“No, I'll stay aboard,” said I to Mulholland, as he stood aside for me to
precede him down the gangway from the launch. I went into the watch-pocket
of my trousers and drew out the folded two one-thousand-dollar bills I
always carried--it was a habit formed in my youthful, gambling days. I
handed him one of the bills. He hesitated.
“For the four little Mulhollands,” I urged.
He put it in his pocket. I watched him and his men depart with a heavy
heart. I felt alone, horribly alone, without a tie or an interest. Some of
the morning papers spoke respectfully of me as one of the strong men who
had ridden the flood and had been landed by it on the heights of wealth
and power. Admiration and envy lurked even in sneers at my “unscrupulous
plotting.” Since I had wealth, plenty of wealth, I did not need character.
Of what use was character in such a world except as a commodity to exchange
for wealth?
“Any orders, sir?” interrupted my captain.
I looked round that vast and vivid scene of sea and land activities. I
looked along the city's titanic sky-line--the mighty fortresses of trade
and commerce piercing the heavens and flinging to the wind their black
banners of defiance. I felt that I was under the walls of hell itself.
“To get away from this,” replied I to the waiting captain. “Go back down
the Sound--to Dawn Hill.”
Yes, I would go to the peaceful, soothing country, to my dogs and horses
and those faithful servants bound to me by our common love for the same
animals. “Men to cross swords with, to amuse oneself with,” I mused; “but
dogs and horses to live with.” I pictured myself at the kennels--the joyful
uproar the instant instinct warned the dogs of my coming; how they would
leap and bark and tremble in a very ecstasy of delight as I stood among
them; how jealous all the others would be, as I selected one to caress.
“Send her ahead as fast as she'll go,” I called to the captain.
As the _Albatross_ steamed into the little harbor, I saw Mowbray
Langdon's _Indolence_ at anchor. I glanced toward Steuben Point--where
his cousins, the Vivians, lived--and thought I recognized his launch at
their pier. We saluted the _Indolence_; the _Indolence_ saluted
us. My launch was piped away and took me ashore. I strolled along the path
that wound round the base of the hill toward the kennels. At the crossing
of the path down from the house, I paused and lingered on the glimpse
of one of the corner towers of the great showy palace. I was muttering
something--I listened to myself. It was: “Mulholland, Mrs. Mulholland and
the four little Mulhollands.” And I felt like laughing aloud, such a joke
was it that I should be envying a policeman his potato patch and his fat
wife and his four brats, and that he should be in a position to pity me.
You may be imagining that, through all, Anita had been dominating my mind.
That is the way it is in the romances; but not in life. No doubt there are
men who brood upon the impossible, and moon and maunder away their lives
over the grave of a dead love; no doubt there are people who will say that,
because I did not shoot Langdon or her, or myself, or fly to a desert or
pose in the crowded places of the world as the last scene of a tragedy,
I therefore cared little about her. I offer them this suggestion: A man
strong enough to give a love worth a woman's while is strong enough to live
on without her when he finds he may not live with her.
As I stood there that summer day, looking toward the crest of the hill,
at the mocking mausoleum of my dead dream, I realized what the incessant
battle of the Street had meant to me. “There is peace for me only in the
storm,” said I. “But, thank God, there is peace for me somewhere.”
Through the foliage I had glimpses of some one coming slowly down the
zigzag path. Presently, at one of the turnings half-way up the hill,
appeared Mowbray Langdon. “What is he doing here,” thought I, scarcely able
to believe my eyes. “Here of all places!” And then I forgot the strangeness
of his being at Dawn Hill in the strangeness of his expression. For it was
apparent, even at the distance which separated us, that he was suffering
from some great and recent blow. He looked old and haggard; he walked like
a man who neither knows nor cares where he is going.
He had not seen me, and my impulse was to avoid him by continuing on toward
the kennels. I had no especial feeling against him; I had not lost Anita
because she cared for him or he for her, but because she did not care for
me--simply that to meet would be awkward, disagreeable for us both. At the
slight noise of my movement to go on, he halted, glanced round eagerly,
as if he hoped the sound had been made by some one he wished to see. His
glance fell on me. He stopped short, was for an instant disconcerted; then
his face lighted up with devilish joy. “You!” he cried. “Just the man!” And
he descended more rapidly.
At first I could make nothing of this remark. But as he drew nearer and
nearer, and his ugly mood became more and more apparent, I felt that he was
looking forward to provoking me into giving him a distraction from whatever
was tormenting him. I waited. A few minutes and we were face to face, I
outwardly calm, but my anger slowly lighting up as he deliberately applied
to it the torch of his insolent eyes. He was wearing his old familiar
air of cynical assurance. Evidently, with his recovered fortune, he had
recovered his conviction of his great superiority to the rest of the human
race--the child had climbed back on the chair that made it tall and had
forgotten its tumble. And I was wondering again that I, so short a time
before, had been crude enough to be fascinated and fooled by those tawdry
posings and pretenses. For the man, as I now saw him, was obviously shallow
and vain, a slave to those poor “man-of-the-world” passions--ostentation
and cynicism and skill at vices old as mankind and tedious as a treadmill,
the commonplace routine of the idle and foolish and purposeless. A clever,
handsome fellow, but the more pitiful that he was by nature above the uses
to which he prostituted himself.
He fought hard to keep his eyes steadily on mine; but they would waver and
shift. Not, however, before I had found deep down in them the beginnings
of fear. “You see, you were mistaken,” said I. “You have nothing to say to
me--or I to you.”
He knew I had looked straight to the bottom of his real self, and had seen
the coward that is in every man who has been bred to appearances only. Up
rose his vanity, the coward's substitute for courage.
“You think I am afraid of you?” he sneered, bluffing and blustering like
the school bully.
“I don't in the least care whether you are or not,” replied I. “What are
you doing here, anyhow?”
It was as if I had thrown off the cover of a furnace. “I came to get the
woman I love,” he cried. “You stole her from me! You tricked me! But, by
God, Blacklock, I'll never pause until I get her back and punish you!”
He was brave enough now, drunk with the fumes from his brave words. “All
my life,” he raged arrogantly on, “I've had whatever I wanted. I've let
nothing interfere--nothing and nobody. I've been too forbearing with
you--first, because I knew she could never care for you, and, then, because
I rather admired your pluck and impudence. I like to see fellows kick their
way up among us from the common people.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. No doubt the fiend that rose within me, as
from the dead, looked at him from my eyes. He has great physical strength,
but he winced under that weight and grip, and across his face flitted the
terror that must come to any man at first sense of being in the angry
clutch of one stronger than he. I slowly released him--I had tested and
realized my physical superiority; to use it would be cheap and cowardly.
“You can't provoke me to descend to your level,” said I, with the easy
philosophy of him who clearly has the better of the argument.
He was shaking from head to foot, not with terror, but with impotent rage.
How much we owe to accident! The mere accident of my physical superiority
had put him at hopeless disadvantage; had made him feel inferior to me as
no victory of mental or moral superiority could possibly have done. And I
myself felt a greater contempt for him than the discovery of his treachery
and his shallowness had together inspired.
“I shan't indulge in flapdoodle,” I went on. “I'll be frank. A year ago, if
any man had faced me with a claim upon a woman who was married to me, I'd
probably have dealt with him as your vanity and what you call 'honor' would
force you to try to deal with a similar situation. But I live to learn, and
I'm, fortunately, not afraid to follow a new light. There is the vanity of
so-called honor; there as also the demand of justice--of fair play. As I
have told her, so I now tell you--she is free to go. But I shall say one
thing to you that I did not say to her. If you do not deal fairly with her,
I shall see to it that there are ten thorns to every rose in that bed of
roses on which you lie. You are contemptible in many ways--perhaps that's
why women like you. But there must be some good in you, or possibilities of
good, or you could not have won and kept her love.”
He was staring at me with a dazed expression. I rather expected him to show
some of that amused contempt with which men of his sort always receive a
new idea that is beyond the range of their narrow, conventional minds. For
I did not expect him to understand why I was not only willing, but even
eager, to relinquish a woman whom I could hold only by asserting a property
right in her. And I do not think he did understand me, though his manner
changed to a sort of grudging respect. He was, I believe, about to make
some impulsive, generous speech, when we heard the quick strokes of
iron-shod hoofs on the path from the kennels and the stables--is there
any sound more arresting? Past us at a gallop swept a horse, on his
back--Anita. She was not in riding-habit; the wind fluttered the sleeves of
her blouse, blew her uncovered hair this way and that about her beautiful
face. She sped on toward the landing, though I fancied she had seen us.
Anita at Dawn Hill--Langdon, in a furious temper, descending from the house
toward the landing--Anita presently, riding like mad--“to overtake him,”
thought I. And I read confirmation in his triumphant eyes. In another
mood, I suppose my fury would have been beyond my power to restrain it.
Just then--the day grew dark for me, and I wanted to hide away somewhere.
Heart-sick, I was ashamed for her, hated myself for having blundered into
surprising her.
She reappeared at the turn round which she had vanished. I now tooted that
she was riding without saddle or bridle, with only a halter round the
horse's neck--then she had seen us, had stopped and come back as soon as
she could. She dropped from the horse, looked swiftly at me, at him, at me
again, with intense anxiety.
“I saw your yacht in the harbor only a moment ago,” she said to me. She was
almost panting. “I feared you might meet him. So I came.”
“As you see, he is quite--intact,” said I. “I must ask that you and he
leave the place at once.” And I went rapidly along the path toward the
kennels.
An exclamation from Langdon forced me to turn in spite of myself. He was
half-kneeling, was holding her in his arms. At that sight, the savage in
me shook himself free. I dashed toward them with I knew not what curses
bursting from me. Langdon, intent upon her, did not realize until I sent
him reeling backward to the earth and snatched her up. Her white face, her
closed eyes, her limp form made my fury instantly collapse. In my confusion
I thought that she was dead. I laid her gently on the grass and supported
her head, so small, so gloriously crowned, the face so still and sweet and
white, like the stainless entrance to a stainless shrine. How that horrible
fear changed my whole way of looking at her, at him, at her and him, at
everything!
Her eyelids were quivering--her eyes were opening--her bosom was rising and
falling slowly as she drew long, uncertain breaths. She shuddered, sat up,
started up. “Go! go!” she cried. “Bring him back! Bring him back! Bring
him--”
There she recognized me. “Oh,” she said, and gave a great sigh of relief.
She leaned against a tree and looked at Langdon. “You are still here? Then
tell him.”
Langdon gazed sullenly at the ground. “I can't,” he answered. “I don't
believe it. Besides--he has given you to me. Let us go. Let me take you to
the Vivians.” He threw out his arms in a wild, passionate gesture; he was
utterly unlike himself. His emotion burst through and shattered pose and
cynicism and hard crust of selfishness like the exploding powder bursting
the shell. “I can't give you up, Anita!” he exclaimed in a tone of utter
desperation. “I can't! I can't!”
But her gaze was all this time steadily on me, as if she feared I would go,
should she look away. “I will tell you myself,” she said rapidly, to me.
“We--uncle Howard and I--read in the papers how they had all turned against
you, and he brought me over here. He has been telegraphing for you. This
morning he went to town to search for you. About an hour ago Langdon came.
I refused to see him, as I have ever since the time I told you about at
Alva's. He persisted, until at last I had the servant request him to leave
the house.”
“But _now_ there's no longer any reason for your staying, Anita,” he
pleaded. “He has said you are free. Why stay when _you_ would really
no more be here than if you were to go, leaving one of your empty dresses?”
She had not for an instant taken her gaze from me; and so strange were her
eyes, so compelling, that I seemed unable to move or speak.
But now she released me to blaze upon him--and never shall I forget any
detail of her face or voice as she said to him: “That is false, Mowbray
Langdon. I told you the truth when I told you I loved him!”
So violent was her emotion that she had to pause for self-control. And I?
I was overwhelmed, dazed, stunned. When she went on, she was looking at
neither of us. “Yes, I loved him, almost from the first--from the day he
came to the box at the races. I was ashamed, poor creature that my parents
had made me! I was ashamed of it. And I tried to hate him, and thought I
did. And when he showed me that he no longer cared, my pride goaded me into
the folly of trying to listen to you. But I loved him more than ever. And
as you and he stand here, I am ashamed again--ashamed that I was ever so
blind and ignorant and prejudiced as to compare him with”--she looked at
Langdon--“with you. Do you believe me now--now that I humble myself before
him here in your presence?”
I should have had no heart at all if I had not felt pity for him. His face
was gray, and on it were those signs of age that strong emotion brings to
the surface after forty. “You could have convinced me in no other way,” he
replied, after a silence, and in a voice I should not have recognized.
Silence again. Presently he raised his head, and with something of his old
cynicism bowed to her.
“You have avenged much and many,” said he. “I have often had a presentiment
that my day of wrath would come.”
He lifted his hat, bowed to me without looking at me, and, drawing the
tatters of his pose still further over his wounds, moved away toward the
landing.
I, still in a stupor, watched him until he had disappeared. When I turned
to her, she dropped her eyes. “Uncle Howard will be back this afternoon,”
said she. “If I may, I'll stay at the house until he comes to take me.”
A weary, half-suppressed sigh escaped from her. I knew how she must be
reading my silence, but I was still unable to speak. She went to the horse,
browsing near by; she stroked his muzzle. Lingeringly she twined her
fingers in his mane, as if about to spring to his back! That reminded me of
a thousand and one changes in her--little changes, each a trifle in itself,
yet, taken all together, making a complete transformation.
“Let me help you,” I managed to say. And I bent, and made a step of my
hand.
She touched her fingers to my shoulder, set her narrow, graceful foot upon
my palm. But she did not rise. I glanced up; she was gazing wistfully down
at me.
“Women have to learn by experience just as do men,” said she forlornly.
“Yet men will not tolerate it.”
I suppose I must suddenly have looked what I was unable to put into
words--for her eyes grew very wide, and, with a cry that was a sigh and a
sob, and a laugh and a caress all in one, she slid into my arms and her
face was burning against mine.
“Do you remember the night at the theater,” she murmured, “when your lips
almost touched my neck?--I loved you then--Black Matt--_Black Matt_!”
And I found voice; and the horse wandered away.
* * * * *
What more?
How Langdon eased his pain and soothed his vanity? Whenever an old
Babylonian nobleman had a misfortune, he used to order all his slaves to be
lashed, that their shrieks and moans might join his in appeasing the god
who was punishing him. Langdon went back to Wall Street, and for months he
made all within his power suffer; in his fury he smashed fortunes, lowered
wages, raised prices, reveled in the blasts of a storm of impotent curses.
But you do not care to hear about that.
As for myself, what could I tell that you do not know or guess? Now that
all men, even the rich, even the parasites of the bandits, groan under
their tyranny and their taxes, is it strange that the resentment against me
has disappeared, that my warnings are remembered, that I am popular? I
might forecast what I purpose to do when the time is ripe. But I am not
given to prophecy. I will only say that I think I shall, in due season, go
into action again--profiting by my experience in the futility of trying to
hasten evolution by revolution. Meanwhile--
As I write, I can look up from the paper, and out upon the lawn, at a
woman--what a woman!--teaching a baby to walk. And, assisting her, there
is a boy, himself not yet an expert at walking. I doubt if you'd have to
glance twice at that boy to know he is my son. Well--I have borrowed a leaf
from Mulholland's philosophy. I commend it to you.