Mrs. Trescot received no acknowledgment of the receipt of her letter,
nor had the unhappy woman to whom it was sent any intention of answering
it. She desired never again to hear of the writer.
Making such excuses as were possible to her astonished friends, Miss
Wilson took the train to the North on the day after her visit to Mr.
Kent, and thence returned to Sacramento. She was wise enough to avoid a
meeting with Greyhurst.
From Chicago she wrote to Mr. Kent a note of renewed thankfulness, and
earnestly asked that he would not feel it necessary to mention to Mr.
Greyhurst what he, Mr. Kent, had told her. “I am most grateful to you,”
she wrote, “for the courage of what you did for me, a stranger; but I
cannot rest easy under the idea that, in his anger and disappointment, a
man as passionate may again do something as rash as that which has
parted us forever. It will be altogether unnecessary for you to speak of
what you said to me, because Mrs. Trescot’s letter will suffice to
explain to him the reasons for my decision. It is an unfeeling letter,
but it will so justify my decision as to relieve you from need to
speak.”
Her request had no effect on Kent’s intention. He had taken on himself a
grave responsibility, and meant to abide by it. He had neither fear of
unpleasant consequences nor belief that they would occur. The thought
that Mrs. Trescot’s letter would reach Greyhurst made him far more
uneasy. He resolved to speak to the lawyer on his return, which took
place two days later.
Greyhurst had found difficulty in satisfying the bankers on whom he
relied. The money-market was unsettled, and men were indisposed to go
into even the most promising ventures. He was advised to wait, to return
in a month. He left New York a much disappointed man, and went home to
meet conditions which he knew must result in ruin.
Thinking sadly of his affairs, and with some relieving hope in regard to
Jeanette Wilson, whom he very honestly loved and sincerely respected, he
left the station at St. Ann. The phantom face had been seen of late but
rarely, and had lost distinctness.
On his way he called to see Colonel Dudley. His wife was in the hall.
“Glad to see you back,” she said. “My husband is out.”
“Tell the colonel that I was detained in New York. I will call
to-night.”
“You have just missed Miss Wilson.”
“Miss Wilson! Has she been in St. Ann?”
“Yes; but she stayed only two or three days. She has gone.”
“Did you see her, Mrs. Dudley?”
“Oh, yes; she was looking very pretty and very well. We had a little
talk. I hope I may soon be able to congratulate you.”
If she desired to make him speak of Miss Jeanette, she was mistaken.
“You may not,” he returned abruptly.
He knew Mrs. Dudley well and disliked her. Something in her face and
manner, and what she had mentioned, made him uncomfortable. He said
good-by and went on to his office. He unlocked it and went in. His clerk
had left a number of letters on his table. None of them were very
reassuring. The people from whom he had bought the river-frontage, in
his hope of adding the strip Mrs. Trescot had taken from him, were
urgent for payment of interest upon a mortgage left on the property.
There were other claims as pressing: notice of a note gone to protest,
two unpaid bills for the schooling of his daughter. He tossed the papers
aside, and, turning over his other letters in eager haste, fell upon one
in a hand he knew and loved. He tore it open and read:
“DEAR SIR:
“After seeing you I spent some of the most miserable hours a not too
happy life has brought me. I was wretched because I felt that you
might not have been able to be entirely truthful. I had to learn more
than I could expect you to tell. My whole life was at stake. Where I
love I must also respect, and I was in an agony of doubt. I could not
stand it. I went to St. Ann, and there gathered from various sources
all that men knew of that one sad matter of which you talked to me. I
heard too much for my own happiness. I thought it all over with such
grief as it pains me to remember; and, with every desire to be just,
I have prayed to be rightly guided, and now I must tell you that I
can never marry you.
“I shall give no further explanations. The letter I inclose, hard and
cruel as it is, would have been enough. I will never see you again,
and this is final. What this decision costs me you can never know.
May God guide and guard you! Forgive me the pain this letter will
inflict on you. It cannot be greater than what it costs me.
“Yours truly,
“JEANETTE WILSON.
“JOHN GREYHURST, Esq.”
He turned with sudden anger to the inclosed letter from Mrs. Trescot. He
read that also. He let it fall and lay back in his chair. As he read,
the remembrance of the young man walking toward him, with the smile of
what he had taken to be triumph, came back to him. He looked up and saw
once more the silvery phantom, for some weeks absent at times or
indistinct. It, too, was smiling. He took up Jeanette Wilson’s letter
and read it and re-read it. When at last he laid it down the paper was
wet from his sweating hands. He knew her too well to have the slightest
hope. She herself could never have had any conception of the passion
with which he loved her, nor could she have fully appreciated what to
him would be this ending of his hopes for a life that would atone for
the past and satisfy her ideals. And this was that woman’s work! He
cursed her with oaths too dreadful to repeat. She had brought him to the
verge of ruin, had tortured him into impossibility of forgetfulness, and
now she had taken away from him the one real love of his unhappy life.
He rose, seeing the face as before. “My God!” he cried, staring at the
phantom, “George Trescot, you ought to thank me!” As he stood up he
staggered with a return of the old vertigo, and seized a chair back
until it passed away. It did not now alarm him. He caught up his
traveling-cap, and as he passed out left the door open. In the street he
was recognized by two or three men. One said, “He has been drinking.” He
went on his way, turning down West Street toward his house, which, in
his absence, had been closed. Walking rapidly, he went past the church
at the corner, and crossed to the south side of the street. Kent had
just come out of his study and stood still, enjoying the splendor of
scarlet above the setting sun, and the strange colors cast on the yellow
waters of the mighty river below. It was unusual, and, becoming more and
more intense, was changing from moment to moment.
Kent wondered if Susan Hood were feeling the mysterious awe which for
him vast masses of red created. No other color so affected him. He
wished her to share with him the solemn beauty of the fading day, and
while hastening to find her at her home, he saw Greyhurst in front of
him.
Glad of an early chance to free his mind, he quickened his pace and
overtook him. He said, as he joined him:
“Good evening, Mr. Greyhurst.”
Without turning his head, the man beside him said, “Good evening,” and
leaving him, abruptly crossed the street.
Kent was surprised, and said to himself, “He must have heard, but how
could he have heard?”
With increase of interest he saw Greyhurst stop, look over at Mrs.
Trescot’s, and pass on. Still more amazed, he, too, went by the house
and, pausing, observed Greyhurst go up his own steps and, as it seemed,
try the door. Apparently finding himself unable to enter, he went around
the house, through the garden, and was lost to view. Kent thought it all
rather odd; but, like the man on the main street, concluded that
Greyhurst must have been drinking, and turned back to seek Susan Hood.
The March day in this warm clime was already rich with the young buds of
spring. He picked an opening rose, and, ringing the bell, stood at the
door, left open for the cooler air of evening to sweep through the hall.
He saw how the vast flood of scarlet to westward was slowly darkening to
orange.
The maid said Miss Susan had just come in and was up-stairs. Mrs.
Trescot was in the parlor. He hesitated a moment and then went in.
Mrs. Trescot was seated at the western window in a listless attitude,
her hands in her lap. She turned as he entered saying, “What a glory of
color!”
“Yes,” she said; “but I do not like it. I dislike red. I always did,
even when a child.”
“Well,” he said, smiling, “Nature is generously respectful; she is
shifting her scenery.”
“And then,” she said, “it will be night, and I do not love darkness. I
should like to live in endless daylight.”
He thought singular both her moody manner and the feeling she expressed.
“The Northland would suit you for half the year, but not me. I hope Miss
Hood did not miss the sunset.”
“I do not know.”
For a moment there was silence,—the woman gazing at the slowly darkening
pall above the dying day, the man resolute to fulfil a long-held
purpose.
“I do not know whether you can understand the great pleasure you gave me
the other day when you said I have some likeness to my cousin. It has
been noticed by others, but for you to see it meant much to me. If in
all ways I could be like him I should be well satisfied with myself.”
“You are like him,” she said, turning toward him. “It pleased me, and I
wondered that I had not seen it before. It is in manner more than in
face.”
He returned earnestly: “May not that give me the privilege of taking
with you a liberty greater than our brief acquaintance justifies?”
“Oh, yes, if you want to.” She would have said no in some form if there
had not been something sadly familiar in the grave gentleness of Kent’s
approach; something which forbade her to deny him. She was deeply moved
as, in the lessening light, she heard him say:
“I want to speak to you as a man, not as a clergyman.”
“Go on,” she returned faintly.
“Thank you. You cannot know—you cannot have known—the pain you have
given to Miss Susan and to the many whom you have helped in St. Ann. May
I not ask you to think how it will end. I should feel glad, for you and
others, that it should end.”
“Yes, it must end. I fear that now it is at an end.”
Her voice lost its languor. She ceased to regard either the sunset or
the man, and sat up, a little excited, looking straight in front of her.
“If,” she continued, “it had not been at an end, I do not think I should
have been willing to listen to you. I have allowed no one to interfere
with my actions—not even my sister; but now I do not care. I have made
that man suffer. I have taken from him the power to forget. I have
ruined him financially, and I believe—yes, I am sure—that I have taken
from him the love of a woman; and now you ask me how it will end! If you
had talked to me about my soul, and of the sin of punishing a murderer,
I should have laughed at you. You did not. You have done what you think
a duty. You have talked as George would have done, and so I answer that
I know nothing more I can do. If there were anything I could do to
injure or to punish, I should do it eagerly. There is nothing.”
“And,” he said, “are you satisfied?”
“No, I am not. If I could fill his days with grief like mine,—oh, to his
latest hour,—if I could make his nights, like mine, one long anguish of
yearning and unrest, I should be satisfied.”
He touched the thin, white hand which lay on her knee. He made no other
reply. The malady was past his helping. She turned and looked at him
steadily. A certain tender sweetness in his silent failure to respond,
some fresh recognition of resemblance, disturbed her as she said:
“For good or ill, I suppose it is at an end.”
Then, as he heard a heavy footfall behind him, she was on her feet. John
Greyhurst was standing in the doorway. Tall, broad-shouldered, pale, and
with eyes deeply congested, he came quickly to the middle of the room
and stood still as Mrs. Trescot leaped to her feet and faced him.
Kent laid a hand on his arm. “This,” he said, “is the last house you
should dare to enter.”
“What do you want?” said Mrs. Trescot, faintly; and then, in sudden
anger, “Out of this, murderer—go!”
He shook off Kent’s arm and said in unnaturally measured tones:
“No; this is my hour, not yours. For these many months you have driven
me to despair. You have taken from me, at last, all that was left to
me—a woman’s love. I am here to end it—to settle my debt.”
As he spoke, and his hand dropped to his pocket, Kent instantly threw
himself before him. The woman stood still, glad of the swift coming of
death.
With his left arm Greyhurst threw Kent violently from him across the
room, and as the young man fell, stunned for the moment, he covered her
with his revolver. She stood motionless.
“Thank you,” she said; “I am glad—glad to die!”
He laughed. “You fool!” he cried, and turning the pistol to his temple,
fired. His arm dropped in jerks. For a moment he stood, staring, and
then fell as a tree falls, shaking the room with his bulk.
The woman staggered back, caught behind her with both hands the edge of
a table, and stared at the man at her feet—dead.
As the servants ran in and out again, screaming, Kent was on his feet.
He knelt beside Greyhurst, and then looked up as Susan ran in and stood
still, terrified.
“Is he dead?” asked Constance.
“Yes, he is dead.”
“Then he is gone, and I am alive. Will you have it taken away—quick,
quick—out of my house?”
Kent caught her as she staggered to the door, swaying and crying, “Take
him away, take him away, out of this house—anywhere!” She pushed Kent
aside, passed into the study, and, as Susan followed her, fell on to a
lounge. The house filled with a crowd of neighbors. Susan, always most
quiet when others lost their heads, shut the door. Kent, having said a
word of explanation to those in the parlors, reëntered the study.
Constance was breathing fast, her eyes wide open. Leaving a scared maid
beside her, Kent led Susan into the hall, and in as few words as
possible told her what had happened.
“And this is the end,” she said. “How terrible! My poor Conny! Did he
mean to kill her, Reginald?”
“I thought so for a moment; I do not know. I struck my head as he threw
me, and what followed I did not fully see. I will go for Dr. Eskridge
and send for General Averill. Shall you mind my leaving you alone with
her?”
“Oh, no; I think there is no danger. She seems conscious. I will get her
up to bed. Come back soon.”
As he went out he cast his eyes on the sword upon the table, the Bible
with its marking glove, the dead flower-petals, the sacredly guarded
room. “I wonder,” he thought, as he hurried up the street, “what this
woman would have been had George Trescot lived.”
As he hastened to find the doctor he sought to recall just what had
happened. Surely the man meant to kill Constance Trescot and then
himself. She most plainly was glad to die. Yes, she had said so; on
which he had turned the pistol on himself, saying, “You fool!” What did
he mean? Did he not want to kill her because she wished to die? “Ah,
poor lady!” he said. “Perhaps George Trescot was fortunate—and my poor
Susan!”
X
Contrary to what the doctor and Susan expected, Constance came out of
her dazed state in a few hours. She asked quickly if they had taken it
away. When assured as to this, she seemed at ease and put no other
questions. Although her mind was clear, she spoke little, and was
apparently indifferent to everything. She asked, however, after a few
days to be taken to her Beverly home. Kent made all the needed
arrangements and went with them. This seemed to excite no surprise in
the mind of Constance; she accepted everything in an apathetic way, and
when Kent was leaving them at the end of their journey, said good-by
listlessly and with no word of thanks. For a month or more she lost
flesh and vigor daily, so that Susan thought that she would surely find
the relief of death.
In August she began to recover her strength, but not her looks. She had
lived many years in one, and, except for the still lovely eyes, had
little left of her former beauty. The framework of her face was on a
scale which needed the fullness of health, and this she had lost
forever.
As she slowly regained her strength she turned anew to Susan for the
only society she cared to have, and by degrees taxed more and more
heavily the time and attention of the self-sacrificing sister. She began
at last to read, or liked better to be read to; but never returned to
her music, and never spoke of the Averills, or of Kent,—nor, indeed, of
any one in St. Ann. Neither did she ever mention George Trescot. So long
as she had been actively employed in thinking of means of ruining
Greyhurst, she had asked of Susan no more attention and care than was
easy and pleasant to give. When once her pursuit had ended, and one
dominating idea had ceased to occupy her mind, she began to enlarge the
boundaries of those despotic claims which the feeble or suffering
sometimes make upon the unselfish. It is probable that Constance was not
fully aware of this avarice of affection which caused her to accept or
grasp and use the service of the sister, and to overesteem the love she
herself gave in return. At first Susan looked upon it all as evidence of
a revival of Constance’s former affection. She was unwilling to be
alone, she desired no occupation, and would not ride or walk far. What
she liked best was to sit in silence with Susan reading aloud to her in
the garden, or to drive for hours in the carriage. To escape from her
company was so difficult that Susan found only those hours her own in
which Constance slept. At times she wondered whether or not this jealous
absorption of a life would not soon or late have been applied to George
Trescot.
As the warm summer days came and went, Susan was made to feel more and
more plainly that she was becoming the slave of exactions which had in
them something morbid. To her alarm, she began also to suspect that
incessant care of a depressed and too dependent woman might prove to be
a dangerous tax on health, and recognized at last with some alarm that
she herself was consciously losing vigor.
When making vain efforts to assert her independence she was met by
unlooked-for difficulties. In her uncle’s house, as the elder sister,
Susan had exerted more or less authority; but now she had the feeling
that Constance was, as indeed she looked, the older sister. By degrees
Susan also learned that Constance relied on her misfortunes and her long
illness to insure to her an excess of sympathetic affection and
unremitting service. The discoveries thus made troubled the less selfish
sister, and her good sense made plain to her that to permit limitless
use of this form of devotion was to commit suicide of health and to
sacrifice more than herself. There was one escape possible, and of this
she knew that at some time she should have to speak, for her health and
all that was once hers alone she felt were no longer to be risked
without unfairness to one more dear to her than Constance. Over and
over, when approaching this subject, her courage failed her.
When she chanced to mention, even in the most casual way, the man whom
she had promised to marry, Constance said at once: “You must know,
Susan,—you ought to know,—that I have no desire to hear of him, or of
any one in St. Ann. I think you show small consideration for my
feelings.” Although aware that her sister and Kent corresponded, and
that letters came and went daily, she took no more interest in it than
she did in whatever was outside of her own immediate and limited life.
It was to Susan an almost inconceivable condition, and she was well
aware that not only must it come to an end, but that to hear of her
decision would be to Constance a painful awakening.
At last, when, in September, Constance seemed still better, Susan knew
that she must speak out, and frankly. Constance furnished the
opportunity. They were seated at evening in the garden above a quiet
sea. Constance said: “I have been thinking, Susan, about the winter and
what would be best for me. The doctor talks about Algiers. How would
that do? It is time I made my plans. I do not suppose you care where we
go, so long as we are together.”
For a moment Susan made no reply; then she said: “Let us put that aside
for a moment. I have long wanted to talk to you, Conny, about another
matter, but you have never been willing to listen. While you were so
weak I felt that you must not be troubled by what I knew you must some
day know. I am engaged to Reginald Kent, and we are to be married late
in October. You must have known, Conny, that it would be.”
Constance heard her with an appearance of indifference.
“Oh, I saw there was something; but you cannot really mean to leave me.
You are all I have, all I care for. It is simply out of the question.
You must see that your duty lies with me.”
“Yes, dear, I see that; and we hope that you will live with us. Reginald
is to have a parish near Boston.”
“I will never consent to it. Must I always be sacrificed?”
“If you mean that you will not consent to my marriage, you have no right
to say that; if you mean not to live with us, I shall be sorry. I do not
think that you should have spoken as you have done. You have had from me
all that I could give, and, dear, you do not know how much you claim,
nor do you seem to see that even with my sound health I am not fit to be
and do what you expect of me—in fact, that it is I who am sacrificed.”
“Then you think I am selfish?”
“I think, dear, that in your sorrow and weakness you need more than I
can give.”
“And you intend to marry that man and leave me?”
“I mean to marry Reginald Kent.”
“Then I shall find a companion and go abroad,” she said; and, rising,
went away into the house.