Five minutes later he was sitting in his room, with his head bowed
within the circle of his arms, on the table—final attitude of grief and
despair. His tears were flowing fast, and now and then a sob broke upon
the stillness. Presently he said:
“I knew her when she was a little child and used to climb about my
knees; I love her as I love my own, and now—oh, poor thing, poor thing,
I cannot bear it!—she’s gone and lost her heart to this mangy
materializee! Why _didn’t_ we see that that might happen? But how could
we? Nobody could; nobody could ever have dreamed of such a thing. You
couldn’t expect a person would fall in love with a wax-work. And this
one doesn’t even amount to that.”
He went on grieving to himself, and now and then giving voice to his
lamentations.
“It’s done, oh, it’s done, and there’s no help for it, no undoing the
miserable business. If I had the nerve, I would kill it. But that
wouldn’t do any good. _She_ loves it; she thinks it’s genuine and
authentic. If she lost it she would grieve for it just as she would for
a real person. And who’s to break it to the family! Not I—I’ll die
first. Sellers is the best human being I ever knew and I wouldn’t any
more think of—oh, dear, why it’ll break his heart when he finds it out.
And Polly’s too. _This_ comes of meddling with such infernal matters!
But for this, the creature would still be roasting in Sheol where it
belongs. How is it that these people don’t smell the brimstone?
Sometimes I can’t come into the same room with him without nearly
suffocating.”
After a while he broke out again:
“Well, there’s _one_ thing, sure. The materializing has got to stop
right where it is. If she’s got to marry a spectre, let her marry a
decent one out of the Middle Ages, like this one—not a cowboy and a
thief such as this protoplasmic tadpole’s going to turn into if Sellers
keeps on fussing at it. It costs five thousand dollars cash and shuts
down on the incorporated company to stop the works at this point, but
Sally Sellers’s happiness is worth more than that.”
He heard Sellers coming, and got himself to rights. Sellers took a
seat, and said:
“Well, I’ve got to confess I’m a good deal puzzled. It did certainly
eat, there’s no getting around it. Not eat, exactly, either, but it
nibbled; nibbled in an appetiteless way, but still it nibbled; and
that’s just a marvel. Now the question is, what does it do with those
nibblings? That’s it—what does it do with them? My idea is that we
don’t begin to know all there is to this stupendous discovery yet. But
time will show—time and science—give us a chance, and don’t get
impatient.”
But he couldn’t get Hawkins interested; couldn’t make him talk to
amount to anything; couldn’t drag him out of his depression. But at
last he took a turn that arrested Hawkins’s attention.
“I’m coming to like him, Hawkins. He is a person of stupendous
character—absolutely gigantic. Under that placid exterior is concealed
the most dare-devil spirit that was ever put into a man—he’s just a
Clive over again. Yes, I’m all admiration for him, on account of his
character, and liking naturally follows admiration, you know. I’m
coming to like him immensely. Do you know, I haven’t the heart to
degrade such a character as that down to the burglar estate for money
or for anything else; and I’ve come to ask if you are willing to let
the reward go, and leave this poor fellow—
“Where he is?”
“Yes—not bring him down to date.”
“Oh, there’s my hand; and my heart’s in it, too!”
“I’ll never forget you for this, Hawkins,” said the old gentleman in a
voice which he found it hard to control. “You are making a great
sacrifice for me, and one which you can ill afford, but I’ll never
forget your generosity, and if I live you shall not suffer for it, be
sure of that.”
Sally Sellers immediately and vividly realized that she was become a
new being; a being of a far higher and worthier sort than she had been
such a little while before; an earnest being, in place of a dreamer;
and supplied with a reason for her presence in the world, where merely
a wistful and troubled curiosity about it had existed before. So great
and so comprehensive was the change which had been wrought, that she
seemed to herself to be a real person who had lately been a shadow; a
something which had lately been a nothing; a purpose, which had lately
been a fancy; a finished temple, with the altar-fires lit and the voice
of worship ascending, where before had been but an architect’s
confusion of arid working plans, unintelligible to the passing eye and
prophesying nothing.
“Lady” Gwendolen! The pleasantness of that sound was all gone; it was
an offense to her ear now. She said:
“There—that sham belongs to the past; I will not be called by it any
more.”
“I may call you simply Gwendolen? You will allow me to drop the
formalities straightway and name you by your dear first name without
additions?”
She was dethroning the pink and replacing it with a rosebud.
“There—that is better. I hate pinks—some pinks. Indeed yes, you are to
call me by my first name without additions—that is,—well, I don’t mean
without additions _entirely_, but—”
It was as far as she could get. There was a pause; his intellect was
struggling to comprehend; presently it did manage to catch the idea in
time to save embarrassment all around, and he said gratefully—
“_Dear_ Gwendolen! I may say that?”
“Yes—part of it. But—don’t kiss me when I am talking, it makes me
forget what I was going to say. You can call me by part of that form,
but not the last part. Gwendolen is not my name.”
“Not your name?” This in a tone of wonder and surprise.
The girl’s soul was suddenly invaded by a creepy apprehension, a quite
definite sense of suspicion and alarm. She put his arms away from her,
looked him searchingly in the eye, and said:
“Answer me truly, on your honor. You are not seeking to marry me on
account of my _rank?_”
The shot almost knocked him through the wall, he was so little prepared
for it. There was something so finely grotesque about the question and
its parent suspicion, that he stopped to wonder and admire, and thus
was he saved from laughing. Then, without wasting precious time, he set
about the task of convincing her that he had been lured by herself
alone, and had fallen in love with her only, not her title and
position; that he loved her with all his heart, and could not love her
more if she were a duchess, or less if she were without home, name or
family. She watched his face wistfully, eagerly, hopefully, translating
his words by its expression; and when he had finished there was
gladness in her heart—a tumultuous gladness, indeed, though outwardly
she was calm, tranquil, even judicially austere. She prepared a
surprise for him, now, calculated to put a heavy strain upon those
disinterested protestations of his; and thus she delivered it, burning
it away word by word as the fuse burns down to a bombshell, and
watching to see how far the explosion would lift him:
“Listen—and do not doubt me, for I shall speak the exact truth. Howard
Tracy, I am no more an earl’s child than you are!”
To her joy—and secret surprise, also—it never phased him. He was ready,
this time, and saw his chance. He cried out with enthusiasm, “Thank
heaven for that!” and gathered her to his arms.
To express her happiness was almost beyond her gift of speech.
“You make me the proudest girl in all the earth,” she said, with her
head pillowed on his shoulder. “I thought it only natural that you
should be dazzled by the title—maybe even unconsciously, you being
English—and that you might be deceiving yourself in thinking you loved
only me, and find you didn’t love me when the deception was swept away;
so it makes me proud that the revelation stands for nothing and that
you _do_ love just me, only me—oh, prouder than any words can tell!”
“It is only you, sweetheart, I never gave one envying glance toward
your father’s earldom. That is utterly true, dear Gwendolen.”
“There—you mustn’t call me that. I hate that false name. I told you it
wasn’t mine. My name is Sally Sellers—or Sarah, if you like. From this
time I banish dreams, visions, imaginings, and will no more of them. I
am going to be myself—my genuine self, my honest self, my natural self,
clear and clean of sham and folly and fraud, and worthy of you. There
is no grain of social inequality between us; I, like you, am poor; I,
like you, am without position or distinction; you are a struggling
artist, I am that, too, in my humbler way. Our bread is honest bread,
we work for our living. Hand in hand we will walk hence to the grave,
helping each other in all ways, living for each other, being and
remaining one in heart and purpose, one in hope and aspiration,
inseparable to the end. And though our place is low, judged by the
world’s eye, we will make it as high as the highest in the great
essentials of honest work for what we eat and wear, and conduct above
reproach. We live in a land, let us be thankful, where this is
all-sufficient, and no man is better than his neighbor by the grace of
God, but only by his own merit.”
Tracy tried to break in, but she stopped him and kept the floor
herself.
“I am not through yet. I am going to purge myself of the last vestiges
of artificiality and pretence, and then start fair on your own honest
level and be worthy mate to you thenceforth. My father honestly thinks
he is an earl. Well, leave him his dream, it pleases him and does no
one any harm: It was the dream of his ancestors before him. It has made
fools of the house of Sellers for generations, and it made something of
a fool of me, but took no deep root. I am done with it now, and for
good. Forty-eight hours ago I was privately proud of being the daughter
of a pinchbeck earl, and thought the proper mate for me must be a man
of like degree; but to-day—oh, how grateful I am for your love which
has healed my sick brain and restored my sanity!—I could make oath that
no earl’s son in all the world—”
“Oh,—well, but—but—”
“Why, you look like a person in a panic. What is it? What is the
matter?”
“Matter? Oh, nothing—nothing. I was only going to say”—but in his
flurry nothing occurred to him to say, for a moment; then by a lucky
inspiration he thought of something entirely sufficient for the
occasion, and brought it out with eloquent force: “Oh, how beautiful
you are! You take my breath away when you look like that.”
It was well conceived, well timed, and cordially delivered—and it got
its reward.
“Let me see. Where was I? Yes, my father’s earldom is pure moonshine.
Look at those dreadful things on the wall. You have of course supposed
them to be portraits of his ancestors, earls of Rossmore. Well, they
are not. They are chromos of distinguished Americans—all moderns; but
he has carried them back a thousand years by re-labeling them. Andrew
Jackson there, is doing what he can to be the late American earl; and
the newest treasure in the collection is supposed to be the young
English heir—I mean the idiot with the crape; but in truth it’s a
shoemaker, and not Lord Berkeley at all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Why of course I am. He wouldn’t look like that.”
“Why?”
“Because his conduct in his last moments, when the fire was sweeping
around him shows that he was a man. It shows that he was a fine,
high-souled young creature.”
Tracy was strongly moved by these compliments, and it seemed to him
that the girl’s lovely lips took on a new loveliness when they were
delivering them. He said, softly:
“It is a pity he could not know what a gracious impression his behavior
was going to leave with the dearest and sweetest stranger in the land
of—”
“Oh, I almost loved him! Why, I think of him every day. He is always
floating about in my mind.”
Tracy felt that this was a little more than was necessary. He was
conscious of the sting of jealousy. He said:
“It is quite right to think of him—at least now and then—that is, at
intervals—in perhaps an admiring way—but it seems to me that—”
“Howard Tracy, are you jealous of that dead man?”
He was ashamed—and at the same time not ashamed. He was jealous—and at
the same time he was not jealous. In a sense the dead man was himself;
in that case compliments and affection lavished upon that corpse went
into his own till and were clear profit. But in another sense the dead
man was not himself; and in that case all compliments and affection
lavished there were wasted, and a sufficient basis for jealousy. A tiff
was the result of the dispute between the two. Then they made it up,
and were more loving than ever. As an affectionate clincher of the
reconciliation, Sally declared that she had now banished Lord Berkeley
from her mind; and added, “And in order to make sure that he shall
never make trouble between us again, I will teach myself to detest that
name and all that have ever borne it or ever shall bear it.”
This inflicted another pang, and Tracy was minded to ask her to modify
that a little just on general principles, and as practice in not
overdoing a good thing—perhaps he might better leave things as they
were and not risk bringing on another tiff. He got away from that
particular, and sought less tender ground for conversation.
“I suppose you disapprove wholly of aristocracies and nobilities, now
that you have renounced your title and your father’s earldom.”
“_Real_ ones? Oh, dear no—but I’ve thrown aside our sham one for good.”
This answer fell just at the right time and just in the right place, to
save the poor unstable young man from changing his political complexion
once more. He had been on the point of beginning to totter again, but
this prop shored him up and kept him from floundering back into
democracy and re-renouncing aristocracy. So he went home glad that he
had asked the fortunate question. The girl would accept a little thing
like a genuine earldom, she was merely prejudiced against the brummagem
article. Yes, he could have his girl and have his earldom, too: that
question was a fortunate stroke.
Sally went to bed happy, too; and remained happy, deliriously happy,
for nearly two hours; but at last, just as she was sinking into a
contented and luxurious unconsciousness, the shady devil who lives and
lurks and hides and watches inside of human beings and is always
waiting for a chance to do the proprietor a malicious damage, whispered
to her soul and said, “That question had a harmless look, but what was
_back_ of it?—what was the secret motive of it?—what suggested it?”
The shady devil had knifed her, and could retire, now, and take a rest;
the wound would attend to business for him. And it did.
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_Why_ should Howard Tracy ask that question? If he was not trying to
marry her for the sake of her rank, what should suggest that question
to him? Didn’t he plainly look gratified when she said her objections
to aristocracy had their limitations? Ah, he is after that earldom,
that gilded sham—it isn’t poor me he wants.
So she argued, in anguish and tears. Then she argued the opposite
theory, but made a weak, poor business of it, and lost the case. She
kept the arguing up, one side and then the other, the rest of the
night, and at last fell asleep at dawn; fell in the fire at dawn, one
may say; for that kind of sleep resembles fire, and one comes out of it
with his brain baked and his physical forces fried out of him.