Tracy wrote his father before he sought his bed. He wrote a letter
which he believed would get better treatment than his cablegram
received, for it contained what ought to be welcome news; namely, that
he had tried equality and working for a living; had made a fight which
he could find no reason to be ashamed of, and in the matter of earning
a living had proved that he was able to do it; but that on the whole he
had arrived at the conclusion that he could not reform the world
single-handed, and was willing to retire from the conflict with the
fair degree of honor which he had gained, and was also willing to
return home and resume his position and be content with it and thankful
for it for the future, leaving further experiment of a missionary sort
to other young people needing the chastening and quelling persuasions
of experience, the only logic sure to convince a diseased imagination
and restore it to rugged health. Then he approached the subject of
marriage with the daughter of the American Claimant with a good deal of
caution and much painstaking art. He said praiseful and appreciative
things about the girl, but didn’t dwell upon that detail or make it
prominent. The thing which he made prominent was the opportunity now so
happily afforded, to reconcile York and Lancaster, graft the warring
roses upon one stem, and end forever a crying injustice which had
already lasted far too long. One could infer that he had thought this
thing all out and chosen this way of making all things fair and right
because it was sufficiently fair and considerably wiser than the
renunciation-scheme which he had brought with him from England. One
could infer that, but he didn’t say it. In fact the more he read his
letter over, the more he got to inferring it himself.
When the old earl received that letter, the first part of it filled him
with a grim and snarly satisfaction; but the rest of it brought a snort
or two out of him that could be translated differently. He wasted no
ink in this emergency, either in cablegrams or letters; he promptly
took ship for America to look into the matter himself. He had staunchly
held his grip all this long time, and given no sign of the hunger at
his heart to see his son; hoping for the cure of his insane dream, and
resolute that the process should go through all the necessary stages
without assuaging telegrams or other nonsense from home, and here was
victory at last. Victory, but stupidly marred by this idiotic marriage
project. Yes, he would step over and take a hand in this matter
himself.
During the first ten days following the mailing of the letter Tracy’s
spirits had no idle time; they were always climbing up into the clouds
or sliding down into the earth as deep as the law of gravitation
reached. He was intensely happy or intensely miserable by turns,
according to Miss Sally’s moods. He never could tell when the mood was
going to change, and when it changed he couldn’t tell what it was that
had changed it. Sometimes she was so in love with him that her love was
tropical, torrid, and she could find no language fervent enough for its
expression; then suddenly, and without warning or any apparent reason,
the weather would change, and the victim would find himself adrift
among the icebergs and feeling as lonesome and friendless as the north
pole. It sometimes seemed to him that a man might better be dead than
exposed to these devastating varieties of climate.
The case was simple. Sally _wanted_ to believe that Tracy’s preference
was disinterested; so she was always applying little tests of one sort
or another, hoping and expecting that they would bring out evidence
which would confirm or fortify her belief. Poor Tracy did not know that
these experiments were being made upon him, consequently he walked
promptly into all the traps the girl set for him. These traps consisted
in apparently casual references to social distinction, aristocratic
title and privilege, and such things. Often Tracy responded to these
references heedlessly and not much caring what he said provided it kept
the talk going and prolonged the seance. He didn’t suspect that the
girl was watching his face and listening for his words as one who
watches the judge’s face and listens for the words which will restore
him to home and friends and freedom or shut him away from the sun and
human companionship forever. He didn’t suspect that his careless words
were being weighed, and so he often delivered sentence of death when it
would have been just as handy and all the same to him to pronounce
acquittal. Daily he broke the girl’s heart, nightly he sent her to the
rack for sleep. He couldn’t understand it.
Some people would have put this and that together and perceived that
the weather never changed until one particular subject was introduced,
and that then it _always_ changed. And they would have looked further,
and perceived that that subject was always introduced by the one party,
never the other. They would have argued, then, that this was done for a
purpose. If they could not find out what that purpose was in any
simpler or easier way, they would _ask_.
But Tracy was not deep enough or suspicious enough to think of these
things. He noticed only one particular; that the weather was always
sunny when a visit _began_. No matter how much it might cloud up later,
it always began with a clear sky. He couldn’t explain this curious fact
to himself, he merely knew it to be a fact. The truth of the matter
was, that by the time Tracy had been out of Sally’s sight six hours she
was so famishing for a sight of him that her doubts and suspicions were
all consumed away in the fire of that longing, and so always she came
into his presence as surprisingly radiant and joyous as she wasn’t when
she went out of it.
In circumstances like these a growing portrait runs a good many risks.
The portrait of Sellers, by Tracy, was fighting along, day by day,
through this mixed weather, and daily adding to itself ineradicable
signs of the checkered life it was leading. It was the happiest
portrait, in spots, that was ever seen; but in other spots a damned
soul looked out from it; a soul that was suffering all the different
kinds of distress there are, from stomach ache to rabies. But Sellers
liked it. He said it was just himself all over—a portrait that sweated
moods from every pore, and no two moods alike. He said he had as many
different kinds of emotions in him as a jug.
It was a kind of a deadly work of art, maybe, but it was a starchy
picture for show; for it was life size, full length, and represented
the American earl in a peer’s scarlet robe, with the three ermine bars
indicative of an earl’s rank, and on the gray head an earl’s coronet,
tilted just a wee bit to one side in a most gallus and winsome way.
When Sally’s weather was sunny the portrait made Tracy chuckle, but
when her weather was overcast it disordered his mind and stopped the
circulation of his blood.
Late one night when the sweethearts had been having a flawless visit
together, Sally’s interior devil began to work his specialty, and soon
the conversation was drifting toward the customary rock. Presently, in
the midst of Tracy’s serene flow of talk, he felt a shudder which he
knew was not his shudder, but exterior to his breast although
immediately against it. After the shudder came sobs; Sally was crying.
“Oh, my darling, what have I done—what have I said? It has happened
again! What _have_ I done to wound you?”
She disengaged herself from his arms and gave him a look of deep
reproach.
“What have you done? I will tell you what you have done. You have
unwittingly revealed—oh, for the twentieth time, though I _could_ not
believe it, _would_ not believe it!—that it is not me you love, but
that foolish sham, my father’s imitation earldom; and you have broken
my heart!”
“Oh, my child, what are you saying! I never dreamed of such a thing.”
“Oh, Howard, Howard, the things you have uttered when you were
forgetting to guard your tongue, have betrayed you.”
“Things I have uttered when I was _forgetting_ to guard my tongue?
These are hard words. When have I _remembered_ to guard it? Never in
one instance. It has no office but to speak the truth. It needs no
guarding for that.”
“Howard, I have noted your words and weighed them, when you were not
thinking of their significance—and they have told me more than you
meant they should.”
“Do you mean to say you have answered the trust I had in you by using
it as an ambuscade from which you could set snares for my unsuspecting
tongue and be safe from detection while you did it? You have not done
this—surely you have not done this thing. Oh, one’s enemy could not do
it.”
This was an aspect of the girl’s conduct which she had not clearly
perceived before. Was it treachery? Had she abused a trust? The thought
crimsoned her cheeks with shame and remorse.
“Oh, forgive me,” she said, “I did not know what I was doing. I have
been so tortured—you _will_ forgive me, you _must;_ I have suffered so
much, and I am so sorry and so humble; you _do_ forgive me, _don’t_
you?—don’t turn away, don’t refuse me; it is only my love that is at
fault, and you _know_ I love you, love you with all my heart; I
couldn’t bear to—oh, dear, dear, I am so miserable, and I _never_ meant
any harm, and I didn’t see where this insanity was carrying me, and how
it was wronging and abusing the dearest heart in all the world to
me—and—and—oh, take me in your arms again, I have no other refuge, no
other home and hope!”
There was reconciliation again—immediate, perfect, all-embracing—and
with it utter happiness. This would have been a good time to adjourn.
But no, now that the cloud-breeder was revealed at last; now that it
was manifest that all the sour weather had come from this girl’s dread
that Tracy was lured by her rank and not herself, he resolved to lay
that ghost immediately and permanently by furnishing the best possible
proof that he _couldn’t_ have had back of him at any time the suspected
motive. So he said:
“Let me whisper a little secret in your ear—a secret which I have kept
shut up in my breast all this time. Your rank _couldn’t_ ever have been
an enticement. I am son and heir to an English earl!”
The girl stared at him—one, two, three moments, maybe a dozen—then her
lips parted:
“You?” she said, and moved away from him, still gazing at him in a kind
of blank amazement.
“Why—why, certainly I am. Why do you act like this? What have I done
_now?_”
“What have you done? You have certainly made a most strange statement.
You must see that yourself.”
“Well,” with a timid little laugh, “it may be a strange enough
statement; but of what consequence is that, if it is true?”
“_If_ it is true. You are already retiring from it.”
“Oh, not for a moment! You should not say that. I have not deserved it.
I have spoken the truth; why do you doubt it?”
Her reply was prompt.
“Simply because you didn’t speak it earlier!”
“Oh!” It wasn’t a groan, exactly, but it was an intelligible enough
expression of the fact that he saw the point and recognized that there
was reason in it.
“You have seemed to conceal nothing from me that I ought to know
concerning yourself, and you were not privileged to keep back such a
thing as this from me a moment after—after—well, after you had
determined to pay your court to me.”
“Its true, it’s true, I know it! But there were circumstances—in—in the
way—circumstances which—”
She waved the circumstances aside.
“Well, you see,” he said, pleadingly, “you seemed so bent on our
traveling the proud path of honest labor and honorable poverty, that I
was terrified—that is, I was afraid—of—of—well, _you_ know how you
talked.”
“Yes, I know how I talked. And I also know that before the talk was
finished you inquired how I stood as regards aristocracies, and my
answer was calculated to relieve your fears.”
He was silent a while. Then he said, in a discouraged way:
“I don’t see any way out of it. It was a mistake. That is in truth all
it was, just a mistake. No harm was meant, no harm in the world. I
didn’t see how it might some time look. It is my way. I don’t seem to
see far.”
The girl was almost disarmed, for a moment. Then she flared up again.
“An Earl’s son! Do earls’ sons go about working in lowly callings for
their bread and butter?”
“God knows they don’t! I have wished they did.”
“Do earls’ sons sink their degree in a country like this, and come
sober and decent to sue for the hand of a born child of poverty when
they can go drunk, profane, and steeped in dishonorable debt and buy
the pick and choice of the millionaires’ daughters of America? _You_ an
earl’s son! Show me the signs.”
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“I thank God I am not able—if those are the signs. But yet I am an
earl’s son and heir. It is all I can say. I wish you would believe me,
but you will not. I know no way to persuade you.”
She was about to soften again, but his closing remark made her bring
her foot down with smart vexation, and she cried out:
“Oh, you drive all patience out of me! Would you have one believe that
you haven’t your proofs at hand, and yet are what you say you are? You
do not put your hand in your pocket _now_—for you have nothing there.
You make a claim like this, and then venture to travel without
credentials. These are simply incredibilities. Don’t you see that,
yourself?”
He cast about in his mind for a defence of some kind or other—hesitated
a little, and then said, with difficulty and diffidence:
“I will tell you just the truth, foolish as it will seem to you—to
anybody, I suppose—but it _is_ the truth. I had an ideal—call it a
dream, a folly, if you will—but I wanted to renounce the privileges and
unfair advantages enjoyed by the nobility and wrung from the nation by
force and fraud, and purge myself of my share of those crimes against
right and reason, by thenceforth comrading with the poor and humble on
equal terms, earning with my own hands the bread I ate, and rising by
my own merit if I rose at all.”
The young girl scanned his face narrowly while he spoke; and there was
something about his simplicity of manner and statement which touched
her —touched her almost to the danger point; but she set her grip on
the yielding spirit and choked it to quiescence; it could not be wise
to surrender to compassion or any kind of sentiment, yet; she must ask
one or two more questions. Tracy was reading her face; and what he read
there lifted his drooping hopes a little.
“An earl’s son to do that! Why, he were a man! A man to love!—oh, more,
a man to worship!”
“Why, I—?”
“But he never lived! He is not born, he will not be born. The
self-abnegation that could do that—even in utter folly, and hopeless of
conveying benefit to any, beyond the mere example—could be mistaken for
greatness; why, it would _be_ greatness in this cold age of sordid
ideals! A moment—wait—let me finish; I have one question more. Your
father is earl of what?”
“Rossmore—and I am Viscount Berkeley!”
The fat was in the fire again. The girl felt so outraged that it was
difficult for her to speak.
“How _can_ you venture such a brazen thing! You know that he is dead,
and you know that I know it. Oh, to rob the living of name and honors
for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the
defenceless dead—why it is more than crime, it _degrades_ crime!”
“Oh, listen to me—just a word—don’t turn away like that. Don’t go—don’t
leave me, so—stay one moment. On my honor—”
“Oh, on your honor!”
“On my honor I am what I say! And I will prove it, and you will
believe, I know you will. I will bring you a message—a cablegram—”
“When?”
“To-morrow—next day—”
“Signed ‘Rossmore’?”
“Yes—signed Rossmore.”
“What will that prove?”
“What will it prove? What _should_ it prove?”
“If you force me to say it—possibly the presence of a confederate
somewhere.”
This was a hard blow, and staggered him. He said, dejectedly:
“It is true. I did not think of it. Oh, my God, I do not know any way
to do; I do everything wrong. You are going?—and you won’t say even
good-night—or good-bye? Ah, we have not parted like this before.”
“Oh, I _want_ to run and—no, go, now.” A pause—then she said, “You may
bring the message when it comes.”
“Oh, may I? God bless you.”
He was gone; and none too soon; her lips were already quivering, and
now she broke down. Through her sobbings her words broke from time to
time.
“Oh, he is gone. I have lost him, I shall never see him any more. And
he didn’t kiss me good-bye; never even offered to force a kiss from me,
and he _knowing_ it was the very, very last, and I expecting he would,
and never _dreaming_ he would treat me so after all we have been to
each other. Oh, oh, oh, oh, what shall I do, what _shall_ I do! He is a
dear, poor, miserable, good-hearted, transparent liar and humbug, but
oh, I _do_ love him so—!” After a little she broke into speech again.
“How dear he is! and I shall miss him so, I shall miss him so! Why
_won’t_ he ever think to _forge_ a message and fetch it?—but no, he
never will, he never thinks of anything; he’s so honest and simple it
wouldn’t ever occur to him. Oh, what _did_ possess him to think he
could succeed as a fraud—and he hasn’t the first requisite except
duplicity that I can see. Oh, dear, I’ll go to bed and give it all up.
Oh, I _wish_ I had told him to come and tell me whenever he didn’t get
any telegram—and now it’s all my own fault if I never see him again.
How my eyes must look!”