THE FIRST OF OCTOBER
The old Dameron house had known much of the pain and joy of life.
Merriams had been born and had died there; but the tumult of spirit
that shook it on the last night of September was of a new and
disquieting order.
Zelda closed the door and sat down at her desk by the window. She went
over the interview with her father sentence by sentence, with surprise
that she could remember so well; and a kind of terror possessed her,
now that she saw the hideousness of it all. One sentence rang in her
head over and over again, like a tolling bell; and she could see at
every repetition the angry light that had flashed in her father’s eyes:
“_I wish you would not lie to me, Ezra Dameron!_”
She doubted whether she had really said it; but it continued to taunt
her. She tested her memory by omitting his name at the end; but back
it came again and again; and the name with its deep insult, its ugly
disavowal of their kinship, was always the climax of every sentence.
“_Ezra Dameron!_”
In her memory it rose at the end just as it had risen and clung in
the room below as she had spoken it. It seemed to her that it must be
ringing across the night; and it was all wrong, wrong, wrong! She
bowed her head in her hands and wept.
She grew calm again as the night wore on. It seemed that she had been
there in the dark room for an eternity when she heard a clock strike
midnight in one of the lower rooms. She threw up a shade and looked
out, finding in the lights of the streets and houses a grateful contact
with the outer world. In a house that she identified she saw a light
in the room of a girl she knew very well; and she fell to wondering
about this friend, whose father was a well-known man of affairs,--whose
name none spoke but to praise. She felt the sob coming into her throat,
and drew down the blind as though to shut out the mockery the thought
awakened of her own father.
“_I wish you would not lie to me, Ezra Dameron!_”
She threw herself on the bed and lay for long, dreaming, wondering. She
thought of every place she had ever been, of every one she knew; and
little things long forgotten sped past in the running flood-tide of
memory.
At last she found a point of rest for her spirit. She needed help, and
it was her right to demand it of her uncle. She had led a false life
out of devotion to her mother’s memory, that no one might say that she
had been weak where her mother had been strong; but it was at an end
now. It would be a simple matter to leave the house at an early hour in
the morning and go to her uncle’s door, or she could summon him to come
to her; and while she debated which course she should adopt she fell
asleep.
The first gray light of the autumn morning was breaking when she awoke,
chilled and numbed. She was very tired from lying cramped in her
clothes on the bed, but she arranged the pillows on a couch, and lay
down on it, drawing a comforter about her.
Her thoughts found new channels. She watched the eastern window whiten
slowly and listened to the first tentative notes of traffic in the
street. She had been trying to avoid thinking of Morris Leighton, but
the thought of him was sweet in her heart. He had offered her his love
and she had repelled him, not as a woman may, with an honest denial,
but in a spirit of hard rejection of all that life and love meant. As
the dawn grew her thoughts sought little harbors of security and peace
that her love for him made; and she fell asleep as a child will, when
it has known a hurt in its little world, but finds oblivion at last
under the soothing touch of loving hands.
She woke as the little French clock in her room chimed seven, and as
she lay for a moment taking account of her surroundings, she heard a
step in the hall outside her door. It was her father; he stood by her
door an instant listening, and then passed on slowly to the stairway.
“_I wish you would not lie to me, Ezra Dameron!_”
The hateful words came back to her again! She had failed! This was the
thought that the morning brought; and as she rose from the couch her
mother’s book, with its fateful words, fell on the floor.
She caught it up and pressed it against her face.
“Mother! O mother!” she whispered. “Yes; I have failed; I have failed,”
she said.
And with the sense of failure dominant in her mind she made ready for
the day. It was her birthday; she was twenty-one, and that was very
old!
By the time she was ready to go down stairs to meet her father she saw
the whole matter in what seemed to her a sane, reasonable spirit; she
was even tranquil, as she sat for a moment at her dressing-table, her
hands clasped before her, pondering her course. She had put on a cloth
street-gown, and fastened a black stock at her throat. The little book
lay beside her and she carried it to her desk and put it away in the
drawer, where she had kept it since the morning a year ago, when it had
first fallen under her eyes in the garret. She had been false to its
charge; but that was past. She had failed; but she would begin again.
Her heart heat fast as she went down stairs. Her father sat in the
sitting-room as he always did, waiting for her to come to breakfast;
but as she stood upon the threshold, whence she had often called her
good morning, he did not look up from the newspaper with his usual
smile. She was touched by the pathos of his figure. He seemed older,
more shrunken; his profile, as the early light gave it to her, was less
hard. His lean cheeks had the touch of color they always wore in the
morning from his careful shaving, and his long hair was brushed back
with something more than its usual uncompromising smoothness. A certain
primness and rigidity in him which had often vexed her, struck only her
pity now.
“Father!”
He rose and turned toward her with a pathetic appeal in his eyes.
“Good morning, Zee,” he said. Habit was strong in him and they usually
went to breakfast as soon as she came down. He took a step now toward
the dining-room.
“Father, I wish to speak to you a moment,” she said kindly; and he
paused.
“I am sorry for what happened last night. I was not quite myself; I
said things that will always trouble me if you--unless you can forgive
me. I was wrong,--about everything. You must let me help, if I can help
you,--in any way.”
He said nothing, but stared at her.
“What angered me was that you weren’t quite frank, father. I didn’t
care about the money. It wasn’t that--but if things haven’t gone well
with you, I wish to share the burden. No,--I mean it,--that I am
sorry,--let us be quite good friends again.”
She went up to him quickly and took his hand.
“Father,” she said.
“Zee, my little girl,--my little girl,” he began brokenly, touching her
cheeks with trembling hands.
“Yes, father,” she said, wishing to help him.
“I have been very wicked; I have led a bad life. I must not harm you; I
am not fit--”
“You are my father,” she said, and touched his forehead with her lips,
wondering at herself.
She led him to the table and talked to him brightly on irrelevant
matters. The situation was now in her own hands and she would not fail
again. She usually visited the kitchen after breakfast to make her list
for the grocer; but this morning she went back to the sitting-room with
her father. The autumn morning was cool, and she bent and lighted the
fire.
“Now,” she said, rising quickly and smiling at him, “there are those
bothersome business matters that we were talking about last night. I
wish to sign that paper--”
He shook his head.
“You can’t do it, Zee. You have lighted the fire with it.” The deed had
been torn to pieces and thrown upon the kindling in the grate,--half
had already been destroyed.
“That is probably just as well. We shall make a new one,” she said,
in a matter-of-course tone. “I wish you would tell me, so that I may
understand, just what it is that has happened.”
“It’s a long story. I thought I should be able to make a great fortune
for you. It was my greed,--my greed.”
“Let us not use ugly words about ourselves, father. A great many people
lose their money. It isn’t so terribly tragic. Only,--there mustn’t be
any further trouble.”
“What I proposed about the deed was purely selfish--to shield myself.
It is a grave matter--I have betrayed you--I have betrayed your
mother’s trust. I have robbed you.”
“I haven’t been robbed, father, and I don’t intend that anybody shall
use such words to me. We shall make the deed; no one need ever know
that anything has happened.”
“You are kind; you are more than generous, Zee; but I was mad when I
asked you to re-create the trust last night. I am a bad man; I must
face my sins; I have lived a lying, evil life. I am a thief, worse than
a thief.”
“My father can’t be a thief,” she said.
“I am a thief,--your uncle will see that I am punished. And it will be
better so,--if only I did not drag you down, smirch your name.”
Her strength,--her readiness to meet the situation grew as she saw his
weakness.
“How bad is it, father; have we anything left? Don’t be afraid to tell
me. It’s concealment you must avoid. If we haven’t a thing--”
Her tone reassured him; he lifted his head with more courage.
“This house--the place in the country--they are free. They are yours
to-day. My investments,”--he hesitated and blinked at the word--“they
can not come back to injure you.”
“Then this house and the farm are still ours.”
“They are yours, not mine. I have wasted so much! It was a
fortune,--nearly half a million dollars when I began throwing it away.”
“I don’t believe that’s very much. When you haven’t a million
you’re,--you’re not in it!” and she laughed. “The loss of anything else
isn’t worth crying over. And then, you might have made a great deal
more out of it.”
He flinched, knowing how culpable he was; but her generosity and
kindness were lifting his spirit.
“I have given an option on a piece of ground--you may know it--out by
the creek, and have received a thousand dollars on account of it. It
may be binding on you. It grew out of my necessity. It is not fair for
me to talk to you of these things at all. You should take advice of
some one else,--just as though there were no sort of tie between us.”
“We are not going to do it that way,” said Zelda, decisively. “We are
going to understand this between ourselves. Now this strip of ground
that has been practically sold. What is there about that?”
“The money should be returned, or offered to them. Balcomb was managing
it--”
“Mr. Jack Balcomb?--then of course it wasn’t regular.”
“It was my fault, Zee.”
“I don’t believe it. He was contriving a pitfall,--that is what might
have been expected of him. And he came to our house and pretended to be
our friend!”
“Yes; he pretended that; but I pretended much more. Deceit is something
that feeds on itself.”
He repeated the words, “It feeds on itself,” as though he found
satisfaction in them. He was quite willing now to yield everything to
Zelda’s hands. The very way in which she asked questions was a relief
to him.
“Mr. Balcomb gave you a thousand dollars to bind a bargain--is that
what they call it?--for the sale of the creek strip. I think I
understand that. But are there debts,--are there other things that must
be paid? And if we still have two houses we can get money for them. We
must face the whole matter now,--please keep nothing back.”
“I have told you everything. I have squandered your money in
speculations,--gambling is the name for it; but I have kept the farm
and this house, untouched. Everything else has gone and I have given an
option for the sale of that strip of ground on the creek. And I sold a
block of lots belonging to you, in an irregular way. I could not sell
property without an order of court--that was required by your mother’s
will; but my necessities were great, and Balcomb arranged an abstract
to suit himself--but I let him do it. I am the guilty one; it is my
crime.”
“Let us not use unpleasant words. It’s my birthday. I’m quite grown up
and you must let me help--or find help!”
“Yes; but not Rodney; not your uncle,” he said hurriedly. “He is
violent, very violent. He would have no mercy on me. And I am an old
man, and broken, very badly broken.”
He settled back in his chair despairingly.
“I shall have to tell Uncle Rodney; but you need have no fear of him, I
promise you that.”
“He is very violent,--he and I have never been friends.”
“You imagine that. I shall take care of him. He and I understand each
other perfectly,” she added, and smiled to herself.
“Mr. Carr is your lawyer, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes; but he has been away. I took advantage of his absence to do
things he would never have countenanced.”
“There is Mr. Leighton.”
“No, no, not that man!” She had tried to avoid any reference to the
interview of the night before, but the mention of Leighton’s name
brought the whole wretched scene clearly before her again. It was he,
more than her uncle, that she relied on.
“I’m sorry you feel toward him as you do, father. I believe that we
might trust him. I look upon him as a friend.”
Ezra Dameron was weak and the talk was wearying him. He closed his eyes
and rested his head on the back of the chair, moving it from side to
side restlessly.
He was silent for a moment; then he brought his eyes to bear on her.
“Zee,” he began haltingly,--“Zee, I’m sorry I spoke of him as I did. I
was quite out of my senses. He is a fine, manly fellow.”
“Don’t trouble about anything, father,” she said, and went to her room
for her wraps.
Ezra Dameron was beaten and he was not heroic in defeat. He was stunned
by the failure of his gambling operations. He had lived so entirely
in dreams for a year that it was difficult for him to realize the
broad daylight of a workaday world. Echoes of the harsh things that
had passed between him and the child of his own blood but a few hours
before still haunted him. She had summoned the apparition of her dead
mother and had called him a liar; and he had insulted her in the
harshest terms he knew; but he was now leaning upon her helplessly.
He did not know, and he could not understand, the motives that were
prompting her. He had thrown away her money, and she did not arraign
him for it; she was even devising means of covering up his ill-doings;
and the fact that one could overlook and pardon the loss of a fortune
was utterly beyond his comprehension.
When she came down, her father was still sitting as she had left him,
with a look of unutterable dejection on his face.
“You won’t go out to-day,--of course!”
“What? No! no! My business is over. If they come for me they will find
me here,--here--at home,” he said wearily.
His smile, the smile that had been hard to bear, was gone.
“Try to cheer up,” she said, resting her hand on his shoulder for a
moment. “Don’t talk to anybody about business of any kind. I’m going
down to uncle’s; and you needn’t be afraid of him, or of anybody.”
She went to the telephone and called her uncle’s number.
“Tell Mr. Merriam that Miss Dameron is coming to his house at once,”
she said to the Japanese boy who answered.