Anne's strictest injunction to Simmy Dodge bore upon the anonymity of the
contributions to the various specified charities. Huge sums were to be
delivered at stated intervals, covering a period of six months. At the end
of that period she would have contributed the whole of her fortune to
charity and, through its agencies, to humanity. The only obligation
demanded in return from any of these organisations was a pledge of
secrecy, and from this pledge there was to be no release until such time
as the donor herself announced her willingness to make public the nature
and extent of her benefactions. It was this desire to avoid publicity that
appealed most strongly to Thorpe. As for poor Simmy,—he could not
understand it at all.
Grimly, Anne's lover refused to interfere with her plans. He went about
his work from that day on, however, with a feverish eagerness and zest,
and an exaltation that frequently lifted him to a sort of glory that he
could neither define nor deny. There were moments when he slipped far back
into the depths, and cursed himself for rejoicing in the sacrifice she was
apparently so willing to make. And at such times he found that he had to
resist an impulse that was almost overwhelming in its force: the impulse
to rush down to her and cry out that the sacrifice was not necessary!
Mrs. Tresslyn came to see him shortly after Anne's return to the city. She
was humble. When she was announced, he prepared himself for a bitter
scene. But she was not bitter, she was not furious; on the contrary, she
was gentler than he had ever known her to be.
"If you do not take her now, Braden," she said in the course of their
brief interview, "I do not know what will become of her. I blame myself
for everything, of course. It was I who allowed her to go into that
unhappy business of getting Mr. Thorpe's money, and I _am_ to blame. I
should have allowed her to marry you in the beginning. I should not have
been deceived by the cleverness of your amiable grandfather. But, you see
I counted on something better than this for her. I thought,—and she
thought as well,—that she could one day have both you and the money. It is
a pretty hard thing to say, isn't it? I saw her to-day. She is quite
happy,—really it seems to me she was radiantly happy this morning. Simmy
has arranged for the first instalment of five hundred thousand dollars to
be paid over to-morrow. She herself has selected the securities that are
to make up this initial payment. They are the best of the lot, Simmy tells
me. In a few months she will be penniless. I don't know what is to become
of her, Braden, if you do not take her when all this absurd business is
over. You love her and she loves you. Both of you should hate me, but
Anne, for one, does not. She is sorrier for me than she is for herself. Of
course, you are to understand one thing, Braden." She lifted her chin
proudly. "She may return to me at any time. My home is hers. She shall
never want for anything that I am able to give her. She is my daughter
and—well, you are to understand that I shall stand by her, no matter what
she does. I have but one object in coming to see you to-day. I need not
put it into words."
A few days later Simmy came in, drooping. "Well, the first half-million is
gone. Next month another five hundred thousand goes. I hope you are happy,
Brady."
"I hope Anne is happy," was all that Thorpe said in response.
* * * * *
No word came to him from Anne. She was as silent as the sphinx. Not a day
passed that did not find him running eagerly,—hopefully,—through his mail,
looking for the letter he hoped for and was sure that eventually she would
write to him. But no letter came. The only news he had of her was obtained
through Simmy, who kept him acquainted with the progress of his client's
affairs, forgetting quite simply the admonition concerning secrecy.
Thorpe virtually abandoned his visits to the home of the young Tresslyns.
He had them out to dinner and the theatre occasionally. They talked quite
freely with him about the all-important topic, and seemed not to be
unhappy or unduly exercised over the step Anne had taken. In fact, George
was bursting with pride in his sister. Apparently he had no other thought
than that everything would turn out right and fair for her in the end. But
the covert, anxious, analysing look in Lutie's eyes was always present and
it was disconcerting.
He avoided the little flat in which he had spent so many happy, and in a
sense profitable hours, and they appreciated his reason for doing so. They
kept their own counsel. He had no means of knowing that Anne Thorpe's
visits were but little more frequent than his.
Anne's silence, her persistent aloofness, began to irritate him at last.
Weeks had passed since her return to the city and she had given no sign.
He had long since ceased his sly pilgrimages to the neighbourhood of
Washington Square. Now as the days grew shorter and the nights infinitely
longer, he was conscious, first, of a distinct feeling of resentment
toward her, and later on of an acute sense of uneasiness. The long, dreary
hours of darkness fed him with reflections that kept him awake most of the
night, and only his iron will held his hand and nerves steady during the
days between the black seasons. The theatre palled on him, books failed to
hold his attention, people annoyed him. He could not concentrate his
thoughts on study; his mind was forever journeying. What was she doing?
Every minute of the day he was asking that question of himself. It was in
the printed pages of the books he read; it was on the lips of every
lecturer he listened to; it was placarded on every inch of scenery in the
theatre,—always: "Where is she to-night? What is she doing?"
And then, at last, one cold, rainy night in late November he resumed his
stealthy journeys to lower Fifth Avenue atop of the stage, protected by a
thick ulster and hidden as well as he could be in the shelter of a rigidly
grasped umbrella. Alighting in front of the Brevoort, he slunk rather than
sauntered up the Avenue until he came to the cross-town street in which
she lived,—in which he once had lived. It was a fair night for such an
adventure as this. There were but few people abroad. The rain was falling
steadily and there was a gusty wind. He had left his club at ten o'clock,
and all the way down the Avenue he was alone on the upper deck of the
stage. Afterwards he chuckled guiltily to himself as he recalled the odd
stare with which the conductor favoured him when he jestingly inquired if
there was "any room aloft."
Walking down the street toward Sixth Avenue, he peered out from beneath
the umbrella as he passed his grandfather's house across the way. There
were lights downstairs. A solitary taxi-cab stood in front of the house.
He quickened his pace. He did not want to charge himself with spying. A
feeling of shame and mortification came over him as he hurried along; his
face burned. He was not acting like a man, but as a love-sick, jealous
school-boy would have behaved. And yet all the way up Sixth Avenue to
Fifty-ninth Street,—he walked the entire distance,—he wondered why he had
not waited to see who came forth from Anne's house to enter the taxi-cab.
For a week he stubbornly resisted the desire to repeat the trip down-town.
In the meantime, Simmy had developed into a most unsatisfactory informant.
He suddenly revealed an astonishing streak of uncommunicativeness, totally
unnatural in him and tantalising in the extreme. He rarely mentioned
Anne's name and never discussed her movements. Thorpe was obliged to
content himself with an occasional word from Lutie,—who was also painfully
reticent,—and now and then a scrap of news in the society columns of the
newspapers. Once he saw her in the theatre. She was with other people, all
of whom he knew. One of them was Percy Wintermill. He began on that night
to hate Wintermill. The scion of the Wintermill family sat next to Anne
and there was nothing in his manner to indicate that he had resigned
himself to defeat in the lists.
If Anne saw him she did not betray the fact. He waited outside for a
fairer glimpse of her as she left the theatre. What he saw at close range
from his carefully chosen position was not calculated to relieve his mind.
She appeared to be quite happy. There was nothing in her appearance or in
her manner to indicate that she suffered,—and he _wanted_ her to suffer as
he was suffering. That night he did not close his eyes.
He had said to her that he would never marry her even though she gave up
the money she had received from his grandfather, and she had said—how well
he remembered!—that if George was worth thirty thousand dollars to Lutie,
which was her _all_,—he was worth two millions to her, and her _all_. She
was paying for him now, just as Lutie had paid for George, only in Lutie's
case there was the assurance that the sacrifice would bring its own
consolation and reward. Anne was going ahead blindly, trusting to an
uncertainty. She had his word for it that the sacrifice would bring no
reward through him, and yet she persisted in the vain enterprise. She had
likened herself, in a sense, to Lutie, and now he was beginning to think
of himself as he had once thought of George Tresslyn!
He recalled his pitying scorn for the big, once useless boy during that
long period of dog-like watchfulness over the comings and goings of the
girl he loved. He had felt sorry for him and yet pleased with him. There
was something admirable in the stubborn, drunken loyalty of George
Tresslyn,—a loyalty that never wavered even though there was no such thing
as hope ahead of him.
As time went on, Thorpe, the sound, sober, indomitable Thorpe,—began to
encourage himself with the thought that he too might sink to the
extremities through which George had passed,—and be as simple and as firm
in his weakness as the other had been! He too might stand in dark places
and watch, he too might slink behind like a thing in the night. Only in
his case the conditions would be reversed. He would be fighting conviction
and not hope, for he knew he had but to walk into Anne's presence and
speak,—and the suspense would be over. She was waiting for him. It was he
who would have to surrender, not she.
He fought desperately with himself; the longing to see her, to be near
her, to test his vaunted self-control, never for an instant subsided. He
fought the harder because he was always asking himself why he fought at
all. Why should he not take what belonged to him? Why should he deny
himself happiness when it was so much to be desired and so easy to obtain?
But always when he was nearest to the breaking point, and the rush of
feeling was at flood, there crept up beside him the shadow that threatened
his very existence and hers. He had taken the life of her husband. He had
no right to her. Down in his heart he knew that there was no moral ground
for the position he took and from which he could not extricate himself. He
had committed no crime. There had been no thought of himself in that
solemn hour when he delivered his best friend out of bondage. Anne had no
qualms, and he knew her to be a creature of fine feelings. She had always
revolted against the unlovely aspects of life, and all this despite the
claim she made that love would survive the most unholy of oppressions.
What was it then that _he_ was afraid of? What was it that made him hold
back while love tugged so violently, so persistently at his heart-strings?
At times he had flashes of the thing that created the shadow, and it was
then that he grasped, in a way, the true cause of his fears. Back of
everything he realised there was the most uncanny of superstitions. He
could not throw off the feeling that his grandfather, in his grave, still
had his hand lifted against his marriage with Anne Tresslyn; that the
grim, loving old man still regarded himself as a safeguard against the
connivings of Anne!
His common sense, of course, resisted this singular notion. He had but to
recall his grandfather's praise of Anne just before he went to his death.
Surely that signified an altered opinion of the girl, and no doubt there
was in his heart during those last days of life, a very deep, if puzzled,
admiration for her. And yet, despite the conviction that his grandfather,
had he been pressed for a definite statement would have declared himself
as being no longer opposed to his marriage with Anne, there still remained
the fact that he had gone to his grave without a word to show that he
regarded his experiment as a failure. And he had gone to his grave in a
manner that left no room for doubt that his death was to stand always as
an obstacle in the path of the lovers. There were times when Braden Thorpe
could have cursed his grandfather for the cruel cunning to which he had
resorted in the end.
He could not free himself of the ridiculous, distorted and oft-recurring
notion that his grandfather was watching him from beyond the grave, nor
were all his scientific convictions sufficient to dispel the fear that men
live after death and govern the destinies of those who remain.
But through all of these vain struggles, his love for Anne grew stronger,
more overpowering. He was hollow-eyed and gaunt, ravenous with the hunger
of love. A spectre of his former self, he watched himself starve with
sustenance at hand. Bountiful love lay within his grasp and yet he
starved. Full, rich pastures spread out before him wherein he could roam
to the end of his days, blissfully gorging himself,—and yet he starved.
And Anne, who dwelt in those elysian pastures, was starving too!
Once more he wavered and again he fell. He found himself at midnight
standing at the corner above Anne's home, staring at the darkened
unresponsive windows. Three nights passed before he resumed the hateful
vigil. This time there were lights. And from that time on, he went almost
nightly to the neighbourhood of Washington Square, regardless of weather
or inconvenience. He saw her come and go, night after night, and he saw
people enter the house to which he held a key,—always he saw from obscure
points of vantage and with the stealth and caution of a malefactor.
He came to realise in course of time that she was not at peace with
herself, notwithstanding a certain assumption of spiritedness with which
she fared into the world with others. At first he was deceived by
appearances, but later on he knew that she was not the happy, interested
creature she affected to be when adventuring forth in search of pleasure.
He observed that she tripped lightly down the steps on leaving the house,
and that she ascended them slowly, wearily, almost reluctantly on her
return, far in the night. He invariably waited for the lights to appear in
the shaded windows of her room upstairs, and then he would hurry away as
if pursued. Once, after roaming the streets for two hours following her
return to the house, he wended his way back to the spot from which he had
last gazed at her windows. To his surprise the lights were still burning.
After that he never left the neighbourhood until he saw that the windows
were dark, and more often than otherwise the lights did not go out until
two or three o'clock in the morning. The significance of these nightly
indications of sleeplessness on her part did not escape him.
Bitterly cold and blustering were some of the nights. He sought warmth and
shelter from time to time in the near-by cafés, always returning to his
post when the call became irresistible. It was his practice to go to the
cheap and lowly cafés, places where he was not likely to be known despite
his long residence in the community. He did not drink. It had, of course,
occurred to him that he might find solace in resorting to the cup that
cheers, but never for an instant was he tempted to do so. He was too
strong for that!
Curiosity led him one night to the restaurant of Josiah Wade. He did not
enter, but stood outside peering through the window. It was late at night
and old Wade was closing the place. A young woman whom Thorpe took to be
his wife was chatting amiably with a stalwart youth near the cash
register. He did not fail to observe the furtive, shifty glances that Wade
shot out from under his bushy eyebrows in the direction of the couple.
He knew, through Simmy, that the last of Templeton Thorpe's money would
soon pass from Anne's hands. A million and a half was gone. The time for
the last to go was rapidly approaching. She would soon be poorer than when
she entered upon the infamous enterprise. There would still remain to her
the house in which she lived. It was not a part of the purchase price. It
was outside of the bargain she had made, and the right to sell it was
forbidden her. But possesion of it was a liability rather than an asset.
He wondered what she would do when it came down to the house in which she
lived.
Again and again he apostrophized himself as follows: "My God, what am I
coming to? Is this madness? Am I as George Tresslyn was, am I no nobler
than he? Or was he noble in spite of himself, and am I noble in the same
sense? If I am mad with love, if I am weak and accursed by consequences,
why should not she be weaker than I? She is a woman. I am—or was—a man.
Why should I sink to such a state as this and she remain brave and strong
and resolute? She keeps away from me, why should I not stay away from her?
God knows I have tried to resist this thing that she resists, and what
have I come to? A street loafer, a spy, a sneak, a dog without a master.
She is doing a big thing, and I am doing the smallest thing that man can
do. She loves me and longs for me and—Oh, what damned madness is it that
brings me to loving her and longing for her and yet makes of me a thing so
much less worthy than she?" And so on by the hour, day and night, he
cursed himself with questions.
* * * * *
The end came swiftly, resistlessly. She paused at the bottom of the steps
as the automobile slid off into the chill, windy night. For the first time
in all his vigil, he noted the absence of the footman who always ran up
the steps ahead of her to open the door. She was alone to-night. This had
never happened before. Mystified, he saw her slowly ascend the steps and
pause before the door. Her body drooped wearily. He waited long for her to
press the electric button which had taken the place of the ancient knob
that jangled the bell at the far end of the hall. But she remained
motionless for what seemed to him an interminable time, and then, to his
consternation, she leaned against the door and covered her face with her
hands.
A great weight suddenly was lifted from his soul; a vast exaltation drove
out everything that had been oppressing him for so long. He was free! He
was free of the thing that had been driving him to death. Joy, so
overwhelming in its rush that he almost collapsed as it assailed him,
swept aside every vestige of resistance,—and, paradox of paradoxes,—made a
man of him! He was a man and he would—But even as his jaw set and his body
straightened in its old, dominant strength, she opened the door and passed
into the dim hall beyond.
He was half across the street when the door closed behind her, but he did
not pause. His hand came from his pocket and in his rigid fingers he held
the key to his home—and hers.
At the bottom of the steps he halted. The lights in the drawing-room had
been switched on. The purpose that filled him now was so great that he
waited long there, grasping the hand rail, striving to temper his new-
found strength to the gentleness that was in his heart. The fight was
over, and he had won—the man of him had won. She was in that room where
the lights were,—waiting for him. The moment was not far off when she
would be in his arms. He was suffocating with the thought of the nearness
of it all!
He mounted the steps. As he came to the top, the door was opened and Anne
stood there in the warm light of the hall,—a slender, swaying figure in
something rose-coloured and—and her lips were parted in a wondering,
enchanted smile. She held out her arms to him.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
1. Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards.
2. Frontispiece relocated after copyright page.
3. Table of Contents added.
4. Typographic errors corrected in original:
p. 102 heared to hearted ("loyal, warm-hearted, enduring creature")
p. 193 snovel to snivel ("choke and snivel softly")
p. 215 unforgetable to unforgettable ("that unforgettable day")
p. 439 "Her saw her" to "He saw her" ("He saw her come and go")
p. 440 possesion to possession ("possession of it was a liability")
End of Project Gutenberg's From the Housetops, by George Barr McCutcheon