FOR THE CHILD’S SAKE!
The crowding passengers lounging on the decks of the “Campania” and
“Normandie” idly watched the fleeting waves torn up by the ocean racers
as they swept by each other in mid-ocean four days later, but there
were strangely agitated hearts, too, on the passing steamers, when the
signal flags were broken out.
For, the secret enemies now swept past each other at the distance of a
few furlongs.
“What the devil can the real motive of her quick return be?” angrily
mused bridegroom Vreeland, as he called up again Senator Garston’s
baffled fury on learning that for all his goading on, his detectives
had failed to locate the missing Romaine Garland.
He led his beautiful bride back to her room, and then left her to the
enjoyment of “Les Denis-Vierges,” while he eyed the fast-receding
“Normandie.”
“Another big deal in ‘Sugar,’” he suddenly thought, and he felt himself
perhaps hoodwinked by both Senators and the handsome woman who had so
artfully led him on to his fate. “It may be that they all are fooling
me; I may have been merely jockeyed away. Mrs. Willoughby can work
the ‘off side’ of her deals alone from the ‘Elmleaf,’ and the regular
transactions will go on as usual through our firm, really Alynton &
Willoughby. Or, she may have picked up another protégé. God only knows
what a woman may do.
“They all have their secrets, by Jove! Senator Garston or this cool
devil, Hugh Conyers, may now turn up as the secret broker in my place.”
It suddenly occurred to him that the powerful Western millionaire might
really be the favored lover, and Alynton, after all, only the dupe of a
growing passion. “I am powerless to go further now,” he groaned, as he
gazed at the rooms where his lovely and exacting bride was “squeezing
the orange of life” to its last drop. He had found out, even now, that
there were thorns upon his rosebud.
He was not yet entirely satisfied with the status of husband so
recently assumed. Still affecting all the delicacy of the lover, he
had, however, quite practically approached the subject of Katharine
Norreys’ investments “in the hands of Uncle James.”
And he soon found out that the exquisite form of his dazzling blonde
wife hid a resolute and undaunted spirit, an unruffled temper, and an
easy, natural defiance of all marital control. “Where did she get her
experience of life?” mused the startled bridegroom.
“You must go over all these tiresome matters, Harold, with Uncle James,
on our return,” the overwearied, fashionable bride answered.
“I have never entered into any details with him, and I supposed, of
course, that you and he had covered all this ground. I have only asked
him for money as I needed it since my return, and he has always sent
me his checks. It is for you, both business men, to regulate such
matters.” And she cast her eyes down again on her entrancing book.
“Then you have no permanent bank account of your own?” moodily demanded
Vreeland.
“Why should I have one?” innocently replied Mrs. Katharine Vreeland,
“when Uncle James has always paid the bills and furnished me all
that I ask? I have never asked him for any formal accounting.” Harold
Vreeland was secretly nettled at her easy carelessness.
“And if he were to die, if anything happened, you would then know
nothing of your own affairs,” said the dissatisfied husband.
“No more than I know now of yours, my dear,” calmly answered Katharine,
settling herself deeper in her cushions. “Uncle James simply told me
that you were a very rich man, and of course, I took his word. I have
not asked you to inventory your own possessions.”
She was turning an unusually interesting leaf as Vreeland walked out of
the cabin in a suppressed rage.
“We are both at sea, it appears,” was his disquieting thought, and
again the remembrances of that slender family tree of his lovely wife
annoyed him. It seemed to begin and end in the graves of the dead
parents, who were only gruesome shadows.
“I will go over this whole ugly matter with Garston at once, just as
soon as I see him,” was Vreeland’s mental decision. “Katharine is
either a child-wife of the Dora order, or else far deeper than the sea
that we are skimming over now.”
It came to him cogently that he had taken her “on trust” largely, and
that a current of life’s mysterious undertow had swept him along into
Senator Garston’s power. There was no going back, however.
“It is too late to hesitate now,” he mused, as he uneasily gazed back
toward America, well knowing that some giant game might be played in
his absence.
In the deal there would be no cards for him, however the luck might
turn. And there remained but one golden gleam in the gray clouds. He
had that paper with which to dominate Mrs. Willoughby. But, it was a
dangerous weapon; it might prove a boomerang.
“Justine Duprez stands between me and all harm. That was a
master-stroke! And so I can cut into the game as I wish, on my return.
The very first thing I shall do will be to get Katharine’s fortune out
of Garston’s control. He shall face the music. And yet, I can afford no
quarrel until that is all safe.”
In the month which followed this vain attempt at probing the financial
resources of the wife of his bosom, Mr. Harold Vreeland, at the Hotel
Cecil, London, found the beautiful Katharine’s money-spending power to
be something abnormal.
There was a rapid exchange of letters and cable ciphers between Garston
and the young broker spy, but the husband was never enlightened as to
the nature of the frequent telegrams and letters passing between “Uncle
James” and his ward.
It vastly annoyed him—this continued private commerce of ideas.
The questions of the husband were frankly enough met. “I have always
been accustomed to do exactly as I pleased,” the lady remarked, with a
bright, hard smile. Vreeland’s face hardened.
“And now, that you are married?” demanded Vreeland, angrily.
“I shall continue to do so, Harold,” his wife sweetly replied.
“If you would have me lead a Darby and Joan life, please to remember
that sort of thing went out with the ‘Rollo books’ and ‘Faith Gartney’s
Girlhood!’”
Mr. Harold Vreeland, the husband of a few weeks, soon realized that
while he was doing the clubs and music halls of London, his resplendent
wife had quietly gathered up quite a coterie of admiring American men,
generally conversationally lumped as “the Western gang.”
These ardent cavaliers seemed to be all wifeless, and, strangely
enough too, without mothers or sisters. “‘Uncle James’ friends,”
was Mrs. Vreeland’s saving clause, when at last her angered husband
remonstrated at their increasing circle. He was beginning to be
agnostic as to her guilelessness.
And on their removal to Paris, where certain of these “friends” soon
after appeared, Katharine Vreeland bravely continued “to do as she
pleased,” and her now bitter husband partook himself to sparkling wine
and “the sights of Paris.”
He was driven along from day to day, for he had no reliable news from
the seat of war. He realized that he was alone in the world and without
one trusty friend. His wife was only a bright enigma.
“The lone-hand game has its disadvantages, I perceive,” was his bitter
secret comment, as he tired of the Hotel Continental—the perfunctory
drives in the Bois, the open summer amusements—and visibly fretted at
his wife’s endless shopping.
Even with Garston’s substantial bribe, he began to see that
Mrs. Katharine Vreeland’s “separate estate” was to become a very
“burning question”—in the near future.
She was a “money-eater” of the first class.
“Let us get back to New York,” he moodily said after one of a series
of wordy recriminations. “With all my heart,” placidly retorted the
“beautiful Mrs. Vreeland,” for she had now acquired that professional
designation in the journals and the cant phrases of the uneasy floating
“American circle” of Parisian high life.
Harold Vreeland was now mentally tired of the by-play of marital
fencing. He realized, in all their varied encounters, that she was
calmly superior at every clash.
Bright, bold and ready, she “came back at him” every time, and he was
quietly cornered by that flashing rapier, her tongue. What man can
prevail against that two-edged sword?
But one resource was left. He had run the gamut of sullenness,
persuasion, a bit of bullying, some pleading and even a touch of lofty
tenderness, but her point was carried high, her wrist easy, and her
blade opposed to him at every turn.
He could not avouch himself a mere fortune-hunter, and so, he took
refuge in an ominous and expectant silence. “I will get hold of her
estate, and then curb her extravagance,” he brooded.
His worst fears as to the “underground railroad” communications of the
“uncle” and ward were realized when he finally received a positive
request of Senator Garston for an immediate return.
“I want you at once. I wish to lay out our plans for the winter. And
if I am to trap this underhanded, intrigant Mrs. Willoughby, I must
finish my work before the opening of the session of Congress, and our
committees will begin soon to meet. Come on, with no delay.” The words
were almost mandatory, and they annoyed him strangely.
Returning from his banker’s with this letter, he found his wife’s two
maids busied in packing up all her effects. He was startled, but took
the defensive.
Something impelled him to keep the news to himself. “I am tired of
Paris,” shortly said his wife, as she recognized the drifting odor of
an absinthe frappée. “We can just catch the Gascogne, and so, I have
ordered all my bills sent in. You must attend to them, and then, secure
our passage.”
“Let me know their probable amount,” gruffly answered the husband, as
he departed for the steamer office. He was beginning to feel a master
hand now.
“She had the news before I received it,” he growled. “And I swear I
will make it my pleasing duty to bring ‘Uncle James’ to book, on my
return. I will get her property into my hands, and control it.
“She would beggar even a Vanderbilt, an Astor or a Goelet, if given a
free hand.” Vreeland aspired to the conquest of this defiant beauty in
rebellion.
It so happened that the game as laid out by “Uncle James” suited all
three; but, while he thirsted to see Justine Duprez once more and to
confer with Doctor Alberg, Vreeland was really anxious at heart to
re-enter the comparative protection of his Wall Street office.
“By Jove! I am at least between the lines there,” he mused. “I can
frighten both sides, and so, guard myself.”
It was on the Gascogne that he watched Katharine VanDyke Norreys as
the Count de Millefleurs (a young attaché going over on his first
appointment) bent over her steamer chair.
“This marriage has only hung a millstone around my neck,” he
resentfully brooded. “And I wonder if I was only brought in to relieve
‘Uncle James.’” It was a mean suspicion, but it clung closely to him.
He was now the prey of ugly thoughts, and fleeting fears disturbed “the
sleep of Richard.”
There were times when he feared for the safety of the document so
deftly hidden away. The copy had been artfully deposited (under
receipt) in a Belgian branch bank in Paris, under an assumed name, and
the banker’s receipt was now sewed in his waistcoat. “Thank God! That
is all safe!” he sighed.
He little reflected that one day, laughing over the “Agony Column” of
the London _Times_, his eye had paused at the name “Martha Wilmot.”
Some trace of familiarity, some fleeting memory caused him to read the
few lines.
“Handsome reward and the most complete immunity guaranteed. Greatly to
your advantage. Communicate in any way.”
The signature, “New York,” followed by an address, closed the
expensively placed announcement.
“Some relic of man’s folly and woman’s frailty!” he laughed. “The old,
old game goes on forever.”
And yet, he little dreamed that Hugh Conyers and handsome Dan Daly
were now the right and left hand men of Judge Hiram Endicott, who was
engaged in some very interesting metropolitan researches.
In far-away New York, there was the veiled duel of two fearless
intellects going on, even in the summer days, when the town was empty.
Mrs. Elaine Willoughby was again the radiant mistress of Lakemere,
although she spent a portion of her time in town at the Circassia.
There was now a strange glow of happiness shining on the splendid
woman’s face, and the services of Doctor Hugo Alberg were permanently
discontinued.
It was impossible for the revengeful Teuton to learn the reason from
Justine Duprez. The courteous terms of Mrs. Elaine Willoughby’s letter,
inclosing a check for his annual account, were too unmistakable to
be misconstrued even by the dense German. It was a _congé_ not to be
misunderstood. His Waterloo!
And, in a roundabout way he had also learned that Judge Endicott and
his nephew made up the whole social circle at Lakemere, with Hugh
Conyers as a permanent summer guest.
Hugo Alberg had sworn an oath that Harold Vreeland should recoup him
for the loss of his star patient. He now only awaited the return of his
proposed victim “to levy the Rhine dues.”
A visit to the South Fifth Avenue rooms where Justine had vicariously
entertained him in the old days, gave him the news, by the mouth of the
old denizen, that “_la pauvre_ Justine” was tied down at Lakemere.
“Some one have robbed ze lady last year, and now Justine is ze
prissonaire to watch ze garderobe all ze while; and only ze travail
and ze solitude! _V’la tout!_ _Pauvre_ Justine! _Elle vent bien partir
pour la France._” The doctor hungrily awaited Vreeland’s return for a
bleeding process.
No one but the Frenchwoman herself knew how tightly the coils were
wound around her. Shaking in fear, left without the secret protection
of her traitorous tempter, Vreeland, she dared not try to break away
from Lakemere, for she now feared the gleaming wrist-irons.
To run away would be only to invite an instant arrest, and she panted
for the time of the winter’s gaieties. She would have a chance perhaps
then to slip away unknown.
Her plan was already formulated. A simulated illness, a last “bleeding”
of Harold Vreeland, and then, a return to dear Paris. Once again on
French soil, she would be safe. For Paris would soon swallow her up.
The vicious child would be hidden in the mighty bosom of the Mother of
all Wickedness.
“Ah! he shall pay,” she muttered, as her velvety eyes rested, lit up
with a strange fire, on the beautiful woman whose iron hand now held
her so firmly. “She and the Kelly—how I could drive a knife into their
hearts!” she hissed.
“But Justine must wait; gold first, gold—and then _la liberté_ shall be
mine.”
When “Harold Vreeland and wife” were duly domiciled at the Hotel Savoy,
he was not astonished at the proximity of “Uncle James” at the Plaza
Hotel; but, even on the pier, when the Senator met them, Vreeland noted
the ravages of some overmastering passion in the strong man’s face.
The eyes were brilliant and unsteady, there was a foreign irritability
in his abrupt manner, and Vreeland’s attempts at a _tête-à-tête_ were
only met with a sharp command “to get inside his old business lines” as
soon as he could; and Vreeland, humbled, kept his temper.
“I must have you back in the traces again,” sharply cried Garston.
“And, I would get up to Lakemere to-night if I were you. See
Mrs. Willoughby, and get safe on the old basis.
“The stock market is humming, and I will soon have need of you in Wall
Street. I trust no one there but you.”
Harold Vreeland hastened away to the office, and found the same
unimpassioned greeting which had always characterized Horton Wyman.
And in the rush, they were now glad to have his aid in their increasing
affairs.
“You will go, of course, up to Lakemere to-night?” said Noel Endicott.
“I have already telegraphed your arrival to Mrs. Willoughby.”
In a stolen detour, Vreeland arranged for an early morning interview
with Doctor Alberg, and then he passed the “Circassia” on his way to
the train after dinner.
The flat demand of janitor Helms for “backsheesh” keenly angered a
man already enraged by “Uncle James’” quiet appropriation of the
first evening with that hawk-eyed free-lance of marital beauty,
Mrs. Katharine Vreeland, “whose remarkable loveliness had created such
a London and Paris sensation.”
“I will soon cut the Gordian knot between these two,” growled Vreeland,
as he descended from the waiting carriage at Lakemere. “I will either
have my wife and her property to myself, or else ‘Uncle James’ will
show his hand, to the very last card.” He was beginning to be reckless
in a blind jealousy.
The welcome of Mrs. Elaine Willoughby to her returned protégé was
merely a complacently cordial one, and yet, in half an hour, Vreeland
bore away the assurance of lulled suspicions and his continued business
relation.
“I shall soon call upon Mrs. Vreeland and assure myself by inspection
of her married happiness,” was the last greeting of the hostess, whose
other guests, if any, were invisible.
“I will send for you to the ‘Circassia’ next week, and give you my
general directions for some business which is impending.”
“That woman has found a new happiness. Her life is now complete,” was
the keen-eyed schemer’s comment as he sauntered away toward the park
gates, where the impatient horses awaited his return.
A flitting form in the dusky garden walks led him toward the “lovers’
labyrinth,” behind the unforgotten summer house. His one friend was on
watch.
“Justine!” he gasped, and he hastened to stealthily join her in the
deepened gloom of the trees. A new fear smote upon his startled nerves.
There was the velvet-eyed Frenchwoman in waiting, and her passionate
words, her panting breast and gleaming eyes told him of an unbroken
tie, the bond of their guilty past.
The startled woman fled away at the sound of distant voices, while
Vreeland, wildly agitated at heart, hastened to his carriage.
“The enemy are on their lines,” he defiantly said. “I must strike a
blow somewhere, for Elaine Willoughby’s vengeance is not dead, but
sleepeth. She has not been deceived.
“And, Justine is a virtual prisoner. If she were to tell all!” He
stopped short, for his heart bounded in agony. “I must remove that
document,” he muttered. “For, even she may become an enemy.” He had
always distrusted all men and his marital experience led him now to
distrust all women—even Justine.
As he dashed down the road to the railway station, Vreeland noted an
athletic lad easily following the springing horses, mounted on a racing
bicycle.
The fact that the same lad sauntered into the smoking-room of the
car, and patiently dallied with a cigarette, never intimated to the
unconsciously shadowed man that the schoolboy follower was tracing out
his every movement.
But, officer Dan Daly smiled victoriously next day when he heard Mary
Kelly’s brother tell of Vreeland’s brief tryst with Justine, and his
long interview with Doctor Alberg in South Fifth Avenue. “I’ll get him
yet, in the very act,” he cheerfully prophesied, “with that stolen
paper in his hand.”
“The trap is nearly ready to spring,” complacently reflected the
Roundsman, as he ordered a night and day watch at the peep-hole which
controlled the interior of Justine Duprez’s rooms.
“I have sworn not to marry Mary Kelly till I’ve put the ornaments on
that rascal.” He glanced lovingly at a pair of spring-steel handcuffs
of his own especial selection. His fancy jewelry!
The days gliding along rapidly as Harold Vreeland dropped into his old
groove of the “automatic business relations” in Wall Street found him
still the victim of adverse currents, and wavering in the blasts of
contrary-blowing winds. He made no headway toward a solid footing.
Socially, the return of the Vreelands was an event of moment, and the
tide of unrestrained gaiety rose high around the now frankly defiant
wife. There were soon those gay cavaliers, Merriman, Wiltshire and
Rutherstone, in attendance, “the Three Guardsmen” of the defiant young
Western queen.
And the ever amiable Mrs. Volney McMorris and a flock of semi-detached
women of the younger married set gathered to the feast.
“There was racing and chasing on Cannobie lea,” and the brilliant young
matron was soon classed as a “Madame Benoiton,” _jamais chez elle_!
And Vreeland soon followed her example, living also in the open.
In the hotel corridors of the Savoy, the curious shaven servitors often
listened to the sounds of vigorous marital debate, wherein the low
growl of Vreeland followed the strident soprano of Mrs. Katharine.
For, “Uncle James” had not yet been brought to book! And the young
husband was brutally sullen.
There had been several bitter exchanges of hidden menaces between
the two men at the Hotel Plaza. “I am fighting the fight of my life,
Vreeland, now, over some great Western properties,” gruffly answered
Senator Garston.
“I’ve no time now to go into Katharine’s affairs. Ask her; she will
tell you that all is right.
“And I am, besides, carrying on a half-arm, in-fighting duel with that
devil of a woman.
“I need you in your place to keep her quiet, and whether you wish to or
not, you shall wait. That’s all.” The iron fist of the statesman made
the glasses ring in an angry emphasis.
“You had better watch over your wife and keep her friendly with
Mrs. Willoughby than try to budge me. I need both your help now, and,
I propose to have it,” was Garston’s last shot, as he strode away.
Certainly “Uncle James” did not mince matters.
And as the days drifted on, Vreeland became an object of remark, even
in the hurry of Wall Street. His wife seemed to be on terms of a frank
social intimacy with the Lady of Lakemere, but the man whom all had
envied was rapidly becoming a profitable habitué of the Café Savarin.
It was the beginning of the end of the “splendid run of luck.”
The funds received from Senator Garston, his purchase price, had been
seriously depleted by the young wife’s extravagance, and soon, both
roundsman Dan Daly and the cool Noel Endicott laid before Mrs. Elaine
Willoughby the proof of Harold Vreeland’s heavy outside speculations in
the “active stocks.” The desperate man was “plunging” now blindly.
Both of these secret agents marveled, in their different interviews,
when the Queen of the Street answered the mute inquiries of their eyes:
“Just let him go on; do nothing whatever to interrupt him. Only report
all to me.” And onward dashed Vreeland toward unknown reefs of woe.
She knew, too, that a haggard-eyed man often stole over the walls of
Lakemere, like a thief in the night, now, to meet Justine Duprez, who
was just beginning in her own cowardly heart, to wonder whether a frank
confession might not save her.
For there were no “sure tips” now to aid Harold Vreeland’s redoubled
plunging, and the “strong spirit of wine” was burning away the brain
of the man whose once handsome face was now distorted with racking
emotions and bloated by cognac. He was on a steep “down grade.”
“He may kill me!” tremblingly whispered Justine, who secretly counted
up her gains safely stored away in Paris. “I might tell them all, and
then go away over there. Dare I speak?”
She began to watch, with a sinking heart, the clear, unflinching eyes
of her mistress, now glowing in all the awakened love of her satisfied
motherhood.
“Not yet, not yet, only at the very last!” was the cowardly woman’s
decision, as she crept to the safety of her room. The French maid’s
cowardly terror escaped not her mistress’ eyes.
If she had known that “Martha Wilmot” had secretly crossed the Atlantic
and was now hidden away under Roundsman Daly’s charge, that news would
have brought Justine at once, a shivering culprit, to her mistress’
feet. And now, others than Vreeland were playing a sure and waiting
game.
But the downward curve was now slippery under Harold Vreeland’s uneasy
feet. He had thrown off all his retentive watchfulness, and he even
roughly repulsed Doctor Alberg and Janitor Helms, who hounded him to
the apartments at the Elmleaf, where the suave Bagley still welcomed
his unhappy master.
Brooding there at night after the double life of his Wall Street
duties, and his private plunging, Harold Vreeland at last formulated a
direct demand upon Senator Garston for money. He stood now on the brink
of personal ruin.
The market had gone sadly against him. Loss on loss had swept away the
great sum which he had received as a bribe, and his wife’s recurrent
extravagance at last led him to draw the fifteen thousand dollars of
his salary for the current year.
Noel Endicott handed over the check without a word, and the fact was
soon the property of Roundsman Daly. “I’ll gather him in when that
money is gone,” chuckled Daly. “He is near to the end of his rope now.”
“I can see the white hand that is throttling him!” muttered the blunt
policeman. “It’s the mistress. She will soon bring him to his knees,
and maybe there’ll be no work left for me to do,” he said with a
professional sigh of regret. For, he had set his heart on “running
Vreeland in.” “I’ll have him, dead or alive, yet,” the policeman swore.
But sterner than all the blows of Fate was the blunt rebuff of Senator
Garston, when Vreeland, with burning eyes, demanded a considerable
money advance.
“I gave you enough money for four years at least. You have your own
income down there; what the devil have you done with it?”
The haggard man murmured complaints of his wife’s extravagance. There
was his whole line of privately held stocks in danger now, and the
market was faltering. The Senator read the truth in his eyes.
“See here, Vreeland!” angrily shouted Garston. “You’ve been drinking
far too much of late. I will see that your wife has money—for herself,
but not for you. I hear that you are deep in outside speculations. If
so, remember the old remark about a fool and his money.”
Harold Vreeland turned without a word and left his secret enemy, now
his master. “If I only dared to use the secret of the document!” he
raged, as he sought the hospitality of valet Bagley at the Elmleaf.
There were days now when he did not go to the office where the business
of “Wyman & Vreeland” hummed merrily along.
Days, too, when he did not return to Mrs. Katharine Vreeland’s informal
court at the Hotel Savoy.
“If I only dared!” he growled. But then he reflected that any use of
the document would probably “land him behind the bars.”
He dissembled his rage, as he returned late that night to the separate
apartments he now used at the Savoy.
In the hall, as he lay in a wakeful unrest, he heard two servants
chattering. “The old Senator is here all the while; I guess he is the
real head of the family.”
And then the disgraced husband remembered Alida Hathorn’s parting
malediction: “I leave it to the future to punish you.”
He arose and sought the brandy bottle with uncertain steps. For he
realized at last that whatever game the Senator and his wife were
playing, he was counted only a mere pawn. And, the game of Life was
going against him now!
His power had departed from him, and before he showed his distorted
face next day on Wall Street his line of private stocks was sold out
“under the rule,” and he was really a beggar—stripped of all his
ill-gotten gains, when he returned that night to face his wife, who,
richly dressed for an evening’s outing, passed by him with a silent
sneer. Truly a marriage _à la mode_. He was at bay now!
Vreeland turned into his own room with a muttered curse, and after
a vicious pull at the brandy bottle, rushed out upon the streets to
wander aimlessly in the throngs of the night.
For he was chased out by the maddening thoughts brought to his
half-crazed mind by a chance glance at the _Evening Journal_.
“A social note” of interest heralded the fact that “Mr. and Mrs. James
Potter had returned from Europe, and that the hospitable VanSittart
mansion on Fifth Avenue would soon be opened to society once more, as
well as the beautiful old colonial manor house of Oakhurst. This union
of two old families has united hearts as well as millions,” etc.
“By God! I will not live in New York to have her laugh at my downfall!”
swore Vreeland, as he raced along with his coat opened to the chill
autumn air. The menace of her curse came back: “I leave it to the
future to punish you!” And at last, he was a broken and ruined man—a
human wreck.
On this sharp evening of early October, Senator-elect James Garston
sat alone, moodily gazing into the cheerful wood fire in his sumptuous
room at the Plaza. He watched the bright blaze for an hour, until the
hickory billets had turned into white ashes, flaking the tiles at his
feet.
On the table at his side lay an unfinished letter, and by the dying
embers the man who had the world at his feet groaned. “Ashes of life!
The ashes of a dead past.”
For, by the side of his last passionate appeal lay one or two tattered
letters traced in a girlish hand.
Garston walked the floor with a strong, resounding tread, as he went
over every detail of the veiled duel of the last months.
In the glass at either end of the room he saw his own strong, resolute
face, the silvered temples framed in iron-gray hair, his brow furrowed
with the lines of care which neither his honors nor his millions could
efface.
On the table lay his watch, pocketbook and revolver. He paused, and
picked up the heavy Smith & Wesson aimlessly. The man who had faced
death in a hundred forms bitterly smiled as the trigger yielded to his
practiced finger. There, he held ready fate in his hand!
“Here is either vengeance or release,” he gloomily muttered. “If we
were to go together.”
And then his face softened. “Not yet! Not yet!” he murmured. “I shall
live to look upon my child’s face.”
And so, he had honestly cast up the accounts of his life, not sparing
himself. He knew that Elaine Willoughby was now surrounded by an
alert body-guard of detectives; that her volunteer guardians were with
her daily. Either Judge Endicott, his nephew or the grave-faced Hugh
Conyers was always an inmate of Lakemere on every visit she made to
that lonely spot, and his own detectives had warned him that a special
policeman was also an inmate of her household, while Roundsman Dan Daly
was a grand outside guard. He dared not approach her. Could he lure her
to his side?
Ignorant of his wife’s secret warfare with Harold Vreeland, Senator
Garston saw in all these precautions only the confirmation of her stern
sentence of banishment from her presence.
He knew, too, now of the practical victory of her trip around the
world. Elaine Willoughby had made her word good. The missing girl had
simply disappeared! And he had been unable to reach the girl in order
to blacken the mother. He was powerless now. All his craft, backed by
money, had been met and vanquished.
When he had paid off all his detectives in a sullen despair, the Chief
of the “Inquiry Bureau” had admiringly remarked: “Your enemy has
certainly handled herself superbly, Senator.”
“Force is of no use. She has been guided by some matchless intellect.
We easily traced the girl over to Dresden.
“There she became an inmate of a private Klinik, which, bowered in
gardens and surrounded with stone walls, is guarded like the Kaiser’s
palace.
“Fortified by the stern German laws, the Doctor in charge would be able
to resist anything but a criminal warrant. He owns the property used
by the Klinik. And so far as we know the two women have never met.
Mrs. Willoughby turned up first in Vienna, but we lost her at Port
Said. God knows where she was in those two months.
“The girl went into the Klinik and never emerged; that is our final
report. You know what your orders were—no scandal, no publicity. We
tried to get an agent into the establishment. Ah! Useless! It is a
close corporation.”
The Senator on this lonely night was happy that he had only divulged to
his agents his desire to find the girl for reasons of an old, bitter
intrigue about her property interests.
Too well he knew that Margaret Cranstoun’s clear voice, if once lifted
to tell the story of his past, would damn him forever. The toga would
then be but a public badge of shame. And so, fear stayed his strong
hand.
And a hundred vain solutions of the enigma had haunted his fancy, for
he himself felt assured that the women had met in Europe, and that his
daughter was now lost to him forever.
He groaned as he pondered over the sweet face smiling up from the
dearly bought picture. His sentence of a living death weighed heavily
upon him now. The daughter whom he yearned for would perhaps never call
him “Father!”
“By Heavens!” he cried, in his anguish. “Margaret may have the power to
hold herself aloof from me. I have lost all my rights to her. There is
the past to face. She is right as to herself, but, the child! Nature’s
laws, the laws of God and man, give me the right to a hearing. It is
for my child alone to forgive or to condemn her father. And, I could
atone! She could have all—an honored name, a solid fortune, and a
repentant man’s blessing. ‘Only to hear her voice, only to see her
face,’” and he broke into bitter sobs. For he dared not deceive his
hungry heart. He was wretched, lonely and repentant.
The wretched man little knew how ably Roper had fulfilled his trust as
personal guard, how wisely Sara Conyers had concerted her measures.
Secretly smuggled away at night from the Dresden Klinik, Romaine
Garland had been transported to Copenhagen in a private car, and, on
beautiful Lake Malar, near stately Stockholm, an old chateau, now
a secluded sanitarium, had given its welcome shelter to the three
travelers. Judge Endicott’s all-seeing eye followed their every
movement, and Roper had nobly upheld his trust.
The heart-hungry mother, hastening from Port Said to Odessa, and thence
to St. Petersburg, had crossed the Baltic to Stockholm, and then, while
the baffled detectives were still watching in Dresden, had clasped to
her heart the girl whom the lame secretary’s chance affection had given
back to her.
And what a delicious apprenticeship in motherhood was opened to the
loving woman! A fairy heaven!
There, by the blue waves of Lake Malar, the mother learned of Alva
Whiting’s peaceful girlhood days in western New York. How those who had
given her a home had died leaving her their honest name and a legacy of
love in the technical education which had fitted her to gain a living.
And then, came the ordeal! The pathway of a maidenly Una among the
lions and jackals of Greater New York City.
And in God’s mystic providence, the strange path which had led her to
the temptations of the great restless city was made only a return to
the bosom of the woman who had lost her child in the shifting of the
mock philanthropic “Home.” And how fondly the happy mother clung to her
wonderfully restored lost lamb!
The dark shadows which rested on the heart of the repentant husband
threw their gloomy shade now over the heart-happy mother. For the same
fear possessed them both. The old fear! That puerile fear—and yet, the
most potent: What will the world say? Garston feared the black record
of his cowardly abandonment, and the victorious mother found that,
though innocent, she dared not tell the whole truth.
Innocent at heart, realizing the only means to save her child from
the man whom she secretly feared, when Elaine Willoughby went back,
incognito, to reappear at Vienna on her homeward way, she only caught
her loving child to her breast in a torrent of silent tears, when
Romaine Garland murmured: “You never speak of my father!”
“Do not ask me yet, my darling!” she sobbed. “I want you all to myself
now. Ask me nothing yet.”
And though the Lady of Lakemere had hoodwinked all of Garston’s spies,
though she had returned unanswered, the letters from her husband sent
to her by messenger on her return, and held the secret of his guilty
past over his head, she felt that this armed inactivity could not
continue forever. The battle must be fought out, and either lost or
won. She renewed her courage.
She could not lie to her child, and her eyes had dropped before the
appealing glances of the restored one. A hundred varied plans were
considered on that long ocean return voyage.
Too well she knew that she dared not settle down in Europe and leave
Harold Vreeland’s unpunished crime behind her.
The secret hidden in the stolen document was momentous! She could not
abandon her comrades in their speculations without vindicating her
trust in honor.
An option, under the guarantee of her faithful syndicate friends
to allow “certain persons” to purchase “certain stocks” at a fixed
valuation was in that fateful record. Its loss meant the ruin of many
reputations. Perhaps, too, the crash of vast fortunes.
The betrayal of a trust which Alynton had imposed upon her, and for
which she had been selected by the “secret syndicate”—the gods of local
finance! She must leave the secret circle with clean hands.
So far, she was safe!
As yet, the thief had not dared to use it. Its fatal power was still
veiled from her dearest foe, James Garston, the husband of her youthful
flower, whom all men once honored as Arnold Cranstoun.
“My God!” shuddered Elaine. “If Garston should obtain that document it
would be my ruin. All would believe that I had sold their secrets to
others. I would be at his mercy. It must not be.
“If he—Vreeland—can be trapped, if a silent surrender is safely
effected, then I could give up my trust, leave America, and seek
happiness abroad with Romaine, my beautiful darling.”
But though she knew that Harold Vreeland would dare to make no public
use of the document, though she was positive that fear of political
scandal would seal James Garston’s lips, she dared not deny, in her
lone watches under the stars, that the man whom she had banished was
still her husband—“till death do us part.”
And if Vreeland was the thief, he could sell her to shame in all men’s
eyes if Garston would shield him.
She knew further that there was no mercy in Garston’s love-maddened
heart now!
And a bitter thought haunted her over the dark Atlantic waters. “My
child’s future! She can not marry under the suspicion of illegitimate
birth, and she shall never deem her mother to have been a guilty
wanton.”
Even Judge Endicott and the chivalric Hugh Conyers knew but half the
truth. Both had assumed that there had been an early and unhappy
marriage, and both only believed that Elaine Willoughby was merely
fighting for the custody of a child whom they knew not to be of legal
age.
“If they knew more, I would either have to clear myself by the whole
truth, or else be disgraced in their eyes,” she murmured.
And on the instant call of her New York agents she had returned now to
strike a death blow to all Harold Vreeland’s criminal schemes. But she
was so sadly weak in her own defenses, against the laws of nature, of
God’s holy sacrament of marriage, and the pleading eyes of her innocent
child! And yet Vreeland’s demoralization forced desperate measures upon
her now. If he should die or abscond, then, there was ruin to face.
And on this night, when her husband mourned in agony over his forfeited
paradise and his childless age, the unhappy wife and mother only
awaited the moment when Harold Vreeland would fall into the snares so
skillfully set for him. That victory won, then she would bid adieu to
the “Street’s” mad ventures, her secret trust once resigned, peace,
love and happiness awaited her at Lake Malar. But safety first, peace
afterward. She felt whither the undercurrent of speculation had swept
her. On a lee shore!
“I can tell Romaine all when she is my very own, and she shall choose
between us then, and judge us both.
“She alone has the right to the truth.”
This vow upon her knees had quieted Margaret Cranstoun’s heart, for she
only now awaited Roundsman Dan Daly’s coming triumph to summon Senator
Alynton.
Once the document was honorably out of her hands, then the Queen of
the Street could abdicate, and go “far from the madding crowd,” where
“beyond their voices there is peace.” The hour of loathing her excited
environment had come at last.
It seemed as if some subtle commune of spirit had brought the
long-estranged husband and wife together in spirit on this very
evening, for Margaret Cranstoun dreamed of the loyal husband of her
youth, when she fell asleep, murmuring “Lead, kindly Light.” There were
angels pleading with them both—angels of white, unfolded wings. For the
child’s sake, they pleaded for a hearing.
And the next morning she was shaken at heart, as the gusty pines are
thrilled by the wild winds of night, when she read the long appeal
wrung from Arnold Cranstoun’s heart by the hours of his lonely midnight
agony. His agony had overmastered the proud spirit at last.
The deserted wife’s tears fell on the blotted pages over which the
strong man had leaned in all the ecstasy of a last appeal.
He knew that there would be an answer, for his messenger was bidden to
return.
And all that day, James Garston waited, while his estranged wife
trembled at the voice of her own heart, and bowed her head over her
daughter’s picture in an agony of speechless love. She dared all for
herself, but only to save the child of her hungry heart.
She feared the fatal sentence of these awful words of Holy Writ:
“For the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the heads of the
children.” That thought brought her to her knees now, and she walked
alone in the dark valley of silent sorrows.
Brought to bay by the wild appeal, the excited woman realized that she
dare not confer with either Alynton, Endicott or Conyers. The still
unsoiled woman-heart revolted at the unveiling of all the sorrows of
a shadowed life—those secret sorrows which had haunted her in all the
gilded scenes of a strange prosperity, her burden carried under the
veil of secrecy—her galling chain of secret sorrows.
“For the child’s sake!” she murmured, as she vainly essayed to answer
her recreant husband’s proposals.
A dozen times she had read over his last logical conclusion: “If you
and I are to respect the untroubled heart of the innocent child whom I
have never seen, then we must leave it to her alone to decide in the
future as to whether she shall go on through life as a fatherless girl.
“You might be taken away; I might pay the penalty of nature. What would
become of our child then? Can you answer? And even if I am a husband
no longer, you have no power to decree that I am not a father. And you
and I alone can settle a situation leading on to madness or despair. As
for the spoliation of our daughter, I will prevent that, but is that
all?—answer me, for God’s sake—is that all of life?—the mere money
provision? Dare you say it is?”
Elaine Willoughby recognized at once his coldly practical mind in the
propositions.
“For all our sakes,” he pleaded, “I will die to the world as Arnold
Cranstoun, if you agree; and I swear before God, that if you agree
that I will only approach Romaine Garland as a stranger, unless in
later years you may lift the ban. For never lived man or woman who
could foretell the future workings of the chainless human heart. Let us
make some joint provision for her future safety. In God’s name—for the
child’s sake.” His words echoed in her heart, and not in vain.
A meeting at the Hotel Belgravia in a week’s time was the proposal.
A family friend of Senator Garston’s had placed his apartments at
the husband’s disposal. “We are neither of us known there; you can
previously enter the hotel and observe the rooms.
“In the evening at nine o’clock on the day you select, I will be at the
door, and you can close the sorrows of a whole life, in a half-hour
given up to mercy.”
“For the child’s sake, be it so!” she cried as she read over the
proposal once more.
Her task was to bring every letter and relic of their married days and
to witness their destruction.
“Then our child can never be shadowed by my guilty past,” his hand had
traced.
“I am sure of your silence. I will go on undisgraced to the end of my
career. I will cease to pursue you and her.
“I am to give you the receipt of the International Trust Company
for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of United States bonds,
registered in the name of Romaine Garland.
“And I am to leave her in my will one-half of all my property. There is
then to be silence—oblivion; for me repentance, for you peace, and so,
for her in time, the enjoyment of her own.
“Should she learn from you in later years that James Garston was her
father, there will at least be no cloud upon her name, and I leave the
key of the future in your hands.
“This I would guarantee before either of the three men whom you trust;
but, I implore peace and silence, for the child’s sake.
“Our only guarantee in this interview of good faith is the one unbroken
tie between us, the child whom I have never seen.”
It was late in the day when James Garston read the lines traced by the
hand which had once trembled lovingly in his own.
“I will come! I will trust to you once more, under the protection of
the memories of all my sorrows, but only for the child’s sake. Our past
is dead. Let us place the seal of silence upon its tomb. I will do as
you bid me.”
There was a strange light in Senator Garston’s face as he hurried out
of the Plaza Hotel, and when in the corridor, he met Harold Vreeland,
he wrested himself from that desperate gamester’s clutches. He dared
not break away from the haggard outcast. There was the meeting with
Elaine—the one aim now of his awakened soul.
“Come into the writing-room,” said the Senator, after he had heard an
appeal which caused him to fear that the man’s mind was wavering.
“Remember, sir,” sternly said the Western millionaire, “I know where
the money is going. And it is the very last dollar of mine that you
will ever see. Your wife”—Garston stopped, shamefaced, for the shadow
of a darling sin now rose up between him and the new-born hope of
meeting his own child in the coming years.
The spell of Margaret Cranstoun was strong upon him now. “I can atone;
Katharine shall not live to suffer poverty,” he groaned, as Vreeland
sped away with a check for forty thousand dollars. And so, a manly
throb of remorse made him generous to Katharine Norreys’ hoodwinked
husband.
The rain was falling in torrents when the hooded form of a stately
woman descended at the Hotel Belgravia on a storm-darkened night a week
later. The drenched cabman wondered at the hurried liberality of his
fare, and then hastened away far beyond the row of blinking lights.
Up the stairway to the first story, the visitor sped with no uncertain
foot, the “parlor watch” noticing with surprise the white robes beneath
the lady’s shrouding cloakings. For it was a fearful night without;
those festal robes were but a mockery in the storm-lashed darkness.
“One of our regulars caught out in this squall,” sleepily muttered the
waiter, resuming his novel.
Onward, guided by a surely retentive memory, the woman sped through
the halls, and pressed her hand upon a doorknob which yielded to her
touch.
The door was quickly closed, and there, surrounded by all the
belongings of a happy family circle, the long sundered foes met in
silence before a cheerful fire which blazed upon the hearth.
In James Garston’s startled eyes there was an expression of wondering
mystery. For with a woman’s self-protective instinct, his estranged
wife had eluded her household at the “Circassia,” and stolen away from
the dinner circle, robed in a costume of stainless white.
Down the deserted side stairway, she had fled, swathed in secretly
purchased storm wrappings such as a woman of the people might wear.
And now, she looked strangely young and fair as he sprang toward her.
She had not been recognized by the hotel attaches; no one had seen her
leave the “Circassia.”
And neither Justine, the watchful, nor the amanuensis knew—not even the
butler detective—that their mistress had gone forth in the storm, her
own apartment doors being locked. She had victoriously passed all the
dangers which she feared. A wild haste now possessed her; only to be
safe at home again!
In silence Elaine Willoughby placed a bundle upon the table, and then,
the eyes of the unhappy couple met.
“It is all there—everything,” faltered Margaret Cranstoun. “Hasten, for
I must save myself; I can not linger. This visit must be kept a secret
from all, for the child’s sake. Examine and destroy them!”
There was that in her eyes which compelled obedience, and the beautiful
woman stood clutching at a table, as Garston, with a mighty effort at
self-control, glancing rapidly at each faded token, cast them one by
one into the fire. Ashes of life, “dead fruits of the fugitive years!”
The flames merrily leaped up, and without the wild storm lashed the
window-panes. In a few moments, the work of destruction was complete.
Margaret Cranstoun started back as her husband faced her, for some
overmastering emotion now quickly convulsed his strong face. A strange
fear palsied her tongue. She had never seen that ashen look upon his
strong face in life before.
“There is the Trust Company’s receipt,” he said, speaking as if in a
dream, while his eyes roved over her loveliness, as she stood there
with her trembling hands clasped on her heaving bosom. A woman to
draw men to her feet—a throbbing, passionate, love-haunted queen—the
apotheosis of love!
“Do you agree to my proposition about my will?” the Senator slowly
said; “and I may at some future day hope to see—”
He paused abruptly, for Margaret Cranstoun reeled. Her strength was
failing; there were strange shadows in the room; the fitful fire glared
in weird flashes!
“Let me go! Let me go!” she cried. “You can write to me as before.”
“I must go!”
For there were strange shadows gathering on his convulsed face.
She turned as if to flee. Her husband was too quick for her.
With a single bound he reached the door and locked it.
“Margaret!” he wildly cried, as he crushed her to his breast, “the past
is dead. Its record lies there, ashes to ashes—the ashes of a dead
life!
“Let me live! Let us go on to the end together.
“No one would know. If we were married now, in due form, the silence of
the past would be unbroken. It is my last prayer. Forgive!”
The frightened woman was struggling in his relentless grasp, as he
pleaded “for the child’s sake!”
She made one last despairing effort to break his frenzied hold upon
her, but she stood there helpless and transfixed in horror, as his arms
relaxed and he suddenly sank at her feet, lying there prone upon the
tapestried floor. The Dark Angel’s wings had touched his pallid brow.
The shriek of horror was frozen on her lips by a sudden fear, and then
grasping at her draperies, she fled away through the open door of the
next apartment. She dared not glance behind her, for death was there!
Now, between her and that locked door lay the nameless thing which was
but now a strong man, the peer of kings! The despairing lover who had
died with the last frenzied words of reawakened tenderness upon his
lips! The husband of her youth!
The majesty of Death had entered unannounced, and that night, in
far-away Sweden, Romaine Garland, praying for the mother whom she
had recovered from Shadowland, stirred in the sleep of maidenhood to
murmur, “My father!” For in the vast empyrean James Garston had found
his child—at last!
A glance showed to the entrapped woman a stout partition wall leading
from a window opened into a side court to the long hotel corridor on
the other side.
Spurred on by a blind impulse of self-protection, Elaine Willoughby
sprang lightly across the dividing wall and raised the window on the
other side of the covered court.
There was no one in the silent corridor. Her beating heart told her
that here was safety.
It was but the work of a moment to cast her cloak around her, and a
side entrance offered her an unobserved descent to the level of the
street.
“If that door should be locked!” was her heart’s wild alarm.
But no, it yielded, and then with a swift step she sped along in the
storm, not daring to look behind her in the night!
The rains of heaven had cooled her brow as she halted far away before
a row of carriages standing before a theater. The sleepy driver only
growled “All right,” as he heard the words “Central Park West.”
He never knew that the half-fainting woman who stopped him on a corner
twenty minutes later, was the one possessor of a mystery which was the
sensation of the whole city next morning.
“Women are queer creatures!” babbled the sleepy driver, as he sought
the nearest saloon, while his fare disappeared under the gloomy
darkness of the walls of the “Circassia.”
“Now what business could take a decent woman out a night like this?”
But he had substantial cause for rejoicing, and he blessed her on her
way. For she paid him the price of a life—all unknown to his gratified
cupidity.
There was silence in the halls of the “Circassia” as Mrs. Elaine
Willoughby swept down the corridors now draped only in her white dinner
dress. The dark wraps, cast away on the servants’ stairway, told
no story of the undetected outing, and, with a trembling hand, the
frightened woman opened the side door of the Pearl boudoir.
An hour later there was hurrying to and fro in her household. “It is
one of Madame’s old attacks,” Justine explained to Doctor Anderson,
hastily summoned by the private secretary.
For after instinctively hiding away the document thrust into her bosom,
the paper which gave to fatherless Romaine Garland a fortune, Elaine
Willoughby had fainted away, with her hand upon the bell, as she
mechanically summoned help in the hour of her agony. And the price of
her safety was a near approach to the grave!
On the next morning the journals of fifty cities told millions of
readers of the sudden death of the Western magnate, Senator James
Garston, and the various political cabals were busied with selecting
his successor. Death had robbed him of the civic crown, and a stately
head was lying low.
Senator Alynton, while hurrying from Washington to New York on
business, read all the details of the attack of heart failure which had
cut off the strong man in the flower of his life.
“This is a serious business,” he murmured, but his impassive face never
showed his secret solicitude lest the papers of the dead man might
expose the operations of a syndicate “for revenue only.” He wore the
impassive mask of the millionaire politician.
There was the look of a wild despair in Katharine Vreeland’s eyes when
she awakened her heavy-eyed husband from the sleep of exhaustion the
next morning.
“Get up!” she sternly said.
“Here is news to frighten even you into being a man for a day. Senator
Garston died last night of heart disease at the Hotel Belgravia.”
“Good God! We are ruined!” cried Vreeland.
“For all your fortune was in his hands. You have not a scrap of paper
to show for it.”
“What do I care for the money!” she sobbed. “I am alone in the world
now.”