"What can you do?"
"I can sing," very faintly.
"Well, if that 's the voice you 're going to sing in, there won't be
many that 'll know whether it 's good or bad. Well, let 's hear
something. Do you know any of these?"
And he ran over the titles of several songs. She knew some of them, and
he selected one. "Try this. Here, Tom, play it for her."
It was an ordeal for the girl to go through. She had never sung before
at anything more formidable than a church concert, where only her
immediate acquaintances and townspeople were present. Now to sing before
all these strange people, themselves singers, made her feel faint and
awkward. But the courage of desperation came to her, and she struck into
the song. At the first her voice wavered and threatened to fail her. It
must not. She choked back her fright and forced the music from her lips.
When she was done, she was startled to hear Martin burst into a raucous
laugh. Such humiliation! She had failed, and instead of telling her, he
was bringing her to shame before the whole company. The tears came into
her eyes, and she was about giving way when she caught a reassuring nod
and smile from Hattie Sterling, and seized on this as a last hope.
"Haw, haw, haw!" laughed Martin, "haw, haw, haw! The little one was
scared, see? She was scared, d' you understand? But did you see the grit
she went at it with? Just took the bit in her teeth and got away. Haw,
haw, haw! Now, that 's what I like. If all you girls had that spirit, we
could do something in two weeks. Try another one, girl."
Kitty's heart had suddenly grown light. She sang the second one better
because something within her was singing.
"Good!" said Martin, but he immediately returned to his cold manner.
"You watch these girls close and see what they do, and to-morrow be
prepared to go into line and move as well as sing."
He immediately turned his attention from her to the chorus, but no
slight that he could inflict upon her now could take away the sweet
truth that she was engaged and to-morrow would begin work. She wished
she could go over and embrace Hattie Sterling. She thought kindly of
Joe, and promised herself to give him a present out of her first month's
earnings.
On the first night of the show pretty little Kitty Hamilton was pointed
out as a girl who would n't be in the chorus long. The mother, who was
soon to be Mrs. Gibson, sat in the balcony, a grieved, pained look on
her face. Joe was in a front row with some of the rest of the gang. He
took many drinks between the acts, because he was proud.
Mr. Thomas was there. He also was proud, and after the performance he
waited for Kitty at the stage door and went forward to meet her as she
came out. The look she gave him stopped him, and he let her pass without
a word.
"Who 'd 'a' thought," he mused, "that the kid had that much nerve? Well,
if they don't want to find out things, what do they come to N' Yawk for?
It ain't nobody's old Sunday-school picnic. Guess I got out easy,
anyhow."
Hattie Sterling took Joe home in a hansom.
"Say," she said, "if you come this way for me again, it 's all over,
see? Your little sister 's a comer, and I 've got to hustle to keep up
with her."
Joe growled and fell asleep in his chair. One must needs have a strong
head or a strong will when one is the brother of a celebrity and would
celebrate the distinguished one's success.
XIII
THE OAKLEYS
A year after the arrest of Berry Hamilton, and at a time when New York
had shown to the eyes of his family so many strange new sights, there
were few changes to be noted in the condition of affairs at the Oakley
place. Maurice Oakley was perhaps a shade more distrustful of his
servants, and consequently more testy with them. Mrs. Oakley was the
same acquiescent woman, with unbounded faith in her husband's wisdom and
judgment. With complacent minds both went their ways, drank their wine,
and said their prayers, and wished that brother Frank's five years were
past. They had letters from him now and then, never very cheerful in
tone, but always breathing the deepest love and gratitude to them.
His brother found deep cause for congratulation in the tone of these
epistles.
"Frank is getting down to work," he would cry exultantly. "He is past
the first buoyant enthusiasm of youth. Ah, Leslie, when a man begins to
be serious, then he begins to be something." And her only answer would
be, "I wonder, Maurice, if Claire Lessing will wait for him?"
The two had frequent questions to answer as to Frank's doing and
prospects, and they had always bright things to say of him, even when
his letters gave them no such warrant. Their love for him made them read
large between the lines, and all they read was good.
Between Maurice and his brother no word of the guilty servant ever
passed. They each avoided it as an unpleasant subject. Frank had never
asked and his brother had never proffered aught of the outcome of the
case.
Mrs. Oakley had once suggested it. "Brother ought to know," she said,
"that Berry is being properly punished."
"By no means," replied her husband. "You know that it would only hurt
him. He shall never know if I have to tell him."
"You are right, Maurice, you are always right. We must shield Frank from
the pain it would cause him. Poor fellow! he is so sensitive."
Their hearts were still steadfastly fixed upon the union of this younger
brother with Claire Lessing. She had lately come into a fortune, and
there was nothing now to prevent it. They would have written Frank to
urge it, but they both believed that to try to woo him away from his art
was but to make him more wayward. That any woman could have power enough
to take him away from this jealous mistress they very much doubted. But
they could hope, and hope made them eager to open every letter that bore
the French postmark. Always it might contain news that he was coming
home, or that he had made a great success, or, better, some inquiry
after Claire. A long time they had waited, but found no such tidings in
the letters from Paris.
At last, as Maurice Oakley sat in his library one day, the servant
brought him a letter more bulky in weight and appearance than any he had
yet received. His eyes glistened with pleasure as he read the postmark.
"A letter from Frank," he said joyfully, "and an important one, I 'll
wager."
He smiled as he weighed it in his hand and caressed it. Mrs. Oakley was
out shopping, and as he knew how deep her interest was, he hesitated to
break the seal before she returned. He curbed his natural desire and
laid the heavy envelope down on the desk. But he could not deny himself
the pleasure of speculating as to its contents.
It was such a large, interesting-looking package. What might it not
contain? It simply reeked of possibilities. Had any one banteringly told
Maurice Oakley that he had such a deep vein of sentiment, he would have
denied it with scorn and laughter. But here he found himself sitting
with the letter in his hand and weaving stories as to its contents.
First, now, it might be a notice that Frank had received the badge of
the Legion of Honour. No, no, that was too big, and he laughed aloud at
his own folly, wondering the next minute, with half shame, why he
laughed, for did he, after all, believe anything was too big for that
brother of his? Well, let him begin, anyway, away down. Let him say, for
instance, that the letter told of the completion and sale of a great
picture. Frank had sold small ones. He would be glad of this, for his
brother had written him several times of things that were a-doing, but
not yet of anything that was done. Or, better yet, let the letter say
that some picture, long finished, but of which the artist's pride and
anxiety had forbidden him to speak, had made a glowing success, the
success it deserved. This sounded well, and seemed not at all beyond the
bounds of possibility. It was an alluring vision. He saw the picture
already. It was a scene from life, true in detail to the point of very
minuteness, and yet with something spiritual in it that lifted it above
the mere copy of the commonplace. At the Salon it would be hung on the
line, and people would stand before it admiring its workmanship and
asking who the artist was. He drew on his memory of old reading. In his
mind's eye he saw Frank, unconscious of his own power or too modest to
admit it, stand unknown among the crowds around his picture waiting for
and dreading their criticisms. He saw the light leap to his eyes as he
heard their words of praise. He saw the straightening of his narrow
shoulders when he was forced to admit that he was the painter of the
work. Then the windows of Paris were filled with his portraits. The
papers were full of his praise, and brave men and fair women met
together to do him homage. Fair women, yes, and Frank would look upon
them all and see reflected in them but a tithe of the glory of one
woman, and that woman Claire Lessing. He roused himself and laughed
again as he tapped the magic envelope.
"My fancies go on and conquer the world for my brother," he muttered.
"He will follow their flight one day and do it himself."
The letter drew his eyes back to it. It seemed to invite him, to beg him
even. "No, I will not do it; I will wait until Leslie comes. She will be
as glad to hear the good news as I am."
His dreams were taking the shape of reality in his mind, and he was
believing all that he wanted to believe.
He turned to look at a picture painted by Frank which hung over the
mantel. He dwelt lovingly upon it, seeing in it the touch of a genius.
"Surely," he said, "this new picture cannot be greater than that, though
it shall hang where kings can see it and this only graces the library of
my poor house. It has the feeling of a woman's soul with the strength
of a man's heart. When Frank and Claire marry, I shall give it back to
them. It is too great a treasure for a clod like me. Heigho, why will
women be so long a-shopping?"
He glanced again at the letter, and his hand went out involuntarily
towards it. He fondled it, smiling.
"Ah, Lady Leslie, I 've a mind to open it to punish you for staying so
long."
He essayed to be playful, but he knew that he was trying to make a
compromise with himself because his eagerness grew stronger than his
gallantry. He laid the letter down and picked it up again. He studied
the postmark over and over. He got up and walked to the window and back
again, and then began fumbling in his pockets for his knife. No, he did
not want it; yes, he did. He would just cut the envelope and make
believe he had read it to pique his wife; but he would not read it. Yes,
that was it. He found the knife and slit the paper. His fingers
trembled as he touched the sheets that protruded. Why would not Leslie
come? Did she not know that he was waiting for her? She ought to have
known that there was a letter from Paris to-day, for it had been a month
since they had had one.
There was a sound of footsteps without. He sprang up, crying, "I 've
been waiting so long for you!" A servant opened the door to bring him a
message. Oakley dismissed him angrily. What did he want to go down to
the Continental for to drink and talk politics to a lot of muddle-pated
fools when he had a brother in Paris who was an artist and a letter from
him lay unread in his hand? His patience and his temper were going.
Leslie was careless and unfeeling. She ought to come; he was tired of
waiting.
A carriage rolled up the driveway and he dropped the letter guiltily, as
if it were not his own. He would only say that he had grown tired of
waiting and started to read it. But it was only Mrs. Davis's footman
leaving a note for Leslie about some charity.
He went back to the letter. Well, it was his. Leslie had forfeited her
right to see it as soon as he. It might be mean, but it was not
dishonest. No, he would not read it now, but he would take it out and
show her that he had exercised his self-control in spite of her
shortcomings. He laid it on the desk once more. It leered at him. He
might just open the sheets enough to see the lines that began it, and
read no further. Yes, he would do that. Leslie could not feel hurt at
such a little thing.
The first line had only "Dear Brother." "Dear Brother"! Why not the
second? That could not hold much more. The second line held him, and the
third, and the fourth, and as he read on, unmindful now of what Leslie
might think or feel, his face turned from the ruddy glow of pleasant
anxiety to the pallor of grief and terror. He was not half-way through
it when Mrs. Oakley's voice in the hall announced her coming. He did
not hear her. He sat staring at the page before him, his lips apart and
his eyes staring. Then, with a cry that echoed through the house,
crumpling the sheets in his hand, he fell forward fainting to the floor,
just as his wife rushed into the room.
"What is it?" she cried. "Maurice! Maurice!"
He lay on the floor staring up at the ceiling, the letter clutched in
his hands. She ran to him and lifted up his head, but he gave no sign of
life. Already the servants were crowding to the door. She bade one of
them to hasten for a doctor, others to bring water and brandy, and the
rest to be gone. As soon as she was alone, she loosed the crumpled
sheets from his hand, for she felt that this must have been the cause of
her husband's strange attack. Without a thought of wrong, for they had
no secrets from each other, she glanced at the opening lines. Then she
forgot the unconscious man at her feet and read the letter through to
the end.
The letter was in Frank's neat hand, a little shaken, perhaps, by
nervousness.
"DEAR BROTHER," it ran, "I know you will grieve at
receiving this, and I wish that I might bear your grief for you,
but I cannot, though I have as heavy a burden as this can bring to
you. Mine would have been lighter to-day, perhaps, had you been
more straightforward with me. I am not blaming you, however, for I
know that my hypocrisy made you believe me possessed of a really
soft heart, and you thought to spare me. Until yesterday, when in a
letter from Esterton he casually mentioned the matter, I did not
know that Berry was in prison, else this letter would have been
written sooner. I have been wanting to write it for so long, and
yet have been too great a coward to do so.
"I know that you will be disappointed in me, and just what that
disappointment will cost you I know; but you must hear the truth. I
shall never see your face again, or I should not dare to tell it
even now. You will remember that I begged you to be easy on your
servant. You thought it was only my kindness of heart. It was not;
I had a deeper reason. I knew where the money had gone and dared
not tell. Berry is as innocent as yourself--and I--well, it is a
story, and let me tell it to you.
"You have had so much confidence in me, and I hate to tell you that
it was all misplaced. I have no doubt that I should not be doing it
now but that I have drunken absinthe enough to give me the
emotional point of view, which I shall regret to-morrow. I do not
mean that I am drunk. I can think clearly and write clearly, but my
emotions are extremely active.
"Do you remember Claire's saying at the table that night of the
farewell dinner that some dark-eyed mademoiselle was waiting for
me? She did not know how truly she spoke, though I fancy she saw
how I flushed when she said it: for I was already in love--madly
so.
"I need not describe her. I need say nothing about her, for I know
that nothing I say can ever persuade you to forgive her for taking
me from you. This has gone on since I first came here, and I dared
not tell you, for I saw whither your eyes had turned. I loved this
girl, and she both inspired and hindered my work. Perhaps I would
have been successful had I not met her, perhaps not.
"I love her too well to marry her and make of our devotion a stale,
prosy thing of duty and compulsion. When a man does not marry a
woman, he must keep her better than he would a wife. It costs. All
that you gave me went to make her happy.
"Then, when I was about leaving you, the catastrophe came. I wanted
much to carry back to her. I gambled to make more. I would surprise
her. Luck was against me. Night after night I lost. Then, just
before the dinner, I woke from my frenzy to find all that I had was
gone. I would have asked you for more, and you would have given it;
but that strange, ridiculous something which we misname Southern
honour, that honour which strains at a gnat and swallows a camel,
withheld me, and I preferred to do worse. So I lied to you. The
money from my cabinet was not stolen save by myself. I am a liar
and a thief, but your eyes shall never tell me so.
"Tell the truth and have Berry released. I can stand it. Write me
but one letter to tell me of this. Do not plead with me, do not
forgive me, do not seek to find me, for from this time I shall be
as one who has perished from the earth; I shall be no more.
"Your brother,
FRANK."
By the time the servants came they found Mrs. Oakley as white as her
lord. But with firm hands and compressed lips she ministered to his
needs pending the doctor's arrival. She bathed his face and temples,
chafed his hands, and forced the brandy between his lips. Finally he
stirred and his hands gripped.
"The letter!" he gasped.
"Yes, dear, I have it; I have it."
"Give it to me," he cried. She handed it to him. He seized it and thrust
it into his breast.
"Did--did--you read it?"
"Yes, I did not know----"
"Oh, my God, I did not intend that you should see it. I wanted the
secret for my own. I wanted to carry it to my grave with me. Oh, Frank,
Frank, Frank!"
"Never mind, Maurice. It is as if you alone knew it."
"It is not, I say, it is not!"
He turned upon his face and began to weep passionately, not like a man,
but like a child whose last toy has been broken.
"Oh, my God," he moaned, "my brother, my brother!"
"'Sh, dearie, think--it 's--it 's--Frank."
"That 's it, that 's it--that 's what I can't forget. It 's
Frank,--Frank, my brother."
Suddenly he sat up and his eyes stared straight into hers.
"Leslie, no one must ever know what is in this letter," he said calmly.
"No one shall, Maurice; come, let us burn it."
"Burn it? No, no," he cried, clutching at his breast. "It must not be
burned. What! burn my brother's secret? No, no, I must carry it with
me,--carry it with me to the grave."
"But, Maurice----"
"I must carry it with me."
She saw that he was overwrought, and so did not argue with him.
When the doctor came, he found Maurice Oakley in bed, but better. The
medical man diagnosed the case and decided that he had received some
severe shock. He feared too for his heart, for the patient constantly
held his hands pressed against his bosom. In vain the doctor pleaded; he
would not take them down, and when the wife added her word, the
physician gave up, and after prescribing, left, much puzzled in mind.
"It 's a strange case," he said; "there 's something more than the
nervous shock that makes him clutch his chest like that, and yet I have
never noticed signs of heart trouble in Oakley. Oh, well, business worry
will produce anything in anybody."
It was soon common talk about the town about Maurice Oakley's attack. In
the seclusion of his chamber he was saying to his wife:
"Ah, Leslie, you and I will keep the secret. No one shall ever know."
"Yes, dear, but--but--what of Berry?"
"What of Berry?" he cried, starting up excitedly. "What is Berry to
Frank? What is that nigger to my brother? What are his sufferings to the
honour of my family and name?"
"Never mind, Maurice, never mind, you are right."
"It must never be known, I say, if Berry has to rot in jail."
So they wrote a lie to Frank, and buried the secret in their breasts,
and Oakley wore its visible form upon his heart.
XIV
FRANKENSTEIN
Five years is but a short time in the life of a man, and yet many things
may happen therein. For instance, the whole way of a family's life may
be changed. Good natures may be made into bad ones and out of a soul of
faith grow a spirit of unbelief. The independence of respectability may
harden into the insolence of defiance, and the sensitive cheek of
modesty into the brazen face of shamelessness. It may be true that the
habits of years are hard to change, but this is not true of the first
sixteen or seventeen years of a young person's life, else Kitty Hamilton
and Joe could not so easily have become what they were. It had taken
barely five years to accomplish an entire metamorphosis of their
characters. In Joe's case even a shorter time was needed. He was so
ready to go down that it needed but a gentle push to start him, and once
started, there was nothing within him to hold him back from the depths.
For his will was as flabby as his conscience, and his pride, which
stands to some men for conscience, had no definite aim or direction.
Hattie Sterling had given him both his greatest impulse for evil and for
good. She had at first given him his gentle push, but when she saw that
his collapse would lose her a faithful and useful slave she had sought
to check his course. Her threat of the severance of their relations had
held him up for a little time, and she began to believe that he was safe
again. He went back to the work he had neglected, drank moderately, and
acted in most things as a sound, sensible being. Then, all of a sudden,
he went down again, and went down badly. She kept her promise and threw
him over. Then he became a hanger-on at the clubs, a genteel loafer. He
used to say in his sober moments that at last he was one of the boys
that Sadness had spoken of. He did not work, and yet he lived and ate
and was proud of his degradation. But he soon tired of being separated
from Hattie, and straightened up again. After some demur she received
him upon his former footing. It was only for a few months. He fell
again. For almost four years this had happened intermittently. Finally
he took a turn for the better that endured so long that Hattie Sterling
again gave him her faith. Then the woman made her mistake. She warmed to
him. She showed him that she was proud of him. He went forth at once to
celebrate his victory. He did not return to her for three days. Then he
was battered, unkempt, and thick of speech.
She looked at him in silent contempt for a while as he sat nursing his
aching head.
"Well, you 're a beauty," she said finally with cutting scorn. "You
ought to be put under a glass case and placed on exhibition."
He groaned and his head sunk lower. A drunken man is always disarmed.
His helplessness, instead of inspiring her with pity, inflamed her with
an unfeeling anger that burst forth in a volume of taunts.
"You 're the thing I 've given up all my chances for--you, a miserable,
drunken jay, without a jay's decency. No one had ever looked at you
until I picked you up and you 've been strutting around ever since,
showing off because I was kind to you, and now this is the way you pay
me back. Drunk half the time and half drunk the rest. Well, you know
what I told you the last time you got 'loaded'? I mean it too. You 're
not the only star in sight, see?"
She laughed meanly and began to sing, "You 'll have to find another baby
now."
For the first time he looked up, and his eyes were full of tears--tears
both of grief and intoxication. There was an expression of a whipped dog
on his face.
"Do'--Ha'ie, do'--" he pleaded, stretching out his hands to her.
Her eyes blazed back at him, but she sang on insolently, tauntingly.
The very inanity of the man disgusted her, and on a sudden impulse she
sprang up and struck him full in the face with the flat of her hand. He
was too weak to resist the blow, and, tumbling from the chair, fell
limply to the floor, where he lay at her feet, alternately weeping aloud
and quivering with drunken, hiccoughing sobs.
"Get up!" she cried; "get up and get out o' here. You sha'n't lay around
my house."
He had already begun to fall into a drunken sleep, but she shook him,
got him to his feet, and pushed him outside the door. "Now, go, you
drunken dog, and never put your foot inside this house again."
He stood outside, swaying dizzily upon his feet and looking back with
dazed eyes at the door, then he muttered: "Pu' me out, wi' you? Pu' me
out, damn you! Well, I ki' you. See 'f I don't;" and he half walked,
half fell down the street.