One afternoon a few days later Roger was riding in the park. He rode
"William," a large lazy cob who as he advanced in age had so subtly and
insidiously slackened his pace from a trot to a jog that Roger barely
noticed how slowly he was riding. As he rode along he liked to watch the
broad winding bridle path with its bobbing procession of riders that kept
appearing before him under the tall spreading trees. Though he knew
scarcely anyone by name, he was a familiar figure here and he recognized
scores of faces. To many men he nodded at passing, and to not a few
alluring young dames, ardent creatures with bright eyes who gave him smiles
of greeting, Roger gravely raised his hat. One was "The Silver Lady" in a
Broadway musical show, but he thought she was "one of the Newport crowd."
He liked to make shrewd guesses like that. There were so many kinds of
people here. There were stout anxious ladies riding for figures and lean
morose gentlemen riding for health. There were joyous care-free girls,
chatting and laughing merrily. There were some gallant foreigners, and
there were riding masters, and Roger could not tell them apart. There were
mad boys from the Squadron who rode at a furious canter, and there were
groups of children, eager and flushed, excited and gay, with stolid grooms
behind them. The path in several places ran close beside the main road of
the park, and with the coming of the dusk this road took on deep purple
hues and glistened with reflections from countless yellow motor eyes. And
from the polished limousines, sumptuous young women smiled out upon the
riders.
At least so Roger saw this life. And after those bleak lonely years
confronted by eternity, it was good to come here and forget, to feel
himself for the moment a part of the thoughtless gaiety, the ease and
luxury of the town. Here he was just on the edge of it all. Often as a
couple passed he would wonder what they were doing that night. In the
riding school where he kept his horse, it was a lazy pleasure to have the
English "valet" there pull off his boots and breeches--though if anyone had
told him so, Roger would have denied it with indignation and surprise. For
was he not an American?
It had been a wonderful tonic, a great idea of Laura's, this forcing him up
here to ride. In one of her affectionate moods, just after a sick spell he
had been through, his gay capricious daughter had insisted that he have his
horse brought down from the mountains. She had promised to ride with him
herself, and she had done so--for a week. Since then he had often met her
here with one of her many smart young men. What a smile of greeting would
flash on her face--when Laura happened to notice him.
He was thinking of Laura now, and there was an anxious gleam in his eyes.
For young Sloane was coming to dinner to-night. What was he going to say to
the fellow? Bruce had learned that Sloane played polo, owned and drove a
racing car and was well liked in his several clubs. But what about women
and his past? Edith had urged her father to go through the lad's life with
a fine tooth comb, and if he should find anything there to kick up no end
of a row for the honor of the family. All of which was nothing but words,
reflected Roger pettishly. It all came to this, that he had a most ticklish
evening ahead! On the path as a rider greeted him, his reply was a dismal
frown.
* * * * *
Laura's suitor arrived at six o'clock. In his study Roger heard the bell,
listened a moment with beating heart, then raised himself heavily from his
chair and went into the hallway.
"Ah, yes! It's you!" he exclaimed, with a nervous cordiality. "Come in, my
boy, come right in! Here, let me help you with your coat. I don't know just
where Laura is. Ahem!" He violently cleared his throat. "Suppose while
we're waiting we have a smoke." He kept it up back into his den. There the
suitor refused a cigar and carefully lit a cigarette. Roger noticed again
how young the chap was, and marriage seemed so ridiculous! All this
feverish trouble was for something so unreal!
"Well, sir," the candidate blurted forth, "I guess I'd better come right to
the point. Mr. Gale, I want to marry your daughter."
"Laura?"
"Yes." Roger cursed himself. Why had he asked, "Laura?" Of course it was
Laura! Would this cub be wanting Deborah?
"Well, my boy," he said thickly. "I--I wish I knew you better."
"So do I, sir. Suppose we begin." The youth took a quick pull at his
cigarette. He waited, stirred nervously in his seat. "You'll have some
questions to ask, I suppose--"
"Yes, there are questions." Roger had risen mechanically and was slowly
walking the room. He threw out short gruff phrases. "I'm not interested in
your past--I don't care about digging into a man--I never have and I never
will--except as it might affect my daughter. That's the main question, I
suppose. Can you make her happy?"
"I think so," said Sloane, decidedly. Roger gave him a glance of
displeasure.
"That's a large order, young man," he rejoined.
"Then let's take it in sections," the youngster replied. Confound his
boyish assurance! "To begin with," he was saying, "I rather think I have
money enough. We'd better go into that, hadn't we?"
"Yes," said Roger indifferently. "We might as well go into it." Of course
the chap had money enough. He was a money maker. You could hear it in his
voice; you could see it in his jaw, in his small aggressive blonde
moustache. Now he was telling briefly of his rich aunt in Bridgeport, of
the generous start she had given him, his work downtown, his income.
"Twenty-two thousand this year," he said. "We can live on that all right, I
guess."
"You won't starve," was the dry response. Roger walked for a moment in
silence, then turned abruptly on young Sloane.
"Look here, young man, I don't want to dig," he continued very huskily.
"But I know little or nothing of what may be behind you. I don't care to
ask you about it now--unless it can make trouble."
"It can't make trouble." At this answer, low but sharp, Roger wheeled and
shot a glance into those clear and twinkling eyes. And his own eyes gleamed
with pain. Laura had been such a little thing in the days when she had been
his pet, the days when he had known her well. What could he do about it?
This was only the usual thing. But he felt suddenly sick of life.
"How soon do you want to get married?" he demanded harshly.
"Next month, if we can."
"Where are you going?"
"Abroad," said Sloane. Roger caught at this topic as at a straw. Soon they
were talking of the trip, and the tension slackened rapidly. He had never
been abroad himself but had always dreamed of going there. With maps and
books of travel Judith and he had planned it out. In imagination they had
lived in London and Paris, Munich and Rome, always in queer old lodgings
looking on quaint crooked streets. He had dreamed of long delicious
rambles, glimpses into queer old shops, vast, silent, dark cathedrals. For
Laura how different it would be. This boy of hers knew Europe as a group
of gorgeous new hotels.
The moment Laura joined them, her father's eye was caught and held by the
ring upon her finger. Roger knew rings, they were his hobby, and this huge
yellow solitaire in its new and brilliant setting at once awakened his
dislike. It just fitted the life they were to lead! What life? As he
listened to his daughter he kept wondering if she were so sure. Had she
felt no uneasiness? She must have, he decided, for all her gay excitement.
One Laura in that smiling face; another Laura deep inside, doubting and
uncertain, reaching for her happiness, now elated, now dismayed,
exclaiming, "Now at last I'm starting!" Oh, what an ignorant child she was.
He wanted to cry out to her, "You'll _always_ be just starting! You'll
never be sure, you'll never be happy, you'll always be just beginning to
be! And the happier you are, the more you will feel it is only a start!...
And then-"
More and more his spirit withdrew from these two heedless children. Later
on, when Deborah came, he barely noticed her meeting with Sloane. And
through dinner, while they talked of plans for the wedding, the trip
abroad, still Roger took no part at all. He felt dull and heavy. Deborah
too, he noticed, after her first efforts to be welcoming and friendly, had
gradually grown silent. He saw her watching Laura with a mingled look of
affection and of whimsical dismay. Soon after dinner she left them, and
Roger smoked with the boy for a while and learned that he was twenty-nine.
Both had grown uneasy and rather dull with each other. It was a relief when
again Laura joined them, dressed to go out. She and her lover left the
house.
Roger sat motionless for some time. His cigar grew cold unheeded. One of
the sorrows of his life had been that his only son had died. Bruce had been
almost like a son. But this young man of Laura's? No.
Later he went for his evening walk. And as though drawn by invisible
chains he strayed far down into the ghetto. Soon he was elbowing his way
through a maze of uproarious tenement streets as one who had been there
many times. But he noticed little around him. He went on, as he had always
gone, seeing and hearing this seething life only as a background to his own
adventure. He reached his destination. Pushing his way through a swarm of
urchins playing in front of a pawnshop, he entered and was a long time
inside, and when he came out again at last the whole expression of his face
had undergone a striking change. As one who had found the solace he needed
for the moment, his pace unconsciously quickened and he looked about him
with brighter eyes.
Around the corner from his home, he went into a small jewelry shop, a
remnant of the town of the past. There were no customers in the place, and
the old Galician jeweler sat at the back playing solitaire. At sight of
Roger he arose; and presently in a small back room, beneath the glare of a
powerful lamp, the two were studying the ring which Roger had found in the
ghetto that night. It was plain, just a thin worn band of gold with an
emerald by no means large; but the setting was old and curious, and
personal, distinctive. Somebody over in Europe had worked on it long and
lovingly. Now as the Galician gently rubbed and polished and turned the
ring this way and that, the light revealed crude tiny figures, a man and a
woman under a tree. And was that a vine or a serpent? They studied it long
and absorbedly.
At home, up in his bedroom, Roger opened a safe which stood in one corner,
took out a large shallow tray and sat down with it by his lamp. A strange
array of rings was there, small and delicate, huge, bizarre; great signet
rings and poison rings, love tokens, charms and amulets, rings which had
been worn by wives, by mistresses, by favorite slaves and by young girls in
convents; rings with the Madonna and rings with many other saints graven
on large heavy stones; rings French and Russian, Polish, Italian, Spanish,
Syrian. Some were many centuries old. In nine shallow metal trays they
filled the safe in Roger's room. Although its money value was small, the
Gale collection was well known to a scattered public of connoisseurs, and
Roger took pride in showing it. But what had always appealed to him most
was the romance, the mystery, stored up in these old talismans that had
lived so many ages, travelled through so many lands, decked so many
fingers. Roger had found every one of them in the pawnshops of New York.
What new recruits to America had brought them here and pawned them? From
what old cities had they come? What passions of love and jealousy, of
hatred, faith, devotion were in this glittering array? Roger's own love
affair had been deep, but quiet and even and happy. All the wild
adventures, the might-have-beens in his sex life, were gathered in these
dusky trays with their richly colored glints of light.
Of his daughters, Laura had been the one most interested in his rings, and
so he thought of Laura now as he placed in the tray the new ring he had
bought, the one he would have liked for her. But a vague uneasiness filled
his mind, for he knew she had the same craving as he for what gleamed out
of these somber trays. The old Galician jeweler had long been quite a
friend of hers, she had often dropped in at his shop to ask him curious
questions about his women patrons. And it was just this side of him that
Roger did not care for. So many of those women were from a dubious
glittering world, and the old Galician took a weird vicarious joy in many
of the gay careers into which he sent his beloved rings, his brooches,
earrings, necklaces, his clasps and diamond garters. And Laura loved to
make him talk.... Yes, she was her father's child, a part of himself. He,
too, had had his yearnings, his burning curiosities, his youthful ventures
into the town. "You will live on in our children's lives." With her
inheritance what would she do? Would she stop halfway as he had done, or
would she throw all caution aside and let the flames within her rise?
He heard a step in the doorway, and Deborah stood there smiling.
"A new one?" she inquired. He nodded, and she bent over the tray. "Poor
father," Deborah murmured. "I saw you eyeing Laura's engagement ring at
dinner to-night. It wasn't like this one, was it?" He scowled:
"I don't like what I see ahead of her. Nor do you," he said. "Be honest."
She looked at him perplexedly.
"We can't stop it, can we? And even if we could," she said, "I'm not quite
sure I'd want to. It's her love affair, not yours or mine--grown out of a
life she made for herself--curious, eager, thrilled by it all--and in the
center of her soul the deep glad growing certainty, 'I'm going to be a
beautiful woman--I myself, I, Laura Gale!' Oh, you don't know--nor do I.
And so she felt her way along--eagerly, hungrily, making mistakes--and you
and I left her to do it alone. I'm afraid we both rather neglected her,
dad," Deborah ended sadly. "And all we can do now, I think, is to give her
the kind of wedding she wants."
Roger started to speak but hesitated.
"What is it?" she inquired.
"Queer," he answered gruffly, "how a man can neglect his children--as I
have done, as I do still--when the one thing he wants most in life is to
see each one of 'em happy."