IN THE LIBRARY ONCE MORE
He caught her hand as she turned from him.
"Margaret, for God's sake, hear me before you go!"
Opening the door of the library he drew her in and closed it behind
them. She dropped into a chair and waited for him to speak. But it was
the first time they had been there together since the reading of the
will, and the benumbing influence of that hour fell on him like a
nightmare. He felt that he could never make her hear. Struggle as he
might for utterance, it would only be an inarticulate horrible moan at
last. If he could but have heard this story before! If only the fatal
words, "and shall claim the child," had been unsaid--how different all
would be! How frightfully easy to utter words. How impossible to evade
the avalanche of consequences they set loose!
From his place by the mantel with one arm resting on it he regarded her
in silence. Neither evaded the other now. They knew by instinct that it
was the final passage between them.
"Go on," she said. "Let me hear it now." Repeating, "You thought--I did
it," not scornfully, nor even in reproach, but as one who is in a maze
and hunting for the clue.
"I thought you did it."
"For five long years you have believed me a murderess, and have given me
no opportunity to vindicate myself!"
"For five long years I have believed you a murderess, and have given you
no chance to vindicate yourself!"
It seemed almost as if he were mocking her, but she knew from the
wretchedness of his face that he was simply pleading guilty.
"This then is the explanation of it all--why you have followed me so
pitilessly--why--"
"Margaret, listen to me!" he cried, throwing off the incubus that was
upon him. "Let me add my part to the pitiful story you heard upstairs
before you pass final judgment. Then I will go away--out of your life
forever."
"You cannot go away out of my life forever," she said passionately,
remembering Philip. "It is too late for that! When one thrusts himself
into the life of another he cannot leave it at his will. Neither can he
escape the consequences of his acts by turning his back upon them."
"True! Too true!" he answered mournfully. There was a note of such utter
misery in his voice that it touched her heart.
"I hope you will believe me when I tell you that not one word of that
poor girl's story was ever known to me before. Had it been, I should not
have left it to you to befriend her and care for her child. I had always
known that Victor was wild and reckless, but young men seldom make
confidants of their mentors. I did not pry into his affairs. I think
perhaps I knew in a general way that they would not bear it, and--I
shrank from it. I do not expect you to understand my feeling toward
Victor. Wayward as he had always been, I yet loved him. There was good
in the boy. I believe now that had he lived you might have won him to a
better life. I had hoped until that hour that it might be. But with life
snuffed out, his day was done. And it was your hand had struck him
down!"
She shook her head in sorrowful protest.
"I know--I know. But to me--in all these years--it was your hand." He
spoke in fragments, with silences in between. "You asked me that day
what he said. Perhaps if I should tell you now it would be some
extenuation at least."
She looked up at him breathless. "What was it?"
"As I bent over him he said, 'She's killed me, Dick.'"
Margaret sank back in her chair. "And it was Rosalie!"
"Yes,--Rosalie. But as he said it you stood above him with a smoking
revolver in your hand--a revolver I had seen here, on your table, but a
few months before."
She opened a drawer and took it out.
"It has been here ever since. He had a pair of them."
He took the revolver in his hand and looked at it. It was of peculiar
workmanship--the counterpart of one now in his own possession--the one
he took out every now and then and looked at. He drew a quick sharp
breath that was almost a groan,--then laid it down, saying quietly, "I
did not know that. It might have changed everything if I had known. You
see how strong it made the case against you. And then his saying--"
"Did he say anything else?" she questioned eagerly.
"Yes. He said, 'Don't prosecute. I deserved it.'"
"And it was Rosalie!" she repeated. "It was Rosalie he tried to save.
Oh, I am glad he said that--glad! Why didn't you tell her?"
"There will be time for that." He marveled that she could think now of
Rosalie. "Do you not see how all this misled me?"
"I see. You thought it was his treatment of me he meant."
"Yes. And then you told me once that if he ever tried to take the
child--"
"That I should kill him. I remember it. It was in the days when I was
full of words.... And you believed I did it!"
"As God hears me, I did. Margaret, you can never know what that struggle
was. It racked me. His blood cried to me day and night--as I watched it
ebb away, and as I stood beside him in the silent house that I thought
_you_ had desolated. I prayed that vengeance might fall on you for this
thing. As for me, I was bound,--bound by his dying wish and his dying
declaration. Who would believe me if I charged you with the crime? And
even if proof were not lacking how could I bring you to justice when
with his latest breath he begged that I would spare you? At last I
remembered the words, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'
I believe in that. God's vengeance does not always come swiftly--but it
comes! I believed that some day it would fall on you. And I could wait!"
She stared at him with fascinated eyes, half feeling in the tension of
the moment that she was the guilty thing he thought her.
"The waiting was not long. When the will was read--the will that by the
accursed law of this District had power to take your child from you and
give him to me--I saw in it my opportunity. They say there is the beast
in every man--the old primordial instinct to rend and kill which ages of
training and leash and club have not exterminated. I do not know.
Sometimes I think it may be true. What I do know is that I came into
this room a man, with a man's self-control, but when I found my hand
upon your throat, found that _my_ time had come, something within me
that I did not know was there leaped up and fought and roared. I could
not hold it down. It mastered me! And at the last it took my form and
said through my lips, 'Vengeance shall be _mine_! _I_ will repay!... And
I will--repay--through--_law_!"
She shrank from him as we do in the presence of the mighty elemental
forces of nature.
"It seemed to me in my distorted state of mind that this was Heaven's
justice, and that I was the instrument to mete it out.... But Margaret!"
He stretched out his hands toward her and then let them drop,--"it was
not true. In my arrogance I had usurped the prerogative of Almighty
God--and He--has--punished me!"
His voice sank lower and lower with each word.
At last she broke the silence that was stifling her, saying wonderingly
and with hesitation,
"How?--how has he punished you? I think I do not understand. Through
Philip, do you mean?"
"No. Not through Philip--not through Philip! Through Philip's mother."
The room lapsed into silence then. Her heart was beating so that it
seemed to her that he must hear the throbs. It was impossible to mistake
his meaning.
"I count it part of my humiliation," he said in proud
self-abasement,--"and I will not spare myself--that I must come at the
last to the woman I have persecuted, the woman I have hunted down and
robbed, the woman I have in my heart held guilty of foul crime--and tell
her--that--_I love her_!"
She did not stir nor look at him.
Then his mood changed, and from his stand by the mantel he regarded her
with a sort of grim humor.
"This surely is the irony of fate," he went on, speaking almost as if in
soliloquy, "that I should come to _you_ with tale of love!... Margaret,
why don't you taunt me with my weakness--jeer at me--say the biting,
scathing things you must want to say? This certainly is your
opportunity. It would complete your victory."
"There is no victory," she said in a dead tone, "it is all defeat."
He was filled with contrition.
"Forgive me. I seem to have an infinite capacity for being cruel. And
yet,--how can I make you understand that I would give all I hold dear if
I could have the right to shield you? How can I expect you to believe--
... Why, Margaret! even the boy--the boy--has crept into my heart and
intrenched himself until I cannot put him out."
A faint pink stole over her eyelids and her chin moved just once, but
she did not look up.
"And you-- ... child, it overmasters me! Every fiber of my being cries
out for you! It is so different from a boy's paltry passion."
He took a step toward her as though driven by a force beyond control and
said in passionate pleading, "Dearest!--let me call you that just
once--did you think you could come into my starved life in the close,
intimate, even though enforced comradeship of the sick-room, and leave
that life just as you found it? Could show me the love and sympathy, the
infinite patience and tenderness of the mother--a thing I had never
known--and the dignity, the sweetness, the charm of the woman,--did you
think that you could thus reveal yourself to me, and then go away and
leave me the same man I had been? You never thought of it at all, did
you? You were thinking of Philip--always Philip.
"But, Margaret, _I_ was human. I thought of you. And while you rocked
the child and sang soft cradle songs to him, I listened and dreamed
dreams. Let me tell them to you--just once--for their very wildness. I
dreamed that this was _our_ home--such a home as I had known in my
warped life only in dreams--and that we had made it, you and I; that the
song on your lips was a song of joy, and that I had taught it to you;
that the light in your eyes was the love-light--not for Philip, but for
me; that it was _my_ child upon your breast; that--no, do not trouble to
remind me that even in my dreams I was a fool? But--my God! if only I
could have had the chance another man might have!"
When he spoke again his voice had a different quality, a yearning
compassion that had in it something of the maternal.
"But Margaret, that was before I knew of Philip's new danger. Since that
last crushing blow has fallen upon you the feeling is so much more
infinitely tender. I think a hundred times a day 'If I could take her
and her helpless child to my heart and hold them there forever,--if I
could bear for her the load that I have forced upon her, or help her
bear it; if I could go with her upon this pitiful quest; could stand
beside her and let her lean upon my strength; could comfort her--'"
She put her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand. Two big
tears rose and struggled under her closed lids. She needed comforting!
"'--and if the worst comes--as it may--could have her lay her head upon
my breast and weep her grief out there--'"
The drops pushed through. What woman, oh, what woman, in her time of
sorrow has not felt need of such a refuge?
"Margaret! if I could thus atone, I feel that I should ask no more of
earth. But--that I have with my own hand barred myself forever from your
life--_this is my punishment_."
* * * * *
When he spoke again it was in his even, controlled voice, taking up the
subject they had talked of earlier under the wistaria, and telling her
of the arrangements he had made. The doctor had suggested the sea voyage
for Philip and had also urged his being put under the care of a
specialist at once. He had taken the liberty of engaging passage for
them on the _Etruria_, the steamer on which the doctor sailed. But this
was conditional, of course.
He waited a moment, but she did not speak, and he went on rather
hurriedly to explain that he had done this because he knew the
staterooms might all be taken if he waited to communicate with her. It
was only by their having been surrendered that he had been able to get
these. He hoped he had not offended her by his action in the matter.
They could be given up at any moment by telegram.
She shook her head, not taking down her sheltering hand. She had heard
this last as one hears in a dream,--thinking dully that this was the
end. During her contest with him she had been nerved to fight; now that
it was over she felt strengthless--nerves in collapse. When he had
spoken of her "pitiful quest" she seemed to see a dreary stretch of road
before her that had no end. She and Philip were on it, toiling along,
going she knew not where, stumbling, falling sometimes but getting up
and struggling on--and Richard behind them stretching out his hands!
If--if--oh, that would be a shameful thing! ... the man that had stolen
her child! ... a monstrous thing! Then something rose up within her and
contended fiercely, "But it is _your_ life!" What? ... give up now? ...
make complete surrender, and in such a way?... Oh, no. She would be
stronger when he was gone. The shock of it had unnerved her. That was
all.
She got up then and stood before him, her head thrown back in its old
way, meaning to thank him courteously and in conventional phrase for
what he had done, speaking in the effusive fashion which says so much
and means so little, "You are very kind. We will take the staterooms and
go at once. Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness." Thus would she
build up the broken-down wall that must always be between them.
But when she stood before him and looked into his stern set face,
remembering all he had said to her, somehow the road stretched out
interminably before her, and--
What she did was to reach out weak hands to him, saying brokenly,
"Richard! I cannot go--without you."
"Margaret!... _Margaret!_"
* * * * *
Five days later they sat together on the deck of the _Etruria_, outward
bound. It was within an hour of the time of sailing and a mild bedlam
reigned. Downstairs Mammy Cely was arranging things in the staterooms.
Upstairs Philip, a shade over his eyes and a steamer rug thrown over
him, was snuggled in the arms of his new father.
The doctor had given them every hope.
People were hurrying on to the steamer and out on the deck to talk with
friends across the rails. _Farewells_ were being spoken, tears shed, and
parting admonitions given. There was a confusion of sounds. "Goodbye!"
"Where's the purser?" "Don't get sea-sick!" "No, indeed!" "Did you get
the little bag?" "Why no--there were four." "Oh, _where's_ the purser?"
Through this babel the deck steward was making his way with a letter
held high.
"Is Mr. De Jarnette here? A telegram for Mr. De Jarnette."
Richard opened it without looking at the address.
"It is for you," he said.
Margaret in the chair beside him took the telegram and read:
"Bill passed House this morning. President's signature assured.
Hurrah!
"Harcourt."
She slipped her hand under the steamer rug into his, where Philip's lay.
He closed upon them both.
"Thank God!" she said softly, "for other mothers who need it."