While the Fanshaw-Herron storm was slowly gathering in Dumont's eastern
horizon, two others equally black were lifting in the west.
In the two months between Scarborough's election and his inauguration,
the great monopolies thriving under the protection of the state's
corrupted statute-book and corrupted officials followed the lead of
their leader, Dumont's National Woolens Company, in making sweeping but
stealthy changes in their prices, wages, methods and even in their
legal status. They hoped thus to enable their Legislature plausibly to
resist Scarborough's demand for a revision of the laws--why revise when
the cry of monopoly had been shown to be a false issue raised by a
demagogue to discredit the tried leaders of the party and to aggrandize
himself? And, when Scarborough had been thoroughly "exposed," business
could be resumed gradually.
But Scarborough had the better brain, and had character as well. He
easily upset their program and pressed their Legislature so hard that
it was kept in line only by pouring out money like water. This became
a public scandal which made him stronger than ever and also made it
seem difficult or impossible for the monopolies to get a corruptible
Legislature at the next election. At last the people had in their
service a lawyer equal in ability to the best the monopolies could buy,
and one who understood human nature and political machinery to boot.
Dumont began to respect Scarborough profoundly--not for his character,
which made him impregnable with the people, but for his intellect,
which showed him how to convince the people of his character and to
keep them convinced. When Merriweather came on "to take his beating"
from his employer he said among other things deprecatory:
"Scarborough's a dreamer. His head's among the clouds." Dumont
retorted: "Yes, but his feet are on the ground--too damned firmly to
suit me." And after a moment's thought, he added: "What a shame for
such a brain to go to waste! Why, he could make millions."
He felt that Gladys was probably his best remaining card. She had been
in Indianapolis visiting the whole of February, Scarborough's second
month as governor, and had gone on to her brother in New York with a
glowing report of her progress with Scarborough's sister Arabella, now
a widow and at her own invitation living with him in Indianapolis to
relieve him of the social duties of his office. She was a dozen years
more the Arabella who had roused her father's wrath by her plans for
educating her brother "like a gentleman"; and Olivia and Fred were
irritated and even alarmed by her anything but helpful
peculiarities--though Scarborough seemed cheerful and indifferent
enough about them.
It was a temperamental impossibility for Dumont to believe that
Scarborough could really be sincere in a course which was obviously
unprofitable. Therefore he attached even more importance to Arabella's
cordiality than did Gladys herself. And, when the Legislature adjourned
and Scarborough returned to Saint X for a brief stay, Dumont sent
Gladys post-haste back to the Eyrie--that is, she instantly and eagerly
acted upon his hint.
A few evenings after her return, she and Pauline were on the south
veranda alone in the starlight. She was in low spirits and presently
began to rail against her lot.
"Don't be absurd," said Pauline. "You've no right to complain. You
have everything--and you're--free!"
That word "free" was often on Pauline's lips in those days. And a close
observer might have been struck by the tone in which she uttered it.
Not the careless tone of those who have never had or have never lost
freedom, but the lingering, longing tone of those who have had it, and
have learned to value it through long years without it.
"Yes--everything!" replied Gladys, bitterly. "Everything except the
one thing I want."
Pauline did not help her, but she was at the stage of suppressed
feeling where desire to confide is stronger than pride.
"The one thing I want," she repeated. "Pauline, I used to think I'd
never care much for any man, except to like it for him to like me. Men
have always been a sort of amusement--and the oftener the man changed,
the better the fun. I've known for several years that I simply must
marry, but I've refused to face it. It seemed to me I was fated to
wander the earth, homeless, begging from door to door for leave to come
in and rest a while."
"You know perfectly well, Gladys, that this is your home."
"Of course--in a sense. It's as much my home as another woman's house
could be. But"--with a little sob--"I've seen my mate and I want to
begin my nest."
They were side by side on a wide, wicker sofa. Pauline made an
impulsive move to put her arm round Gladys, then drew away and clasped
her hands tightly in her lap.
Gladys was crying, sobbing, brokenly apologizing for it--"I'm a little
idiot--but I can't help it--I haven't any pride left--a woman never
does have, really, when she's in love--oh, Pauline, do you think he
cares at all for me?" And after a pause she went on, too absorbed in
herself to observe Pauline or to wonder at her silence: "Sometimes I
think he does. Again I fear that--that he doesn't. And lately--why
doesn't he come here any more?"
"You know how busy he is," said Pauline, in a voice so strained that
Gladys ought to have noticed it.
"But it isn't that--I'm sure it isn't. No, it has something to do with
me. It means either that he doesn't care for me or that--that he does
care and is fighting against it. Oh, I don't know what to think."
Then, after a pause: "How I hate being a woman! If I were a man I
could find out the truth--settle it one way or the other. But I must
sit dumb and wait, and wait, and wait! You don't know how I love him,"
she said brokenly, burying her face in the ends of the soft white shawl
that was flung about her bare shoulders. "I can't help it--he's the
best--he makes all the others look and talk like cheap imitations.
He's the best, and a woman can't help wanting the best."
Pauline rose and leaned against the railing--she could evade the truth
no longer. Gladys was in love with Scarborough, was at last caught in
her own toils, would go on entangling herself deeper and deeper,
abandoning herself more and more to a hopeless love, unless--
"What would you do, Pauline?" pleaded Gladys. "There must be some
reason why he doesn't speak. It isn't fair to me--it isn't fair! I
could stand anything--even giving him up--better than this uncertainty.
It's--it's breaking my heart--I who thought I didn't have a heart."
"No, it isn't fair," said Pauline, to herself rather than to Gladys.
"I suppose you don't sympathize with me," Gladys went on. "I know you
don't like him. I've noticed how strained and distant you are toward
each other. And you seem to avoid each other. And he'll never talk of
you to me. Did you have some sort of misunderstanding at college?"
"Yes," said Pauline, slowly. "A--a misunderstanding."
"And you both remember it, after all these years?"
"Yes," said Pauline.
"How relentless you are," said Gladys, "and how tenacious!" But she was
too intent upon her own affairs to pursue a subject which seemed to
lead away from them. Presently she rose.
"I'll be ashamed of having confessed when I see you in daylight. But I
don't care. I shan't be sorry. I feel a little better. After all, why
should I be ashamed of any one knowing I care for him?" And she
sighed, laughed, went into the house, whistling softly--sad, depressed,
but hopeful, feeling deep down that she surely must win where she had
never known what it was to lose.
Pauline looked after her. "No, it isn't fair," she repeated. She
stayed on the veranda, walking slowly to and fro not to make up her
mind, for she had done that while Gladys was confessing, but to decide
how she could best accomplish what she saw she must now no longer
delay. It was not until two hours later that she went up to bed.
When Gladys came down at nine the next morning Pauline had just gone
out--"I think, Miss Gladys, she told the coachman to drive to her
father's," said the butler.
Gladys set out alone. Instead of keeping to the paths and the woods
along the edge of the bluff she descended to the valley and the river
road. She walked rapidly, her face glowing, her eyes sparkling--she
was quick to respond to impressions through the senses, and to-day she
felt so well physically that it reacted upon her mind and forced her
spirits up. At the turn beyond Deer Creek bridge she met Scarborough
suddenly. He, too, was afoot and alone, and his greeting was
interpreted to her hopes by her spirits.
"May I turn and walk with you?" he asked.
"I'm finding myself disagreeable company today."
"You did look dull," she said, as they set out together, "dull as a
love-sick German. But I supposed it was your executive pose."
"I was thinking that I'll be old before I know it." His old-young face
was shadowed for an instant. "Old--that's an unpleasant thought, isn't
it?"
"Unpleasant for a man," said Gladys, with a laugh, light as youth's
dread of age. "For a woman, ghastly! Old and alone--either one's
dreadful enough. But--the two together! I often think of them. Don't
laugh at me--really I do. Don't you?"
"If you keep to that, our walk'll be a dismal failure. It's a road I
never take--if I can help it."
"You don't look as though you were ever gloomy." Gladys glanced up at
him admiringly. "I should have said you were one person the blue
devils wouldn't dare attack."
"Yes, but they do. And sometimes they throw me."
"And trample you?"
"And trample me," he answered absently.
"That's because you're alone too much," she said with a look of tactful
sympathy.
"Precisely," he replied. "But how am I to prevent that?"
"Marry, of course," she retorted, smiling gaily up at him, letting her
heart just peep from her eyes.
"Thank you! And it sounds so easy! May I ask why you've refused to
take your own medicine--you who say you are so often blue?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I've always suspected the men who asked
me. They were--" She did not finish what she feared might be an
unwise, repelling remark in the circumstances.
"They were after your money," he finished for her.
She nodded. "They were Europeans," she explained. "Europeans want
money when they marry."
"That's another of the curses of riches," he said judicially. "And if
you marry a rich man over here, you may be pretty sure he'll marry you
for your money. I've observed that rich men attach an exaggerated
importance to money, always."
"I'd prefer to marry a poor man," she hastened to answer, her heart
beating faster--certainly his warning against rich suitors must have
been designed to help his own cause with her.
"Yes, that might be better," he agreed. "But you would have to be
careful after you were married or he might fancy you were using your
money to tyrannize over him. I've noticed that the poor husbands of
rich women are supersensitive--often for cause."
"Oh, I'd give it all to him. He could do what he pleased with it. I'd
not care so long as we were happy."
Scarborough liked the spirit of this, liked her look as she said it.
"That's very generous--very like you," he replied warmly. "But I don't
think it would be at all wise. You'd be in a dangerous position. You
might spoil him--great wealth is a great danger, and when it's suddenly
acquired, and so easily-- No, you'd better put your wealth aside and
only use so much of it as will make your income equal to his--if you
can stand living economically."
"I could stand anything with or from any one I cared for." Gladys was
eager for the conversation to turn from the general to the particular.
She went on, forcing her voice to hide her interest: "And you, why
don't you cure your blues?"
"Oh, I shall," he replied carelessly. "But not with your medicine.
Every one to his own prescription."
"And what's yours for yourself?" said Gladys, feeling tired and nervous
from the strain of this delayed happiness.
"Mine?" He laughed. "My dreams."
"You are a strange combination, aren't you? In one way you're so very
practical--with your politics and all that. And in another way--I
suspect you of being sentimental--almost romantic."
"You've plucked out the heart of my mystery. My real name is non
Quixote de Saint X."
"And has your Dulcinea red hands and a flat nose and freckles like the
lady of Toboso?" Gladys' hands were white, her nose notably fine, her
skin transparently clear.
"Being Don Quixote, I don't know it if she has."
"And you prefer to worship afar, and to send her news of your triumphs
instead of going to her yourself?"
"I dare not go." He was looking away, far away. "There are wicked
enchanters. I'm powerless. She alone can break their spells."
They walked in silence, her heart beating so loudly that she thought he
must be hearing it, must be hearing what it was saying. Yes--she must
break the spells. But how--but how? What must she say to make him
see? Did he expect her to ask him to marry her? She had heard that
rich women often were forced to make this concession to the pride of
the men they wished to marry. On the other hand, was there ever a man
less likely than Scarborough to let any obstacle stand between him and
what he wanted?
The first huge drops of a summer rain pattered in big, round stains,
brown upon the white of the road. He glanced up--a cloud was rolling
from beyond the cliffs, was swiftly curtaining the blue.
"Come," he commanded, and they darted into the underbrush, he guiding
her by her arm. A short dash among the trees and bushes and they were
at the base of the bluff, were shielded by a shelf of rock.
"It'll be over soon," he assured her. "But you must stand close or
you'll be drenched."
A clap of thunder deafened them as a flame and a force enswathed the
sycamore tree a few yards away, blowing off its bark, scattering its
branches, making it all in an instant a blackened and blasted wreck.
Gladys gave a low scream of terror, fell against him, hid her face in
his shoulder. She was trembling violently. He put his arm round
her--if he had not supported her she would have fallen. She leaned
against him, clinging to him, so that he felt the beat of her heart,
the swell and fall of her bosom, felt the rush of her young blood
through her veins, felt the thrill from her smooth, delicate, olive
skin. And he, too, was trembling--shaken in all his nerves.
"Don't be afraid," he said--in his voice he unconsciously betrayed the
impulse that was fighting for possession of him.
She drew herself closer to him with a long, tremulous sigh.
"I'm a coward," she murmured. "I'm shaking so that I can't stand."
She tried to draw herself away--or did she only make pretense to him
and to herself that she was trying?--then relaxed again into his arms.
The thunder cracked and crashed; the lightnings leaped in streaks and
in sheets; the waters gushed from the torn clouds and obscured the
light like a heavy veil. She looked up at him in the dimness--she,
too, was drunk with the delirium of the storms raging without and
within them. His brain swam giddily. The points of gold in her dark
eyes were drawing him like so many powerful magnets. Their lips met
and he caught her up in his arms. And for a moment all the fire of his
intensely masculine nature, so long repressed, raged over her lips, her
eyes, her hair, her cheeks, her chin.
A moment she lay, happy as a petrel, beaten by a tempest; a moment her
thirsty heart drank in the ecstasy of the lightnings through her lips
and skin and hair.
She opened her eyes to find out why there was a sudden calm. She saw
him staring with set, white face through the rain-veil. His arms still
held her, but where they had been like the clasp of life itself, they
were now dead as the arms of a statue. A feeling of cold chilled her
skin, trickled icily in and in. She released herself--he did not
oppose her.
"It seems to me I'll never be able to look you--or myself--in the face
again," he said at last.
"I didn't know it was in me to--to take advantage of a woman's
helplessness."
"I wanted you to do what you did," she said simply.
He shook his head. "You are generous," he answered. "But I deserve
nothing but your contempt."
"I wanted you to do it," she repeated. She was under the spell of her
love and of his touch. She was clutching to save what she could, was
desperately hoping it might not be so little as she feared. "I had
the--the same impulse that you had." She looked at him timidly, with a
pleading smile. "And please don't say you're sorry you did it, even if
you feel so. You'll think me very bold--I know it isn't proper for
young women to make such admissions. But--don't reproach
yourself--please!"
If she could have looked into his mind as he stood there, crushed and
degraded in his own eyes, she would have been a little consoled--for,
in defiance of his self-scorn and self-hate, his nerves were tingling
with the memory of that delirium, and his brain was throbbing with the
surge of impulses long dormant, now imperious. But she was not even
looking toward him--for, through her sense of shame, of wounded pride,
her love was clamoring to her to cry out: "Take me in your arms again!
I care not on what terms, only take me and hold me and kiss me."
The rain presently ceased as abruptly as it had begun and they returned
under the dripping leaves to the highroad. She glanced anxiously at
him as they walked toward the town, but he did not speak. She saw that
if the silence was to be broken, she must break it.
"What can I say to convince you?" she asked, as if not he but she were
the offender.
He did not answer.
"Won't you look at me, please?"
He looked, the color mounting in his cheeks, his eyes unsteady.
"Now, tell me you'll not make me suffer because you fancy you've
wronged me. Isn't it ungallant of you to act this way after I've
humiliated myself to confess I didn't mind?"
"Thank you," he said humbly, and looked away.
"You won't have it that I was in the least responsible?" She was
teasing him now--he was plainly unaware of the meaning of her yielding.
"He's so modest," she thought, and went on: "You won't permit me to
flatter myself I was a temptation too strong even for your iron heart,
Don Quixote?"
He flushed scarlet, and the suspicion, the realization of the truth set
her eyes to flashing.
"It's before another woman he's abasing himself," she thought, "not
before me. He isn't even thinking of me." When she spoke her tone was
cold and sneering: "I hope she will forgive you. She certainly would
if she could know what a paladin you are."
He winced, but did not answer. At the road up the bluffs she paused
and there was an embarrassed silence. Then he poured out abrupt
sentences:
"It was doubly base. I betrayed your friendly trust, I was false to
her. Don't misunderstand--she's nothing to me. She's nothing to me,
yet everything. I began really to live when I began to love her.
And--every one must have a--a pole-star. And she's mine--the star I
sail by, and always must. And--" He halted altogether, then blundered
on: "I shall not forgive myself. But you--be merciful--forgive
me--forget it!"
"I shall do neither," she replied curtly, jealousy and vanity stamping
down the generous impulse that rose in response to his appeal. And she
went up her road. A few yards and she paused, hoping to hear him
coming after her. A few yards more and she sat down on a big boulder
by the wayside. Until now all the wishes of her life had been more or
less material, had been wishes which her wealth or the position her
wealth gave had enabled her instantly to gratify. She buried her face
in her arms and sobbed and rocked herself to and fro, in a cyclone of
anger, and jealousy, and shame, and love, and despair.
"I hate him!" she exclaimed between clenched teeth. "I hate him,
but--if he came and wanted me, oh, how I would LOVE him!"
Meanwhile Pauline was at her father's.
"He isn't down yet," said her mother. "You know, he doesn't finish
dressing nowadays until he has read the papers and his mail. Then he
walks in the garden."
"I'll go there," said Pauline. "Won't you bring him when he's ready?"
She never entered the garden that the ghosts of her childhood--how far,
far it seemed!--did not join her, brushing against her, or rustling in
tree and bush and leafy trellis. She paused at the end of the long
arbor and sat on the rustic bench there. A few feet away was the bed
of lilies-of-the-valley. Every spring of her childhood she used to run
from the house on the first warm morning and hurry to it; and if her
glance raised her hopes she would kneel upon the young grass and lower
her head until her long golden hair touched the black ground; and the
soil that had been hard and cold all winter would be cracked open this
way and that; and from the cracks would issue an odor--the odor of
life. And as she would peer into each crack in turn she would see,
down, away down, the pale tip of what she knew to be an up-shooting
slender shaft. And her heart would thrill with joy, for she knew that
the shafts would presently rise green above the black earth, would
unfold, would blossom, would bloom, would fling from tremulous bells a
perfumed proclamation of the arrival of spring.
As she sat waiting, it seemed to her that through the black earth of
her life she could see and feel the backward heralds of her
spring--"after the long winter," she said to herself.
She glanced up--her father coming toward her. He was alone, was
holding a folded letter uncertainly in his hand. He looked at her, his
eyes full of pity and grief. "Pauline," he began, "has everything
been--been well--of late between you and--your husband?"
She started. "No, father," she replied. Then, looking at him with
clear directness: "I've not been showing you and mother the truth
about John and me--not for a long time."
She saw that her answer relieved him. He hesitated, held out the
letter.
"The best way is for you to read it," he said. It was a letter to him
from Fanshaw. He was writing, he explained, because the discharge of a
painful duty to himself would compel him "to give pain to your daughter
whom I esteem highly," and he thought it only right "to prepare her and
her family for what was coming, in order that they might be ready to
take the action that would suggest itself." And he went on to relate
his domestic troubles and his impending suit.
"Poor Leonora!" murmured Pauline, as she finished and sat thinking of
all that Fanshaw's letter involved.
"Is it true, Polly?" asked her father.
She gave a great sigh of relief. How easy this letter had made all
that she had been dreading! "Yes--it's true," she replied. "I've known
about--about it ever since the time I came back from the East and
didn't return."
The habitual pallor of her father's face changed to gray.
"I left him, father." She lifted her head, impatient of her
stammering. A bright flush was in her face as she went on rapidly:
"And I came to-day to tell you the whole story--to be truthful and
honest again. I'm sick of deception and evasion. I can't stand it any
longer--I mustn't. I--you don't know how I've shrunk from wounding
mother and you. But I've no choice now. Father, I must be free--free!"
"And you shall be," replied her father. "He shall not wreck your life
and Gardiner's."
Pauline stared at him. "Father!" she exclaimed.
He put his arm round her and drew her gently to him.
"I know the idea is repellent," he said, as if he were trying to
persuade a child. "But it's right, Pauline. There are cases in which
not to divorce would be a sin. I hope my daughter sees that this is
one."
"I don't understand," she said confusedly. "I thought you and mother
believed divorce was dreadful--no matter what might happen."
"We did, Pauline. But we--that is, I--had never had it brought home.
A hint of this story was published just after you came last year. I
thought it false, but it set me to thinking. 'If your daughter's
husband had turned out to be as you once thought him, would it be right
for her to live on with him? To live a lie, to pretend to keep her
vows to love and honor him? Would it be right to condemn Gardiner to
be poisoned by such a father?' And at last I saw the truth, and your
mother agreed with me. We had been too narrow. We had been laying
down our own notions as God's great justice."
Pauline drew away from her father so that she could look at him. And at
last she saw into his heart. "If I had only known," she said, and sat
numb and stunned.
"When you were coming home from college," her father went on, "your
mother and I talked over what we should do. John had just confessed
your secret marriage--"
"You knew that!"
"Yes, and we understood, Polly. You were so young--so headstrong--and
you couldn't appreciate our reasons."
Pauline's brain was reeling.
"Your mother and I talked it over before you got home and thought it
best to leave you entirely free to choose. But when we saw you
overcome by joy--"
"Don't!" she interrupted, her voice a cry of pain. "I can't bear it!
Don't!" Years of false self-sacrifice, of deceiving her parents and
her child, of self-suppression and self-degradation, and this final
cruelty to Gladys--all, all in vain, all a heaping of folly upon folly,
of wrong upon wrong.
She rushed toward the house. She must fly somewhere--anywhere--to
escape the thoughts that were picking with sharp beaks at her aching
heart. Half-way up the walk she turned and fled to a refuge she would
not have thought of half an hour before to her father's arms.
"Oh, father," she cried. "If I had only known you!"
Gladys, returning from her walk, went directly to Pauline's
sitting-room.
"I'm off for New York and Europe to-morrow morning," she began
abruptly, her voice hard, her expression bitter and reckless.
"Where can she have heard about Leonora?" thought Pauline. She said in
a strained voice: "I had hoped you would stay here to look after the
house."
"To look after the house? What do you mean?" asked Gladys. But she was
too full of herself to be interested in the answer, and went on: "I
want you to forget what I said to you. I've got over all that. I've
come to my senses."
Pauline began a nervous turning of her rings.
Gladys gave a short, grim laugh. "I detest him," she went on. "We're
very changeable, we women, aren't we? I went out of this house two
hours ago loving him--to distraction. I came back hating him. And all
that has happened in between is that I met him and he kissed me a few
times and stabbed my pride a few times."
Pauline stopped turning her rings--she rose slowly, mechanically,
looked straight at Gladys.
"That is not true," she said calmly.
Gladys laughed sardonically. "You don't know the cold and haughty
Governor Scarborough. There's fire under the ice. I can feel the
places on my face where it scorched. Can't you see them?"
Pauline gave her a look of disgust. "How like John Dumont's sister!"
she thought. And she shut herself in her room and stayed there,
pleading illness in excuse, until Gladys was gone.