forgot just then all the boasted sweetness of her present life, her
years of training, and her coming postulancy at St. Margaret’s, as well
as the heinousness of his offence. She forgot everything, save that
this was Neil, and that he suffered.
But all that she, being a woman and merciful, forgot, he, being a man
and something more than just, remembered.
“Good-by, and God be with you,” he said.
“Neil!” she cried. “Neil!”
But his face was set steadfastly toward the heart of the stricken city,
and he neither answered nor looked back.
The future sister of St. Margaret’s watched him with a heart that ached
as she had thought it could never ache again. All the hard-won peace
of her patient years, which she thought so secure a possession, had
gone at once and was as though it had not been; for he, with all his
weaknesses upon him, was still the man she loved.
“Lord, give him back to me!” she cried, yet felt the cry was futile.
Slowly she climbed the stairs again, wondering where was the courage
and quiet confidence that had sustained her so short a time ago.
Was it true, then, that heaven was only excellent when earth could
not be had? She was the coward now. In her mind there were but two
thoughts--the desire to see him again, and a new, appalling fear of
death.
She re-entered the sick-room where the girl was watching her patients
with awed eyes.
“You need not stay here,” she said, softly. “I cannot sleep now. I will
call you when I can.”
“THE HONOR OF A GENTLEMAN”
I
Because there was so little else left him to be proud of, he clung the
more tenaciously to his pride in his gentle blood and the spotless fame
of his forefathers. There was no longer wealth nor state nor position
to give splendor to the name, but this was the less sad in that he
himself was the sole survivor of that distinguished line. He was glad
that he had no sisters--a girl should not be brought up in sordid,
ignoble surroundings, such as he had sometimes had to know; as for
brothers, if there had been two of them to make the fight against the
world shoulder to shoulder, life might have seemed a cheerier thing;
but thus far he had gotten on alone. And the world was not such an
unkindly place, after all. Though he was a thousand miles away from
the old home, in this busy Northwestern city where he and his were
unknown, he was not without friends; he knew a few nice people. He had
money enough to finish his legal studies; if there had not been enough,
he supposed he could have earned it somehow; he was young and brave
enough to believe that he could do anything his self-respect demanded
of him. If it sometimes asked what might seem to a practical world
fantastic sacrifices at his hands, was he not ready to give them? At
least, had he not always been ready before he met Virginia Fenley?
She reminded him of his mother, did Virginia, though no two women
in the world were ever fundamentally more different. Nevertheless,
there was a likeness between the little pearl-set miniature which he
cherished, showing Honora Le Garde in the prime of her beauty, and this
girl who looked up at him with eyes of the self-same brown. Surely,
Virginia should not be held responsible for the fact that a slender,
graceful creature with yellow hair and dark-lashed hazel eyes, with
faint pink flushes coming and going in her cheeks, and the air of
looking out at the world with indifference from a safe and sheltered
distance, was Roderick Le Garde’s ideal of womanhood, and that he
regarded her, the representative of the type, as the embodiment of
everything sweetest and highest in human nature. Virginia’s physique,
like Roderick’s preconceptions of life and love and honor, was an
inheritance, but a less significant one; it required an effort to live
up to it, and Virginia was not fond of effort.
His feeling for her was worship. Virginia had not been looking on at
the pageant (Roderick would have called it a pageant) of society very
long, but she was a beautiful girl and a rich one; therefore she had
seen what called itself love before.
As an example of what a suitor’s attitude should be, she preferred
Roderick’s expression of devotion to that of any man she knew. He
made her few compliments, and those in set and guarded phrase; except
on abstract topics, his speech with her was restrained to the point
of chilliness; even the admiration of his eyes was controlled as
they met hers. But on rare occasions the veil dropped from them, and
then--Virginia did not know what there was about these occasions that
she should find them so fascinating; that she should watch for them
and wait for them, and even try to provoke them, as she did.
Worship is not exactly the form of sentiment of which hopelessness can
be predicated, but Roderick was human enough to wish that the niche in
which his angel was enshrined might be in his own home. He let her see
this one day in the simplicity of his devotion.
“Not that I ask for anything, you understand,” he added, hastily. “I
could not do that. It is only that I would give you the knowledge that
I love you, as--as I might give you a rose to wear. It honors the
flower, you see,” he said, rather wistfully.
She lifted her eyes to his, and he wondered why there should flash
across his mind a recollection of the flowers she had worn yesterday,
a cluster of Maréchal Niels that she had raised to her lips once or
twice, kissing the golden petals. She made absolutely no answer to his
speech, unless the faintest, most evanescent of all her faint smiles
could be called an answer. But she was not angry, and she gave him her
hand at parting.
In spite of her silence she thought of his words. The little that
she had to say upon the subject she said to her father as they were
sitting before the library fire that evening.
John Fenley was a prosperous lumberman, possessed of an affluent
good nature which accorded well with his other surroundings in life.
Virginia was his only child, and motherless. She could not remember
that her father ever refused her anything in his life; and certainly he
had never done so while smoking his after-dinner cigar.
“Papa,” she began, in her pretty, deliberate way--“papa, Roderick Le
Garde is in love with me.”
Her father looked up at her keenly. She was not blushing, and she
was not confused. He watched a smoke-ring dissolve, then answered,
comfortably,
“Well, there is nothing remarkable about that.”
“That is true,” assented Virginia. “The remarkable thing is that I like
him--a little.” Her eyes were fixed upon the fire. There was a pause
before she went on. “I have never liked any of them at all before, as
you know very well. I never expect to--very much. Papa, you afford me
everything I want; can you afford me Roderick Le Garde?”
“Do you know what you are asking, Virginia, or why?” he said, gravely.
“I have thought it over, of course. Couldn’t you put him in charge at
one of the mills or somewhere on a comfortable number of thousands a
year? Of course I can’t starve, you know, and frocks cost something.”
“My daughter is not likely to want for frocks,” said John Fenley,
frowning involuntarily. “You did not take my meaning. I wish your
mother were here, child.”
“I am sufficiently interested, if that is what you mean,” said
Virginia, still tranquilly. “He is different, papa; and I am tired of
the _jeunesse dorée_. Perhaps it is because I am so much _dorée_ myself
that they bore me. Roderick has enthusiasms and ideals; I am one of
them; I like it. You, papa, love me for what I am. It is much more
exciting to be loved for what one is not.”
Her father knit his brows and smoked in silence for a few minutes.
Virginia played with the ribbons of her pug.
“Marylander, isn’t he?”
“Something of the sort; I forget just what.”
“H’m!”
“Le Garde isn’t a business man,” John Fenley said, at length.
“Isn’t he?” asked Virginia, politely smothering a yawn.
“Is he? You know enough about it to know how important it is that any
man who is to work into my affairs, and ultimately to take my place,
should know business and mean business, Virgie. It is a long way from
poverty to wealth, but a short one from wealth to poverty.”
“Yes,” said Virginia, “I know; but I also know enough about it to be
sure that I could manage the business if it became necessary. You and
I are both business men, dear. Let us import a new element into the
family.”
Fenley laughed proudly. “By Jove! I believe you could do it!” A little
further silence; then, “So your heart is set on this, daughter?”
“Have I a heart?” asked Virginia, sedately, rising and leaning an elbow
on the mantel as she held up one small, daintily slippered foot to the
blaze.
II
Long afterward he used to wonder how it had ever come to pass--that
first false step of his, the surrender of his profession, and so of
his liberty. Before middle life a man sometimes forgets the imperious
secret of the springs that moved his youthful actions. In reality, the
mechanism of his decision was very simple.
“How can I give up my profession?” he asked Virginia.
She smiled up into his eyes, her own expressing a divine confidence.
“But how can you give up me?”
Though his doubts were not thereby laid to rest, the matter was
practically settled, and it was understood between them that he was
to accept her father’s unnecessarily liberal offer, and take his
place in John Fenley’s business as his own son might have done. This
may have been unwise, but it was not unnatural, and if there was any
unwisdom in the proceeding, it was apparent to no eyes but Roderick’s
own. Other people said what other people always say under such
circumstances--that young Le Garde was in luck; that he would have a
“soft snap” of it as John Fenley’s son-in-law; that he had shown more
sagacity in feathering his own nest than could have been expected of
such an impractical young fellow. They did not understand his chill
reserve when congratulated on this brilliant bit of success in life. If
they had spoken of his good fortune in being loved by Virginia, that
was something a man could understand. The gods might envy Virginia’s
lover, but that he, Roderick Le Garde, should be congratulated on
becoming John Fenley’s son-in-law was intolerable.
He by no means pretended to scorn money, however, and he felt as
strongly as did Fenley that Virginia must have it. Luxury was her
natural atmosphere--any woman’s perhaps, but surely hers. Other men
sacrificed other things for the women that they loved. He gave up his
proud independence and his proper work, and was sublimely sure that
Virginia understood what the sacrifice cost him.
But it was true that he was not a business man by nature, and his
first few years in John Fenley’s service were not the exacting drill
which would have given him what he lacked. Although he conscientiously
endeavored to carry his share of the burden and do well what fell to
him to do, the fact was that John Fenley was a great deal too energetic
and too fond of managing his own affairs to give up any duties to
another which he could possibly perform for himself. Thus Roderick’s
various positions were always more or less of sinecures as far as
responsibility was concerned, and he had a large margin of leisure as
well as a sufficient amount of money to devote to good books and good
horses, pursuits which met the approval of his father-in-law as being
the “tastes of a gentleman.”
John Fenley did not show his usual foresight, certainly, in encouraging
Roderick to be in the business and not of it; but then he confidently
expected to live to settle up all his own affairs, and turn his large
fortune into a shape in which it would be more easily managed than in
its primitive form of timber lands and sawmills. No one could have
anticipated his death, which occurred in the prime of his active life,
some five years after his daughter’s marriage.
Even then his son-in-law hardly took the position expected of him.
His long habit of standing aside was not easily overcome, and Mrs.
Le Garde, who had a taste for affairs, and Mr. Rogers, her father’s
private secretary, had actually more to do with certain important
transactions than the nominal head of the business.
One of these transactions was as follows:
“Mrs. Le Garde,” said Mr. Rogers, being shown into the library one
chilly afternoon in early October, “Macomb has cabled from Vienna to
his agent here to close with us for that tract of Michigan timber,
paying the price agreed upon for cash. I have had the papers ready for
some time, and they only want signing. If you can come down town at
once----”
Virginia looked down at her tea-gown, and then at the cheerful little
fire on the hearth, and her novel lying face downward on the easiest
chair.
“Won’t to-morrow morning do as well?” she asked, languidly.
“If you will permit me to say so, by no means, Mrs. Le Garde,” said Mr.
Rogers, suavely.
Something in his manner attracted her attention.
“Why not?” she demanded.
Mr. Rogers looked at the fire for a moment before replying. “You
wish to realize upon the land, you see,” he observed, vaguely. “The
cablegram was received this morning. Macomb’s agent has no choice but
to act on it now. By to-morrow, or next day at the farthest, there may
be reasons apparent which would justify him in declaring the deal off.
It is worth your while, _and it should be made worth mine_,” said Mr.
Rogers, leaning upon the words, “to see that the matter is settled this
afternoon. I have private advices that forest fires have started in
northern Michigan--ah--somewhat in this vicinity, and their spread is
greatly to be feared. I have not mentioned this to Mr. Le Garde.”
Mrs. Le Garde hesitated a moment. It would be charitable to suppose
that she did not understand the situation so lightly sketched in, but I
am afraid she did. Mr. Rogers did not raise his eyes.
“Oh, well,” she said, carelessly, “to-day or to-morrow, it doesn’t
signify. If you will have a notary and Macomb’s agent at Mr. Le
Garde’s office in half an hour, Mr. Rogers, I will be there.”
So it was that the papers were executed and payment made that
afternoon. The next day but one, “Forest Fires. Danger to Lumber
Interests in Michigan,” was a prominent head-line in the morning papers.
When Macomb came home from Vienna to look after his own affairs a month
later he found himself the owner of a diminished bank account and some
hundreds of acres of smoking pine-stumps.
He made a trip to northern Michigan to survey these latter possessions,
and while there succeeded in securing some interesting statements which
it pleased him to call “facts.” Armed with these, he went to Roderick
Le Garde, and laid his case before him.
“First of all, I want to say that I have always thought you an honest
man, Le Garde,” he observed, “and I wish to say that I am bringing no
personal accusations, though the case looks black for you. But I know
your man Rogers is a d----d scoundrel, though I fail to see how the
sale could profit him, apart from its advantages to you. But you will
see I have proof that he was well-informed on the day the transfer
took place that that tract of timber was already on fire in a dozen
places, and nothing on earth could save it from destruction. I call
that obtaining money under false pretences, and I warn you if you don’t
desire to repurchase the entire tract at the price I paid for it, that
I propose to see at once what the courts will call it.”
“Much obliged for your good opinion of me,” said Le Garde, dryly. “I
have perfect confidence in Rogers”--this was not strictly true, but
Roderick was angry--“and none at all in your so-called ‘proofs.’ I
shall do a little investigating for myself. If I find, as I believe,
that Rogers had no other information in the matter than I myself
possessed, and that you have met with your losses only in the ordinary
course of events, you may bring as many suits as you like, and rest
assured that the Fenley estate will fight them to the last dollar. If
it is otherwise--but nothing else is possible! Good-morning, sir.”
III
“Virginia! Do you mean that Rogers actually approached _you_ in the
matter?”
Mrs. Le Garde moved uneasily under the scorching light in her husband’s
eyes. It was a new experience to see anything but tenderness in his
face, but she respected him for the look she resented.
“He had to consult some one, of course. You have given no attention to
things of late.” Her voice was irritatingly even. “Papa always said you
had no head for business.”
“Your father was an honest man, Virginia,” cried her husband,
desperately. “He would have been the last person in the world to
attempt to increase his gains dishonestly.”
“I see nothing dishonest about it,” said Virginia, coldly. “I really
think, Roderick, under all the circumstances, it would have been more
appropriate if you had learned something about money in the last seven
years--besides how to spend it.”
Nothing dishonest!
“Don’t you understand,” demanded Le Garde, in a terrible voice, “that
the ‘commission’ you paid Rogers was blackmail, the price of his ‘news’
and his silence?”
Mrs. Le Garde shrugged her shoulders.
Roderick rose dumbly. He knew all that he need. The room whirled round
him. How he made his way out of the house he did not know. Had he
served seven years--for this? The fair house of his life, built up
on the insubstantial foundations of a woman’s silence and her sweet
looks, was tumbling about his ears. She whom he had made his wife, who
wore the name he honored though it was his own, whom he had worshipped
as woman never yet was worshipped, had failed in common honesty, and
taunted him with the life he had led for her sake. She had betrayed him
into a shameful position. That restitution was an easy matter and might
be a secret one did not make the case less hard. He could have defended
her had she been disgraced in the world’s eyes, but how might he defend
her from himself?
It was a raw November night. As he went swiftly on, he felt the
river-mists sweep soft against his face. He wrung his helpless hands.
“Oh, God! It is dishonor! What shall I do? What shall I do?”
No help in the murky sky above him; none in the home whose lights lay
behind; none in the river that rushed along beneath the bluff--that was
the refuge of a coward and a shirk. Had he not already shirked too much
in life?
What must he do? He tried to think collectedly, but in his pain he
could not. There were visions before his eyes. He saw Virginia as she
had seemed to him seven years ago--five years--yesterday--to-night. Was
it true that he had never really seen her till to-night?
Oh, that brave, lost youth of his! His strong, light-hearted youth,
with its poverty, its pride, and its blessed, blessed freedom! If he
could but go back to it, and feel himself his own man once more, with
his life before him to be lived as he had planned it. How was it that
he had become entangled with a soul so alien to his own? And what did
a man do when he reached a point from which he could not go back, yet
loathed to go forward?
He tramped on and on through the drizzling November darkness. Gradually
the tumult in his heart was stilled. He became aware that the air was
cold, that he was splashed with mud and rain, that he had no hat, and
wore only thin evening clothes. He turned at last, his teeth chattering
in his head, and plodded back.
Two things grew clear before his mind--he must settle with Macomb
to-morrow, and he must henceforth assume the control of John Fenley’s
affairs which he had hitherto nominally possessed. Thank Heaven for the
gift of work!
And Virginia?
Who was it who said that for our sins there was all forgiveness,
but our mistakes even infinite mercy could not pardon? Virginia was
a mistake of his; that was all. It was safer to blame himself, not
her--not her. That way lay madness.
Perhaps she, too, had found herself mistaken. Was that the secret he
sometimes fancied he saw stirring behind the curtain of her placid
eyes? If so, God pity them; and God help him to play the part he had to
play.
He had reached his own threshold, and his latch-key faltered in the
door. As he stepped into the wide hall, a curious figure in the
disarray of his fastidious attire, he caught the odor of roses--they
were Maréchal Niels--floating out of the drawing-room. The rooms were
warm and bright and sweet, but their cheer seemed to him oppressive,
and he sickened at the faint perfume of the roses.
His wife came and put the portière aside, standing with one white,
lifted arm outlined against its heavy folds. Virginia always wore
simple evening dress at home for her husband. She had been heard to say
that it was one of the amenities that made domestic life endurable.
“How long you have been out!” she said, in just her usual sweet,
unhurried voice, ignoring his dishevelled aspect. “I am afraid you are
quite chilled through.”
He looked at her an instant curiously--this exquisite piece of flesh
and blood that was his second self for time and eternity--realizing
that he did not understand her, had never understood her, could never
hope nor desire to do so again. Then he gathered himself together
to make the first speech in the part he had appointed hereafter to
play--that rôle of devoted husband, whose cues he knew by heart. As he
spoke he was shivering slightly, but surely that was because of the
raw outer air.
“What a charming pose!” he said. “Did I ever tell you that throughout
Homer ‘white-armed’ is used as a synonyme for beautiful?”
RIVALS
“I didn’t presume to suppose that you could care for me yet,” said
Rollinson, humbly.
“I am not at all sure that I cannot,” said the girl, meditatively,
“but, then, neither am I at all sure that I can.” She looked at him
with clear, untroubled eyes as she spoke, eyes in which he read her
interest, her detachment, and her exquisite sincerity. She had not
grown fluttered or self-conscious over his avowal. She was a modern
woman, and she was young. Nothing had yet happened in her life to
disturb her conviction that this was a subject upon which one could
reason as upon other subjects. She was not emotional, and she suspected
that the poets were not unerring guides in matters of the heart.
She liked Rollinson very much, and she was willing to listen to his
arguments.
It seemed to her a little strange that he did not proceed with those
arguments at once, when suddenly she perceived that the adoration in
his eyes was intended as the chief of them, and this discovery was so
disconcerting that she blushed.
“I am twenty years older than you,” murmured Rollinson. As this was the
fact he most wished to forget, he felt it his duty to remind her of it.
“Nineteen only,” she answered, calmly, “and, besides, I do not see what
that has to do with it. It is not the years but the man one marries.”
“It is very good of you to think so,” he answered, still humbly, “and
since there is no one else you care for, perhaps in time--”
He left the sentence hanging in the air, as if afraid to finish it, and
neither this modesty nor the yearning tenderness of his accent was lost
upon the girl.
“As you say, there is no one else.”
“But--but there might be,” suggested Rollinson, who was strongly
possessed by the insane delusion of the lover that all men must needs
worship his lady. “Bertha! If you are going to learn to love me, make
haste to be kind. I am horribly unreasonable. I see a rival in every
man you speak to, dance with, smile at. Until my probation is over I
should like to depopulate the world you move in. I want, at least, to
be rejected on my own demerits, not because of the merits of another
man!”
Bertha regarded him attentively, still with that serious, candid air.
“Indeed, I will try,” she murmured, and for the moment he wisely said
no more.
Rollinson had been a thoughtful youth, who early conceived of old
age--which he thought began between forty and forty-five--as one of the
most desirable periods of life.
“Patience! Afterwards,” he had said to himself during the storm and
stress, the confusion and uncertainty of youth--“afterwards, when I am
old, when all this fermentation has ceased, when I know what I think,
what I feel, what I want and can do, how glorious life will be!”
And in accordance with this conception, as he advanced in years, he
looked confidently for the subsidence of the swelling tide of his
prejudices, passions, partialities, and for the emergence of reason
undefiled as the second Ararat upon which the long-tossed and buffeted
ark of his mind might rest.