"But surely you do not realize, Robert Garrett, that when you foreclose
this mortgage you leave us virtually penniless;" and the large dark eyes
of the suppliant were blinded by an agony of tears.
"Really, madam, I regret to seem hard;" and the polished courtesy of the
cold, harsh voice fell with heavy weight upon her strained senses. "Your
husband has had more time now than any law allows, human or divine."
"Oh, how gladly he would have paid the debt;" she moaned; "it was his
kindness and forbearance to others--kindness that seemed imperative. He
could not take the law against his crippled brother, his mother's dying
legacy to him. You know all this--you know, too, that if you will only
grant a little longer respite he can settle the claim, or the greater
part of it. How then can you be so cruel as to drive us out of doors!
You who need nothing of this world's goods!"
The man of business stirred a little, crossed his well-clad legs in
still greater comfort, and audibly repressed a yawn. Then as if
unwillingly forced to say something he did it as ungraciously as
possible.
"Again I say I grieve to proceed to harsh measures, but"--then as she
was about to interpose he broke out irritably, "God bless my soul, Mrs.
Blaine, how can you expect anything else! I am obliged to be accurate in
my matters, otherwise there would be no end to imposition from shiftless
men who are always going to pay but----never do."
"This, then, is your ultimatum, sir? You will turn me and my children
out wanderers from the old home where I was born--where I had hoped to
die? Can you do this? Even you, whom the world calls rich and prosperous
and----charitable!" As she spoke she bent upon him in fine scorn her
brilliant eyes dark and piercing.
"Painful things occur every day, my dear madam, in this transitory
life. And once in a while the tables turn. I think I remember a time
when I pleaded with perhaps not so much eloquence, but quite as much
earnestness, for a boon at the hands of pretty Mildred Deering.
I didn't get it, and I have survived, you see. We are apt to magnify
our misfortunes;" and a mocking smile told wherein lay the animus that
was her undoing.
Then she drew her graceful figure to its full height, and with the
contempt of an outraged wife and mother, her words came in tones of
concentrated vehemence:
"So! Robert Garrett, this is your vaunted Christianity! You, the
immaculate pillar of the church--the friend of the outcast--the chief
among philanthropists! Grant _your_ boon? Was there was ever a
moment in her sheltered life when Mildred Deering would have consorted
with the hypocrite you are? Never! Better a thousand times poverty with
nobility and truth in the man she loves. Better an age of privation with
Herbert Blaine than a single instant in the presence of such as you. Do
your worst! And may God mete out to you and yours the mercy you have
shown us!"
Clasping the hand of her little girl who had clung to her mother's
skirts, gazing with wide-open, awestruck eyes at the great man, she was
gone in a moment.
"Ah!" uttered Robert Garrett in a long-drawn-out syllable, reaching for
the evening paper.
There had been another silent witness of this scene in the person of
a lad who stood within the door he had entered just as Mrs. Blaine had
appeared in the opposite way. He was a rather ill-favored schoolboy,
but his thoughts as he came forward with the lanky awkwardness of youth
and took a chair in chimney corner, were not of himself or his looks.
"Father," he said after some minutes had passed, the rattle of the
newspaper and the measured ticking of the clock being the only
disturbing sounds, "Father," he repeated, this time with a falling
inflection.
Startled uncomfortably at the unexpected address the father peered
frowningly at the boy with a gruff, "What!"
"Do you think it is just the fair and square thing to turn 'em out?"
"What do _you_ know about it, you young meddler. Keep quiet about
what does not concern you. You have enough to eat and wear--attend to
your own business."
There was no encouragement to go on, so young Robert sat and pondered
till his father, chafing under the silent rebuke personified in every
line of the son's uncomely face, sent him to his room.
In the other house there was little sleep; and for many succeeding days
the devoted Blaines, with heavy hearts, put by their idols one by one,
till at last the time-honored oaken doors closed upon them in relentless
banishment. It mattered not that amid new scenes prosperity once more
opened her sheltering arms and kept the wolf from the door. The new
owner of Deering Castle, as the villagers had admiringly christened the
grand old place, refused to sell it. Robert Garrett, with the littleness
born of a mean, cramped nature, clung to this coveted possession as the
one thing to be held, though all else were taken. He had money but knew
not how to enjoy it. His household, for the most part, reflected the
coarseness of his nature, and as time passed his retribution was meted
out in rebellious sons and daughters, who wasted his substance and
dragged down his name still further in the mire.
Twenty years had gone by. Herbert Blaine and his bright-eyed wife slept
in the city of the dead. With their latest breath they had, one by one,
adjured their beloved daughter, the only surviving child since the civil
war had laid low their three manly boys, to regain possession of the old
homestead. Time, they assured her, would make all things even, and long
before they laid down the burden of life, they had seen how the wife's
curse beat upon the head of the man who had so oppressed them. They had
learned to feel pity for him whom they had once despised. Not so Jessie
Blaine. She was a woman now, and had been, for a few brief years, till
death robbed her, a happy wife. But never could she forget that dismal
twilight hour when her innocent eyes had photographed the hateful,
sneering face of her mother's enemy; when her ears had phonographed his
mocking words. The scene had haunted her waking and sleeping, for many
days; and still after all these years she could and did remember.
She rejoiced when she heard that wild Ben Garrett had broken nearly
every law of the decalogue, and was wrecking the peace of all who cared
for him. "They richly deserve it all;" she said, when some fresh
escapade or misdemeanor would come to light. He had squandered his
father's thousands aimlessly, recklessly, and was fast bringing his
white hairs in sorrow to the grave. Jessie Forrester only smiled as she
read these items from the local press. Riches and honors were hers.
There was nothing lacking but the dear old home of her people, and this
could not be bought. She climbed to heights undreamed-of in her earlier
days, and became a shining light in the world of letters. Her books were
read in two continents. Statesmen and distinguished circles sought her
till her name became a power in the land. Her influence was widespread.
In an eastern city she at last came to revel in her books and
manuscripts, or in her sweet, healthful, domestic loves, renouncing all
thoughts of revenge, for the time being, and abandoning the hope of
recovering the sacred pile where she first saw the light.
One day there came a letter bearing the postmark of her native town.
With difficulty deciphering the straggling, tremulous address, she
broke the seal and read as follows:--
"Madam:
"A heart-broken father appeals to you in his hour of extremity, to
save his son from the gallows. My boy--my wayward, reckless boy,
who was once as innocent and pure as yourself, has fallen into the
hands of treacherous natives and half-breeds in Arkansas, and they
accuse him of murdering a traveller for his money. He is guiltless
of this crime--God knows he is; but the weight of evidence is fearful,
and I am powerless to refute it. The proceedings have been hurried
over and the verdict is against him.
"I am unable to go to him--I bring the case to you. Go, I beg of you,
to Washington and plead with the congressman from this, your native
district, and the Arkansas representative, who is your kinsman. Urge
them to see the President and prevail upon him to sift the evidence.
I realize most bitterly that I have no claim upon you, but oh, for
God's sake, Madam, do what you can for a distracted father. Hanging!
Oh, save him from that--and act quickly, for he has only five days
to live. I am crazed with anxiety and sleeplessness.
"Your obedient servant,
"Robert Garrett."
Jessie Forrester's hour had come. The revenge so ardently longed-for
since the hour her mother had invoked the curse of heaven upon this man,
was here. What though his boy did perish, by an ignominous death. A more
worthless cumberer of the earth did not exist. Ah! that cold, sneering
voice on the winter's eve so long ago; her mother's tears! As he had
sown so should he reap, and her hands would help to gather in the
harvest. Through him they had been exiled all these years from the home
that was their birthright. The husband of her early womanhood might
have been spared if only they could have nursed him back to health under
the cool shade of those grand old trees instead of languishing in the
hot city. Help this man? This incarnation of cruel selfishness? Not
she;--his boy should suffer the extreme penalty of the law. How could
_she_ lift a voice to save him! "His boy?" Ah, through her tender
mother's heart there darted a pain all unwonted. Her own noble, gifted
boy--her all--what if untoward fate should have in store for him some
doom of shame--him, her idol and her pride.
She sat buried in thought till suddenly starting up she consulted
a time table, then rang hurriedly for her maid. She was ready in thirty
minutes, and summoning her young son, was soon enroute for the capital.
Arriving at ten o'clock she called a carriage and sped away to new
northwest quarter of the city. By midnight she had seen both
representatives and thoroughly enlisted their services. She gave no
reason for her intercession, nor was it necessary. It was enough that
she deemed it a case for intervention. Next morning the two statesmen
had an interview with the President, and by the hardest, for the mass
of evidence against young Garrett was overwhelming, got a stay of
proceedings till the case could be further investigated.
Well-nigh exhausted from the mental and bodily strain, Jessie arrived
at her home unfit for anything but rest. Then she answered her enemy's
letter. Did she reproach him with his life-long injustice? Did she
demand the old home in exchange for the service she had rendered? Or
at least the privilege of buying it? She merely wrote;--
"I have been to Washington and secured a reprieve pending further
sifting of evidence."
Ben Garrett was saved and the close view of the gallows sobered him at
last. He married the daughter of a Texas ranchman and Jessie heard of
him no more.
* * * * *
Five years passed away when on a gloomy afternoon in the autumn, Jessie
Forrester, now a woman of thirty, and wearing her years and honors well,
was sitting at her desk in an elegant sanctum, absorbed in the fate of
two lovers whose history she was creating.
Her door opened and a grave, handsome man with a bearded face stood
before her.
"Madam," he said briefly "you once did my brother a great favor. I am
here to thank you for it."
His brother? A favor? Ah, she had been doing favors for many in all
these years. She did not remember any particular one; it was an every
day matter. Every mail brought petitions and she never turned a deaf
ear. The doing of favors brought its own reward.
She looked steadily at the stranger, and he felt again in his inmost
soul the gaze of those large brown eyes seen once before dilated with
childish terror.
"My name is Garrett," he explained, as briefly as before.
Garrett--that hated name. Involuntarily her eyes fell upon the work
before her, while a warm flush mantled her cheeks.
"May I sit down for five minutes?"
She again raised her eyes without speaking, and he seated himself, not
looking at but beyond her as if her steady gaze unmanned him.
"Madam, my parents are dead. I have come to offer you Deering Castle
at your own price. I should not presume to suggest it as a gift. It is
yours if you wish it. I have heard so often," and here his voice fell
for very shame, "that you wanted it. It was not then mine to dispose
of; now there is no barrier; it is yours. I will send my attorney to
you."
Rising he lingered a moment with a certain wistfulness suffusing his
features, then made his way out ere Jessie could recover sufficiently
to bid him stay.
Her faculties were in a tumult. Deering Castle hers--the estate of her
fathers--the venerated old home hers at last. It almost took her breath
away. A Garrett was offering it. That name hated all her life. But did
she hate it now?
There was no more work that day for the author. Nor ever again did her
genius shine out in rapturing periods till she drew inspiration from the
grand environment of the old homestead. Here Robert Garrett is not an
unwelcome guest. Young Herbert is in fact quite devoted to the grave,
sedate man with the tender heart. Will his benign influence one day
still further cement the new friendship?