, transferred to
Bradish, resulted in a telephoned message to Mr. Cabot’s club. Soon
after the wire, he came, terrified out of all proportion to her
trifling symptoms. To see that all his instructions were carried out,
he stayed.
Dolores’ protestations soon ceased, since to relieve his anxiety might
take him away again. It was too precious to forego, this experience of
being ministered to by him. Their first meal alone together, which he
ordered served in Jack’s living room much as the youngster himself
might have done, was an occasion almost too significant for calm. To
please him, she tried to sip her broth and eat her toast, but with the
sacred joy of a convert at some sacrament.
After he had shut out the servants and advised Morrison that he would
sit awhile with Miss Trent, he wrapped her first in a robe, then in
his arms and sat rocking her with a possessive tenderness which made
her realize how much she had missed from her babyhood. Her ecstasy of
content must have dulled her ears. She heard no sound, merely assumed
one, when he placed her in Jack’s reading chair, took a few steps
toward the hall door and stood intently listening. Still she had heard
nothing when he strode to the door and flung it wide.
Upon the threshold, in a panic of indecision between flight and
remaining, stood Annette. Her eyes, nondescript except for their
shrewdness, followed the thinking glance of the man who had surprised
her from the half-light of the corridor to the strong one of the
reading-lamp within, then down to the key-hole, minus its key.
Evidently, she decided on bravado. A sneer drew down the corners of her
mouth. She straightened to face the master.
“You back?” he asked.
“Madame finds herself in need of certain dinner gowns. She returned me
to select and pack them.”
“She sent you back from Florida to select and pack certain dinner
gowns? Just what does madame pay you for the job?”
“Does not Mr. Cabot know the amount of my salary, none too large for
one who has served----”
“I mean how much for this key-hole job?”
At his contemptuous interruption, the woman caught her breath.
“Five-hundred-dollar, m’sieu.”
“A five-hundred-dollar bonus? Madame is good to you. However, I am in
a position to be better. I’ll advance that bonus to-night, if you’ll
leave her employ.”
Her avaricious watch of his face eased in a disappointed laugh. “Does
m’sieu think I would turn the traitor to a mistress who has ever been
most generous and who trusts----”
“I do.”
“And for a wretched five hundred, already earned?”
“I do not--not for five hundred.” He contributed a short laugh. “But
for that in cash, plus a check for one thousand, good in six months
if you neglect to report to this trusting mistress who has been so
generous with you.”
“But how can M’sieu Cabot think so low of me that for a paltry
thousand-dollar----”
“The five hundred you get now,” he detailed. “The check for a thousand
will be dated so that you can cash it in June, unless traitoring has
become a habit with you. If it does, I shall stop payment at the
bank. You will leave this house and Mrs. Cabot’s employ at once.
Satisfactory?”
The click of the last-word question must have satisfied the maid that
she could profit no further.
“Quite,” she replied, succinctly as he.
Without comment on the fact that he had read her aright, John Cabot
counted five century notes from his wallet and drew the promised check,
calling her attention to the date, six months from that day.
When she had gone he said to Dolores:
“I want my freedom, but not at your expense.”
“You really think,” the girl faltered, “that that is why Annette is
here?”
He nodded. “And why you are here and why I should not be. I have been
inexcusable. _I_ am the traitor--the waster of what I valued most.”
“Don’t keep saying that,” she protested. “Nothing can be wasted when we
love. Jack lived and died that we might know.”
Through the gloom of self-reproach which was settling over
him--settling between them--he saw her outstretched hands; caught them;
was reminded of her feverish state.
“Dear, it will come right,” he made effort to assure her and, with her,
himself. “We mustn’t allow anything to be wasted, not a moment of our
time together, not a regret for the innocence which I should have died
rather than----”
Her smile stopped him--the shy, tremulous, revealing smile so lately
learned. Had a dew-wet violet along a woodland path looked up at him,
he could not have trod upon it. He must not tread upon that smile.
He returned to his delightful care of her. His first and most important
obligation was to see that she did not become ill, he told her. She
must rest now; must sleep off her temperature. He rang for Mrs.
Morrison; agreed that their charge might be put to bed in Jack’s
four-poster; himself suggested that the Airedale be allowed upstairs to
snuggle at her feet. And when the housekeeper had finished her motherly
offices, he made her no explanation of why he still sat reading in the
outer room.
Not since the slight ailments to which all children are heir had
Dolores been ill. Shivering into the eider-down of the historic bed,
she felt vaguely wretched, uncertain, lost. From the same impulse
which had asked the reward of a good-night kiss from Morrison for her
tractability, she now asked John:
“You won’t go away?”
“Leave the corridor door ajar, Morrison.” As if from afar she heard his
instructions. “Come up again when it is time for her medicine. And,
Morrison, I have discharged Mrs. Cabot’s maid. She is to leave as soon
as she can pack her things.”
Dolores grew warmer, then uncomfortably warm. She must soon have fallen
into a doze. When she opened her eyes, she saw that the night lamp had
been clicked off and the light from the living-room shaded from her
face by a screen. The four, tall, pineapple sentinels guarded her--they
and someone else.
John sat beside the bed, the puppy drowsing in his arms. She was glad
that he had become reconciled to the poor little beast; that the
guiltless cause of Jack’s death was not to pay the price which she had
paid in early life for an equally unintentional fault.
But _was_ John reconciled?
The look on his face brought her to acute consciousness. It was a
dreadful look.
“Try not to begrudge the price,” she murmured. “For the least thing in
life you have to pay, you know. To me, love is inestimable.”
At sound of her voice the young dog lifted one of his scraggly eyelids,
and, without otherwise moving, thumped his stub of a tail. John’s
expression changed. He leaned toward her.
“I shouldn’t regret any price that I myself could pay. But I am not
satisfied to let you, who can’t afford it, pay for me. And I won’t.”
She did not understand just what he meant. “You talk as though you were
guilty of----”
He caught her hand and pressed his cheek against it.
“Guilty as--Heaven!” he whispered into its palm before replacing it
beneath the coverlet. At her disturbed look he added: “I am tired with
anxiety for you. Won’t you sleep to rest me? Don’t be afraid that I am
going to leave you. I can stay on this watch of love forever, if only
you will sleep.”
“John--John?” Vaguely she questioned him.
“You are my mate,” he answered. “Rufus called you a gray dove, but to
me you are pure white. Fold your wings and sleep.”
“And are you happy, John?”
“Happy as----”
Her eyelids closed at the touch of his lips. Happy as who? She
wondered. Happy as Cain--that was the meaning of the dreadful look
she had surprised. But she had banished that look. Since she must
sleep that his mind might rest---- How wonderful was this state called
happiness. How precious was each small opportunity to prove how very
much----
“Fold your wings, my white dove,” he murmured again and again. “Sleep,
my mate. I love you. Sleep.”
* * * * *
A hysterical yelp awakened her. Evidently the Airedale, too, had been
startled from sound slumber. How long had she been asleep--for how many
minutes or hours had John Cabot sat there motionless, his eyes on her
face?
She raised on one elbow and looked into the outer room. The little
undergraduate from the A. K. C., more from hereditary instinct than any
wisdom of his own months, had bolted his bed of honor. One backward
glare he spared to learn whether he was to be justified in raising the
alarm; then, bristling from stiff chin whiskers to flag-staff tail,
rushed into the corridor. His master followed.
Dolores tried hard to understand. Her head felt strange and
understanding hurt it. Many sentences of the colloquy outside were not
clear at the time, but came back to her afterward. Besides the voice
of John Cabot, she recognized the distressed _mezzo_ of Morrison, the
startled quaver of old Bradish and an unrecognized duet in bass.
“We are all of that, Mr. Cabot--from the Domestic Detectives,
Incorporated,” sounded the first strange voice, evidently in answer to
some question or comment from John.
“And just in time, at that”--the second.
“Has Annette gone yet, Morrison?”
Bradish answered John’s question. “I let her out not ten minutes ago,
sir.”
“Did you see her speak to these men?”
“She did not pass near enough to speak to them, sir. But I think she
signaled them with a gesture. I cannot be sure.”
One of the strangers interrupted. “You can’t deny that Miss Trent is
inside.”
“I deny nothing, but I do order you out of my house,” John returned.
“Don’t you owe it to yourself to explain, Mr. Cabot?” asked Morrison.
“I’ve worked in this family all my life and am considered a proper
woman. The young lady you ask about is seriously ill. Mr. Cabot is here
because my father, the butler, telephoned for him.”
“Ill, is she?”--the first strange voice. “Well, we’re specialists sent
to investigate her symptoms. Here, matey, help me ease this gent away
from the door. No need for strenuous argument when we’re two to his
one.”
“Look out--a gun!”--the second.
“And a gun,” John added quietly, “trained to put burglars out of my
house.”
“We’re not burglars, Cabot. We’re authorized to enter by the lady of
your house.”
“By Mrs. Cabot? Her authorization can’t help you--from the distance of
Palm Beach.”
Together the two laughed. One explained their amusement.
“Wifie isn’t in Palm Beach, old chap. She’s waiting down at the Plaza
to give us any further authority we need over the telephone.”
“She--didn’t--go?”
A moment of silence followed John’s slow question; then, in staccato----
“Well, get your further authority over an outside ’phone. Mine are
busy. Quick, now--my fingers are nervous. I’d be well within my rights
if I----”
A grumbled sentence which Dolores could not hear ended in steps
descending the stairs. The colloquy seemed to be ended. She felt
relieved; dozed off.
* * * * *
The morning was half over before John enquired about her condition over
Jack’s telephone. He felt that he must tell her certain facts, not so
much to worry her as to spare her worry over matters which undoubtedly
soon would be forced upon her attention. He hoped that listening
would not tax her, since the physician’s morning report had been most
encouraging. A little patience, a few days within doors, and she would
be herself again. His relief she could better imagine than he describe.
If his friend Rufus Holt called to see her, she was to talk to him
as she felt inclined and might trust his advices. Toward any other
inquiries regarding her personal affairs she should not commit herself.
For some time he would not be able to see her and considered it best
that he should get his news of her through Morrison. She must take all
possible care of herself and believe that nothing--_nothing_ had been
wasted.
Scarcely had Dolores hung up the receiver, scarcely had given her mind
to the realization that John Cabot was trying to protect her from
whatever it was that threatened, when the gallery door opened and
Clarke Shayle strode into the room.
He looked flushed, hurried, perturbed. He stopped before Jack’s reading
chair, in which she sat, and fixed his odd-flecked gaze upon her, his
lips twitching. Sinking on the hassock, he laid his face in the robe
that wrapped her knees and drew a rasping, relieved sigh.
“I was a fool to credit a word of it,” he exclaimed brokenly. “You
really are sick. You really are--are everything I believed. I don’t
care what she says or what anybody says. I wouldn’t care even if they
could prove it. What a man thinks himself is the only thing that
matters. And I’ve got a sort of super-think.” His attempt to banish
emotion from his face with a grin was more ghastly than gay. “You see,
it ain’t inherited. It’s a gift.”
Even in this crisis, he could not express himself without the use of
his banal phrases. Dolores felt sorry for him. She stretched out her
hand from an impulse to smooth back his stiff, auburn cowlick; then,
remembering, drew it back.
“What ‘she’ and what ‘anybody’ says?” she asked.
“She sent for me this morning and told me all about last night. I
believe she had the whole thing planned from first sight of you. She’s
the only wholly bad woman I’ve ever known--Catherine.” He shaded his
eyes as if confused by her shocked glance, then continued: “She loves
herself and hates everyone who does not share the feeling, chiefly her
husband. Because he has humiliated her by getting her number right,
she intends to humiliate him before their world. She’s going to marry
d’Elie after she gets all she wants out of Cabot and gets it her own
way. As for me----”
His face lowered into his freckled, delicate hands. A shudder moved his
thick neck and muscular back.
“God knows, I deserve the part she’s cast me for. But I pray Him--I
pray you to let me off. My self-respect was only doped. It came to the
day I met you and has made me so unhappy since that I--I hope---- Oh,
have a heart, little chump! Help me to be honest with you--encourage me
to explain.”
“Why? Why not?” She hesitated.
“_Why?_ Because I owe it to you to make you understand. _Why not?_
Because you have made me despise myself and my life. Here in your
presence, at the present moment, I’d rather die than go on. And yet,
I’ll worse than die if I don’t go on. Dolores, you have felt something
of my power--you know that I’m mesmeric and hypnotic. You know that
I know it, but not that I have used it to make me what I am to-day.”
He gave a limping laugh. “Can’t you imagine what is my professional
stock-in-trade--how I hold Catherine and her sort in scented boudoirs?”
“No--_no_.” With her low protest, the girl drew back into her chair;
clutched its arms; closed her eyes, as if against the perception.
From his abject position at her feet, the young man straightened and
clasped together his hands so viciously that nails cut into flesh. The
white spots pressed by his teeth into his lower lip spread backward
until even his ears were pale.
“That’s the worst of it,” he said effortfully. “The best is that I
could have roused you, could rouse you now. But I won’t. I know the
tinder you are made of. That first day I realized that my self-respect
was only auto-hypnotized, not dead. The feeling for you that
restrained me has grown--has given me the strength to tell you the
truth and ask your help.”
“But if you despise yourself and your life,” Dolores faltered, “why not
help yourself?”
“Don’t you know that a bad habit soon masters one? The damnable
thing has got me, that’s why. It will take something stronger than
contempt for myself to get me out. That something is my respect for
you. The fact that I didn’t--that I simply couldn’t----” His fingers
forward-stretching, but clutching only air, his face again florid from
a return rush of blood, he urged: “You--I need _you_. God, I am mad for
you. Have been all along. But I want you to keep. I want you enough to
change my whole life to have you. I know I am a crude sort--that I’m
not what they call to the manner born. But I swear to give you a square
deal. I don’t care what they say about you. I believe in you. I want to
marry you--to take you off somewhere, so that you and I---- Surely you
love me, Dolores? Surely you will----”
The pause was long. During it he seized her limp hand, then dropped it.
He staggered to his feet and stood looking down at her with the dread
gaze of despair. When he spoke again, his lips worked clumsily.
“So. I’m too late. You’re a snuffed candle to me. That means--Mr.
Other Man. The reward of my sacrifice is--punishment. It’s a beautiful
sentiment. I’ll tell the world that. She was speaking the truth for
once, then, about you and John Cabot? All right. I quit. I’m through.”
Dolores watched him fling into his overcoat, pick up his hat and start
for the door. She wished to say something that would help him. She owed
him consideration as the only man who had asked her to marry him. That
he had asked her soothed an ache in her mind. She liked him and she
feared for him. But what was there she could say?
Without a word she had refused him. Without a word she let him go.
The American vernacular “breezed in” might have been inspired by the
entries of Rufus Holt. Less boisterous than a gale, stronger than a
zephyr, something refreshing and promising came with him, like the
tonic in the breath of Spring.
“Glad you’re enjoying a rest,” he saluted Dolores. “You need it,
probably, as much as you deserve it. Or perhaps I should say you
deserve it as much as you need it. It is a worthy thought, for it works
both ways.”
The girl, having been foreadvised to trust the attorney, relaxed in his
balmy friendliness.
“Doesn’t the truth usually work both ways?”
At her offering he rubbed his bald fore-top. “I don’t know about that.
We lawyers learn not to expect too much of the truth. It has gone some
if it works one way.”
The fact that he would not take off his top-coat gave each minute of
the time that he did stay an added value. That he would not smoke
somehow increased the fragrance about him of a fine cigar. That he gave
her choice of chairs for him the preference lent companionableness to
his manner of pulling up directly before her.
“The future has in it lots and lots of trouble that hasn’t been used
yet,” he prefaced, suddenly grave, “and don’t think that you, lovely
little lady, are going to get all of it. There are other non-union
workers besides yourself.”
“Others?”
He evaded the question direct.
Trouble was the text of his small address--trouble ahead of a kind
she had not known. She must prepare her mind for it; must gather her
resources against an attack. And another would be protected in the
protectorate of herself, one who deserved justification quite as much
as she.
Meeting the silent, fluent appeal of her eyes, he set aside hyperbole;
before her placed facts, as if on the salver of his outspread hands.
Catherine Cabot was an edition of womankind which Dolores doubtless
had found hard to read. Velvet-bound was she, gilt-edged, artfully
illustrated. The most astute of worldlings might remain unenlightened
for many chapters as to the plot of her. Spite, it would seem, was her
motivation--spite toward a husband who had depreciated what she was by
a deliberate and stubborn over-valuation.
Long she had waited and watched to prove the plot of him as bad as
her own. Quite recently she had refused a separation because she
wished, not only a divorce, but a discredited husband and a huge,
decreed alimony, rather than a collusive settlement. Her engagement
of Dolores, her pseudo-kindnesses, her pretended dependence upon the
girl in her recent trip South--a trip that had taken her no farther
than Philadelphia and been followed by a secret return to a mid-town
hotel--were calculated steps toward this end. To-day she had served
upon her husband the complaint in a suit for absolute divorce. Dolores
Trent, grief now to one woman as to many men, she had named as
co-respondent.
The dread announcement was made.
Forgetting the hurry on account of which he had refused to smoke, Holt
now busied himself producing a cigar, clipping it and lighting it.
Through smoke-clouds he looked across at the notorious girl whom he had
whip-lashed with news of fresh notoriety. Seeing that her lips moved,
he leaned forward to catch her words.
“Maybe she was not so bad as---- The idea was d’Elie’s. I mustn’t
forget that. _He_ suggested that the father of _l’enfant terrible_
might find me congenial--not she. ‘Enough, my clever Henri. I
understand.’ I remember distinctly what she said.”
In the midst of her shared memories, she became conscious of the
quality of the lawyer’s regard. Her eyes lifted to his.
“You believe that I----”
Perhaps the more staunchly for catching the sag in her voice, he sought
to reassure her. “I _know_ that you are guiltless. Do you recall the
little toast I gave you one night at dinner? I didn’t say on that
occasion that I’d been doubly favored by meeting your kind of a woman
twice in my lifetime--the woman who doesn’t need to boast or sparkle or
promise--the woman who needs only to be. The first one, Miss Trent, of
whom you reminded me, was my mother.”
Dolores was startled. Always before she had suffered because unjustly
blamed. Now she was unjustly praised. She did not feel honest. But she
must be careful, even with the kindly attorney. She had John, as well
as herself, to think of. The fault was not so much his as hers and he
must not be blamed.
“Then, too----” Holt had cleared the huskiness from his throat--“I know
John Cabot.”
Evidently that, to him, was conclusive.
By and by he added: “Even Mrs. Cabot does not think you guilty, as she
charges.”
“How can you know that?” Again Dolores was startled.
“She admitted as much to me not more than an hour ago.”
“You have talked with her to-day and she admitted---- Then, perhaps,
she _can_ be reached?”
But the bald head wagged, even as the friendly eyes beamed upon her.
“She cannot be reached as you mean, although I have reached her in a
way for which you may despise me. Mrs. Cabot has retained me as her
lawyer in this case.”
“You--her lawyer?” The words were so hot, they seemed to scorch
Dolores’ lips. “I thought you were his friend?”
“I am. But Catherine believes now that I have always cared--for her,
you know--and that therefore I want her freedom more than anything else
in the world. A vain woman can easily be persuaded of that.”
Dolores could not understand. “You say you really are his friend, yet
you take Mrs. Cabot’s case against him? What possible motive----”
“Me, too, you do an injustice, Miss Trent.”
“You--too?”
“Even me. I am taking the case to lose it.”