He Takes the Telegram which Tells of
Defeat and Is Seen No More Alive
Chicago, July 3d--After a conference of the leaders of the Phillips
cohorts this afternoon the following telegram was sent to the President
at Stag Inlet: "We are moving heaven and earth; but the forces of evil
are too many for us. First ballot to-morrow."
The news column was after that fashion. The leading editorial was a
scream under the caption, "The Trusts Have Murdered Him!"
Mr. Mackenzie, who had sent the telegram, was mortally angry that the
odium of actual defeat from which death had relieved his friend should
have been fixed thus upon his memory. He was offended almost beyond
endurance with his confidential clerk despite that young man's violent
disclaimer of responsibility for the leak; but he was most enraged at
the diabolical discretion of the managing editor of _The Yellow_ in
omitting the name of the sender of the telegram: which would necessitate
that he admit having sent it before he could demand to know whence the
paper had knowledge of it.
The convention took a recess for ten days, and, upon reassembling after
Mr. Phillips' burial, passed by a unanimous vote a set of resolutions
that lifted him to the stars and gave him place among the gods. Then it
set out upon a long round of balloting; and without being altogether
conscious of the reasons and causes impelling, it finally nominated a
"safe" man for President.
* * * * *
Helen could not attend her father's funeral. Pitifully weakened by the
awful shock of his sudden passing, she cried out with all her remaining
strength to be carried in to look upon his face in death. Her
physician's consent after long refusal was due to his kindliness of
heart, and the result vindicated his professional judgment, in that it
came frightfully near to taking her life.
In utter desolation of spirit was she left when they had taken the great
man out of the house upon his stately procession to Washington and the
grave. Her husband was unfailing in devoted and anxious attendance, but
she was listless to his tenderest efforts to console her. Elise's
letters, coming now every day from the bedside of the prostrated mother,
Helen read faithfully to the last word, and really tried to take comfort
and courage from them, but they could not get down, it seemed, to touch
and dissolve the cold mists of desolation in the deeps of her heart.
Her father, the stay and fixative of her life, was gone: and there was
nothing now to give her footing upon the earth. No one to interpret
life, to give meaning to life, to give purpose to life, to give value to
life. The days might as well move backward as forward. They appeared not
to be moving at all. There was no one to give them direction. He
toward whom or from whom or about whom the days had always turned as a
sort of first cause or incarnation of the reason and sense of things,
was gone: and she was in chaos.
With her weakness of body, her mental processes were weak, and her mind
did not take vigorous hold of things: but, confidently as it had
followed her father's sentimental speeches about the negro race and
loyally as she would defend and abide his words and the consequences of
them, she could not control her thinking, even in its weakness, and put
down the thoughts which her every look upon her baby brought to disturb
her. Very slowly the natural spring and rebound of youth brought her
out of her physical relapse, and yet more slowly out of her mental
depression. But, even as strength of body and mind returned, there came
more insistently the questioning that could not be answered.
In her heart she had always glorified mother-love. In the days and weeks
before the baby's coming she had revelled in the dreams of motherhood,
and her heart had been overcharged with love and visions of it.
But this little fellow was not the baby of her dreams. Never in all the
hundred varied pictures her heart had painted had there been a child
like him. He was not of her mind, surely; and vaguely uneasy and
distressed was she that he was not of her kind. Nervously she swung
between the moments when pent-up mother-love swept away all questions
and poured itself out upon her little son in fullness of tenderness, and
the other moments of revulsion when she could not coerce her rebellious
spirit.
Feverishly in the doubting moments would she repeat over and over her
father's brief words of assurance. Hungrily had she awaited them before
he had come to look upon the boy, greedily had she seized upon them when
he had pronounced a favourable judgment, and longingly she wished now
that he could come back to reinforce them and reassure her faint
confidence that all was well. Not finding a sufficient volume of
testimony in the few words he had spoken in that last interview, she
supplemented them with all she could recall of everything she had ever
heard him say about the excellence of the negro race, and added to that
all the nurse had to say of the proverbial uncomeliness and
possibilities of phenomenal "come out" in very young babies: and for
days her pitiful daily mental task was to lie with closed eyes and
interminably to construct and reconstruct of these things an argument to
prop up her ever-wavering faith.
* * * * *
Hayward Graham was a man of too much intelligence not to see the
uncertainty of his wife's attitude toward the boy. He was of too much
white blood in his own veins not to have suffered measurably the same
torments because of the baby's recession in type. What Mr. Phillips had
said of it, he did not know, and dared not ask Helen. In all kindliness
of purpose he encouraged her to believe _The Yellow's_ theory that her
father's heart had broken under defeat. He did not know that she was
agonizingly fearful of having contributed to that defeat.
* * * * *
Helen was rummaging through her father's desk in the library. With the
first escape from the prison-house of her bedroom, her feet had turned
instinctively toward the workshop which had been the scene of Mr.
Phillips' labours at Hill-Top, and the scene also of much that had been
joyous in her association with him. But even as she idly tumbled the
odds and ends of papers about--in solemn and fascinated inspection, for
that they seemed in a way to breathe his spirit and to invoke his
presence--the undercurrent of her mind was busy as ever with its
never-ending task.
She turned up a small package of notes marked "Cincinnati speech," and
examined them absent-mindedly; but found nothing that caught her
interest. Tossing them back in the desk, she picked up a letter
addressed to her father in her own hand. She recognized a rambling and
rollicking message she had sent to him more than a year before. From
the appearance of the envelope she judged that he must have carried it
in his pocket awhile. She had a little cry when she came to the
characteristic closing sentence: "Daddy, I want to see you so bad."
That had been a simple message of love. Now it was the cry of her
heart's loneliness and need.
* * * * *
Dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, she pulled out from the
bottom of the drawer an unbound section of the _Congressional Record_,
from which protruded a slip of paper. Opening it at this marker, she
saw a blue pencil-mark which indicated the beginning of a speech before
the Senate by Mr. Rutledge. Half-way down the second column her father
had made the marginal comment "good." Further along was a blue cross
without explanatory note. Still further, "very good." With such
commendations in her father's own words she began to read what Mr.
Rutledge had to say.... For a short space she noticed her father's
occasional marginal notes, favourable or critical, and the more frequent
non-committal blue cross. It appeared that he had contemplated
preparing an answer of some sort. Very soon Helen became so interested
that she saw only the text.
* * * * *
With faster beating heart and breath that came more irregularly she was
drawn irresistibly along. It was an answer to her soul's cry for a word;
and whether true or false, welcome or unwelcome, she could not but
listen to that answer with quickening pulse as it ran hurriedly under
her eyes. Long before she reached the end her anger was ablaze and her
fears a-tremble, but she could not throw the speech from her unfinished.
Almost in a frenzy of excitement and resentment she rushed along to the
very last word: and with a gasping cry of horror and wrath grabbed at
the desk-drawer with the intention to hurl the pamphlet viciously back
into it. She caught the slide instead, and pulled that out with a jerk.
Lying on the slide was a telegraph envelope which her violence threw on
the floor. With another impatient trial she slammed the pamphlet into
the drawer, and mechanically picked up the telegram.
It was addressed to "The President, Hill-Top." Turning it over to take
out the message, she found it sealed. Instinctively she hesitated a
moment, long enough for the question to come, "Why is it unopened?"
Then she tore the end off the envelope.
The message read, "We are moving heaven and earth but the forces of evil
are too many for us. First ballot to-morrow," and was signed by Mr.
Mackenzie.
She read it over and over, stupidly at first, for her mind was excited
by other things. Then the meaning of it began to be appreciated, and
her heart sank. Confirmation of the newspaper story! The telegram _had_
been sent! And her father _had_ been defeated, and death alone had
saved him from the damning ballot! Defeated, yes, really defeated!--and
she had contributed, if only a mite, to that defeat which broke his
heart! Guilty--_guilty_! She bowed her head in grief and agonized
self-condemnation....
But no:--she started up--the telegram! He had not read it! Had he read
it?--she caught up the envelope and examined it feverishly.... It could
not have been opened--it had not been opened! He had not read it--he
did not know! He had not known of his defeat--he had not died of his
defeat--and she had not helped to send him to his death! Oh the joy of
this acquittal!--and she held the envelope as one under sentence might
clasp a reprieve, and almost caressed it as she made sure of its
testimony in her behalf.
When she had assured herself that the envelope had not been opened, the
burden upon her heart would have been lifted entirely if the telegram
had not confirmed the fact of his defeat. He had not died because of
defeat, and she was acquitted therefore of his death, yet she was
acutely sensible of the fact that he had gone to his grave in the shadow
of defeat, and that death alone had saved him from the shameful
actuality.
This was gall and wormwood to her, for his name could never be flung
free of that shadow. The very time and manner of his going-out had
fixed failure eternally upon him. Oh why, her heart cried, could he not
have died before or lived beyond it? Why had he died _then_? Mr.
Mackenzie might have been mistaken, or the sentiment might have changed
with the balloting, victory have come out of defeat and his fame have
been without a cloud upon it. Oh, why had he not lived?--lived to
outlive that one reverse--lived to overwhelm his enemies in another
trial, lived to put those hateful Southern delegates again under heel?
Why had he died so inopportunely? ... Why had he died at all? ... _Why
had he died_? ... How could death have taken him so quickly and so
unawares? He had gone briskly out of her room with the promise on his
lips to hurry back. He had kissed the baby and said it looked like
her.... Yes, said it looked like her--the baby--
Hurriedly she snatched the _Congressional Record_ out of the drawer into
which she had angrily flung it! Breathlessly she turned the pages to
see what comment he had made upon that last part of Rutledge's speech.
Mr. Phillips had put but one marginal note against all that fearful
presentation. Opposite the words, "when the blood of your daughter ...
is mixed with that of one of this race, however 'risen,' redolent of
newly applied polish," etc., Helen saw the single written word,
"unthinkable."
Unthinkable! Quickly she searched again that portion of the speech that
had given supreme offence--and found nothing. Nothing beside the word
"unthinkable." No denial had her father entered that "vile unknown
ancestral impulses, the untamed passions of a barbarous blood would be
planted in the Anglo-Saxon's very heart" by such unions as hers. No hint
of his thought as to a "mongrel progeny." No answer to the question,
"How shall sickly sentimentalities solace your shame if in the blood of
your mulatto grandchild the vigorous red jungle corpuscles of some
savage ancestor shall overmatch your more gentle endowment...?" A free
expression, critical or approving, of the first half of the speech; but
silence, an awful silence, when it comes to this part so pertinent to
her situation. Silence!--_for the reason_ that her situation is
UNTHINKABLE!
In an illuminating flash she sees the Truth--sees all the minute
incidents of the past months, the looks, the gestures, the things
unsaid, which, unnoted by her at the time, were yet registered in her
subconsciousness, and which make so plain, now that she reads them
aright, all her father's thoughts and sufferings and sacrifice from the
moment when he had cried, "But a _negro_, Helen! How could you!" until
the time he had rushed away after kissing her negro baby--rushed away to
die! .... She knew! ... _Despoiled herself!--polluted her blood beyond
cleansing!--brought to life a mongrel fright, and brought to death her
father!_--with a scream of horror she staggered to her feet.... At the
door she met the nurse, who was hurrying to her, still holding in her
arms the baby whom she had not tarried to put down.
"Take it away! _Take it away_!" shrieked Helen, pushing it from her so
violently as to hurl it from the nurse's arms, and staggered on through
the hall, out the door, and down the path toward the lake.
*CHAPTER XXXIX*
The candidates for the Senate were come to Spartanburg in their canvass
of the State before the primary election. The campaign was about half
finished and had already reached the very personal stage of discussion
so dear and so interesting to the South Carolina heart. LaRoque,
Rutledge, Preston and Darlington were all out after Mr. Killam's scalp,
and that gentleman was making it sufficiently entertaining for the four
of them and for the crowds who flocked to hear.
Major Darlington and "Judge" Preston were running each in the hope that
"something might happen:" Mr. Rutledge and Colonel LaRoque each in an
effort to poll the largest vote next to Mr. Killam and thus be left to
try conclusions alone with the old man in a second primary--provided the
four of them in an unformulated coalition could keep the old man from
winning out of hand in the first trial.
At the hotels on the Saturday morning of the Spartanburg meeting, each
of the candidates was surrounded by a coming and going crowd of his
admirers and supporters and persons curious to see what he looked like.
Senator Killam, as by right, was the centre of the largest interest.
Nearest about him were his most trusted lieutenants in the county, who
did not come and go with the changing crowd but stood by to whisper
confidences to the Senator, to receive his more intimate disclosures,
and to present formally sundry citizens who desired to shake the great
man's hand and be called by name.
A little further removed from the Senator's person were the inevitable
two or three of that super-admiring yokel type which, too ignorant,
unwashed and boorish to stand in the Very Presence, is yet vastly joyed
to hang about, open-mouthed and open-eared, in the immediate
neighbourhood of greatness, in the hope to be counted in among its
_entourage_. Still further out the curious viewed "the old man" from a
respectful distance and commented upon him, freely and respectfully or
otherwise, as freeborn American citizens are wont to do. The while the
crowd shifted and eddied, came and went. As about Senator Killam, so in
less degree moved the tides about the other aspirants.
"Senator," asked one of the inner circle in a quiet moment, "what do you
think of our chances with the national ticket?"
"Not so good as they'd have been with Phillips against us," answered Mr.
Killam.
"Oh, of course not," said the questioner, glad to display his political
wisdom, "I've told the boys all along that we could have beaten Phillips
with that nigger son-in-law of his sure as shootin'."
"That's where you are mistaken," replied the Senator oracularly. "We
might have beaten Phillips if we had nominated a dyed-in-the-wool
corporation law-agent like they have now put up against us; but the
nigger son-in-law wouldn't have cut any ice. I believe at heart they
don't like that any more than we do, but if the Trusts would have
permitted it they would have put Phillips and his nigger back there just
to show us they could do it.... They've got a lot of fool notions about
'justice to the nigger' that make me sick.... Justice to the nigger is
to make him know his place and teach him to be happy in it; but the
Yankees haven't got the sense to see it. Rutledge, even, had a lot of
that damn nonsense in his speech on the Hare Bill. Half of what he said
was very good, if he had only voted accordingly and left out all that
rot about educating the nigger.... How in the devil he got his ideas I
can't see. He didn't inherit 'em, for his aristocratic old daddy
thought it was a dangerous thing to educate the lower classes of white
folks."
"You are not worrying yourself much about Rutledge in this race, are
you, Senator?"
"No, no, he'll never hear the gun fire. Why man, he's neither one thing
nor the other. Some of his ideas about the nigger will make any _white_
man mad, and yet nobody ever did make a more forcible protest against
Phillips' nigger luncheon, nor paint a more horrible picture of
miscegenation.... Strange thing about that, too,"--the Senator lowered
his voice to reach only the inmost circle, and the yokels almost
dislocated their necks in attempts to burglarize his confidence--"do you
know it was whispered that Rutledge was engaged to Phillips' oldest
daughter"--the Senator's voice dropped still lower--"no doubt, they say,
that he is, or was, very much in love with her."
The smaller circle exchanged glances of interest, and a smile went
round.
"Gosh, isn't that a situation!" said one of them.
"Yes, but don't mention it," Mr. Killam requested.
"Certainly not."
* * * * *
"What was it he told 'em?" asked one of the unwashed of his more
fortunately placed fellow.
"I didn't ketch it all," replied the other, proud nevertheless to
possess even a fragment of a state secret.
* * * * *
The crowd was far too large for the Spartanburg court-house, so the
public discussion was had under the oaks of Burnett Park. An improvised
platform of planks laid upon empty boxes lifted the candidates high into
view of the assembled Spartans, who stood without thought of fatigue for
six hours and listened to the merry war of words, and encouraged,
interrogated, cheered and howled at the speakers in good old primary
campaign fashion.
The primary campaign is inherently prolific of heat and hate: for the
candidates, being agreed on political principles, are driven perforce to
the discussion of personal records and foibles. This campaign had
developed the most friction between Mr. LaRoque and Mr. Killam, these
two having been long in public life and having accumulated the usual
assorted odds and ends of memories they would desire to forget.
In the very beginning of the canvass the Senator and the Colonel had
rushed through Touchstone's category from the Retort Courteous to the
Quip Modest, the Reply Churlish, the Reproof Valiant, the Countercheck
Quarrelsome, the Lie with Circumstance, and had pulled up on the very
ragged edge of the Lie Direct. There they had hung for days, while an
appreciative public feigned to wait in breathless suspense for the
moment when the unequivocal words "You are a liar" should precipitate a
tragedy and the coroner count one of the gentlemen out of the race. At
many of the meetings, the reports had it, were the people "standing on
the crust of a muttering volcano," or in tense situations where "a
single spark to the powder" would have--played hell; and especially at
Gaffney on the preceding day, so the newspapers said, was the feeling so
bitter and the words so caustic that partisans of Killam and LaRoque,
"desperate men who would shoot at the drop of a hat, had stood with
bated breath, hand on pistol, imminently expectant of the fatal word
that should cause rivers of blood to flow."
Non-residents who occasionally read of the South Carolina campaigns and
have formed the idea that they are things of blood, battle, murder and
sudden death, may be somewhat relieved and reassured to learn that in
the last thirty years not a single volcano has erupted, not a
powder-mine has exploded, not a teaspoonful of blood have all the
candidates together shed--notwithstanding the fact that a fiery Lie
Direct has more than once been pitched sputtering hot into the powder of
these debates. Let timid outsiders not be too much overwrought,
therefore, because of these bated breaths and hands full of pistols,--it
is just a cute way the good South Carolinians have of manifesting an
interest in the proceedings.
The Spartanburg debate drew itself along after the usual fashion. There
was plenty of noise, gesticulation and heat, and the usual allotment of
"critical moments" when "tragedy was miraculously averted" by the
"marvelous self-control and cool head of the Honourable" Thomas, Richard
or Henry.
Senator Killam followed Colonel LaRoque, and long before he had
finished, the crust over the volcano had been worn thinner than ever,
the crowd was in a tumult, and no man could have made an altogether
coherent speech to it.
The Senator had not referred to Rutledge in his talk, but at the end of
it, as Rutledge was to follow him, he introduced him to the people as
"my young friend who believes it is possible for a negro to become the
equal of a white man." It had been Mr. Killam's studied practice to
ignore Rutledge and treat his candidacy as a harmless youthful caper,
and he usually referred to his former colleague briefly in the very
words in which he then presented him to the assembled Spartans.
Mr. Killam's shrewd but unfair characterization of him gave Rutledge a
fine opening for a speech, but it gave him no little trouble also, for
the Senator always appeared to make the statement casually with an air
that said it didn't make the slightest difference anyway what the young
Mr. Rutledge thought; and it was a difficult thing for Rutledge to
straighten the matter out without magnifying the gravity of the charge.
Rutledge was quite able to take care of himself in any controversy where
calm and intelligent reason was the arbiter, but it requires a peculiar
order of ability to be master of such assemblies as was gathered there.
While far from being a novice or a failure at stump-speaking, Rutledge
was not in Senator Killam's class at that business. He had not learned
that, whatever else it may be, and however much it may be such
incidentally, a stump-speech is not primarily an appeal to reason. He
took too much pains to be perfectly accurate, consistent and logical in
all the details of his argument. He dealt too much in argument. His
reasoning was excellent--as far as he was permitted to deliver it; but
many of his choicest webs of logic were demolished half-spun by the
irrelevant, irreverent, impertinent questions yelled at him by the
crowd.
It takes a shifty man to accept all these challenges and turn them to
his own account. Rutledge was well aware of that fact, but it was not
for that reason alone that he ignored them as far as possible. He had
started out on the campaign with the high purpose and resolve to pay his
countrymen the compliment to talk to them as to men who think, and he
had held as religiously to that ideal as his countrymen would permit.
Like the other three he was addressing himself principally to the record
and claims of Mr. Killam, and the Killam partisans, already fomented by
LaRoque's speech, were in a ferment of disorder. In a perfect shower of
interruptions Rutledge had held his way unturned and apparently
unnoticing when--
"You want to marry ol' Phillips' oldes' daughter, don't yuh?" split the
air like the crack of a bull-whip.
Rutledge, hand uplifted in the middle of a sentence, stopped so quickly,
so astonished, that he forgot to lower his arm.
"Um-huh! Thought that'd fetch yuh! When're yuh goin' to marry the
nigger's sister?"
Before Rutledge could locate the disturber the crowd was in an uproar.
"Kill him!" "Kick him out!" "Hit him in the head with an axe!"--these
were only a few of the cries that tore themselves through the
pandemonium.
Rutledge stood, pale with passion, while the outburst spent itself. It
seemed a very long time.
"My fellow countrymen," he said, when his voice could be heard--and at
the sound of it the assemblage became very quiet--"I will answer my
unknown and unseen questioner as though he were a man and not a dog. I
have not the honour or the hope to be engaged to Miss Phillips; but, if
I had, I would account myself most fortunate. So much for the
question.... As for the man who asked it, we certainly have come upon
strange times in South Carolina, my countrymen, if the names of women
are to be bandied in political debates. It has not surprised me to see
you rebuke it. By your quick indignation at such an outrage you have
spontaneously vindicated the good name of your State. The dog who made
this attack cannot be of South Carolina. If born so he is a degenerate
hound. You have no part with him: and before you kick him out there is
only left for you to inquire whose collar he wears. What master has fed
him and trained him and taught him this trick, and secretly has set him
on to make this attack? That is the only question, my countrymen: _Whose
hound dog is this_?"
"Rutledge! Rutledge! Hurrah for Rutledge!" "Kick him out!" "Shoot the
dog!" "Tie a can to his tail!" "Who's lost a dog?" "Hurrah for
Rutledge!" Rutledge's supporters bestirred their lungs to make the most
of the situation.
"You go to hell! Hurrah for Killam!"--the defiant voice was the voice
of the offender.
Senator Killam sprang to his feet with the bound of a panther.
"Say, you!"--he leaned far over the edge of the platform and shook his
fist in a towering rage at his admirer who now stood revealed--"I give
you to understand that I don't want the support of any such damn
scoundrel as you or any of your folks, you infernal--" but bless you,
though the Senator was screaming his denunciation, the rest of it was
lost to history in the war of applause in which "Killam!" and
"Rutledge!" seemed to bear about equal weight. The deafening crash of
sound seemed to double when Mr. Killam, ceasing his screaming pantomime,
stepped quickly over to Rutledge and extended his hand, which Rutledge
took and shook with warmth as the old man spoke something that of course
the crowd could not hear.
* * * * *
After the speaking was finished, Rutledge went back to his hotel, and,
taking from the clerk a bundle of mail that had been forwarded to him,
climbed up to his room to look it over.
The third letter he opened was in a plain business envelope with
typewritten address. He read:
"Unspeakably false? No, no, Evans, I am not false. I have not been
false: for I love you. Such a long time I have loved you. Sometimes I
have believed you loved me, and sometimes I have doubted; but I do not
doubt since you told me to-night I was unspeakably false. Shame on you
to swear at your sweetheart so!--and bless you for saying it, for now I
know. O why did you not say it earlier so that I might not have misread
you? I thought you felt yourself committed, and must go on: that your
love was dead, but honour held you. You looked so distressed, dear
heart, that I was misled. Forgive me. And do not think I do not know
your distress. I, too--but no, I must not. I love you, I cannot do
more. In your rage were you conscious that your kiss fell upon _my
lips_, dearest? Blind you were when you said I was unspeakably false--"
*CHAPTER XL*
Elise Phillips had not stirred from Virginia Springs since coming there
with her mother and two little sisters early in April. Her father had
visited them regularly each week-end except when imperative official
duties forbade, and had suggested at his almost every coming that Elise
take some little outing from her mother's bedside. Elise would not go.
She was as constant in ministering to her mother as was the nurse in
charge.
Not even when her father died did she go to look upon him in farewell,
for she was momentarily fearful lest her mother go away also for ever.
It was a forced choice between the claims of the living and the dead.
Her heart was torn with a distressing sense of her father's loneliness
in death--going to his grave in state, thousands following his
catafalque--and yet not a single member of his family beside him: her
mother and Helen prostrated, Katherine and May too very young, and she
herself drawn on the rack of a divided duty.
Her daily life had been secluded and monotonous, except in the moments
when her cumulating sorrows were so poignant that they drove out
monotony. With religious regularity and with tenderest love--as for a
wayward unfortunate child--she had written to Helen at Hill-Top, and at
the private hospital in which she was now detained, until the physician
in charge had requested that she discontinue her letters except at such
times as he should advise.
Only in the last fortnight, since her mother was beginning slowly to
recover strength, had Elise given the slightest heed to her physician's
orders that she herself take some appreciable outdoor exercise and care
of her health. Few of the summer visitors stopping at the one hotel of
the quiet resort ever had a glimpse of her, for the reason that the
cottage taken by Mrs. Phillips was quite removed and secluded. The few
friends who did see her remarked upon her loss of flesh and added
beauty.
Elise was never beautiful after an assertive, flamboyant fashion, but
was of that sublimated type of loveliness that, stealing slowly and
softly in upon the senses, at last holds them rapt before the Rare
Vision: Woman in Excelsis. Now, however, vigils and griefs had touched
her face and form with a spirituelle quality not ordinarily possessed by
them, and this ethereal effect caught the eye more quickly, and revealed
at once the fine and exquisite modelling of her beauty.
She had seen and heard very little of Rutledge for half a year. During
the remainder of the Washington season after Helen's marriage was
announced she had bravely kept up appearances by missing none of the
functions and gayeties that had claim upon her time and interest, and on
one or two occasions had been face to face with him and exchanged brief
but formal salutations. Since she had been at Virginia Springs an
occasional brief press notice of the South Carolina senatorial campaign
was all the word she had of him except a couple of lines in a letter
from Lola Hazard in May.
On the Sunday morning after the Spartanburg meeting, at about the usual
hour of eleven o'clock, the boy brought the Washington papers. As Elise
sat down in the shadow of the porch and unfolded _The Post_ she
experienced the most acute sensations of interest that had stirred her
for months. Over and again she read that Mr. Rutledge had neither "the
honour nor the hope to be engaged to" her.
After the first surprise, came anger. The publicity was very offensive;
and, beyond that, the denial itself was to be resented. As she
understood it, no gentleman has the right to deny an engagement to any
_lady_--that was the woman's privilege: and for the man's denial to
savour of meeting an accusation--unpardonable!
But he had said "the honour:" oh, yes, of course; she admitted the word
was all right, but at best it was such a formal word: and it might have
been sarcasm--she could hardly imagine it other--for had he not told her
she was unspeakably false? If she only could have heard how he said it!
... "Nor the hope:" worse still, he was trying to purge himself of the
very slightest mental taint of guilt. It was an utter repudiation of
her--in the face of the mob, he had not even _the hope_--very well, let
it be so--doubtless his political career and a South Carolina mob was
what he had in mind when he had said to her, "It is better so." ...
"Would account himself most fortunate:" oh, certainly, Elise sneered,
make a brave show of gallantry, but be particular to have the mob
understand that you have _not even the hope_ (by which it will
understand _desire_)--it will be better so, for the politician....
Resentment possessed Elise.
This state of mind did abide with her--on through luncheon, and after.
She thought of little else.
As evening approached she took Katherine and May for a stroll.
Following the roadway some little distance toward the hotel, the three
turned into a well-defined path leading up the hill that robbed the
cottagers of their sunsets.
With an open prospect toward the east, the Virginia Springs folk might
have all the glories of the morning as the free gift of God; but to
possess the sunsets they must pay tribute of breath and strength in a
climb of what the low-country visitors called "the mountain." The long
ridge was really not of montane height, but was sufficiently uplifted to
stay the feet of all except such as "in the love of Nature hold
communion with her visible forms."
Once on top, however,--with its broad, open, wind-swept reaches rolling
down to the wide river valley on the west and southwest, with a sweep of
vision over the lower hills and lowlands to the north, east and south,
and in the west across the river to the far-lying mountains showing
under the afternoon sunlight only their smoky heads indistinct above the
white haze that veiled the foothills: one had measurably the sensation
of standing on top of the world.... The climb was a favourite diversion
of Elise, and the red-splashed and golden sunsets and the sense of
physical and spiritual uplift, a passion with her.
Before they reached the summit on this summer afternoon, the little May
was sufficiently exercised, and wished to return. Permitting her and
Katherine to go back alone, Elise climbed on to the top of the hill. and
sitting down in her favourite seat, looked steadily into the west--into
the future--into her heart.... Pride is inherently not a bad thing. Nor
are its works always evil. Elise's pride in her love finally rebelled
against her evil thinking of her lover. It preferred to think good of
him, and it began to construct a defence of him.... First it set up
that she had refused him pointblank, had denied her own love, and that
after such a dismissal she certainly could demand from him nothing in
the way of loyalty. Further, before dismissing him she had led him on
to hope, no doubt about that; and in the light of her conduct his
denunciation was just: she had mocked him--he was justified in thinking
she was unspeakably false. What right, then, had she now to demand of
his love that it should be loyal, that it should sacrifice his political
future, that it should confess to a hope,--or even to a desire, if he
had so meant it? Her heart admitted she was estopped.... Yet it could
not be content and dismiss the matter from her thinking.... Had he meant
to deny desire in denying hope? She asked herself the question....
Could one negative hope without admitting desire? ... Is there not
desire in the dead as in the living hope? Do not hope and hopeless
premise desire? ... Elise's mind was wandering in the maze of the
psychology of hope, when she looked about to see coming up toward her
_the man_.
* * * * *
Rutledge caught a train Washington bound in thirty minutes after reading
Elise's fragment of a letter. He sent a telegram to his campaign
manager, Robertson: "I am called north on business. Will miss
Greenville meeting. Represent me there. It is probable I can make
Laurens meeting Tuesday."
The hurry of his departure over, he sat in the Pullman and persuaded
himself that he was undecided as to what he should do and was giving a
judicial consideration to the advisability of marrying a woman
sister-in-law to a negro: but the while he thought he was debating the
matter Kale Lineberger was whisking the New York and New Orleans Limited
along the curves of the Big Thicketty and across the bridges of the
Broad and the Catawba--speeding him on toward the girl--as fast as an
expert handling of throttle, lever and "air" could turn the
driving-wheels of the mammoth "1231" and keep her feet on the rails....
As Rutledge in the cool of Sunday morning stepped from the rear sleeper,
Jim McQueen climbed down from the engine, oil-can in hand.
"Well," said Jim, taking a look at his watch, "here's one Southern train
under a Washington shed on time,--if I do say it, as shouldn't." ...
Rutledge had not lost ten seconds in his coming to Elise.
Buying a copy of _The Mail_ from a boy, he took a cab to his lodgings.
From habit he looked first at the editorials. Turning then to the first
page he saw under a modest headline an accurate account of the
yesterday's episode at Spartanburg, and his statement that he was not
engaged to Miss Phillips. He read it over a second time. Then, as if
by the recurrence of a lapsed instinct, unthinkingly he turned the
leaves and was reading an item on the "society page."
"Virginia Springs, Va.--Her physician states that Mrs. Hayne Phillips is
recovering very slowly from the effects of the terrible shock caused by
Mr. Phillips' death, and will hardly be strong enough to be removed to
her home in Cleveland before the first of October."
Rutledge had been buried in South Carolina politics for ten weeks and in
that time had not seen the Virginia Springs date-line sometime so
familiar to him. Of course, he thought, Elise is with her mother! and
from the dating-stamp on that letter he had carelessly assumed she was
in Washington. He turned back a page and glanced hurriedly at a
railroad time-card, then at his watch.
"Here," he called sharply to the cabby, who jerked up his horse, "you've
but three minutes to get me back to the station--get a move on!" ... Out
of the cab through the waiting-room and at the gate he rushed. The
placid keeper barred the way.
"C. & O. west!" snapped Rutledge.
"Gone." The gateman seemed to be thinking of something else.
"How long since?"
"Half minute. Lynchburg, yes, madam--third track."
"When's the next?" Rutledge demanded impatiently.
"Three-eighteen. Don't block the way."
* * * * *
Desiring to avoid interviews and interviewers, Rutledge drove to his
sleeping quarters and shut himself in for the seven or eight hours wait.
His fever of impatience had time to rise and fall many times before the
hour and minute of 3:18 came slowly and grudgingly to pass. He had so
desired to tell Elise that he had come without delay.
It was very late in the afternoon when he reached the Virginia Springs
hotel. He was somewhat undecided how to proceed: whether to ask Elise's
permission to call or to present himself unannounced, whether to inquire
of the clerk in the crowded lobby the way to the Phillips' cottage or to
acquire the information more quietly. He noted that not less than half
a dozen men within ear-shot of the clerk's desk were at the moment
reading various papers that had Elise's name and his own in display type
on their front pages.
As he came down from his room after hurriedly making himself presentable
he met at the foot of the stairs Mr. Sanders, the managing owner of _The
Mail_. He was surprised, but annoyed more than surprised--for he must be
deferential to his chief,--and another precious half-hour was consumed
in the effort to pull himself away without giving offence. His only
compensation for the delay was in learning casually from Mr. Sanders
where to seek the Phillips cottage.
Finally shaking himself loose, he set out with more impatience than
haste to find Elise. When he had gotten beyond the eyes of the people
in the hotel he put some little speed into his steps. He was striding
along rapidly when just in front of him Katherine and May Phillips came
down out of the hill path into the road.
"Isn't this Katherine Phillips?" he asked, overtaking them.
"Yes," said Katherine, looking doubtfully at him.
"Well," said Rutledge, hesitating a moment, "you permitted me to shake
hands with you once. I'm Mr. Rutledge. Do you remember?"
"Yes," said Katherine, though with a shade of uncertainty in her tone.
"That's good. And who is this?"
"May," said Katherine.
"Why, certainly. I might have guessed." Rutledge extended his hand and
the little girl took it in simple confidence. "And where are you two
little ladies going, if I may ask?"
"Elise sent us home," said May, permitting him still to hold her
fingers.
"And where is she?" Involuntarily Rutledge almost came to a halt as he
asked the question.
"Way up on the mountain." May waved her small arm indefinitely back the
way they had come.... Rutledge's steps became slower and slower.
"Well, young ladies, I'm glad to have met you. I must be getting back.
I suppose you can get home safe."
"Oh, yes," said Katherine. "It's not far."
"So? Well, good-bye."
"Good-bye," said the little girls.
Rutledge's steps quickened as he came to the path and turned hurriedly
up the hill.
* * * * *
Your woman of the world is marvelous in her self-possession. In a
moment of complete abandon to thoughts of her love and her lover, Elise
looked about and saw the man coming to her. With her mind so intent
upon him that she wavered for a moment in doubt lest his appearing was
an hallucination, her manner of greeting him was the perfection of
indifferent politeness--neither warm nor frosty.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Rutledge. What wind blows you across the world
to-day?"--she seemed to know that he was just passing across the hill.
With her heart-revealing letter in his pocket--nay more, committed every
word to memory in his heart--Rutledge was taken aback by the casual way
in which she spoke to him. He knew, of course, that she had not mailed
him the letter and was not aware that he had it; yet on the basis of the
letter he had conceived words he would say to her and she to him: but
not a word he had prepared was possible at the moment.
"I am--I came--I have an appointment with Mr. Sanders, the owner of _The
Mail_--at the hotel--at half past eight." The appointment had been made
ten minutes ago. It was the only wind he could think of that was
blowing him across the world.
The man's confusion and seriousness and conscientious statement of
detail ordinarily would have amused Elise; but she had not for months
been in a mood to be amused.
A moment later Rutledge was laughing inwardly at himself, his confusion
gone, his self-possession perfect. His prosaic accounting for his
presence smothered the tiny romantic flame that had kindled in Elise's
bosom, and she in turn was taken aback: and the man saw, and knew, and
laughed unholily. Not even the most observing eye, fairly limited,
would have detected the effect upon her; but he had an unfair
advantage--for had he not her letter at that moment snuggled up close to
his heart?
His laugh was not out-breaking, but the girl saw embarrassment drop as a
cloak from his manner, and a flicker of amusement in his eyes; and the
quickness of the change was a bit bewildering to her. The word upon her
lips was stayed as she looked steadily at him as if for an explanation.
Rutledge spoke first,--but he did not presume upon his unfair advantage.
All the tenderness of his soul was bowing before the clear-eyed young
woman as she stood there so adorable, swinging her black hat in her
hand, the light hill-breeze stirring the loose strands of sunlit hair
about her temples and the folds of her simple summery mourning dress.
If he had obeyed the impulse he would have knelt to kiss the hem of that
dress. Emboldened by the words of her letter, he could not even then
with unseemly assurance come to her heart to possess it. Confidently as
he came to claim it, he drew near to her love as one whose steps
approach a shrine.
"It is a very pleasant surprise to find you up here," he said. "And
this view is a surprise also--a revelation. They did not tell me at the
hotel that such an one was to be had from this hill."
Elise was deceived by his words, and convinced that the merest chance
had appointed this meeting: and yet she could not dismiss from her mind
the question, "Why did he walk so straight at me as he came up the
hill?" His words, however, put the situation on an impersonal basis and
her reply in kind established the conventional status.
They talked of indifferent things, and she was speaking of the splendour
that was flaming in the west when the man's impatience broke the bands
he had put upon it.
"Elise, I love you, and I want you to be my wife." It was abrupt but it
was in tones of humble entreaty.
Taken completely unawares, Elise turned quickly about from the sunset to
look at him. Her gray eyes weighed his truth in the balance for five
seconds. His manner was softened and natural, his face and attitude
spoke love in every line. Her eyes dropped before his, and a rich
colour came to her throat, cheek and temple as she turned again to the
golden west.
Rutledge made a step toward her as if to take her. Her hand went up to
stay him, though the lovelight was on her face.
"Don't," she said gently. She was disposed to play with her happiness,
to hold him at arm's length. "Why do you come to me again, Mr. Rutledge?
You have had my answer once, and it must have convinced you." Her words
and her manner were contradictory, and Rutledge was confused. "You
plead without hope. You told the people yesterday that you had not even
the hope to be engaged to me. Why pursue a hopeless--no, no, don't!"
she again commanded as, ignoring her words, he moved to answer her
smile.
"And it's better so, Mr. Rutledge. You yourself have said it; and you
can hardly expect me to gainsay it."
Despite the smile on her face this was a shot that went home, and it put
Rutledge on the defensive.
"You could hardly expect me to say less, Elise, after your denial of
your love for me."
"My love for you? Of all the presumption!"
Elise caught her breath at this rejoinder, but it only gave zest to the
game and she tilted her chin mockingly at him.
Rutledge, with some deliberation, took from an inside coat pocket a
letter, and handed it to her. She glanced at it in astonished surprise,
and her face went hard.
"Where did you get this?" she cried.
"In the mail, yesterday afternoon. Elise, I didn't delay a moment in
coming to you. It came--"
"So this is what brought you!"
"Yes. I--"
"And you thought I sent it?"--her voice was as hard as her eyes were
cold.
"No. But you wrote it, and--"
"Did I?"
"Didn't you?"
"What a question!--and you came because you thought a lady called.
Certainly you did! You Southerners are so abominably gallant.... You
have acquitted yourself very handsomely, Mr. Rutledge. I congratulate
you. You have thoroughly vindicated your claim to the name of
'gentleman'--'Southern gentleman,' if the term is of more excellence.
Assuredly nothing further is required of you. I ex--"
"Elise, you wrote that letter."
"No."
"Elise!"
"Stop. Don't touch me!"--but his left arm went determinedly about her,
and only with both hands could she hold his right hand away.
"You wrote that letter, Elise; and you love me."
"No--never--no!" ... Her physical resistance seemed a match for his
strength.
"It is useless, Elise," he said to her as with tense muscles he strove
to subdue her will and her wilful pride. "I have always loved you, and
now that I know you love me nothing shall divide us. Why should you
hold out against love?"
But Elise's resistance was fixed and set. Rutledge pleaded and begged
and made love to her with all the tenderness of his heart and the energy
of his passion for her, and exerted his physical strength to break down
her defence.
"Tell me that you wrote it, sweetheart," he implored and besought her
again and again: but she only shook her head in dissent. He exhausted
every prayer and plea without avail.
Desperately resolved to win at any cost, he could only hold her fast and
swear in his heart she should not escape him. Finally he called upon
all his muscular power to crush her into surrender, and mercilessly bore
in upon her.
Elise bore out against him with all her strength. Her face became first
crimson and then pale with the effort. Her teeth bit into her lips.
Her breathing became fast and faster. But her will would not bend. The
man's brute force was almost vicious in its unrestraint. A tear was
forced through her tight-shut lashes, but her chin was still uplifted in
defiance when--
"You hurt me, Evans," she said, as her resistance collapsed and her face
fell hidden against his breast.
"And you wrote the letter, Elise?" he contended, broken-hearted that he
had hurt her, but holding her fiercely yet.
"Yes, dear;"--and he is holding her so tenderly now.
* * * * *
Weakly she stood, held close within his arms, until her exhaustion
passed, while he murmured to her the gentle nothings which have been
messengers of love in all ages. Very gently then she freed herself from
his embrace, permitting him still to hold her fingers.
"Let your own lips tell me you love me, Elise."
She looked up at him from under drooping lashes. Her mental decision
came before her actual complaisance. She revelled for a time in the
ecstasy of her mental abandon to love, and trembled in the very joy of
it.
"Yes, yes, I love you,"--and with closing eyes she lifted her face in
surrender. A long, long caress intoxicates them, and then, as if in
expiation for the blessed delirium of it--
"But not while Helen--not until Helen--oh, it is too horrible to wait
for your own sister to die!"--and she is crying her heart out against
his shoulder.
Rutledge waited till her tears were spent, and then tenderly he
protested.
"But Elise, you will not make any such decree as that. There's no need
that we should wait on Helen's account."
"Not while she lives, not while she lives," Elise repeated, looking into
his eyes. "I cannot permit your love to bring you to--"
"My love is all-sufficient, Elise; and all else is nothing since you
love me. Do not let your pride defeat us of our happiness, sweetheart.
Already it--"
"Pride? I have no pride any more for you, my dear. I do not conceal my
heart's love nor its woes from you. I believe that love alone, not
_noblesse_, brings you to me now. I love you, yes, I love you, but my
love forbids that I should marry you and destroy your career and your
mother's happiness."
"My mother! What do you know of that?"
"It is so, then! I knew it, Evans;--prescience, I suppose. I am a
granddaughter of South Carolina, you know. I know in my own heart what
her sorrow would be."
"No, no, Elise, you misjudge my mother. She would love you as she loves
me."
"Love me, yes--as well as even now I love--your mother. I believe it
and am glad, Evans. But, with all her loving, she could not put away
shame and grief. I know, dear, I know. She would love me and--curse
me."
"No, no, you do not know. I am willing to speak for my mother. She
will--"
"But who can speak for the voters in the coming election? No, Evans, I
must not! It would defeat you. Your sacrifice would be too great!"
"There would be no sacrifice. You are worth it all to me, dearest
heart--and more. And beside, I do not think the voters of my State
would--"
"Wait," said Elise. "Answer me--and answer me truly, for remember my
pride is gone and only love is in my heart. Will you win the
Senatorship?"
"The prospect is quite alluring," the man replied. "The betting is 2 to
1 that the first primary will not elect, and 9 to 10 that I will defeat
Mr. Killam in the second. Robertson really seems to be convinced that I
am to succeed."
"Oh, how good that is! I pray for you--but would it not cost you votes,
maybe the election, to marry me?--to be engaged to me, even? Do not
deceive me. Have you not thought of the hurt it would do your chance of
success? Truth and honour, now,--as I love you."
In the face of that sacred obligation Rutledge hesitated an instant.
"_Thought_ of it, yes," he said at last, "but--"
"Then the danger is something considerable. I knew it. My letter's
coming was untimely, thanks to the unknown person who mailed it to you.
No, my dear, I will not marry you. I will not engage myself to you. I
will not defeat you."
Rutledge gathered her to himself again, confident to crush her
opposition by brute mastery as before. But there was no physical
opposition to be mastered now.
"It is useless," she said wearily. "I love you too much to marry you
now, Evans."
"Now?" repeated Rutledge. "If not now, when?"
"Or to engage myself to you."
Her impassive manner was tantalizingly irritating to him as he laid
under tribute every resource of his mind and heart to overturn her
decision. Her non-resisting resistance was proof against attack. It
was like fighting a fog. Seemingly it offered no opposition, and yet
when he had exhausted himself in attempts to brush it aside, it was
there, filling all space.
"No, no!" she cried out at last, thoroughly aroused by his passionate
plea for their happiness; "go! it is sinful even to dream of being happy
while one's sister is so wretched--and I will not have your blood upon
my hands--nor your mother's curse upon me!"
Rutledge gazed steadily at her a few moments,--and for an answer drew
out his watch to see what the hour was.
"Kiss me good-bye," she said, holding her lips up. to him simply as a
child.
Taking her hands and drawing them to his heart he bent his head down to
hers as reverently as if that gentle, lingering kiss were a sacrament.
Turning away, he went swiftly down the path he had come.
Elise sat down upon the boulder from which she had risen at his coming.
With her arms clasping her knees, her head was bowed above them, and her
shoulders drooped in abject hopelessness.
Looking up at the sound of his steps returning, she half turns to motion
him away.
"No, no. It means only that I no longer dissemble before you. Go.
There is no hope." And as he obeys she settles back motionless again
into that living statue of Despair.
* * * * *
When Mrs. Hazard read in that Sunday's paper an account of the
Spartanburg meeting she was dismayed. She had been on the _qui vive_
for nearly a week, though not looking to the newspapers for information.
Rutledge's repudiation of Elise angered her.
Monday's papers, however, brought her better temper. She laughed softly
as she read among the Virginia Springs items that Mr. Rutledge had
arrived there on Sunday afternoon. She was somewhat mystified, though,
by the fact that Mr. Rutledge had been so hopeless on Saturday
afternoon,--and she was struck with consternation when at last she
happened upon a local item which said Mr. Rutledge had passed through
the city Sunday night on his return to South Carolina.
"I think she might have written me!" she said when Monday's noon mail
brought no letter from her friend.
"I'm going to run over to see Elise this afternoon, if I can catch the
train," she told her husband at luncheon; and at 3:18 she was on the
way. A wreck ahead of them put her at the Virginia Springs hotel about
bed-time.
* * * * *
"How did you get here? I'm so glad to see you!" Elise exclaimed when
Lola appeared at the cottage next morning.
"Came last night," Lola said, giving her a hug, "but a miserable wreck
held us up till long after dark. I would have come directly here even
then, but I did not know how your mother was."
"She is much better," Elise said. "Come right in to see her."
Lola loved Mrs. Phillips very heartily, but she felt that Elise was
precipitate in taking her immediately to her mother's room. She went
along, of course, and sat down and talked to the two of them for an hour
or more. There seemed to be no end to the things they discussed,--the
more interminable they were because of the fact that Mrs. Hazard had not
made her journey for the pleasure of a general conversation.
She could not understand why Elise did this thing. She tried to read the
young lady's reason in her face, but that told nothing. It had not the
elation that bespoke a heart joyous in its love. Neither, in the
conventional gayety of the three-cornered conversation, did it betray a
heart that was desolate. The only thing certain was Elise's evident
avoidance of a _tete-a-tete_ with her best friend.
It came to pass Mrs. Phillips had to dismiss them on the plea of
exhaustion. Lola apologized profusely. Elise felt guilty, but she asked
for no pardon.
The young women went out on the broad veranda. Elise offered Lola the
hammock; but Mrs. Hazard was unconsciously too intent upon a present
purpose to assume such a purposeless attitude. She took a
rocking-chair, but she did not rock. As Elise arranged herself in the
hammock, her friend bethought herself as to how she should begin her
inquiries. She thought best not to display too minute an acquaintance
with the situation.
Elise had indeed some curiosity to know how Rutledge had come into
possession of the letter, and believed that Lola could throw light on
that matter. But to ask about it was too much like opening the grave of
love: and she recoiled. Looking at her face in repose, Lola was
convinced that things had gone wrong. This made her take the more
thought for an opening.
In the hush before the talk would begin, the boy brought the morning's
paper. Lola, seated nearest the steps, took it from his hand. She did
not have to unfold it to read what was of supreme interest. As she
read, her eyes danced. Half finished, she glanced from the paper to
Elise, whose face was apathy clothed in flesh. Lola sought the paper
again, feeling that the spooks were playing a trick upon her. It was
very plain reading, however. She crushed the paper in her lap, and
studied the profile of the girl in the hammock.
"Elise!" she called, still feeling that the spooks had her.
Elise slowly turned toward her a listless face,--which, indeed, took on
some life at sight of Mrs. Hazard's excitement.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Oh, full of all guile and subtlety!" Lola exclaimed with a gasp.
"Well, I have never!"
Elise looked at her inquiringly.
"Listen, miss; while I read you the news."
Lola picked up the paper and took time to smooth out its wrinkles.
"Don't be impatient, my lady.... Now. Here is the paragraph. It is
part of a special despatch from Greenville, South Carolina. You have no
idea where that is, of course; but listen:
"Ex-Senator Rutledge spoke last. He had just arrived from Washington,
unexpectedly, on a delayed train, and had not had time to brush the
coal-dust from his clothes. He made the usual forcible speech with
which he has dignified the campaign. At the end of it he said: 'My
fellow countrymen, I must be honest and candid with you. At the
Spartanburg meeting day before yesterday, in answer to the question of a
disreputable dog, I said that I had neither the honour nor the hope to
be engaged to the eldest daughter of the late President Phillips. That
was the exact truth, my countrymen. To-day I tell you that I do have
the happiness to be engaged to Miss Elise Phillips and that we will be
married on the last Thursday in next March.'"
There was no apathy in Elise's profile when Lola looked up from her
reading. The girl had covered her face with her hands, and flood upon
flood of colour was racing over it.
"Is that 'the exact truth, my countrymen?'" Lola demanded, standing over
the hammock.
"Yes," Elise said, "why not?"--and Lola grabbed her with a joyful shout.
"Don't make such a fuss," Elise sputtered from out the smother of Mrs.
Hazard's kisses, "for I haven't told mamma yet."
* * * * *
"--And look here," a radiant Elise demanded when the two of them had
become somewhat composed, "I want to know how it came about that a
letter I wrote _and burned_ should have--"
"Stop, stop, honey; I will not answer.... But I _do_ think it is a very
bad Samaritan who will not help Dan Cupid when he's in trouble."
*CHAPTER XLI*
The communications between Hayward Graham and the physician in charge of
the private hospital in which Helen was detained had become caustic. So
much so, that the great specialist had asked Graham to remove her from
his care. This Hayward was unable to do. Mrs. Phillips was paying the
hospital fees and expenses, and Hayward felt that he could not keep his
wife in proper and befitting manner even if she were altogether sane and
sound in health. He had no means with which properly to provide for her
if she was really in such a condition as the physician declared.
Not being willing or able to assume responsibility for her removal, he
was all the more angered at what he believed to be the eminent
alienist's positive misrepresentation of the gravity of Helen's ailment
and his unwarranted and cavalier treatment of him, her husband.
Provoked beyond endurance he went at last to the hospital.
"Mr. Hayward Graham? Yes. Well, come right into my office. Now, what
may I do for you?"
"Your last letter about my wife, doctor, was very unsatisfactory," said
Hayward, "and I came to see about it. Surely she cannot be so ill as
you report. When you admitted her you said she would recover her health
in a very short time."
"Excuse me, Mr. Graham; but if you wish to take issue with me as to your
wife's condition, I will have to insist on the request in my letter of
yesterday--that you remove her at once," the physician said with
decision.
"I do not desire to do that," Graham replied; "but I cannot understand
what has happened here to change her prospects of recovery, of which you
were so confident when you admitted her. Besides that I do not see why
you forbid me to communicate with her. She is certa--"
"Wait a moment, Mr. Graham. You must understand that in our prejudgment
of these cases we do not arrogate to ourselves infallibility; but that
in our treatment of them we do demand for ourselves absolute authority
to say what shall and what shall not be done, and the very strictest
obedience to that. This is a very peculiar case. It has one element
that is altogether unique. Never before have I met it in my practice or
seen it in the books. I am doing the best I can with it, and if you do
not de--"
"That is not it, doctor. I have no suggestions to make to you as to the
proper treatment, nor any objection, indeed, to complying with any
reasonable restriction; but when you say that I shall not see or
communicate with my wife at any time, it seems unreasonable. Does she
have no lucid intervals in which I might see her? Does she never think
or speak of me--never write to me?"
"Yes, Mr. Graham, she has lucid intervals. She speaks of you at times,
oftentimes. And she writes to you occasionally, but I have decided that
it would not--"
"Has written to me? And you have not sent me the letters? Surely,
surely, doctor, I am not crazy, that you should withhold letters from
me! Have you the letters? Has she written often?"
"She has written often; but only on two occasions was there anything
except disjointed sentences. She--"
"And when was that? And where are the letters?"
"I have them," replied the doctor, "but I do not think that--"
"I demand to see them, sir! I'm not in your hospital for treatment!"
"Very well," said the doctor, "I'll get them for you."
He went to a filing cabinet and took out a package of papers and came
back across the room with two sheets of paper which he handed to
Hayward, and watched him as he read them.
The first was as sweet and gentle and loving a letter as the heart of
man could desire. Some of the references in it were a little bit
obscure and inaccurate, but Hayward was too much elated with the tender,
petting things it said to notice trifles so inconsequential. He
revelled in it like a hungry man at a feast. He gulped down its
sweetness ravenously: and took the second. What! The first sentence
was the jab of a misshapen barb--and every following sentence a twisting
of that barb in the flesh.
"My God, this is awful!" he groaned. "I am sorry you gave it to me.
Have you no other like the first?"
"No," said the doctor. "All her other writings have been mere scraps or
incoherent mixtures of such things as are in the first letter you have
there with such as are in the one you have just read. These are the
only ones in each of which her mood was fixed and distinct."
Hayward took the first letter and read it over again as hungrily as at
first.
"In which mood does she seem most to be?" he asked.
"In the mood to write that first letter, fortunately; but the case is
peculiar in that very fact. I have studied it with--"
"Let me see her," Hayward broke in. "May I see her? I must see her!"
"I would advise against it," the doctor said, in a tone and manner that
was intended to be a polite refusal of permission.
"But I _must_ see her, I tell you. I demand to see her! I am her
husband, and if she is quiet to-day I demand to see and speak to her."
"Mr. Graham, this case is unique, as I have told you before; and even if
she is quiet I think it best not to--"
"Now, doctor, stop right there a moment. She is my wife, and I will not
be bound by any orders her mother may have given you! I am going to see
her this once. I assume all responsibility, sir!"
The physician looked at him with a sneer of contempt on his face.
"Very well, Mr. Graham," he said finally. "You shall see her. But
permit me to say that Mrs. Phillips has had the good sense and the good
taste to make no suggestions to me as to how I shall manage this
case.... Come right along down to the ward, sir."
He led the way down a long hall and, tapping upon a door, was admitted
into a transverse corridor by an attendant.
"How is Mrs. Graham?" he asked in an undertone.
"Quiet at the moment, sir."
Hayward heard Helen's voice and started forward eagerly. The physician
caught him by the arm and restrained him.
"Wait," he whispered. "Let's listen a minute."
It was hard for Hayward to wait. He could hear Helen's words coming
from the second door down the corridor, and only the doctor's hand
stayed him from rushing into her presence. They moved quietly nearer to
the door and stood still to hear what she was saying. As they listened
tides of joy rolled in upon Hayward's heart....
Helen was humming a song that her husband had heard of old. Her voice,
though somewhat weak, had its old joyous ring. Hayward could easily
imagine she was coming tripping down to the stable for her horse to take
a morning canter. When she finished the song and was silent, he noted
for the first time that the grated door to her cell was locked and its
rungs and pickets were heavily padded. He resented that, and turned
upon the physician to protest, but was held by the doctor's signal for
silence. He obeyed, but his resentment grew as Helen's words came again
in gentle accents to them.
She was moving slowly about, and was evidently arranging some
flowers--to judge by the things she was saying to them. It was very
kind of the doctor, her husband thought, to let her have her
flowers--she was always so fond of them.... In half a minute she was
singing a lullaby that she had sung to their baby. Hayward could hardly
contain himself. And when he heard her walk across the room,--to a
window, it seemed,--and say, in a tone so expressive of longing: "If
Hayward would only come and take me out to-day! It is such a beautiful
day outside," he snatched his arm free of the doctor's hand and called
to her as he sprang in front of the door.
Helen turned at his call, and looked at him for a space with dilated
eyes. In that space Hayward saw that her cell was padded throughout,
floor and walls, and that there was not a flower or a flower-pot in the
room, that her clothing was torn, her hair streaming and dishevelled.
Before he had time to make any inferences from these facts, Helen, still
gazing at him with that peculiar stare, started across the room to him,
saying gladly, "Oh, you have come to take me out driving!"
Nearly to the door she stopped. Slowly her face changed its whole
expression. The wide-eyed stare gave way, and the old Helen looked at
him a moment from her eyes. In another moment her face was convulsed in
a spasm of aversion.
"Go away! Go away!" she cried out wildly as she turned from him.
Retreating into a far corner of her cell, she called to the attendant,
"Oh, save me!--take him away!--keep him away!"
"Why, Helen, don't you know me?" Hayward called to her.
"Yes, yes, I know you, but in God's name leave me! Don't let him in!
Don't let him in!" she pleaded with the physician, who also had come to
the door.
"I'll not hurt you, Helen. You know I'll not hurt you. Don't run from
me. You know I'll not hurt you."
Hayward motioned to the physician to unlock the door. Whereupon Helen
uttered a blood-curdling scream as she cowered back into her corner.
"Don't! Don't!! He has already hurt me, doctor! Go away! Go _away_!
The poison of your blood is in my veins and will not come out! It is
polluted, forever polluted! A knife--_a knife_! Give me a knife,
doctor, that I may let it out. Please give me a knife. I have prayed
you daily for one and you won't give it to me. Kill me--_save me_! My
blood is _unclean_, and he did it! My baby was black, _black_!--and its
negro blood is in my veins! A knife, doctor! A knife!! Oo-o-a-ugh!!
I'll tear it out, then!"--and she clawed and tore and bit at her wrists
in an agony of endeavour to purge her veins of the tainted fluid which
had brought to life that fright, her baby.
Hayward stood helpless and terror-stricken before the door, and his
staying only drove Helen into more horrible paroxysms.
"Come away, man, come away," the doctor commanded; and he obeyed weakly.
"Great God," he said when he was back in the physician's office, "that
is awful, awful! How can she live, doctor, if she is shaken and torn by
such dementia as that?"
"I cannot say whether she will live, Mr. Graham," the doctor replied;
"but her periods of dementia give her the only relief that she enjoys.
As a remedy for exhaustion they are our only hope for her life so far
appearing."
"I don't understand," said Graham, "how such suffering as that can be a
relief from exhaustion."
"I did not say that," said the doctor. "I said her _periods of
dementia_ give her relief from exhaustion. As I said before, Mr. Graham,
this is an absolutely unique case. It is--"
"Unique in what?" asked Graham.
"It is unique in this," said the physician: "It is in her sane
moments--in her lucid intervals, when she is fully conscious of her
condition and situation--that she raves and tears herself and cries out
against the devils that are torturing her. It is in such moments that
her eyes have the light of reason in them. On the other hand, it is when
she is _insane_, demented--when her mind is unhinged and wandering--that
she is quiet and peaceful and happy. The letter you enjoyed was written
when she was crazy. The one that tortured you was written when she was
clothed and in her right mind."
"My God, doctor, that cannot be! Do not tell me that!" cried Hayward,
shaken like a reed. "Tell me whether there is hope for her?"
"As I said, Mr. Graham, the case is unique and therefore any opinion is
nothing more than a bare opinion, but to me her case is hopeless for the
reason that her violences are based not upon hallucinations--which might
pass--but upon _facts_ which no sane mind can deny. At present the only
hope for her life is that her periods of dementia, with their peace and
quiet, will increase: and that her sane moments, in which she suffers
the tortures of the damned, will become briefer and fewer. Only that
will save her from death from exhaustion."
"No, no, doctor! Can't you--"
* * * * *
A soldier in uniform stepped into the recruiting office, saluted, handed
the officer his papers, and stood at _attention_, saying simply, "I
desire to re-enlist."
The officer unfolded the "honourable discharge" and read aloud,
"Sergeant John Hayward Graham." Looking the paper over, he turned to
Graham.
"Yes, this is all right--if you are physically fit; but you have waited
so long you have lost your rank and will have to begin at the very
bottom again."
"Yes, sir. I understand, sir."
"Very well, the clerk can make out the new papers from these while the
surgeon looks you over. Where do you wish to serve--in the United
States or the Philippines?"
"Anywhere my country needs a man, sir."