As the months wore on into winter Randal Ducie, in the pursuance of the
effort to rehabilitate his broken and maimed life, was often in Memphis.
His old associates had an eager welcome for him, for his candid and
genial nature was supplemented by a tireless energy and some special
acumen and active experience in the line in which these endowments were
now needed. The levee crisis was acute, and the planters were eager to
formulate an adequate and practical defense against the encroachments of
the river, with State or Federal aid, rather than have the Delta serve,
as they claimed, as an experiment station for the Government. Cotton was
their objective,--not science.
Sometimes a poignant pang smote the heart of the lonely man as some
absorbed and eager acquaintance greeted him, from force of habit, with
the old look of inquiry as to his identity, one of those who used
formerly to ask inadvertently, “Is this you, or your brother?” eliciting
in those happy days the delighted response “Of course, it is my
brother.”
Alas, how Randal wished now that it was his brother,--to be himself
lying in that quiet grave to which he was sure their ill-fated
resemblance had consigned Adrian in the flower of his youth, and that it
was he who was here among these streets of busy men with many a long
year of life before him.
“But you should thank God that you are privileged to suffer in his
stead,” Hildegarde would argue with him. “He would have had all this
torture to endure if you had been the one called away.”
Shortly after his arrival in Memphis he had gravitated to her father’s
house, where he often sat for hours in the library in the quiet
atmosphere of the books, her face pensive, illumined by the flash and
sparkle of the fire as she worked with dainty, deft fingers on a bit of
embroidery. Informal visits these, and often other members of the family
gathered around the hearth,--her father, talking levee-board, and the
stage of the river, the price of cotton and the dangers of
overproduction; her college-boy brother, a football expert, a famous
halfback with the latest sensations of the gridiron on Thanksgiving-day;
her mother, soft and sweet, with that frank look of Hildegarde in her
duller eyes, for which Randal loved her. He found the only comfort he
knew in this group. Once, however, the young girl’s unthinking candor
almost stunned him.
“Such an odd thing,” she said one day when all were present; she was
evidently coming from far reaches of her reverie; she had been carefully
matching the skeins for the embroidered gentian blooming under the
benison of her touch, and he had a fleeting thought that she might have
rivaled nature had she compared them to the tint of her eyes. “I met
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney yesterday at the Jennison reception, and she asked me
such a strange question.”
She paused, but he would not inquire, and the others, realizing the
malapropos subject, could not sufficiently command their embarrassment.
But the transparent Hildegarde needed no urgency.
“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney asked me,” she said, laying all the skeins together
in her right hand while she looked up with bright interest, “if you had
ever told me of the contents of the letter she wrote to you some months
ago.”
“And what did you answer?” asked Randal, breaking the awkward silence.
“Why, of course I told her that you had never mentioned the letter,”
replied Hildegarde, with a flash of surprise. “I told her the truth.”
“You did! Why, you amaze me!” exclaimed Randal, with a touch of his old
gayety, and with the laugh that rippled around the circle the incident
passed.
Yet this incident put him on his guard. He had long since lost every
trace of the sentiment he had once felt for this woman. From the moment
he had received his rejection, years ago, he had realized that he had
been mistaken from the first in her nature. With many men the
contemplation of the magnitude of the temptation, the splendor of the
opportunity as Floyd-Rosney’s wife, might have served to condone in a
degree her defection. Not so with Randal Ducie. He had a very honest
self-respect. He had been trained at his mother’s knee to reverence the
high ideals of life. To him, Love was a sacred thing, Marriage was the
ordinance of God, and a mercenary motive a profanation. He had been
poignantly wounded in the disappointment, humiliated, in some sort, yet
he looked upon the discovery that she was vulnerable to this specious
lure of gain as an escape, and he set all the strong will of his
stanchly endowed nature to recover from the influence she had exerted
in his life. Now, so long afterward, when he had not only reason to
condemn and resent her part in his own past, but to detest the very
sight of her, the sound of the name she bore, he could not imagine how
she could be the victim of the obsession that she was aught to him but a
hateful living lie, a presentment of avarice. He wondered at the
persuasion of a woman, perceived by him only in this instance, but often
noticed elsewhere by the observant in such matters, as to the unlimited
power of her attractions. She can never believe no ember burns amidst
the ashes of a former attachment, dulled by time perhaps, covered from
sight, but smouldering still, and with fresh fuel ready to flame forth
anew. He could not understand on what was based her conviction of the
permanence of his attachment. On her true faith to bind them together
till death?--it had been tested and found wanting. On her gifts of
intellect?--the supposition was an absurdity; she was indubitably a
bright and a cultivated woman, but Randal had been educated too
definitely in the masculine American methods to think of sitting at the
feet of any woman. On her beauty?--where was the traditional delicacy of
the feminine perceptions! Did she imagine him a Turk at heart? Her
beauty might attract--it could never hold. In the old days of his fond
affection if she had been visited by some disfiguring, defacing
affliction she would have been the same to him, equally dear, and but
that she herself had stripped off the mask and proclaimed the disguise
that had befooled him she would have been the lady of his heart, the
cherished treasure of his life to the day of his death.
Now he could but wish that she would withhold her withering hand from
such poor values as she and hers had left him in life. He did not
understand her latest demonstration. But for Hildegarde’s pellucid
candor he might never have dreamed of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s covert
interest in a proposition made to him by the senior partner of a firm of
prominent jewelers, looking to the purchase of the diamond necklace
found among the jewels at Duciehurst, now lying in a safety deposit
vault. Ducie curtly refused to entertain an offer. Then he as curtly
asked:
“But why should you think I would wish to sell it?”
Mr. Dazzle was visibly embarrassed, but still rational.
“The idea was suggested to me, as the stones are of
great--well--ahem--considerable value, and you have no ladies in your
family.”
“Not at present,” said Randal, stiffly.
“True--true; you might care to retain them if you should marry. But as
they are so far beyond the pretensions of present-day ornaments,
something more suitable--and--and your being extensively interested in
cotton planting where money can be used to advantage----”
“And lost to disadvantage, too,” said Ducie, grimly.
“True--true--but the diamonds being wholly unproductive--they are cut in
the old style, too, which tends to reduce their value----”
“You wouldn’t have an antique necklace with diamonds cut in the present
style?”
“No--no; I was considering them as disassociated from their setting,
which is very rare of workmanship--that is--I thought--the idea was
suggested to me”--Mr. Dazzle did not intend to imperil his soul by lying
in anybody’s interest--“the idea was suggested to me that perhaps you
might care to sell.”
“Not at all. The necklace is reserved as a bridal gift,” said Ducie,
precipitately.
“And a most magnificent one,” declared Mr. Dazzle, his face beaming with
the enthusiasm befitting his vocation. “I hope you will give us the
commission to clean and put the necklace in order, see to the clasp,
which should be renewed, possibly, as a precaution against loss,--all
those details. It will appear to twice the advantage that it did when I
saw it at the time you and your brother had it appraised with a view to
dividing the valuables found at Duciehurst.”
Ducie got rid of the man without further committing himself. Then in
surprise he demanded of himself why he had said this thing, when nothing
was further from his thoughts. In fact it had been thrown off on the
spur of the moment, to be quit of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s suspected
interference in his affairs. She wear the revered Ducie heirlooms! He
would work his fingers to the bone before the jewels should go on the
market. And the offensive suggestion that something simpler, cheaper, in
the manner of the present day, might suffice for his bridal gifts when
he should be called upon to make them, in order that the difference
might go to forwarding his business, and ease the struggle for meat and
bread, was so characteristic of the Floyd-Rosney methods of considering
the affairs of other people that Randal could but ascribe it to her. But
why had his ungoverned impulse broached the idea of a bridal present?
he wondered. Her interest, her espionage in his most intimate personal
concerns seemed sinister, and he would fain be rid of the very thought
of her.
The reaction had been great when Paula had received back her crafty
letter of condolence with the characteristic endorsement on the final
page. Her pride was humiliated to the ground, and her heart pierced. She
could not realize, she would not believe that he no longer loved her.
She could but think that were not other considerations held paramount he
would have flown to her arms. She became ingenious in constructing a
mental status to justify his course on some other theory--any other
theory--than a burned-out flame. He was in the thrall of public opinion,
she argued. He fancied it would not sustain him in his devotion to the
widow of the man who had murdered his brother. He was ready to sacrifice
himself and her also that he might stand unchallenged by the world--the
careless unnoting world, rolling on its own way, that would not know
to-morrow a phase of the whole episode. What was a gossip’s tongue
clacking here and there in comparison with their long deferred
happiness. How should a censorious frown or a raised eyebrow outweigh
all that they were, all that they had been to each other--their human,
pulsing hearts! If she could only have speech of him--yet no! She could
not say of her own initiative what had been most difficult to intimate
in writing. She must wait, and plan, and watch, and be as patient as she
might.
Her spirits had worn low in the process. She had begun to feel the keen
griefs of a martyr. Through her love for this man, what had she not
suffered? From the moment on the _Cherokee Rose_ that she had seen his
brother’s face, so nearly a facsimile of his own, her old love for him
reasserted itself and would not be denied. Had not Adrian been of the
passengers of the packet, had not so keen and intense a reminder of the
old days risen before her, life would have gone on as heretofore. She
would have continued to adjust her moods to the exactions of her
arbitrary husband, as she had been well content to do. No jealousy would
have inflamed his causeless suspicions. He would have been still in his
lordly enjoyment of his rich opportunities and Adrian Ducie alive and
well. She had been pilloried before the public gaze; her child had been
torn from her bosom; her husband had made his name, the name she bore,
infamous with a revolting crime, and was dead in his sins; and the man
for whose sake--nay for the sake of a mere sweet memory of a boyish
worship, a tender reciprocation of a pure and ardent attachment--this
coil of events was set in motion, writes that he has read the story to
the end of the page, and the book is closed. Ah, no--Randal Ducie, there
is somewhat more, reading between the lines, for your perusal, and the
book may be reopened. Her heart was full of reproach for him, and yet
she believed that he loved her and secretly upbraided him that he did
not love her more than the frown of the world,--that world to which she
had in her fresh youth been glad to do homage on her bended knees,
sacrificing him to it, and her plighted troth.
She was restless; she could not be still. She was out every day. More
than once in her limousine she caught sight of him on the sidewalk. She
had fancied, she had feared he might not speak, but he raised his hat
with a grave dignity and a look wholly devoid of consciousness, and she
could hang no thread of a theory on the incident. Once he chanced to be
strolling with Hildegarde Dean, and with the recollection of her fresh,
smiling, girlish face Paula went home in a rage, as if she had received
some bitter affront, as if her tenure on his affections precluded his
exchange of a word with any other woman, the tender of a casual
courtesy. Then it was that she projected the purchase of the necklace.
If he should--but oh, he could not! That girl should not wear the
gorgeous gewgaw, which she herself had rescued at such pains and risk,
and restored to his possession. He was as poor as poverty--she had
adopted her husband’s habit of scorn of small means--and she would buy
it secretly through an agent, at any price.
When the answer came from the jeweler she was stunned. It was reserved
as a bridal gift, quotha. She had crystallized the very thought she had
sought to preclude. The mischance tamed her. She caught her breath and
took counsel with sober conservatism. She must be wary; she must make no
false move. Indeed, she told herself she must be utterly quiescent; she
must, in prudence, in self-respect, make no move at all. Then by degrees
her persistent hopefulness, her vehement determination, were reasserted.
She argued that no immediate bridal was foreshadowed, nor with whom. She
herself might wear these jewels,--which she had discovered and
restored,--on a day that would be like a first bridal, for her wedding
seemed to her now as a sacrifice to Moloch.
Some time later she chanced, while driving, to meet Hildegarde, walking
alone. Paula joyously signaled to her and ordered the limousine to be
drawn up to the curb. “Come with me,” she said, genially, “let’s have a
long drive and a good talk. I was just thinking of you!”
She looked most attractive as she smiled at the girl. Her ermine furs,
including the toque--for she had cast aside even the perfunctory weeds
she had worn--added an especial richness and daintiness to a wintry
toilette of black, adhering to the convention of second mourning, it
being now almost a year since Floyd-Rosney had startled the world by his
manner of quitting it. Her eyes were bright and kindly, her cheek
delicately flushed. She had an increased authority or autocracy in her
manner, which might have come about from unrestrained control of her
fortune and her actions, but which seemed to the girl in some sort
coercive. Hildegarde felt that she could scarcely have refused if she
would, yet indeed she did not wish to decline, and soon they were
skimming along the smooth curves of the speedway in the driving park,
the river, though lower than at this season last year, glimpsed in
burnished silver now and again through the trees.
“I have a good scheme for you and me, Hildegarde,” said Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney, and as the two sat together she slipped one hand into
Hildegarde’s chinchilla muff to give her little gloved fingers an
affectionate pressure. “I want you to go with me as my guest to New
Orleans for Mardi Gras,--doesn’t Lent come early this year? The yacht
is quite ready and we will make a list of just a few friends for
company. And afterward to my house on Saint Simon’s Island.”
“Oh, ideal,” cried Hildegarde joyously. “I shall be delighted to go.”
“I think Saint Simon’s Island is the choice location for the penitential
season,” said Paula flippantly,--“savors least of sackcloth and ashes.”
Hildegarde’s face fell.
“Oh, did I tell you,” the quick Paula broke off suddenly, “that as a
Lenten offering I am going to furnish a room and endow a bed in the new
Charity Hospital?”
“Oh, how lovely,” cried Hildegarde, radiant once more.
“But to return to our outing,” resumed Paula, “of course, under the
circumstances,” with a slanting glance at the presumably grief-stricken
ermine and velvet, “I can’t make up a party of pleasure for myself,--it
must be complimentary to my dear young friend, and its personnel must be
selected with that view.” Once more her hand crept into Hildegarde’s
muff.
She paused reflectively for a moment, while her mood seemed to change,
and when she went on it was in a different tone and with a crestfallen
look.
“To be quite frank with you, dear, I have a strong personal interest in
the occasion. I really want an excuse to get out of the town myself.
There’s a man here whom I want to avoid, and I’m forever meeting him.”
“I wonder,” commented the guileless girl.
“It is always easier to run away from a thing like that than to bring it
to a crisis, and really in this instance circumstances will not admit
of any canvassing of the matter.”
Hildegarde’s face was eloquent of interest, but she decorously forbore
inquiry.
“If I mention the name you won’t repeat it, though I don’t see why I
should, but Heaven knows I am so lonely I long to confide my troubles to
some sympathetic soul.”
And now it was Hildegarde’s hand that stole into the ermine muff with an
ardent little clasp which was convulsively returned.
“You can say anything you wish to me, dear Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and rely
on my silence.”
She turned such pellucidly clear azure eyes on Paula. She looked so
docile and ingenuous, that for one moment the heart of the schemer
almost misgave her. And indeed in the old days, before Paula ever met
Floyd-Rosney, she would have been incapable of the duplicity which she
now contemplated. But when sordid worldly motives are permitted to enter
the soul of a woman and to dominate it they work its ultimate
disintegration, despite the presence of worthier traits which otherwise
might have proved cohesive. As, however, she spoke the name already on
her lips she detected a quiver in the little hand she held, and that
vague tremor served to renew her purpose and nerved her to go on. “It is
Randal Ducie,” she said.
For she had deliberately planned at whatever sacrifice of truth to
implant distrust and aversion toward Randal Ducie in the mind of this
girl of high ideals; to remove her for a time from the sphere of his
influence and the opportunity of explanation; in the interval to
supplant him in her estimation with others of carefully vaunted
attributes. By the time Hildegarde Dean should return from Saint Simon’s
Island she would not tolerate his presence, and in the humiliation of
her contempt Randal Ducie might find a solace in recurring to the page
of that sweet old story, albeit he had so hardily declared the book was
closed.
“It is Randal Ducie,” Paula repeated. “You know long ago,--is that front
window closed--these chauffeurs hear everything if one is not
careful,--well, long ago when I was with my grandmother,--we lived at
Ingleside, Ran Ducie and I were engaged. Did you know that?”
“I have heard it,” said Hildegarde, her face tense and troubled, her
eyes unseeing and dreamily fixed.
“You have heard, too, that I threw him over, having the opportunity to
make a wealthy match.”
“Ye-es,” admitted Hildegarde, embarrassed, “people say anything, you
know. They gossip so awfully.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, looking out pathetically at the budding
trees of the similitude of a forest as the car swung down the broad,
smooth curves, “it was the other way about. It was _he_ who changed his
mind. Then I had the opportunity of the grand match, the first time I
ever was in New Orleans--and I took it out of pique. A girl is such a
poor, silly, little fool.”
Hildegarde was silent. There was so strong an expression of negation, of
condemnation, of doubt on her face that Paula went on precipitately.
“Of course, I wasn’t in the least justified.”
“And you realized that?” said Hildegarde.
“You see, I didn’t love my husband. You don’t understand these things,
child. He was kind, in his way, and rich, and talented, and
handsome----”
“Oh, yes, he was splendid looking,” said Hildegarde, sustaining her pose
of interest, but her lips were white.
“But I didn’t love him--and I loved Randal. A girl, though, Hildegarde,
cannot remonstrate against inconstancy. Randal came to me and said he
had mistaken the state of his feelings, that the interest he had felt
for me was merely because we happened to be the only two young people in
the neighborhood and were thrown together so often; that he realized
this as soon as he was again in the world, and that it was foolish for
him to think of taking a wife in view of his limited resources. He asked
to be released. So there was nothing for me to say but ‘Good day, Sir,’
with what dignity I could muster,--for, my dear girl, ‘Good day’ had
already been said by him. Oh, kind Heaven, why do women have such keen
memories? It wasn’t yesterday, surely.”
Paula threw her face suddenly into its wonted pretty and placid and
haughty contour, and bowed and smiled to a passing car, filled with
bowing and smiling faces.
“I couldn’t help feeling a bit triumphant that such a notable catch as
Mr. Floyd-Rosney--so cultivated, and talented, and wealthy--should
single me out as his preference as soon as he saw me.”
“I think your feeling was very natural,” said Hildegarde, “but I don’t
see why you should leave town on Randal Ducie’s account.”
What made her lips so dry, she wondered. They fumbled almost
unintelligibly on the words.
“Oh, my dear, that isn’t the end of it. He is all for taking it back
now; for renewing the old romance. He has a thousand reasons for his
defection, the chief being--and it was really true--that he couldn’t
afford to marry and was pushed to the wall by some debts that he had
contrived to make. But, Hildegarde, the real fact is not the revival of
his love for me--very warm it is now, if he is to be believed--but--you
would never realize it, you are such an unworldly, uncalculating little
kitten--but, I have at my disposal a great fortune, with nobody to say
me nay. I am one of the largest taxpayers in the county, and that does
make a man’s heart so tender to his old love; the girl who adored him,
who told him all her little, foolish heart, and let him kiss her
good-by, always, and lied to her grandmother, and told the unsuspecting
old lady she never did. Oh, why are women’s memories weighted to
bursting with trifles! Now, Hildegarde, haven’t you noticed how much Ran
Ducie has been in town all last fall and this spring?”
Hildegarde had, indeed, noticed it. She nodded assent. She was beyond
speech.
“That’s his errand, my dear, making up for lost time. Here we are at
your home. Thank you so much for giving me the chance to go. I’ll make
it lovely for you. The yacht casts off at five to-morrow afternoon, and
the limousine will call for you at four.”