THAT very day Judge Temple violated his usual custom and did not come
home promptly after court adjourned. The hour came and passed and he
had not appeared.
Rose was waiting for him in the library and she began to glance
uneasily at the clock. His habits were as fixed as the laws of the
Medes and Persians; any deviation indicated something out of the
common. These spring evenings it was his custom to walk in the garden
before dinner. Rose had accordingly opened the long French window on
the piazza and the tendrils of the jasmine vine, not yet budding, swung
across it; the air was sweet, redolent with the perfume of the wistaria
which hung in festoons on the arbor. The sweet full note of a catbird
broke the stillness.
Rose walked to and fro, trying to distract her mind; if she relaxed
a moment she heard Fox’s voice, saw his strong pale face. It was
pathetically significant that Allestree, and Allestree’s pain at her
finality had dropped from her mind. Love and youth are absolutely
selfish, they ignore the universe.
When she came home that day and was alone in her room, she had shed
some passionate tears; her young strong heart had rebelled utterly;
she wanted happiness too, wanted it as bitterly as Margaret did, but
Margaret had robbed her of it! She gave way then to the passion and the
rage of her grief, she forgot all Christian maxims, and in her heart
stormed against Margaret again, not against Margaret’s lover. But the
fury of her mood passed, leaving her pale and wan, exhausted by it, but
still unsubmissive. It was no longer an unusual thing to wash away the
stains of tears and go down stairs with a smile. It occurred to her as
she smoothed her rumpled hair and made her toilet for the evening that
she had learned the alphabet of deceit too easily, she was a veritable
whited sepulchre. Nevertheless she went down bravely to meet her father
and take up her life just where she had broken off for those few hours
of mad grief and restlessness. But the delay fretted her nerves; it was
one thing to be ready, another to keep that smile, that brave air of
comfort for an hour, two hours, three! She grew uneasy, too, for the
judge,--could he be ill? Could anything have happened? A dim foreboding
crept through the preoccupation of her mood. She ran to the front
window and looked down the long street and saw her father coming slowly
toward the house, his head slightly bowed and his tall thin figure
showing more than usually the student’s stoop of the shoulders. The
last rays of sunlight slanting down the street fell on the whiteness of
his beard and hair.
A swift, pained perception of his age, his feebleness, gave Rose a
sudden sharp pang of grief, of foreshadowed loss; the revelation that
comes suddenly--like the opening of a window in the soul--of the
mortality of those we love, of life’s awful uncertainty.
She opened the door with a pale face. “Father!” she exclaimed, “you’re
so late, I was getting anxious.”
He looked up without a smile, his eyes dull and weary. “I was
delayed--by business matters,” he said simply.
He followed her into the library, and putting down a bundle of papers
he carried sank wearily into his great chair and hid his face in his
hands without another word.
Rose looked at him keenly, her heart throbbing with a new dismay, and
seeing that the fingers which pressed his temples slightly trembled
she went to the dining-room and pouring out a glass of wine brought
it to him. “You are very tired,” she said gently; “try to take this,
father, I think you need it.”
He looked up blankly, took the glass and tasting the wine set it aside.
His face had aged ten years.
In her distress Rose only thought of cheering him. She averted her
eyes; it seemed almost an indelicacy to inquire too closely into such
apparent distress. “The roses I ordered came to-day,” she said, with a
forced lightness of tone which jarred; “I thought, perhaps, we could
decide this evening where to set them out. Do you think they’d do best
by the south wall, father?”
He passed his hand over his eyes like a man whose sight was failing.
“The roses?” he repeated absently; “I do not know. My child,” he added
in a heavy tone, “something has happened to-day; I’m practically a
ruined man.”
She caught her breath, frightened for the moment and taken unawares; in
the assured comfort and peace of her life it seemed impossible. “Oh,
father!” she exclaimed, “not really?”
He nodded, speech was difficult; the full force and horror of the
calamity still hung over him.
A hundred conjectures darted through her mind, but intuitively she
knew the actual fact, his trust had been betrayed. “It’s that man--the
note you endorsed?” she said.
“Yes,” he replied simply, “that and the unfortunate investments I made
in New York. They turned out badly two months ago; I did not tell you,
Rose, but I was swindled. This morning the note came due and Erkhardt
has disappeared.”
“Oh, the villain!” Rose exclaimed hotly, “and you so kind. Father,
can’t it be delayed--warded off? Surely something can be done--must you
lose all that too?”
He roused himself with an effort from the cloud which seemed to be
enfolding him, shutting down on his stupefied senses. “I shall have to
pay the whole obligation; it can’t be honorably delayed,” he said; “it
will sweep away my whole principal, Rose, and leave me nothing but my
salary.”
“But we can live on that,” she exclaimed eagerly, her face brightening,
“we can easily live on that, father; you’ll see how famously I can
manage!”
The judge looked at her with a pitiful tightening of the lines about
his mouth, his eyes filled with unshed tears; her ignorance seemed
to him the sweetest, the most helpless thing in the world. “But when
I die, Rose,” he said hoarsely, “and I may die soon--” he rose and
walked to and fro before the open window where the soft twilight was
falling. He was suddenly bowed with years, shrunken, haggard. “My God,
child, there will be nothing for you!” he broke out at last.
She went to him then, throwing her young arms around his neck and
staying him in his walk. He looked at her, bewildered, and she laid her
soft cheek against his in a mute caress. “It doesn’t matter, father!”
she whispered; “don’t think of me, don’t add that to your burden.”
The old man groaned. “My child,” he exclaimed, his voice quavering with
grief, “my poor child, I can never forgive myself!”
Tears of sympathy filled her eyes, but she smiled bravely. “Why,
father, we have so much--here is the house, the--”
“It’s mortgaged,” he said, and sank heavily into his chair.
For an instant Rose stood appalled. Unconsciously she glanced about
her; in the gathering gloom the dear familiar room, the book-lined
walls, the littered table, the old clock, seemed suddenly changed.
Between yesterday and to-day, between this morning and to-night was
a great gulf fixed. She shivered, a horrible sensation of loss, of
unreality, of despair, swept over her young soul and bared it to
misery, the poignant, unreasoning misery of youth. Then she saw the
bowed white head, the bent shoulders which had borne the heat and
burden of the day, and forgot herself. She knelt by his chair and
slipped her arms around his neck. “Nothing matters, dear daddy, while
we have each other,” she whispered, a little sob in her voice.
He put his shaking hand on her head. “My poor child,” he repeated.
She raised her head, a soft light in her eyes. “Father, you’ll let me
sing now,” she said, “you’ll let me sing--I know I can make a fortune
for us both. Mancini told me that with a year in Paris I could be
ready. He believes in my voice, father, and you know he has trained two
great sopranos.”
The judge shook his head sadly. “Child, child, you know how I feel
about your singing in public!”
“But now, daddy,” she pleaded, “now when it will save me from poverty,
and I love it, oh, I love it! May I go, just for six months?”
Again the judge shook his head, his lips almost formed “no,” but Rose’s
arms tightened around his neck.
“Don’t say it, daddy!” she cried, “don’t say it, for then you will
not unsay it! Truly, truly I must sing, it is my greatest desire, my
happiness, the talent that was given me--surely I mustn’t be the one to
fold it in a napkin! Daddy, daddy, say yes.”
He sat looking out of the window with unseeing eyes, his lips
compressed. The demand struck at his dearest prejudices, his firmest
convictions, yet to leave her helpless and poor!
In the still room the ticking of the clock sounded with monotonous
distinctness; it seemed to jar the silence. Twilight fell fast, the
corners were dark, the two faces in the foreground showed white and
tense.
At last the judge sighed heavily. “I must give in,” he said, with slow
reluctance, “in my folly I have wrecked us both; I’m no longer fit to
command. You may sing, child, but I hope it will only be in concerts.”
Rose’s face fell but hope kindled, one step was gained, and like every
wedge it makes the other easier. “But I must go abroad to be finished
for any really great success,” she said; “father, can’t you go with me?”
The judge looked at her strangely. “Child, I never thought,” he said
harshly; “I haven’t the money to send you yet,--you’ll have to wait
until we can save it; it’s another denial for you, Rose. You know I
sent a large check to Allestree the other day, and there is little left
now.”
A wild hope leaped in her heart, she knew the check would come back,
but dared she tell him? Would he take it if it came? Her lips trembled,
she was glad of the darkness. “Father, I shall sing,” she said bravely,
“perhaps,--who knows,--I shall sing so well that you’ll be proud of me
and sit and applaud and send me bouquets.”
He wiped away the gathering moisture in his eyes. “I’ve always been
proud of you, Rose!” he said sadly, “but that a child of mine should
have to sing for a living! The Lord’s hand is heavy upon me in my old
age,” he added pitifully, completely broken down.
The girl’s arms were closer about his neck; her own sorrow, her
thoughts of Fox were lost in her love for the old man in his distress.
“Who knows?” she cried with new sweet courage, almost gay in her
bravery, “perhaps I shall be as lucky as Patti and we’ll have a great
fortune and a palace to live in! Oh, daddy, I shall be so happy to
sing!”
But he sat motionless, his chin upon his breast and his dull eyes fixed
on the open space beyond the window where the lilac bush stood like a
ghost amidst the gathering night.