Left alone before the empty space reserved for the masterpiece the
expression on Gard's face changed. Grave and purposeful, he continued to
regard the blank wall, then, turning, he caught up the desk telephone,
gave Mrs. Marteen's private number and waited.
A moment later the sweet familiar voice thrilled him.
"It's I--Marcus," he said. "I am coming for you this morning. Yes, I'm
taking a holiday, and I'm going to bring you back to the library to see
a new acquisition of mine--that will interest you. Then you and Dorothy
will lunch with Polly. Dorothy can join us at one o'clock. This is a
private view--for you alone.... You will? That's good! Good-by."
Noises in the resonant hall and the opening of the great doors announced
the arrival of the moving van and its precious contents, before
Saunders, his eyes bulging with excitement, rushed in with the tidings
of the coming of the world famous Heim Vandyke. With respectful care the
great canvas was brought in, unwrapped and lifted to its chosen hanging
place.
Seated in his armchair, Gard with mixed emotions watched it elevated and
straightened. The pictured face smiled down at him--impersonal yet
human, glowing, vivid with color, alive with that suggestion of eternal
life that art alone in its highest expression can give. Card's smile was
enigmatical; his eyes were sad. His imagination pictured to him Mrs.
Marteen as she had sat before him in her self-contained stateliness and
announced with indifferent calm that the Vandyke had been but a ruse to
gain his private ear.
Gard rose, approached the picture, and for an instant laid his fingers
upon its darkened frame. The movement was that of a worshiper who makes
his vow at the touch of some relic infinitely holy.
Then he returned to his seat and for some time remained wrapped in
thought. These moments of introspection, of deep self-questioning, had
become more and more frequent. He had made in the past few months a new
and most interesting acquaintance--himself. All the years of his
over-hurried, over-cultivated, ambitious life he had delved into the
psychology of others. It had been his pride to divine motives, to
dissect personalities, to classify and sort the brains and natures of
men. Now for the first time he had turned the scalpel upon himself. He
was amazed, he was shocked, almost frightened. He could not hide from
himself, he was no longer blind, the searchlight of his own analysis was
inexorably focused on his own sins and shortcomings--his powers misused,
his strength misdirected, his weaknesses indulged, because his strength
protected them. In these hours of what he had grown to grimly call his
"stock taking," he had become aware of a new and all-important group of
men. Where before he had reckoned values solely by capacities of brain
and hand, he found now a new factor--the capacity of heart. Ideals that
heretofore had borne to his mind the stamp of weakness, now showed
themselves as real bulwarks of character. The men who had fallen by the
wayside in the advance of his pitiless march to power, were no longer,
to his eyes, types of the unfit, to be thrust aside. Some were men,
indeed, who knew their own souls, and would not barter them.
In his mind a vast readjustment had taken place. Words had become
bodied, the unseen was becoming the visible--Responsibility, Honesty,
Fairness, Truth! they had all been words to conjure with--for use in
political speeches, in interviews--because they seemed to exercise an
occult influence upon the gullible public. "Law," "Peace," "Order," "The
Greatest Good to the Greatest Number," he had used them all as an Indian
medicine-man shakes bone rattles, and waves a cow's tail before the
tribe, laughing behind his gaping mask at the servile acceptance of his
prophecies. One and all these Cunjar Gods he had believed to be only
bits of shell and plaited rope, had come to life--they _were_ gods, real
presences, real powers. He had invoked them only to deceive others--and,
behold! he it was who knew not the truth.
The high tower of his heaven-grasping ambitions seemed suddenly insecure
and founded upon shifting sands. The incense the sycophant world burned
before him became a stench in his nostrils. The fetishes he had tossed
to the crowd now faced him as real gods; and they were not to be blinded
with dust, nor bought with gold. The specious and tortured verbiage of
twisted law never for one moment deceived the open ears of Justice, even
though it tied her hands, and her voice was the voice of condemnation.
Honor--he had sold it. Faith--he had not kept it. Truth--he had
distorted to fit whatever garb he had chosen for her to wear. And,
withal, he had hailed himself conqueror; had placed his laurels himself
upon his head, ranking all others beneath him. The clamor of the mob he
had interpreted as acclaim. Now he heard above the applause the hoarse
chorus of disdain and fear. It had been his pride to see men fall back
and make way at the very mention of his name. Now he felt that they
shrank from him--not before his greatness, but from his very contact. He
had driven his fellow creatures from him, and in return, they withdrew
themselves.
If they came to him fawning, they but showed their lower natures. He had
not called forth the power for good, from these the necromancy of his
personality had touched. He had conjured evil, he had pandered to base
forces.
The realization had not come easily. His habits of thought would return
and blind him as of old. He had laughed at himself; he had derided the
new gods, he had disobeyed them and their strange commands--only to
return crestfallen, contrite, feeling himself unworthy. He became aware
that he had run a long and victorious race for a prize he had
craved--only to find that the goal to which it brought him was not that
of his old desires. That was but withered leaves, spattered with the
blood of those who lost. He had turned from it, and now his steps sought
another conquest and another reward. He must strive for a goal unseen,
but more real and more worthy than the little crowns of little
victories.
His somber thoughts left him refreshed, as if from a bath of deep, clear
waters. His spirit felt clean and elated as it rose from the depths. It
was with a smile that he pushed back his chair and rose from the table
where, for a full hour, he had sat in silent self-communing. He still
smiled as he entered the motor and was driven to Mrs. Marteen's.
He found her awaiting him, with outstretched hands, and the look in her
eyes that he always longed for--the look he had divined rather than seen
on that day of days, when the Past had been renounced and consumed.
There was no embarrassment in their meeting. True, there had been daily
exchange of letters during the months of her enforced exile; but they
had been only friendly, surface tokens, giving no real hint of the
realities beneath. But they had grown toward one another, not apart. It
was as if they had never been sundered; as if all the experiences of all
the intervening days had been experiences in common.
He gazed at her happily now, rejoicing in the firmness of her step, the
brightness of her eyes, the healthy color of her skin. She came with him
gladly at his suggestion and they drove in silence through the crowded
streets and the silence was in truth, golden. At the door of the great
house he descended, gave her his hand and conducted her quickly through
the vast, soft-lighted hall to his own sanctum. He closed the door
quietly and pressed the electric switch. Instantly the mellow lights
glowed above the portrait, which throbbed in response, a glittering gem
of warmth and beauty.
Mrs. Marteen's body stiffened; the color receded from her face, leaving
it ashen. Her great eyes dilated.
"Do you know why it is there?" he asked at length in a whisper.
"Yes," she murmured. "We have traveled the same road--you and I. I
understand."
He took her hand and raised it to his lips. "You don't know all that
this picture recalls to me--and I hope you will never know; but you and
I," he said slowly, weighing his words, "are not of the breed of those
who cry out with remorse. We are of those who live differently. That is
the constant reminder of what _was_. I do not want to forget. I want to
remember. Every time the iron enters my soul I shall know the more
keenly that I have at last a soul."
Again they fell silent.
"According to the accepted code I suppose I should make a clean breast
of it, even to Dorothy, and go into retirement," she said at length. "I
have thought of that, too; but I cannot _feel_ it. I want to be active;
to be able to use myself for betterment; make of myself an example of
good and not of evil. What I did was because of what I was. I am that no
longer, and my expression must be of the new thing that has become me--a
soul!" she said reverently.
"A soul," he repeated. "It has come to me, too. And what is left to me
of life has no place for regrets. I have that which I must live up to--I
_shall_ live up to it."
"We have, indeed, traveled the same road; but you--have led me." She
looked at him with complete comprehension.
"We will travel the new road together," he said finally, "hand in hand."