THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING
On a June day a month later, Harry Sanderson sat in his study, looking
out of the window across the dim summer haze of heat, negligently
smoking. On the distant hill overlooking the town was the cemetery,
flanked by fields of growing corn where sulky, round-shouldered crows
quarrelled and pilfered. He could see the long white marl road, bending
in a broad curve between clover-stippled meadows, to skirt the
willow-green bluff above the river. There, miles away, on the high bank,
he could distinguish the railroad bridge, a long black skeleton spanning
"the hole," a deep, fish-haunted pool, the deepest spot in the river for
fifty miles. From the nearer, elm-shaded streets came the muffled clack
of trade and the discordant treble of a huckster, somewhere a
trolley-bell was buzzing angrily, and the impudent scream of a blue jay
sheared across the monotone. Harry's gaze went past the streets--past
the open square, with its chapel spire lifting from a beryl sea of
foliage--to a white colonial porch, peering from between aspens that
quivered in the tremulous sunlight.
The dog on the rug rose, stretching, and came to thrust an eager
insinuating muzzle into its master's lap. Rummy whined, the stubby tail
wagged, but his master paid no heed, and with dejected ears, he slunk
out into the sunshine. Harry was looking, with brows gathered to a
frown, at the far-away porch. The look was full of a troubled question,
a vague misgiving, an interrogative anxiety. He was thinking of a night
when he had saved the son of that house from the calamity of
disinheritance--to what end?
For since that moonlighted evening of the will-making Harry had learned
that the long lane had had no true turning for Hugh. He had sifted him
through and through. At college he had put him down for a
weakling--unballasted, misdemeanant. Now he knew him for what he really
was--a moral mollusk, a scamp in embryo, a decadent, realizing an ugly
propensity to a deplorable _finale_. A consistent career of loose living
had carried Hugh far since those college days when he had been dubbed
"Satan's Shadow." While to Harry Sanderson the eccentric and agnostical
had then been, as it were, the mask through which his temperament looked
at life, to Hugh it had spelled shipwreck. Harry Sanderson had done
broadly as he pleased. He had entertained whom he listed; had gone
"slumming"; had once boxed to a finish, for a wager, a local pugilist
whose acquaintance he affected, known as "Gentleman Jim." He had been
both the hardest hitter and the hardest drinker in his class, yet withal
its most brilliant student. Native character had enabled him to persist,
as the exasperating function of success which dissipation declined to
eliminate. But the same natural gravitation which in spite of all
aberration had given Harry Sanderson classical honors, had brought Hugh
Stires to the imminent brink of expulsion. And since that time, without
the character which belonged to Harry as a possession, Hugh had
continued to drift aimlessly on down the broad lax way of profligacy.
The conditions he found upon his return, however, had opened Hugh's eyes
to the perilous strait in which he stood. He was a materialist, and the
taste he had had of deprivation had sickened him. In the first
revulsion, when the contrast between recent famine and present plenty
was strong upon him, he had been at anxious pains to make himself secure
with his father--and with Jessica Holme. Harry's mental sight--keen as
the hunter's sight on the rifle-barrel--was sharpened by his knowledge
of the old Hugh, an intuitive knowledge gained in a significant
formative period. He saw more clearly than the townfolk who, in a
general way, had known Hugh Stires all their lives. Week by week Harry
had seen him regain lost ground in his father's esteem; day by day he
had seen him making studious appeal to all that was romantic in Jessica,
climbing to the favor of each on the ladder of the other's regard. Hugh
was naturally a _poseur_, with a keen sense of effect. He could be
brilliant at will, could play a little on piano, banjo and violin, could
sing a little, and had himself well in hand. And feeling the unconscious
cord of romance vibrate to his touch, he had played upon it with no
unskilful fingers.
Jessica was comparatively free from that coquetry by means of which a
woman's instinct experiments in emotion. Although she had been artist
enough before the cloistered years of her blindness to know that she was
comely, she had never employed that beauty in the ordinary blandishments
of girlish fascination. But steadily and unconsciously she had turned in
her darkness more and more to the bright and tender air with which Hugh
clothed all their intercourse. Her blindness had been of too short
duration to have developed that fine sense-perception with which nature
seeks to supplement the darkened vision. The ineradicable marks which
ill-governed living had set in Hugh's face--the self-indulgence and
egotism--she could not see. She mistook impulse for instinct. She read
him by the untrustworthy light of a colorful imagination. She deemed him
high-spirited and debonair, a Prince Charming, whose prideful rebellion
had been atoned for by a touching and manly surrender.
All this Harry had watched with a painful sense of impotence, and this
feeling was upon him to-day as he stared out from the study toward the
white porch, glistening in the sun.
At length, with a little gesture expressive at once of helplessness and
puzzle, he turned from the window, took his violin and began to play. He
began a barcarole, but the music wandered away, through insensible
variations, into a moving minor, a composition of his own.
It broke off suddenly at a dog's fierce snarl from the yard, and the
rattle of a thrown pebble. Immediately a knock came at the door, and a
man entered.
"Don't stop," said the new-comer. "I've dropped in for only a minute!
That's an ill-tempered little brute of yours! If I were you, I'd get rid
of him."
Harry Sanderson laid the violin carefully in its case and shut the lid
before he answered. "Rummy is impulsive," he said dryly. "How is your
father to-day, Hugh?"
The other tapped the toe of his shining patent-leather with his cane as
he said with a look of ill-humor:
"About as well as usual. He's planning now to put me in business, and
expects me to become a staid pillar of society--'like Sanderson,' as he
says forty times a week. How do you do it, Harry? There isn't an old
lady in town who thinks her parlor carpet half good enough for you to
walk on! You're only a month older than I am, yet you can wind the whole
vestry, and the bishop to boot, around your finger!"
"I wasn't aware of the idolatry." Harry laughed a little--a distant
laugh. "You are observant, Hugh."
"Oh, anybody can see it. I'd like to know how you do it. It was always
so with you, even at college. You could do pretty much as you liked, and
yet be popular, too. Why, there was never a jamboree complete without
you and your violin at the head of the table."
"That is a long time ago," said Harry.
"More than four years. Four years and a month to-morrow, since that last
evening of college. Yet I imagine it will be longer before we forget it!
I think of it still, sometimes, in the night--" Hugh went on more
slowly,--"that last dinner of The Saints, and poor Archie singing with
that wobbly smilax wreath over one eye and the claret spilled down his
shirt-front--then the sudden silence like a wet blanket! I can see him
yet, when his head dropped. He seemed to shrivel right up in his chair.
How horrible to die like that! I didn't touch a drink for a month
afterward!" He shivered slightly, and walked to the window.
Harry did not speak. The words had torn the network of the past as
sheet-lightning tears the summer dusk; had called up a ghost that he had
labored hard to lay--a memory-specter of a select coterie whose wild
days and nights had once revolved about him as its central sun. The
sharp tragedy of that long-ago evening had been the awakening. The
swift, appalling catastrophe had crashed into his career at the pivotal
moment. It had shocked him from his orbit and set him to the
right-about-face. And the moral _bouleversement_ had carried him, in
abrupt recoil, into the ministry.
An odd confusion blurred his vision. Perhaps to cover this, he crossed
the room to a small private safe which stood open in the corner, in
which he kept his tithes and his charities. When Hugh, shrugging his
shoulders as if to dismiss the unwelcome picture he had painted, turned
again, Harry was putting into it some papers from his pocket. Hugh saw
the action; his eyes fastened on the safe avidly.
"I say," he said after a moment's pause, as Harry made to shut its door,
"can you loan me another fifty? I'm flat on my uppers again, and the
old man has been tight as nails with me since I came back. I'm sure to
be able to return it with the rest, in a week or two."
Harry stretched his hand again toward the safe--then drew it back with
compressed lips. He had met Hugh with persistent courtesy, and the other
had found him sufficiently obliging with loans. Of late, however, his
nerves had been on edge. The patent calculation of Hugh's course had
sickened, and his flippant cynicism had jarred and disconcerted him. A
growing sense of security, too, had made Hugh less circumspect. More
than once during the past month Harry had seen him issue from the
shadowed door whose upper panel held the little barred window--the door
at which Doctor Moreau had entrance, though decent doors were closed in
his face.
Hugh's lowered gaze saw the arrested movement and his cheek flushed.
"Oh, if it's inconvenient, I won't trouble you for the accommodation,"
he said. "I dare say I can raise it."
The attempt at nonchalance cost him a palpable effort. Comparatively
small as the amount was, he needed it. He was in sore straits. By hook
or crook he must stave off an evil day whose approach he knew not how to
meet.
"It isn't that it is inconvenient, Hugh," said Harry. "It's that I
can't approve your manner of living lately, and--I don't know where the
fifty is going."
The mark on Hugh's brow reddened. "I wasn't aware that I was expected to
render you an accounting," he said sulkily, "if I do borrow a dollar or
two now and then! What if I play cards, and drink a little when I'm dry?
I've got to have a bit of amusement once in a while between prayers. You
liked it yourself well enough, before you discovered a sudden talent for
preaching!"
"Some men hide their talents under a napkin," said Harry. "You drown
yours--in a bottle. You have been steadily going downhill. You are
deceiving your father--and others--with a pretended reform which isn't
skin-deep! You have made them believe you are living straight, when you
are carousing; that you keep respectable company, when you have taken up
with a besotted and discredited gambler!"
"I suppose you mean Doctor Moreau," returned Hugh. "There are plenty of
people in town who are worse than he is."
"He is a quack--dropped from the hospital staff for addiction to drugs,
and expelled from his club for cheating at cards."
"He's down and out," said Hugh sullenly, "and any cur can bite him. He
never cheated me, and I find him better company than your sanctimonious,
psalm-singing sort. I'm not going to give him the cold shoulder because
everybody else does. I never went back on a friend yet. I'm not that
sort!"
A steely look had come to Harry Sanderson's eyes; he was thinking of the
house in the aspens. While he talked, shooting pictures had been
flashing through his mind. Now, at the boast of this eager protester of
loyalty, this recreant who "never went back on a friend," his face set
like a flint.
"You never had a friend, Hugh," he said steadily. "You never really
loved anybody or anything but yourself. You are utterly selfish. You are
deliberately lying, every hour you live, to those who love you. You are
playing a part--for your own ends! You were only a good imitation of a
good fellow at college. You are a poor imitation of a man of honor now."
Hugh rose to his feet, as he answered hotly: "And what are you, I'd like
to know? Just because I take my pleasure as I please, while you choose
to make a stained-glass cherub of yourself, is no reason why I'm not
just as good as you! I knew you well enough before you set up for such a
pattern. You didn't go in much then for a theological diet. Pshaw!" he
went on, snapping his fingers toward the well-stocked book-shelves. "I
wonder how much of all that you really believe!"
Harry passed the insolence of the remark. He flecked a bit of dust from
his sleeve before he answered, smiling a little disdainfully:
"And how much do _you_ believe, Hugh?"
"I believe in running my own affairs, and letting other people run
theirs! I don't believe in talking cant, and posing as a
little-tin-god-on-wheels! If I lived in a glass-house, I'd be precious
careful not to throw stones!"
Harry Sanderson was staring at him curiously now--a stare of singular
inquiry. This shallow witness of his youthful misconduct, then, judged
him by himself; deemed him a mere masquerader in the domino of decorous
life, carrying the reckless and vicious humors of his nonage into the
wider issues of living, and clothing an arrant hypocrisy under the habit
of one of God's ministers!
The elastic weight of air in the study seemed suddenly grown
suffocating. He reached and flung open the chapel door, and stood
looking across the choir, through the mellow light of the duskily tinted
nave, solemn as with the hush of past prayer. On this interior had been
lavished the special love of the invalid, who had given of his riches
that this place for the comfort of souls might be. It was an expanse of
dim colors and dark woodwork. At its eastern end was the high altar,
with tall flowers in stately gilt vases on either side, and a brass
lectern glimmered near-by. In the western wall was set a great
rose-window of rich stained glass--a picture of the eternal tragedy of
Calvary. As Harry stood gazing into the mellow light, Hugh paced moodily
up and down behind him. Suddenly he caught Harry's arm and pointed.
Harry turned and looked.
Above the mantel was set a mirror, and from where they stood, this
reflected Hugh's face. It startled Harry, for some trick of the
atmosphere, or the sunlight falling through the painted glass,
lightening the sallow face and leaving the hair in deeper shade--as a
cunning painter by a single line will alter a whole physiognomy--had for
the instant wiped out all superficial unresemblance and left a weird
likeness. As Hugh's mocking countenance looked from the oval frame,
Harry had a queer sensation as if he were looking at his own face, with
some indefinable smear of attaint upon it--the trail of evil. As he drew
away from the other's touch, his eye followed the bar of amber light to
the rose-window in the chapel; it was falling through the face of the
unrepentant thief.
The movement broke the spell. When he looked again the eerie impression
of identity was gone.
Hugh had felt the recoil. "Not complimented, eh?" he said with a
half-sneer. "Too bad the prodigal should resemble Satan Sanderson, the
fashionable parish rector who waves his arms so gracefully in the
pulpit, and preaches such nice little sermons! You didn't mind it so
much in the old days! Pardon me," he added with malice, "I forgot. It's
the 'Reverend Henry' at present, of course! I imagine your friends don't
call you 'Satan' now."
"No," returned Harry quietly. "They don't call me 'Satan' now!"
He went back to the safe.
The movement set Hugh instantly to regretting his hasty tongue. If he
had only assumed penitence, instead of flying into a passion, he might
have had the money he wanted just as well as not!
"There's no sense in us two quarrelling," he said hastily. "We've been
friends a long time. I'm sure I didn't intend to when I came in. I
suppose you're right about some things, and probably dropping Moreau
wouldn't hurt me any. I'm sorry I said all I did. Only--the money
seemed such a little thing, and I--I needed it."
Harry stood an instant with his hand on the knob, then instead of
closing the door, he drew out a little drawer. He lifted a packet of
crisp yellow-backs and slowly counted out one hundred dollars. "I'm
trying to believe you mean what you say, Hugh," he said.
Hugh's fingers closed eagerly over the crackling notes. "Now that's
white of you, after everything I said! You're a good fellow, Harry,
after all, and I'll always say so. I wish Old Gooseberry was half as
decent in a money way. He seems to think fifty dollars a week is plenty
till I marry and settle down. He talks of retiring then, and I suppose
he'll come down handsomely, and give me a chance to look my debts in the
face." He pocketed the money with an air of relief and picked up his hat
and cane.
Just then from the dusty street came the sound of carriage-wheels and
the click of the gate-latch.
"It's Bishop Ludlow," he said, glancing through the window. "He's coming
in. I think I'll slip out the side way. Thanks for the loan and--I'll
think over what you've said!"
Avoiding the bishop, Hugh stepped toward the gate. The money was in his
pocket. Well, one of these days he would not have to grovel for a
paltry fifty dollars! He would be his own master, and could afford to
let Harry Sanderson and everybody else think what they liked.
"So I'm playing a part, am I!" he said to himself. "Why should your
Holiness trouble yourself over it, if I am! Not because you're so
careful of the Governor's feelings; not by a long shot! It's because you
choose to think Jessica Holme is too good for me! That's where the shoe
pinches! Perhaps you'd like to play at that game yourself, eh?"
He walked jauntily up the street--toward the door with the little barred
window.
"The old man is fond of her. He thinks I mean to settle down and let the
moss grow over my ears, and he'll do the proper thing. It'll be a good
way to put my head above water and keep it there. It must be soon,
though!" A smile came to his face, a pretentious, boastful smile, and
his shining patent-leathers stepped more confidently. "She's the
finest-looking girl in this town, even without her eyes. She may get
back her sight sometime. But even if she doesn't, blindness in a wife
might not be such a bad thing, after all!"