AFTERWARDS Rose never quite knew how she endured the voyage home. Her
love for her father was so deep, so tender, they were so bound together
by a hundred ties not only of affection but of sympathy and tastes and
interests, that the very thought of losing him almost broke her down.
It took both Cousin Emily Carter and old black Aunt Hannah to comfort
and sustain her during those ten days.
But when she reached Washington Allestree met her at the station with
good tidings; the judge was out of danger. He had been very near
death and came back slowly from the Valley of the Shadow. However, he
had come back and Rose knelt beside his bed and cried her heart out
with joy to feel his arm around her. How pale and thin and wasted he
looked. He had aged so much; poor Rose, she saw it and forced a smile
to disguise it even to herself. But he was unaware of the shock which
the sight of him gave her, and he forgot his illness in his eager
interest in her account of Paris and her final success. She told him
very little of those long months of struggle and depression, of the
thousand little pinches and trials that they had been through to keep
from asking an extra penny from him.
After Rose came the judge began to mend more rapidly; old Mrs.
Allestree said he had only been pining away for the child, but she
knew better, being a wise old woman. She knew that the judge had been
struggling all the year to stave off the foreclosure of the mortgage
on the old house which he and Rose loved so well. She knew, too, that
he had almost failed when that mysterious arrangement was made for him
by an unknown party; the message came that the mortgage had been taken
up, and he could have all the time he wanted and at a lower rate of
interest.
This news, so amazing and so unprecedented, had been synchronous with
the judge’s breakdown and had, Mrs. Allestree believed, contributed
to it. The sudden relief had snapped the strain on his nerves, and
he slipped down into a state of coma. However, she did not tell Rose
this, nor her suspicions, which were fast becoming certainties, about
the mortgage; she only kissed her affectionately and made her sing to
her the song which had won such an ovation from the French critics,
and which Cousin Emily Carter had described with enthusiasm before
she departed to the Tidewater region, where she hoped to cut her own
asparagus bed and set out her flowers undisturbed by Parisian manners
and customs.
Allestree welcomed Rose with even greater relief than his mother and
the judge, but wisdom had taught him to rejoice in silence, and he did
so, being careful, however, to send promptly for her portrait which,
according to the agreement between Mrs. Allestree and the judge, could
not be loaned during Rose’s presence in the house, but only as a
consolation in her absence. But the judge sighed deeply when they told
him it had been returned to the studio again.
It was during the first days of her father’s convalescence that Rose
found Margaret’s letter to her among his papers; not knowing Rose’s
address in Paris, Margaret had sent it in the judge’s care and he had
overlooked it when he forwarded the letters, as he did, once a week.
By a strange accident it had slipped under some pamphlets in the
basket on his library table and lay there until Rose, rearranging his
papers one morning, came upon it and recognizing the writing broke the
seal with some trepidation, for Margaret had never been an intimate
correspondent, and Rose divined some serious reason for this long
closely written letter. She was alone when she found it, and she went
to the open window and stood there reading it.
Margaret, moved by the deep sorrow and passion which had swept over her
poor troubled soul in those last days of her life, had poured out her
heart. She told Rose all; that she had come between her and Fox; in
her wild and covetous jealousy she had thought to wrest happiness from
despair; to keep his love she had been willing to lose all, and she had
lost! She concealed nothing, the last pitiful words of the letter, a
remarkable letter of passion and grief and self-sacrifice, told Rose
that she was going to give up her life to her children and try to live
down her desertion of them.
Rose read it through to the end, and then covered her face with
her hands, trying to shut out the terrifying picture that it had
unconsciously drawn of a woman, desolate, shipwrecked, without hope in
earth or heaven. The terrors which had possessed Margaret’s soul swept
over hers. All that Mrs. Allestree had told her, and that Gerty, poor,
voluble, good-hearted Gerty, had enlarged upon, filled out the scene.
The lonely walk, the visit to the studio, the unfriended and miserable
death; she did not know of those other scenes in the church and the
curiosity-shop where Margaret had found her heart, but she did know of
a strange girl who had brought a single white lily to lay in Margaret’s
dead hand and gone away weeping bitterly.
She had blamed poor Margaret, judged her; Rose felt it at that moment
and accused herself of heartlessness; of Fox she dared not think. In
the new light which this letter shed on the situation, she began to
understand how cruelly he had been placed, and there, too, she had
judged!
Poor Rose,--her father had inculcated stern and simple lessons and she
had tried, before all things, to be just; but to be judicious and calm
and in love at the same time was an impossible combination. She dashed
the tears from her eyes, and thrust Margaret’s letter into her pocket
and went about her duties with the air of a soldier on guard, but her
lip would quiver at intervals and she could not sing a note when the
judge asked for one of the old ballads that he had loved as a boy, and
Rose had learned, to please him.
It was about this time that she began to wonder if the old house must
go, or if her father had been able to meet all the payments due upon
it. She dared not ask him, and he said nothing, but she noticed that
now that he was able to be moved into the library every day and
sometimes into the garden in the warm spring sunshine, that he sat for
hours at a time in a brown study with a deep furrow between his brows,
and constantly pushing back his hair from his forehead, as he did in
moments of perplexity. She was afraid to speak, lest any mention of
the trouble which had so beset him would bring back the fever and a
relapse, so she had to content herself with hope and waited for some
sign on his part.
The old house had never seemed so dear; the mantling vines were full
out in new foliage, birds were nested on the southern wall toward the
garden, and the old garden-plot itself, so sheltered and secluded by
the house and the high brick wall which shut out the street, was just
coming into bloom. The roses she had set out the spring before were in
bud, and the peonies were blooming. Rose looked about her with a sigh
and forgot that she would, perhaps, be one day a great prima donna with
the world at her feet. Such things do not always fill a woman’s heart.
Meanwhile the judge had written and despatched a letter with great
secrecy, and one morning, after he was wheeled into his library,
he told Rose that she might take her sewing into the garden for he
expected a gentleman on business and he might be there half an hour.
She obeyed him with a stifling sensation of anxiety; she knew it was
that mortgage, that terrible mortgage, and his reticence convinced her
that he was concealing bad news from her. She took her sewing out to
the little arbor in the corner, where the library windows were out of
sight, and she tried to sew, but her fingers trembled so that she lost
her needle and, having neglected to provide herself with another, she
sat and watched the robin on the lawn and wished money grew up like
grass out of the well tilled earth and was of as little consequence.
Yet, all the while, it was not of herself she thought but of her
father, broken in health, old and careworn, facing those inexorable
obligations without even her help.
The judge alone in the library watched the clock with an anxious eye,
and thought of Rose and all it would mean to her if he could save the
property. When he lay near death the one overwhelming horror of his
heart had been to leave her at the mercy of the world. The old man
glanced about him with the same fond recognition of familiar objects;
it is strange how dear these inanimate things, which were here before
we came and will be here when we are gone, become so valuable to us.
To the judge they had associations. The picture over the mantel had
been bought by his grandfather, those books dated still farther back in
the family; the clock had belonged to his mother’s great grandfather,
the old secretary of polished mahogany, with secret drawers and brass
mountings, was an heirloom,--it had held a will which had nearly
disrupted the family two generations back. Small matters, but to an old
man inexpressibly interesting and sacred. Of the house he did not like
to think; that was full of memories of his wife, and he could not now
explain the madness which had led him to mortgage it to pay off more
pressing claims which had followed his first heavy losses.
X
ROSE had been ten minutes in the garden, and the judge was beginning to
fidget in his chair when he heard the front door open and shut and at
last steps came toward the library. A moment later William Fox entered
the room. As he came into the mellow light from the open window the
judge was struck by the change in his strong pale face. The old smile
which had come so easily to his lips, and which, at times, had almost
the sweetness of a woman’s, was gone; the brow and chin had a new
resolution. The man was changed. Judge Temple saw it and held out his
hand with a sudden impulse of warmer sympathy than he had felt before.
After all, Fox had met it like a man and paid the cost.
On his side, Fox was as strongly affected by the broken appearance of
the old man in his invalid chair with his white head and his sunken
eyes. “My dear judge,” he said, “I hope you’re feeling better? I was
glad to obey your summons, though I’m not sure that I understand the
reference in your note.”
The judge looked at him a moment in silence, then drawing a letter from
his pocket, opened it and handed it to him. Fox took it with evident
reluctance; as he read it he colored a little and folding it hastily,
handed it back without a word.
“I did not know until yesterday, sir, to whom I was indebted,” Judge
Temple said slowly, his lip trembling slightly from weakness and
profound emotion.
Fox stirred uneasily in his chair, his color deepening. “I didn’t
intend you to know it at all, judge,” he said, almost with an air of
diffidence; “I presume I owe my betrayal to Berkman. However, I want
to assure you--since it is known--that you can have all the time you
desire; I consider it a good investment!”
The judge’s spectacles grew misty and he took them off hurriedly and
wiped them, his thin hands shaking as he did it. “I thank you for
your confidence,” he said quietly, when he could speak; “you’ll get
it--every cent.”
“I know it. I tell you I consider it a good investment, the best I
ever made,” Fox retorted smiling; “I’m not usually so judicious in my
ventures.”
The old man tried to force an answering smile but he failed, his head
sank on his breast and his hands, lying on the carved arms of his
great chair, still trembled. Fox looked at him in some anxiety, half
afraid that the excitement and relief had been too much, and bitterly
indignant that his secret had been betrayed. It had been a difficult
matter for him to take up the mortgage, for he was by no means a rich
man, but he had vowed in his heart to save Rose her home, the home that
he knew she loved so well, and half the joy of doing it had been to do
it without her knowledge; but it seemed impossible to keep a secret
which, from its very nature, must be shared with others.
The change in the old face opposite was alarmingly sharp.
“My dear judge, you are too indisposed for business; let me ring for
assistance,” Fox exclaimed, with real concern.
But the judge protested. “Sir, I’m better to-day than I have been for
a year,” he said, a slight break in his voice; “I see my way clear,
I’ll be able to save this property, I--” he broke off and passed his
handkerchief over his eyes; there was a moment’s painful silence, then
he held out his hand. “God bless you, Fox!” he broke out suddenly, “it
was killing me to lose it--”
They shook hands. Fox had risen and his face was colorless. “Don’t tell
her, judge,” he said abruptly.
The old man started and was about to speak but, meeting the other’s
eye, refrained. Many things came into his mind, among them a memory of
Rose’s face at Mrs. O’Neal’s ball. It was a bitter moment; no man was
good enough for her, and this man had been too much talked about! Yet
the child’s happiness was near his heart.
With a certain reluctance Fox turned at last to go, and as he did so
his glance passed through the open window into the garden. “I can reach
the gate by this path, can I not?” he asked, moving toward it.
The judge started uneasily, with an involuntary gesture as if to detain
him, to keep him back at any cost, but Fox did not see it and the
old man sank back in his chair quiescent. His lips moved but he said
nothing; after all, had he a right to interfere? Unconsciously the
younger man went out of the window and down the two short steps to the
gravel path.
The judge watched him disappear behind the Persian lilac with a
fascinated eye. Then he took out his handkerchief again, and passing
it swiftly across his brow pushed back his scant white hair until it
seemed to rise up in active protest. The glare of the May sunshine
suddenly hurt his gaze and he shook out his handkerchief and threw it
over his head, closing his eyes.
Aunt Hannah, opening the door a moment later, with a pleasant jingle of
ice in the mint-julep glass on her tray, peeped in, thought him asleep
and cautiously and discreetly closed the door again. “Fo’ de Lord,” she
murmured, “ef it ain’t de fust time dat he didn’t kinder sense dat de
julep was comin’; I reckon he’s right po’ly!”
* * * * *
Fox turned the corner by the lilac, walking slowly, holding his hat
behind his back, his bare head bowed. His face was gloomy with thought,
and he almost passed the arbor. At the turn a glint of white caught his
eye and he looked up quickly and saw Rose industriously sewing without
a needle, her head down over her work and the sunshine filtering
through a trellis of vines on her soft bright hair and her white gown.
He came toward her with an exclamation of unrestrained joy, but as
their eyes met a wave of mutual feeling swept over their souls and left
them mute. Between them seemed to lie the sorrow and the love of that
beautiful and unfortunate woman who had separated them. The language
of conventionality was no longer possible; Rose tried to speak, but
her words died in an inarticulate murmur. The anguish of Margaret’s
letter came back to her; it had saved Fox in her eyes; she no longer
condemned him, she no longer felt it a duty to avoid him, but she found
it impossible to tell him of the change in her heart by any commonplace
word of friendship. Her hand had slipped from his eager grasp and lay
trembling on her work. It was terrible to betray herself so; her cheek
reddened and tears of mortification came into her eyes. But to speak
to him of common things at such a moment--how could she? And he made
no effort to help her, but only watched her, his soul in his eyes.
The marks of suffering on his face touched her, too; the lines had
sharpened, the gaze deepened and become more introspective, the shock
of primitive passions had really decentralized his life. He smiled at
the sight of her, almost the old eager smile, but even that light had
died out of his face now, and in the pause she seemed to hear her own
heart beating against her breast.
He stood looking at her. “How long must I be silent?” he asked at last.
Rose busied herself in a fruitless attempt to thread an imaginary
needle, and her slender fingers shook. It had been in her mind to
tell him that Margaret had written her, but as he spoke a sudden
intuition of the truth arrested her impulse, a flood of light poured
in upon her, illuminating the twilight of her thought. She felt that
he must not only never know of Margaret’s confession--she had not
meant to tell him that--but not even of her letter. It was impossible
to answer him; her lips were tremulous as she looked up and met his
grave, compelling gaze. In her look, so full of buoyant and beautiful
youth, there was not even the shadow of reproach. Her simplicity, her
renewal of confidence in him, were profoundly touching; the bitterness
and humiliation of the past months seemed at last sanctified by her
forbearance. The secret agony which had torn his heart during the
long winter fell away from the present; it belonged at once to the
past, sinking into that long vista which leads to oblivion. To-day was
beautiful and strong with hope.
Before her youth and purity William Fox experienced a feeling of sudden
and complete humility. “Can you forgive me?” he asked, in a low voice.
Margaret’s letter seemed to breathe its message in her ears. “There’s
nothing to forgive,” Rose said simply.
“You understand?” there was passionate eagerness in his glance; his
love for her was sweeping away the obstacles from his mind, leaping up
again to demand its right to exist.
“Yes,” Rose said, with white lips, “I understand, not fully--but--”
“And now?” he was strongly moved; not knowing whose hand had lifted the
veil of her misunderstanding and far from divining the truth.
“And now?” the tears gathered in her eyes and fell unheeded; “I cannot
but think of her love--her unhappiness!”
“And you still blame me?” Fox stood motionless, his face resuming its
stern reserve.
Rose shook her head. “I--I cannot!” she murmured, remembering that
confession, and the thought of it sealing her lips.
He started, the color rushing to his temples, the kindling passion of
his glance transforming him. “Rose!”
She looked up through her tears, and as suddenly hid her face in her
hands. “I am afraid!” she murmured brokenly, “out of--of all this
sorrow can there be happiness?”
Fox sat down beside her and gently took her hand. “You mean you cannot
trust me?” he asked soberly.
For a moment she did not answer. He looked down at her drooping
profile, the lovely arch of her brow, the soft cheek and chin; her eyes
no longer met his. “Or is it that you do not love me?” he said quietly.
She raised her head at that, and the dawning sweetness of her glance
illumined his soul. “It is because I love you--that I can no longer
judge!” she faltered, with trembling lips.
He met her look without a word; language, for the moment, had not
significance for them.
Silence, filled with the sweet murmur of summer life, the fragrance of
flowers, the audible rustling of the magnolia leaves, seemed to enfold
them in a new and beautiful world.