In the darkest corner of the quietest room in the club, Sively found his
cousin gloomily smoking a cigar, a bottle of brandy on a table near him,
and a copy of Luke King's paper on the floor at his feet. As he looked
up his eyes had a shifting glare in them, and there was an air of utter
dejection on him, though, on recognizing his cousin, he made a valiant
effort to appear at ease.
"Oh, you are back, are you?" he said, awkwardly, flicking the ashes of
his cigar over a tray.
"Yes, just in, old boy, and I've got my horses out for a spin to the
Driving Club. Come along. The whole town is out on wheels; the afternoon
is perfect. The idea of your sitting cooped up here, in smoke thick
enough to cut with an axe, when you ought to be filling your lungs with
ozone and enjoying life!"
Langdon hesitated, but it was evident that he could formulate no
reasonable excuse for declining the invitation, and so he reluctantly
gave in. "Let me get my hat," he said, and together they strolled down
the wide entrance-hall to the hat-rack.
"I felt rather uneasy when I missed you at my rooms," Sively remarked,
as they were approaching the trap at the door. "Pomp could give no
account of you, and I didn't know but what you'd skipped out for home.
Have a good time while I was away?"
"Oh yes, yes," Chester answered, as he got into the vehicle and began to
adjust the lap-robes about him. "I got along all right. You see, old
man, I'm sort of getting on the social retired-list. Living in the
country, where we have few formalities, has turned me somewhat against
your teas, dinners, and dances. I never go without feeling out of it
somehow. You Atlanta men seem to know how to combine business and
society pretty well; but, having no business when I'm here, I get sick
of doing the other thing exclusively."
"Oh, I see," said Sively, who was too deeply versed in human nature to
be misled.
As they sped along the smooth asphalt pavement of Peachtree Street,
dodging trolley-cars and passing or meeting open vehicles filled with
pleasure-seekers, Sively's hat and arm were in continual motion bowing
to friends and acquaintances. The conversation languished. Sively found
it very difficult to keep it going as he noted the deep lines of care
which marked his cousin's face. He was quite sure something of a very
serious nature had happened to Langdon, and his sympathies were deeply
stirred.
After twenty minutes' brisk driving, they reached the club-house and
entered the throng of fashionably dressed men and women distributed
about at the numerous refreshment-tables under the trees. The club was
on a slight elevation, and below them stretched the beautiful greensward
of the extensive Exposition grounds. Several of the liveried servants,
recognizing Sively, approached and offered chairs at their respective
tables, but, sensing his cousin's desire not to be thrown with others,
he led the way through the laughing and chattering assemblage to a quiet
table in a little smoking-room quite in the rear of the building.
"There," he smiled, "this will suit you better, I know."
"Yes, I think it will, if it's all the same to you," Chester admitted,
with a breath of relief. "The Lord only knows what I'd talk about out
there in that chattering gang."
Sively ordered cigars, and, when the waiter had gone for them, he said,
lightly: "No more liquor for you to-day, my boy. You hold your own all
right, but you are too nervous to take any more."
"Nervous? Do you think so? Do I look it?" Chester asked.
"Oh yes, a little," said Sively. He was taking a bunch of cigars from
the waiter, and, when he had signed his name to the accompanying slip of
paper, he said, "Harry, pull the door to after you, and see that we are
not disturbed."
"Certainly, sir."
Langdon, with widening eyes, watched the negro as he went out and closed
the door, then he glanced at his cousin inquiringly.
"I want to be alone with you, my boy," Sively said, with ill-assumed
ease. "You can trust me, you know, and--well, the truth is, my boy, I
want to know what you are in trouble about."
"Me? Good gracious!"
"Oh, don't begin that!" Sively said, firmly, as he struck a match and
held it to the end of his cigar. "I won't stand it. You can't keep your
feelings from me. At first, when Pomp told me about your not going out
to those affairs when I was away, I thought your father had thrown you
over for good and all, but it isn't that. My uncle couldn't do it,
anyway. You are in trouble, my boy; what is it?"
Langdon flushed and stared defiantly across the table into the fixed
eyes of his cousin for a moment, and then he looked down.
"No, my father is all right," he said. "He's found out about the horse,
but he didn't take it so very hard. In fact, he went to Darley and
bought him back for only a slight advance on what I sold him for. He is
worried about me, and writes for me to come on home."
"Then, as I supposed, it is _not_ your father," said Sively.
There was a pause. Langdon, with bloodless fingers, nervously broke his
cigar half in two. He took another and listlessly struck a match, only
to let its flame expire without using it.
"What's the trouble, my boy?" pursued Sively. "I want to befriend you if
I can. I'm older than you."
"Well, I _am_ in trouble," Langdon said, simply. Then, in a low tone,
and with frequent pauses, he told all about his acquaintance with
Virginia. Once started, he left out no detail, extending his confidence
till it had included a humble confession even of his humiliation by Ann
Boyd and the girl's bitter words of contempt a few days later. "Then I
had to come away," Langdon finished, with a sigh that was a whispered
groan. "I couldn't stand it. I thought the change, the life and
excitement down here, would make me forget, but it's worse than ever.
I'm in hell, old man--a regular hell."
Sively leaned back in his chair. There was an expression of supreme
disgust about his sensitive nose and mouth, and his eyes burned with
indignant, spirit-fed fires.
"Great God!" he exclaimed; "and it was _that_ girl--that particular
one--Jane Hemingway's daughter!"
"You've seen her, then?" Langdon said, in awakening surprise.
"Seen her? Great Heavens, of course, I've seen her, and, now that I know
all this, her sweet, young face will never go out of my mind--never as
long as life is in me."
"I don't exactly see--I don't understand--" Langdon began, but his
cousin interrupted him.
"I had a talk with her one day," he said, feelingly. "I had been hunting
with your gun and dogs, and stopped at her mother's house to get a drink
of water. Virginia was the only one at home, and she brought it to me in
the little porch. I've met thousands of women, Langdon, but her beauty,
grace, intelligence, and dazzling purity affected me as I never was
before. I am old enough to be her father, but do you know what I thought
as I sat there and talked to her? I thought that I'd give every dollar I
had for the love and faith of such a girl--to leave this rotten
existence here and settle down there in the mountains to earn my living
by the sweat of my brow. It was almost the only silly dream I ever had,
but it was soon over. A thousand times since that day, in the midst of
all this false show and glitter, my mind has gone back to that wonderful
girl. She'd read books I'd never had time to open, and talked about them
as freely and naturally as I would about things of everyday life. No
doubt she was famished for what all women, good or bad, love--the
admiration of men--and so she listened eagerly to your slick tongue. Oh,
I know what you said, and exactly how you said it. You've inherited that
gift, my boy, but you've inherited something--perhaps from your
mother--something that your father never had in his make-up--you've
inherited a capacity for remorse, self-contempt, the throes of an
outraged conscience. I'm a man of the world--I don't go to church, I
play cards, I race horses, I've gone all the gaits--but I know there is
something in most men which turns their souls sick when they consciously
commit crime. _Crime!_--yes, that's it--don't stop me. I used a strong
word, but it must go. There are men who would ten thousand times rather
shoot a strong, able-bodied man dead in his tracks than beguile a young
girl to the brink of doom (of all ways) as you did--blinding her to her
own danger by the holy desire to save her mother's life, pulling her as
it were by her very torn and bleeding heart-strings. God!"
"Oh, don't--don't make it any worse than it is!" Langdon groaned.
"What's done's done, and, if I'm down in the blackest depths of despair
over it, what's the use to kick me? I'm helpless. Do you know what I
actually thought of doing this morning? I actually lay in bed and
planned my escape. I wanted to turn on the gas, but I knew it would
never do its work in that big, airy room."
"Oh, don't be a fool, Langdon!" Sively said, suddenly pulled around.
"Never think of such a thing again. When a man that _is_ a man does a
wrong, there is only one thing for him to do, and that is to set it
right."
"Set it right? But how?" Langdon cried, almost eagerly.
"Why, there are several ways to make a stab at it, anyway," Sively said;
"and that is better than wiping your feet on a gentle creature and then
going off and smoking a gas-pipe. What I want to know is this: do you
_love_ that girl, really and genuinely _love_ her?"
"Why, I think I do," said Langdon; "in fact, I now _know_ it; if I
didn't, why should I be here miserable enough to die about what has
happened and her later treatment of me?"
"I couldn't take your diagnosis of your particular malady." Sively
puffed thoughtfully at his cigar. "You'd be the last person, really,
that could decide on that. There are some men in the world who can't
tell the difference between love and passion, and they are led to the
altar by one as often as the other. But the passion-led man has walked
through the pink gates of hell. When his temporary desire has been fed,
he'll look into the face of his bride with absolute loathing and
contempt. She'll be too pure, as a rule, to understand the chasm between
them, but she will know that for her, at least, marriage is a failure.
Now, if I thought you really loved that pretty girl--if I thought you
really were man enough to devote the rest of your days to blotting from
her memory the black events of that night; if I thought you'd go to her
with the hot blood of hell out of your veins, and devote yourself to
winning her just as some young man on her own social level would do,
paying her open and respectful attentions, declaring your honorable
intentions to her relatives and friends--if I thought you were man
enough to do that, in spite of the opposition of your father and mother,
then I'd glory in your spunk, and I'd think more of you, my poor boy,
than I ever have in all my life."
Langdon leaned forward. He had felt his cousin's contemptuous words less
for the hope they embodied. "Then you think if I did that, she might--"
"I don't know what _she'd_ do," Sively broke in. "I only know that when
you finally saw her after that night and made no declarations of
honorable intentions, that you simply emphasized the cold-blooded insult
of what had already happened. She saw in your following her up only a
desire to repeat the conduct which had so nearly entrapped her. My boy,
I am not a mean judge of women, and I am afraid you have simply lost
that girl forever. She has lowered herself, as she perhaps looks at it,
in the eyes of another woman--the one who saved her--and her young eyes
have been torn open to things she was too pure and unsuspecting even to
dream of. However, all her life she has heard of the misfortune of this
Mrs. Boyd, and she now realizes only too vividly what she has escaped.
It might take you years to restore her confidence--to prove to her that
you love her for herself alone, but if I stood in your shoes I'd do it
if it took me a lifetime. She is worth it, my boy. In fact, I'm afraid
she is--now pardon me for being so blunt--but I'm afraid she is superior
to you in intellect. She struck me as being a most wonderful woman for
her age. Given opportunity, she'd perhaps out-strip you. It is strange
that she has had so little attention paid to her. Has she never had an
admirer before?"
Langdon exhaled a deep breath before replying. "That is something I've
been worried about," he admitted. "From little things she has dropped I
imagine this same Luke King used to be very fond of her before he left
for the West. They have met since he got back, and I'm afraid she--"
"Good gracious! that puts another face on the business," said Sively. "I
don't mean any disparagement to you, but if--if there ever was any
understanding between them, and he has come back such a success, why, it
isn't unlikely that you'd have a rival worth giving attention to. A man
of that sort rarely ever makes a mistake in marrying. If he is after
that girl, you've got an interesting fight ahead of you--that is, if you
intend to buck against him. Now, I see, I've made you mad."
"Do you think I'd let a man of his birth and rearing thwart me?" Langdon
cried--"a mountain cracker, a clodhopper, an uncouth, unrefined--"
"Stop! you are going too far," said Sively, quickly. "Our old idea that
refinement can only come from silk-lined cradles is about exploded. It
seems to me that refinement is as natural as a love of art, music, or
poetry. And not only has that chap got refinement of a decided sort, but
he's got a certain sort of pride that makes him step clean over a
reverence for our defunct traditions. When he meets a scion of the old
aristocracy his clear eye doesn't waver as he stares steadily into the
face as if to see if the old regime has left a fragment of brains there
worth inspecting. Oh, he gets along all right in society! The Holts had
him at the club reception and dinner the other night, and our best women
were actually _asking_ to be introduced to him, and--"
"But why are you telling all this stuff to me?" Langdon thundered, as he
rose angrily to signify that he was ready to go.
"Why do I?" Sively said, pacifically. "Because you've simply got to know
the genuine strength of your rival, if he _is_ that, and you have to
cross swords with him. If the fellow really intends to win that girl, he
will perhaps display a power in the undertaking that you never saw. I'd
as soon fight a buzz-saw with bare hands as to tackle him in a fight for
a woman's love. Oh, I've got started, my boy, and I'll have to reel it
all off, and be done with it. There is one thing you may get mad and
jealous enough to do--that is, in case you are this fellow King's
rival--"
"What do you mean? What did you start to say?" Langdon glared down at
his cousin.
"Why, you might--I say might--fall low enough to try to use the poor
girl's little indiscretion against her. But if you do, my boy, I'll go
back on you. I'll do it as sure as there is a God in heaven. I wish you
luck with her, but it all depends on you. If you will be a man, you may
be happy in the end, get a beautiful, trusting wife, and wipe the mire
off your soul which is making you so miserable. Go straight home and set
about it in the right way. Begin with a humble proposal of marriage.
That will show your intentions at the outset. Now, let's get out in the
open air."
They walked through the gay throng again to the carriage, and as they
were getting in Langdon said, almost cheerfully: "I'm going to take your
advice. I know I love her, honestly and truly, for I want her with every
nerve in my body. I haven't slept a single night through since the thing
happened. I've simply been crazy."
"Well, the whole thing lies with you," said Sively. "The girl must have
cared _something_ for you at one time, and you must recover your lost
place in her estimation. A humble proposal of marriage will, in my
judgment, soften her more than anything else. It will be balm to her
wounded pride, too, and you may win. You've got a fair chance. Most poor
mountain girls would be flattered by the opportunity to marry a man
above them in social position, and she may be that way. Be a man, and
pay no attention to your father's objections. When the proper time
comes, I'll talk to him."