MARCH GILCHRIST’S name was brought up to the sewing room at eleven
o’clock Monday morning. Hetty was cutting out shirts for the twins at
a table of Homer’s contrivance and manufacture. Her face was flushed,
perhaps with stooping over the board, when she looked up.
“Please say that I am particularly engaged this morning, Mary Ann, and
beg to be excused.”
“My dear!” expostulated Mrs. Wayt. “He has probably called with a
message from his mother or sister.”
“In that case ask him to leave it with you, Mary Ann, unless you care
to go down, Frances?”
“He said ‘Miss Alling’ most particular,” ventured Mary Ann.
“Then take my message just as I gave it, if you please.”
“Did you know,” pursued Miss Alling, when the girl had gone, “that
Perry is an inch taller than his brother? His arms are longer, too.
They were exactly the same size until this summer.”
Mrs. Wayt eyed her sister with a helpless, distraught air, while the
scissors flashed and slipped through the muslin, and the worker
appeared to have no interest in life beyond the manipulation of both.
“Dear,” she said timidly at length, without noticing the other’s query.
“I never blame you for any action, however singular it may seem to me.
I know you always have some excellent reason for what you do or say.
But the Gilchrists are our best neighbors, and are leading people in
the church. It would be unwise to offend them. Do you object to telling
me why you would not see Mr. March Gilchrist?”
Hetty shifted the pattern to a corner of the stuff, turned it upside
down and regarded it solemnly, her head on one side. Then she pinned it
fast and fell again to cutting.
“I do object—decidedly!” she said composedly. “But it is perhaps
best that you should know the truth. It may prevent unpleasant
complications. Mr. Gilchrist did me the honor last evening to offer to
marry me, and I refused him.”
“Hetty Alling!”
“That is likely to remain my name. I supposed that you would be
surprised. _I_ was!” as coolly as before. “I trust to your honor to
keep Mr. Gilchrist’s secret, even from Mr. Wayt. It is not a matter
that concerns anybody but ourselves. And we will not allude to it
again.”
Struck by something unnatural in the girl’s perfect composure, the
tender-hearted matron leaned forward to stroke the head bowed over the
work.
“There is something behind all this, Hetty, dear. I am sure of it. It
would make me very happy to see you married to such a man as March
Gilchrist. What objection can you have to him as a suitor?”
“The very question which he asked and I answered. Excuse me for
reminding you that nobody else has the right to press it.”
The rebuff did not end the discussion. The matter was, in Mrs. Wayt’s
mind, too grave to be lightly dismissed.
“Don’t be angry with me!” staying the progress of the clicking shears,
that her sister might be compelled to hear what she said, “I love you
too dearly to let you make a blunder you may regret for a lifetime.
March is a noble young fellow, of unexceptionable family and character.
His disposition is excellent; his manners are charming; he has talent,
energy——”
“Spare me the rest of the catalogue, please!” retorted Hetty curtly.
“It is not like you, Francis, to force a disagreeable subject upon me.
And this is one of the least agreeable you could select. Discussion of
it is indelicate and a breach of confidence on my part—and altogether
useless on yours.”
Yet she was especially gentle and affectionate with her sister for
the rest of the day. On bidding her “good-night” she embraced her
fervently.
“I love you dearly; better this minute than ever before, if I was so
savage this morning,” she said, with shining eyes, to March’s champion.
Upstairs she read “Locksley Hall” through to Hester, who was sleepless,
until twelve o’clock. Not until the clock had struck the half-hour
after midnight was Hetty free to take from her pocket and look at a
letter the afternoon mail had brought. The superscription was in a hand
she had seen in notes to Hester and upon the fly-leaves of books, and
it was still sealed. She sat looking at it, as it lay within the open
palm of a lax hand for a good (or bad) quarter of an hour.
Hester’s regurgitate breathing—worse to-night than usual—was the only
sound in the chamber. Now and then she raised her hands strugglingly,
as if dreaming, but she slept on.
To open that letter and take the contents into her empty heart would
be to the lonely orphan Heaven on earth. It was long, for the envelope
held several sheets. It was eloquent, for she had heard him talk upon
the theme set forth in every line. She had will-force sufficient to
conceal from the sister, whose heart would be broken by the truth, her
reasons for refusing to link hers with the unsmirched name of the man
she loved. She was not strong enough to put her finger under the flap
of that envelope and read a single line, and then persist in doing
right. Perhaps, in spite of the repulse of the morning, he had again
called her “darling!”
She durst not risk the seeing; she had strength given her to keep the
resolution, but she did no more that night. The answer must wait until
morning. The letter was hidden under the pillow, and her hand touched
it while she slept and while she lay awake. In the still, purple dawn,
she arose quietly, not to disturb Hester, dressed herself and knelt for
a brief prayer, such as the busiest member of the household had time
to offer. While she prayed she held the unopened letter to her heart.
Arising, she kissed it lingeringly.
“God bless my love!” she whispered.
With steady fingers she wrote upon the reverse of the envelope: “_I
cannot read this. Do not write again_,” slipped it into a larger cover,
addressed it, and, before the family was astir, sent Homer with it to
the nearest letter box.
She had acted bravely, and, she believed, decisively, but she had
blundered withal. An unopened letter, unaccompanied by a word of
extenuation of the flagrant discourtesy, might damp the ardor of the
most adoring lover. Yet March’s eyes were lit by a ray of affectionate
amusement in receiving back this, the first love letter he had ever
penned. He kissed the one-line sentence before putting the envelope
away.
“Perhaps she is afraid of herself!” May had suggested sagely, _à
propos_ of Hetty’s avoidance of his visits.
The bright-natured suitor’s conclusion, after reading what was meant
as a quietus to his addresses, was not dissimilar. If the case were
hopeless she would have written nothing. Nevertheless, he bowed to the
laconic: “Do not write again.” He did more than she had commanded.
Without attempting to see Hetty again, he escorted his sister in the
second week of July to Long Branch, and stayed there a fortnight, then
went with her to Mt. Desert for ten days more.
The malign influence of a dog-day drought was upon Fairhill when the
pair returned. The streets were deep in dust, the sun, a red and
rayless ball, had rolled from east to west, and taken his own time
in doing it, and was staining to a dingy crimson horizon-vapors that
looked as dry as the dust, as brother and sister paused upon the piazza
for a look over the familiar landscape.
“It is stifling after the seashore!” breathed May. “But it is home! I
am _glad_ to be back!”
“And I—always!”
March said it, in stooping, hat in hand, to kiss his mother. There was
the ring of sincerity in his voice; his eyes were placid. He had come
home to her cured of an ill-starred fancy for an ineligible girl. There
was no sign of anything more than neighborly interest in his face when
May asked at dinner-time how the Wayts were.
“Well, I believe,” replied Mrs. Gilchrist. “I have seen comparatively
little of them while you were away, except at church. It has been too
hot for visiting. Yesterday I took Hester out to drive. She misses you
sadly, May. She is thinner and has less color than when you went away.”
“Dear little Queen Mab!” said Hester’s friend. “I must have her over
to-morrow to spend the day. I have some books and sketches for her. And
Hetty?”
“Is as busy as usual, Hester tells me. She goes out very little, I
believe. The young people hereabouts call her a recluse.”
The unconscious judge came to the relief of all parties.
“Mr. Wayt’s congregation continues large,” he remarked. “He preached a
truly remarkable sermon last Sunday. At this rate we will have to pull
down our church and build a larger by next year.”
The wife looked gratified. It was much to have her husband speak of
“our church.”
May was content to wait for the morrow’s meeting with her pet. Hester
was wild with impatience to be again with her worshiped friend. Hetty
might remonstrate, and her mother entreat her not to intrude upon the
family on the evening of the travelers’ arrival. The spoiled child
was unmanageable. She could not sleep a wink, she protested, until she
had kissed Miss May, and exchanged reports of the weeks separating
them from the dear everyday intercourse. She would take with her the
portfolio she had almost worked herself ill to fill with what May must
think showed diligent endeavor to improve.
“Then, there is the great news to tell!”
“Wouldn’t it be well to wait a while before speaking of that?”
dissuaded the mother.
“It is a week old, already!” Hester pouted, “and I said never a word to
Mrs. Gilchrist yesterday. ‘The Seasons’”—the _mot de famille_ at the
Gilchrists’ for brother and sister—“are our only _own_ friends, mamma.
You can trust them to hold their tongues!”
“What seems a great event to us will be small to them,” cautioned Mrs.
Wayt—then gave Hester her way.
Nine o’clock saw her in Homer’s charge on the orchard road, the
shortest, as it was the most secluded, to the Gilchrist place.
“Where _are_ you taking me, Tony?” she aroused from a happy, expectant
reverie to ask, midway.
The aftermath of the June mowing was tall by now, and the chair was
almost hidden in it.
“Now—I don’ keer fur to take ye near that big tree. ’Taint wholesome
nor proper!” grunted the charioteer. He was slightly afraid of the
testy little damsel, and took on doughty airs at times to disprove the
fact. “We’ll soon git inter the path agi’n.”
“But I won’t stand this!” cried Hester, irate. “Go back to the path!
Not wholesome! not proper! What do you mean!”
“Now—I seen the light there oftener’n anywheres else”—Homer was
beginning, when they were hailed by a well-known voice.
“What are you doing over there?” called March.
“Swimming for our lives,” returned Hester. “Won’t you dive, and drag me
out by the hair of my head?”
Her tone was tremulous with delight. As he took her hand, it quivered
like a poplar leaf in his large, cordial grasp. He was fond of Hester
on her own account, fonder of her because he linked her with Hetty. He
had strolled down the street with his cigar after giving his mother a
detailed account of the pleasure making of the last three weeks. He
felt the heat inland to be oppressive after the surf breeze. His mother
was glad that his saunter was not in the direction of the parsonage.
She knew nothing of the short cut from the back street, or with what
ease an athlete of six-and-twenty could vault a five-barred fence.
Besides, was not her boy a cured and discharged patient!
The meeting with Hester, if not the best thing he had hoped for, was
so much better than a solitary ramble in dream-haunted grounds that he
greeted her joyously. It was not the first time the idea had come to
him of making a confidante of the keen-witted, deep-hearted child, but
it suddenly took the shape of determination.
“Going to see May!” He echoed her reply to his next question. “She is
tired out, and has gone to her room by this. She means to claim you for
the whole of to-morrow. Give me a little chat in our arbor instead,
and I will take you home. I have not seen you for an age, and I have
something very interesting to me and important to you, to say to you.”
She laughed up in his face in sheer pleasure.
“And I have something particularly interesting to me, and not important
to you, to tell in return. We have an event in our family—an agreeable
happening as to results, although it comes by a dark and crooked
road—or so mamma persists in saying.”
March had propelled her into the open track and stopped as she said
this to lean forward and peer into the saucy face. A disagreeable—an
absurd—thrill passed over him. Had he lost Hetty?
“An event! Accomplished or prospective?”
“Both!” chuckled Hester.
“Is it an engagement?” bringing out the word courageously.
The question was never answered. A vigorous onward push had brought
them into the moonlit area surrounding the king apple tree. Thor rushed
forward, bellowing ferociously at a long black body that lay half
under, half beyond the dipping outward branches, now weighted almost to
the ground with growing fruit.
“Homer!” shouted March to the figure retreating toward the garden.
“Come back! hurry!” And, hastily, to Hester: “I will send you home with
him and go for the police. Don’t be frightened. It is only a drunken
tramp, or may be a sleeper. In either case he cannot stay here. These
are my father’s grounds.”
Hester had not uttered a sound, but the slight figure, bent toward the
recumbent man, had a strained intensity of expression words could not
have conveyed. Her eyes were fixed, as by the fascination of horrified
dread—one small hand plucked oddly at her throat.
“Take her home, Homer!” March ordered, “and say nothing to alarm the
ladies. I’ll attend to _him_!”
“No! _no!_ NO!” shrilled Hester in an unearthly tone that made him
start. “You must go home! you! _you!_ and say nothing! tell nobody! O
God of mercy, it has come at last! Don’t touch him!” her voice rising
into a husky shriek. For, parting the boughs, March passed to the head
of the prostrate man, and stooped to raise him. His quick eye had
perceived that he was well dressed and no common tramp in figure, also
that he had lain, not fallen, where he was found. In bending to take
hold of him, he detected, even in the intensity of his excitement, the
peculiar, heavy, close odor of drugs that had hung in the air on the
Fourth of July night. In company with a policeman, our young artist had
once visited a Chinese “opium dive” in New York, and he recognized the
smell now.
Homer was beside him, and lent intelligent aid.
“_Now_,” he drawled, without the slightest evidence of alarm, “_I_
mos’ly lif’s him up _so_-fashion!”
The action brought the features into a rift of moonlight.
“Great Heavens!” broke from March in a low tone of horror and dismay.
“It is Mr. Wayt!”
Laying him on the turf he went back to Hester and seized the bar of her
chair.
“You must go home! You must not see him, my poor child! It is your
father, and he is very ill—unconscious. Not a moment is to be lost. I
must go for a doctor immediately!”
“_Let go!_”
Beside herself with fury, she actually struck at the hand grasping the
propeller; her eyes flashed fire; her accents, hardly louder than a
wheezing whisper, were jerky gasps, painful to hear.
“Let go, I say! and do you go to your safe, decent home, as I told
you! Tony and I are used to this sort of thing!”
“Hester! you do not know what you are saying!” March came around and
faced her, trying to quiet her by cold, stern authority.
It was thrown away. She raved on—still tearing away with her tiny
fierce hands at her heaving throat as if to give speech freer vent.
“I do know—oh, we are graduates in these frolicsome escapades! It is
inconsiderate in him—” with a horrid laugh—“to give his wife, his
wife’s sister, and the family factotum such a job as carrying him
all this way. To do him justice, he seldom forgets the decencies so
entirely. If I had my way, he should lie here all night. Only his wife
would come out and stay with him. What are you staring at me for, Mr.
Gilchrist? Here is our family skeleton! Does it frighten you out of
your wits?”
Her croaks of laughter threatened dissolution to the fragile frame. It
was an awful, a repulsive exhibition.
“It is you who have lost yours!” rejoined March gravely. “Your father
may be dying, for aught you know. A hundred men fell in the streets
of New York to-day, overcome by the heat—and we are wasting precious
minutes in wild, nonsensical talk. If you will let Homer take you to
the house, and compose yourself sufficiently to prepare your mother for
the shock of seeing her husband brought in insensible, we may save him
yet. Go! and send Homer back at once.”
The wild eyes surveyed him piercingly; with a low, meaning laugh, she
sank back among her cushions.
“I think”—she said distinctly and deliberately—“that you are the best
man God ever made! Go on, Tony!”
Left alone with the unconscious man, March stooped and rolled him
entirely over. He had been lying, face downward, his cheek to the
sward; one arm was by his side, the other was thrown in a natural
position above his head. His pulse was almost normal, although somewhat
sluggish; his respiration heavy, but not stertorous: his complexion was
not sanguine. His breath and, March fancied, his whole body reeked of
opium. March shook him gently. He slept on. With a disgustful shiver,
he forced himself to pass an arm under his head and lift it to his
knee. There was no change in the limp lethargy. The young man laid him
down, and, rising, stood off and looked at the pitiable wreck. Hester’s
frenzied tirade had disabused the listener’s mind of the suspicion
of suicide. He could no longer doubt that here was the unraveling of
the complex design that had vexed his heart and head. The popular
preacher was not the first of brilliant parts and high position who
had fallen a victim to a debasing and insidious habit, but his skill
and effrontery in concealing the truth were remarkable. Yet—might not
March have divined the nature of the mystery before this revelation?
The peculiar brilliancy of the deep-set eyes; his variable spirits; his
fluent and, at times, erratic speech; the very character of his pulpit
eloquence—might have betrayed him to an expert. His wife’s nervous
vigilance and eager assiduity of devotion—above all, the episode of
the midnight toilers, and the conflicting stories of the need of
that toil—finally—and he recalled it with a bursting heart—Hetty’s
declaration to her lover that there were insurmountable obstacles to
their union—were as clear as daylight now. The sudden illness of that
memorable Saturday night was stupor like that which now chained the
slave of appetite to the earth.
How often and with what excess of anguish the revolting scene had
been enacted only the two unhappy sisters knew, unless the still more
hapless daughter were in the secret. Her wail, “Oh, God of mercy! it
has come at last!” was a key to depths of suspenseful endurance and
labyrinths of unavailing deception.
Unavailing, for the instant of detection was the beginning of the end.
The man was ruined beyond redemption. A whisper of his infirmity would
be the loss of place, reputation, and livelihood, and his innocent
family would go down quick into the pit with him. This was the vision
of impending gloom that had disturbed what should be sunny deeps in the
sweetest eyes in the world to him. This was the almost certain prospect
that made her write, “I can never be more than your friend!”
The Gilchrist was clean, honest blood. Hetty testified her appreciation
of this truth by refusing to marry him. He could think how his mother
would look when she had heard the story and how Fairhill gossip would
gloat over the “newest thing in clerical scandals!”
Why should it be made public? Why should he not help to keep it quiet
instead of pulling down ruin upon the helpless and unoffending? Hetty
had written, “In mercy to the innocent.” He seemed to hear her say it
now, in his ear.
A faint melodious chime just vibrated through the sultry air. The
fine bell of the “Old First” had struck the half hour. The church in
which he was baptized; the church of his mother’s love and prayers!
At thought of the pulpit desecrated by this fellow’s feet, a rush of
indignant contempt surged up to his lips.
“Sacrilegious dog!” he muttered, touching the motionless heap with his
foot.
Homer shambled back out of breath. He had brought a lantern.
“_Now_—it’s powerful shady under the trees!” he replied to March’s
remark that the moon gave all the light they required. “An’ ther’s
somethin’ come ter me, as I want ter see!”
He set down the lantern, hugged the tree bole, and went up a foot or
two. Then were heard a scratching and a rattling overhead.
“_Now_—would ye a mind holdin’ this ’tell I git ’em all?”
The “all” were four bottles and a tin box. Two phials were long and
empty. A name was blown in the glass. March held one down to the light.
“_Elixir of Opium!_”
The others were larger and of stout blue glass. A printed label said
“_Phosphate_.” March pulled out a cork and smelled the contents. Opium
again!
The box held the same drug as a dark paste.
“I mistrusted them horsephates a coople o’ times!” said Homer,
imperturbably sagacious. “He wor too everlastin’ fond of ’em. He
skeered me with the devil inter goin’ ter the drug store with a paper
ter tell ’em for ter give me that ar’ one,” designating an empty phial.
“Leastways, one like it. An’ Miss Hetty, she foun’ it in the garding,
where I drapped it. Then, ’twas she tole me nivver to go nowhar ’thout
’twas she sent me. An’ I aint sence! An’ he’s t’reatened me orful a
many a time ’cause what she said to me that time. I guess he bought ’em
in New York, mos’ likely. He’s a sharp un—Mr. Wayt is!”
March eyed him suspiciously.
“How did you know where these things were, if you had nothing to do
with hiding them!”
“_Now_”—stolid under the implied doubt, or not noticing it—“you reklec’
the Sunday night me ’n you was talkin’ here, ’n’ _he_ come along, an’
I shinned up the tree? I bet”—with more animation than March had ever
seen him display before—“he was a-comin’ for a drink then! ’Twas the
very night before, when Miss Hetty, she come all the way up to my
room, an’ sez she, ‘Homer,’ sez she, ‘Mr. Wayt has done it agin,’ she
say. An’ so he had, an’ him a lyin’ on the study floor jes’ as you
see him now—an’ Mrs. Wayt a-cryin’ over him. You see she’d b’lieved,
sure an’ certain, he’d nuvver do so no more. But _I_ mistrusted them
horsephates. _Now_, that very night—Sunday night ’twas, ’n’ me an’ you
was a-talkin’ here—as I was a-slidin’ down the tree I kotched inter a
hole, an’ somethin’ sort o’ jingled, like glass. I nuvver t’ought no
more ’bout it tell jes’ ez I come up to-night an’ see him a-sprawlin’
thar, an’ I smelled the stuff. I’ll jes’ hide ’em in the grass,
an’ to-morrow early I’ll bury ’em in the garding. But it’s a quare
cupboard, that is.”
While talking, he was busy spreading upon the turf a heavy shawl, such
as were worn by men, forty years ago. “_Now_—ef you’ll lend a lift to
him!” to the wondering observer.
The plan was ingenious, but Homer’s dexterity in carrying it out,
and the _sangfroid_ he maintained throughout, betokened an amount of
practice at which March’s soul recoiled. It was frightfully realistic.
Mr. Wayt was laid in the middle of the big plaid; the two ends were
knotted tightly upon his chest, inclosing his arms, the other two about
his ankles.
“I’ll hitch on to the heavy eend,” quoth the bunch of muscle and bone
March had begun to admire. “Me bein’ useter to it nor what you be. You
take holt on his feet.”
In such style the stately saint was borne up the back steps and laid
upon the settee in the parsonage hall.
Mrs. Wayt was upon the porch. Her first words gave one of the bearers
his cue.
“Oh, Mr. Gilchrist! This is dreadful! And he seemed so well at dinner
time! The heat often affects him seriously. He had a sunstroke some
years ago, and every summer he feels the effects of it. Lay him down
here and rest before taking him upstairs. There. Thank you.”
While she undid and removed the clerical cravat and collar from his
throat, March straightened his spine and looked around for Hetty. The
house was as still as a grave. The front door was closed; the rooms on
both sides of the hall were dark and silent. It was Thursday night,
the universal “evening out” for Fairhill servants. March recollected
it in the mechanical way in which one thinks of trifles at important
junctures. He was glad—mechanically—that Mary Ann was not there to
carry the tale of Mr. Wayt’s fainting fit, or semi-sunstroke, or
whatever name his wife chose to put to it, to Mrs. Gilchrist. He was
beginning to ask himself what he should say at home of what he had done
with himself between nine and ten o’clock that evening.
The transportation up to the second story was slow and difficult. Mrs.
Wayt supported her husband’s head, and, like a flash, recurred to March
Hester’s sneer of the task laid upon “his wife, his wife’s sister, and
the family factotum.” It must have been barely accomplished on the July
night when he and May brought Hester home, and Hetty ran down out of
breath, her hair disheveled and eyes scared! That _her_ hands should be
fouled by such a burden!
His face was set whitely, as, having deposited the load upon the bed,
he accosted the wife:
“Would you like to have a physician?”
His tone was hard and constrained. She did not look up.
“You are very good but it is not necessary—thank you! I have seen him
as ill before from the same cause and know what to do for him. And he
is morbidly sensitive with regard to these attacks. He thinks it would
injure him in his profession if the impression were to get abroad that
his health is unsound or his constitution breaking up. I shall not
even dare tell him that you have seen him to-night.”
She was putting extraordinary force upon herself, but she could not
meet his eye.
“I cannot thank you just now as I would, Mr. Gilchrist. I am all
unnerved, and although I know this seizure is not dangerous, it is
a terrible ordeal to me to witness it. May I ask that you will not
mention it, even to Judge and Mrs. Gilchrist? My husband would be
mortified and distressed beyond measure were his illness the subject of
even friendly remark.”
March hesitated, and she turned upon him quickly. Her face was that of
an old woman—gray, withered, and scored with lines, each one of which
meant an agony.
His resolution dissolved like the frost before fire.
“You may depend upon my discretion and friendship,” he said impulsively.
She burst into tears, the low, convulsive sobbing he had heard above
stairs on that other night.
Unable to bear more he ran down the staircase, and recognized before he
reached the foot that he had committed himself to a lie.
“Mr. Gilchrist!”
His hand was upon the lock of the front door when he caught the low
call.
Hetty stood upon the threshold of the library, a shadowy figure in
white that seemed to waver in the uncertain light.
“I should like to speak to you, if you can spare a few minutes,” she
pursued, leading the way into the room.
With a bow of acquiescence he sat down and waited for her to begin. His
mind was in a tumult; dumb pain devoured him. He felt as any honorable
man might feel who condones a felony.