XXXV
DIVORCE-COURT proceedings can be confidently abandoned to the admirable
frankness of the Sabbath press. The “Strong romance” had produced some
excitement in cultured circles, and provided the Saltire moralists with
a fable that promised to serve for many generations. Seeing that there
had been no defence, and that the case had progressed with unsensational
speed, it had failed to become notorious in any popular sense. Fashion
had not flattered it, nor had it been wildly paragraphed in the evening
papers. There had been no thrashing out of delicate details, so that the
“mess” was not highly savored enough to please the public palate.
Honest gold had gilded the tongues of unprejudiced and veracious
witnesses. Truth, hired for the occasion, had blown her brazen trumpet
in the court, a fine fan-fan in praise of justice. Maltravers’ guineas
had instilled wondrous intelligence into sundry rustic noddles. Ophelia,
a matrimonial martyr, had been crowned with the crown of virgin liberty.
One night in early spring you might have seen a white-faced man writing
at a table in the third-floor room of a Bloomsbury lodging-house. A
cheap brass lamp shed an unpleasant savor from beneath its yellow paper
shade. The table-cloth, a dingy red, was smutched with ink-stains and
the dyes of many dinners. Faded chromographs covered the walls. The
carpet was threadbare, the chintz curtains dirty. A few live coals still
smoked in the unpolished grate.
Midnight was at hand; a church clock in the neighborhood had chimed the
quarter. The footfalls in the street grew few and infrequent. London,
vast, palpitating giant, had turned from toil to brief, healthless
sleep. Her myriad fires burned dim under the stars. Her great heart
slackened from the moil of greed and care.
The man before the lamp labored and bent his brows. Papers and a few
books were squandered on the table, while under the lamp stood a bowl of
golden primroses, children of joy, fair stars of the dawning year. The
man’s pen scratched feverishly over the paper. Often he would pause,
stare at the lamp, glance at the golden flowers, and smile. His eyes
were lustreless and heavy, his face thin. From time to time he would
take up a written page, stare at the scrawled and erasured sheet, smite
out a word with a stroke of the pen, sigh, and toss the page aside with
a twinge of despair.
As the clock chimed midnight the door opened, and a girl in a red gown
came in from the dark landing. Her hair, noosed with a strand of blue,
poured over her white ears and about her shapely throat. There were
shadows under her eyes; she looked thinner and more ethereal than of
yore; the June freshness upon her face had faded to a more pearly gleam.
A brighter lustre kindled in the man’s tired eyes. The vision was
gracious and fair to him as some green and dewy garden in a golden
desert. He leaned back from his labor, took a deep breath as to fill his
heart with the breath of youth. Joan came softly towards him, adorable
as love moving amid summer roses. The room with all its ugly penury
seemed transformed by the glamour of her presence there.
She stood behind his chair, pillowing his head upon her breast, bending
her face to his, so that her hair shone bright about his forehead.
“Dear, you are working too late.”
“Am I?”
“You look tired to death.”
“Not yet,” he answered her, smiling in her eyes. “Can I tire with love
at my right hand?”
“Ah,” she said, touching his hair with her white fingers, “you try
yourself too much; come with me, and sleep.”
He took her hand and held it over his heart.
“Gold, gold, gold, what a task-master art thou!”
“Is not the tale nearly ended?”
“No, not yet. This sensational stuff baffles me; I cannot force the
vulgar speed enough. It is not easy to prostitute one’s art to fill the
public maw. I wish to Heaven we could hear from Garfield.”
She sighed slightly; her arm quivered beneath his head and her eyes grew
wistful.
“How much misery I have brought to you!” she said.
“Misery!”
“Shame and hunger.”
“Joan!”
He turned in his chair, drew her into his arms so that her head rested
on his shoulder as she kneeled beside him. Her hair threaded his black
coat with gold.
“Joan, wife, never speak so to me.”
“It is the truth.”
“A splendid truth to me. Would I return to my vile servitude and lose
the glory of you out of my heart?”
She sighed deeply, the sigh of a woman well beloved, and looked up at
him from amid her hair.
“I am utterly happy,” she said, “for we are together.”
“And that is heaven.”
“For me.”
She laid her fingers upon his closed lids and kissed his lips.
“You must rest to-night,” she said, “for you are weary, and a tired
brain thinks but feebly. Come, I will gather your papers and put out the
lamp. I am your wife, and I must care for you.”
XXXVI
POVERTY, when the bride of need, is in truth a skeleton in ragged
raiment. Those folk who prate of the beauties of indigence and of the
divine unselfishness of so saintly a state should test the superstition
with some leaning towards truth. God help those who are born both proud
and poor. God help those who have fallen from the car of opulence into
the slough of hunger and of need.
Joan and Gabriel had discovered the many curses of that cultured poverty
which is the most piteous product of a diseased civilization. They found
the old quip true, that greed, not God, rules the hearts of the many.
Penury had encompassed them. Children of an ungenerous shame, they
braved the hundred ignominies that poverty creates. Economy was with
them, as with thousands of their fellows, a juggling with coins, a
plotting with pence, a combat with trifles. Their very existence was a
contorted and twisted struggle to escape the coils of annihilation. They
had become as drift-wood on the billows of the great city. Alone in the
vast solitudes of that human sea, they struggled for life, unknown,
abandoned to their own fate, acknowledged of none.
It was such a trial as sours the soul and fills the heart with malice
towards those careless of the miseries of their fellows. Like twin
shoots cut from a green and luxuriant tree, they had been thrust into
sand and left to suck sustenance from brine. They were together, and
their love sustained them. It strengthened the man’s heart like wine,
touched him with a lustre of heroism, chastened his whole soul.
Gabriel began to comprehend in those troublous days the strange, rich
beauty of a woman’s love. Joan’s tenderness, her transcendent courage,
kept him mellowed against the gall of care. She was as sunshine and the
perfume of roses amid rotting ruins, a shaft of joy gleaming amid gloom.
Self seemed never with her. There was never a frown upon her face, an
unworthy word upon her lips. She moved through the sordid realism of
life unconsciously divine, spontaneously beautiful.
Though hope still trimmed her lamp, the hand of tragedy beckoned through
the hangings of the future. Spring had spread her nets of gold and
sapphire in the woods; tree called unto tree under the wakening moon;
the sap of youth stirred in the earth’s red heart. In the great city the
sky alone shone clear and generous, hanging like a blue pall above the
pit of labor and disease.
With Joan and Gabriel their store of gold had dwindled like sand in an
upturned hour-glass. No harvest had fallen to their lot; no cup had
brimmed with the coming of the year. Effort had brought no echo of hope,
and the man’s pen seemed to have labored through the nights for naught.
Many a package had gone out from the little room; none had returned with
the kiss of peace.
It was a spring evening, clear and bright. A swift sunset had brandished
the crimson banners of romance above the gray and grinding tide of toil.
A film of green had spread over the few pools of nature in the living
desert. The restless fires of barter were startling the thin gloom. A
last quaver of joy seemed to fall from the ensanguined clouds.
From the door of a pawnshop in a hurrying highway a man stepped out with
his hat drawn down over his brows. He glanced half furtively hither and
thither, as one new to the ignominies of defeat. A girl in a green
cloak, with red roses in her hat, came to him gray-eyed from the dusk of
the streets. The man colored as she drew near, and held out a hand with
a scanty store of gold glistening in its palm.
“All this?” she asked him, with an eager increase of color.
“Three pounds.”
“Riches.”
He smiled, sadly enough, as she took a faded purse and engulfed the
gold.
“It was Judith’s gift to me,” he said, “a marriage present. Poor little
Judith, if she but knew its fate! To what ends love falls.”
“I should have loved your sister.”
“Ah, she is soul of your soul, little wife.”
They passed on together into a more populous highway, where the flood of
life ran strong and eager. White faces flickered by them, gay, heavy, or
morose. The tide of toil gushed past on every hand, bearing the galleys
of misery or greed. The painted moths of passion fluttered from darkened
byways to jig and glitter in the glow of the many lamps. Opulence rolled
on in sable and white. From many a street penury and despair rushed like
noisome water from some thundering mill.
The man and the woman passed from the highway into a quiet square where
bare trees and the turrets of an antique inn rose against the colorless
sky. A garden lay shadowy under the bleak and arid walls. There was even
a suggestion of solemnity in the silence of the place, with the muffled
roar of toil flooding from the distance. Joan’s arm rested in Gabriel’s.
The warm dusk of the great square was welcome after the turmoil of the
streets.
“What a city is this,” said the girl, looking up into the man’s face.
“At first I thought that it would stifle me with its dust and din. Think
of Domremy and its woods and waters. I often say to myself, ‘How can
these people have souls?’ From my heart I pity the poor.”
“Are we not among them?”
“Struggling against fate.”
“And starvation.”
The man sighed, glanced at the stars in the vault above, and at the
great silver rim of the moon doming the house-tops.
“Often this city,” he said, “this maelstrom of misery, makes me think
there is no God.”
Joan’s arm tightened on his.
“Much is dark and strange to us,” she said.
“Dark indeed.”
“You are cast down, dear, to-night.”
“I am heavy of heart.”
She drew very close to him, still gazing in his face.
“Is it so ill with us?”
“In a month,” he answered her, “unless fortune pities us, we must
starve. God knows, I have pride. I cannot whine. The world seems deaf to
the children of shame.”
They passed on awhile in silence, threading dark streets and lurid
highways where the torch of passion flickered by. Many men stared in
Joan’s fair face as she moved like Truth at the side of Love. The
unclean air was webbed with gold. The dance of death went merrily on. To
the stars many a church held an iron cross, and the dead moon climbed in
the heavy sky.
Down a dusky street they saw the gleam of water under the moon. Turning,
they came to where the river swept with its black bosom under the stars.
Like a great scimitar it seemed to cleave the city’s heart.
The man and the woman leaned on the parapet and watched the restless
tide swirl by. Many lights flashed on the dusky water, symbolic of hope
on the stream of years. The ebb and flow was as the life of the city,
dark and unceasing under the stars.
Joan’s face was turned to the heavens; her hand, clasped by Gabriel’s,
rested on the cold stone. She stood so close to him that he felt her
take her breath.
“You cannot write to your father,” she said to him, as though suggesting
his own thoughts.
“It would be useless.”
“No, you could not beg of him. What of your sister?”
“Judith?”
“Yes; she loves you.”
“I could not beg from a girl.”
She looked out over the river. The moon now shone upon it, spreading a
glittering track of light. A myriad clocks seemed chiming the hour.
“I have less pride,” she said.
“Joan.”
“It is I who have brought this shame and poverty upon you. I can plead
with my own father.”
He looked at her in silence and his hand tightened upon hers. The river
glittered, a black band streaked with silver; roof and spire glimmered
under the moon. The lessening roar of the great loom of life rose upon
the night breeze. As for Joan, she was dreaming of the Mallan water, the
green woods, and the roses that would crimson her old home. The trees
would be flowering in the orchard; the almond had waved its pink pennons
athwart the blue. There would be a thousand violets purpling the grass.
“I will go to Rilchester,” she said. “I will see my father; there were
mellow seasons in him when the sun shone warm. There may be justice left
within his heart.”
“I doubt it,” Gabriel answered her, watching the moonlight on the river.
“Nevertheless, I will try,” she said. “I will go to him alone.”
XXXVII
MR. MINCE, ruddy and effulgent, spread his palms to the glow of his
study fire. Muddy boots steamed before the fender. Mrs. Mince, duster in
hand, was brushing the rain and mud from her husband’s trousers. The
vicarage cat, perched on a footstool as on a pulpit, purred forth a
feline hymn of peace.
Mrs. Mince drew the tea-table before the fire, sat down with lavish lap
in a basket-chair, took up the sugar-tongs, and held them poised like a
miniature spear.
“So the old man is dying,” she said, with a slight sniff, thrusting out
her slippered feet before the fire and taking the warmth into her bosom.
“Sinking fast,” the vicar answered her; “the last ebb of the tide. A
singular man—a most singular man. Marjoy tells me he can’t last a
week.”
Mrs. Mince dropped three cubes of sugar with deliberation into her
husband’s cup.
“What a moral,” she observed, reflectively; “what a living text on the
vanity of riches. Mammon deserts a rich man at the grave; he trusteth in
gold and findeth it dust. Zeus Gildersedge might leave a legacy to the
‘living.’ The porch needs repairing, and we cannot afford to pay for
dilapidations.”
Mr. Mince stared at the fire and smiled.
“There is that daughter,” the vicaress continued, “a dreadful drab; left
her father in his old age to run away with that blackguard Gabriel
Strong. I wonder what has become of them.”
“Can’t say,” said the clergyman.
“Gone to the bad, of course. Such women always gravitate to the gutter.
I’ve no sympathy with the slut. He won’t leave her anything.”
Mr. Mince lifted the lid of the muffineer; a fragrant steam ascended
therefrom; his eyes sparkled as he replenished his plate.
“Terrible, terrible,” he observed. “Ah, my dear, the way of
transgressors is hard, their feet light upon stony places. Sad, most
sad. I like these muffins.”
Mrs. Mince adjusted the tea-cosey and settled herself comfortably in the
arm-chair. The black cat, abandoning its rostrum, migrated to the lady’s
lap and lay curled there, licking her paws.
“The girl had had no education,” said the vicaress. “I believe she had
never been inside a church. What can you expect of a wench who has never
been confirmed and knows nothing of the catechism? Such barbaric
ignorance is inconceivable in these days; a most dreadful instance of
neglect. What about the old man’s money?”
Mr. Mince’s soul expanded in the fragrant atmosphere of home. He lolled
in his chair with the two lower buttons of his waistcoat unfastened and
his bald head pillowed on a faded green cushion. He stretched the soles
of his gray, besocked feet to the fire, twitching his toes as they
tingled on the fender.
“I had some very serious words with Zeus Gildersedge,” he said. “I found
him to-day in a subdued and penitent spirit, thanks to the good counsel
that I had left to germinate in his heart. He grew quite trustful, spoke
to me about his money and his daughter. He confessed that he was
troubled about the wench.”
“Surely, Jacob,” said the vicaress, “you did not advise him to try his
strength by worrying about so abandoned a hussy?”
Mr. Mince sipped his tea, besprinkling his waistcoat with customary
libations.
“My dear,” he retorted, “I had more Christian forethought than to
increase the old man’s troubles. In fact, I told him that it would be an
absolute sin for him to darken his last moments with reflections that
were unnecessary and unpleasant.”
“Admirable tact, my dear.”
“I demonstrated to him how little the girl deserved his remembrance or
claimed his pity.”
“Exactly.”
“That she had wilfully deserted him to follow a notorious blackguard.”
“Precisely.”
“That certain folk are undeserving of consideration, and that one must
set one’s face sternly against impertinent iniquity and gross
ingratitude.”
“My dear,” said the vicaress, “you have the spirit of a Solomon. If Zeus
Gildersedge left the girl any of his money it would only fall into the
hands of that young brute Gabriel Strong. And such a circumstance could
only be deplored as the actual subsidizing of immorality.”
Mr. Mince sat up suddenly in his chair, as though the idea had
stimulated his spinal marrow.
“Pomponia,” he said, “you are a most intelligent woman; strangely
enough, that is the very argument I used to impress my point upon Zeus
Gildersedge.”
The vicaress refilled her husband’s cup.
“The old man saw the wisdom of your words?” she asked.
“Absolutely. My logic triumphed.”
The pair subsided into silence for a season, a peaceful interlude
suffused as with a beatific sanctity. The fire jigged and flickered in
the grate. Mr. Mince’s gray socks smoked. The black cat purred beneath
the vicaress’s bony hand.
“And the money?” she said, at last, her large, yellow face gleaming in
the fire-light.
Her husband awoke as from some saintly reverie.
“Zeus Gildersedge stated certain facts to me,” he said, “facts that I
may confide to your admirable discretion.”
“Of course, my dear.”
“Mrs. Primmer and I were witnesses to his will. He has left the bulk of
his money to charitable enterprises and missions.”
“Most creditable.”
“A solid annuity has been settled on Mrs. Primmer.”
“A most deserving woman.”
“He has also bequeathed a certain sum to be used by me in the parish—to
be used, my dear, at my own discretion.”
“Excellent man.”
“I must confess, Pomponia, that Zeus Gildersedge is departing this world
with a chastened and regenerate soul.”
“Due, my dear Jacob, to your Christian zeal.”
“I shall bury him in Saltire church-yard, and make no charge for it upon
his estate.”
Mrs. Mince beamed on him out of the fulness of her heart.
“You are a good man, Jacob,” she said; “may Heaven recompense you
according to your deserts. I am a proud woman and a proud wife. You
fulfil my ideals. Let me give you some more tea.”
“Only one more cup, my dear,” said the vicar, “and then I must complete
my Sabbath sermon.”
XXXVIII
UP the long road from Rilchester came Joan, her wet skirt blown about
her by the wind. Weary though she was, the breeze had kissed fresh color
into her face, and her eyes were brave under the faded roses in her old
straw hat. Overhead the sky hurried, gray and sullen, unsilvered by the
sun. Rain fell in swift, hurrying showers, dimming the landscape, wiping
out the sea. The trees moaned and waved to one another, troubled by the
restless melancholy of the wind.
Joan’s eyes brightened as she drew near towards her old home. The
meadows rippled at her feet; the great trees called to her like old
playmates out of the woods; the very wind blew blithely in her hair. The
past rushed back, vivid and wistful; memories of her childhood glimmered
through her brain. Yonder in the valley lay the Mallan water, where she
had first met Gabriel when the woods were green.
Betimes Burnt House rose up before her in the east, its red roof warm
above the yews and cypresses, its old wall filleting the brow of the
hill. Joan’s heart beat fast, and for the moment her eyes were dim. Was
there yet hope for her within those well-loved walls? How would her
father greet her?—as of old with his rude, rough tongue?
She reached the iron gate and set it creaking on its rusty hinges. The
shrubs and trees were wild and untrammelled as of yore. They seemed to
welcome her like green-limbed guardians of the past, tossing their
hands, breathing forth deep greetings. Joan saw the track of wheels upon
the grass-grown drive, tracks freshly graven, glistening with the rain.
To the left the orchard flashed before her eyes, with petals rosy and
white scattered by the wind upon the tall, rank grass. Primroses and
hyacinths were in bloom there, and daffodils shook their golden faces to
the breeze.
She crossed the stretch of gravel and entered the old porch. Her hand
held the iron handle; the bell clamored through the silent house. She
waited with her heart hurrying, her eyes watching the waving trees. Slow
footsteps sounded within. The great door opened a very little and Mrs.
Primmer’s yellow face peered out from the gloom.
Joan confronted her with no wavering or fear, the sense of innocence
strong within her heart. The woman’s figure closed the entry; with one
bony hand she held the door.
“Well, mistress?”
There was an insolence in the very word that made Joan color. She moved
forward a step, but Mrs. Primmer did not falter.
“Make way, please.”
“Mr. Gildersedge is ill.”
“My father ill?”
“He maunt see nobody; I have my orders.”
It was plain to Joan that the woman’s rudeness arose from no
superabundance of sincere concern. There was an intentional insult in
her very attitude. Joan’s gray eyes kindled; she was no child to be
shamed and frightened by a frowning face.
“I have come,” she said, quietly, “to see my father.”
“Doctor’s orders—”
“Make way, woman.”
She stepped in and set one hand on Mrs. Primmer’s shoulder. There was no
unseemliness in this strength of hers. The hireling fell back even as a
hireling should.
“Stand aside!”
“I’ve had my orders.”
“And your pay.”
Joan crossed the hall, unfastening her hat and ignoring the lean, black
figure by the door. She climbed the oak stairway, halted in the gallery
above, turning to find Mrs. Primmer had followed from the hall. Throwing
her hat upon a broad window-sill, she looked down on the woman with a
dignity that was not mute.
“Stay,” she said, stretching out a hand.
“Dr. Marjoy told me—”
“Are you the mistress of this house?”
“You won’t get anything out of him, young woman.”
“Spare your words,” said the girl, calmly. “I have come to see my
father, and to see him alone. Go back to the kitchen. That is your
proper place.”
Very pale but very purposeful, Joan moved down the gallery towards her
father’s room. She halted a moment outside the door, listening, watching
to see whether the woman followed. There were no sounds save the moaning
of the wind, the chattering of the casements, and the beating of boughs
against the panes.
Very quietly Joan turned the handle and stood on the threshold of her
father’s room. The old man’s bed faced the broad window, where rain
clouds raced over the rolling downs. He lay half propped upon pillows,
staring at the sullen sky, his thin hands stretched upon the coverlet.
It was not till Joan had closed the door and moved forward into the room
that her father awoke to her presence there. A great change had come
over him those winter months, for disease had dragged him near to the
grave. The yellow skin hung in folds about the neck, the eyes were
sunken, the lips bloodless and marked by the teeth. It was the face of
the dead more than of the living, sharp, earthy, and repulsive, still
infinitely cunning.
When Zeus Gildersedge saw his daughter, a look of peculiar
vindictiveness sharpened his thin face. He strove to rise higher in the
bed, his yellow talons clawing at the coverlet as he raised himself upon
his elbows, the muscles contracted in his pendulous throat. As by
instinct Joan had started towards him to help him as of old; the look in
his sunken eyes beat her back.
“So you have sneaked home,” he said to her, breathing hard, his eyes
glistening with an indescribable malice.
“Father!”
“To beg, eh?”
“Can a daughter beg?”
“He has deserted you, the fine fellow—”
“No, no, not that.”
Zeus Gildersedge propped himself upon his pillows, his birdlike head
straining forward upon its yellow neck.
“You have timed it well, eh?”
“Timed it, father?”
“To sneak back and play the pretty penitent and finger the old man’s
money.”
“We are poor, father.”
“Poor, eh?”
“The world has wronged us.”
There was an unhallowed smirk on Zeus Gildersedge’s face.
“What about your father?” he asked; “you didn’t come to see him. No, by
God! He can die, and that’s about the best thing you think he can do.”
“Father!”
She stretched out her hands to him as though to stem back his taunting
words. Zeus Gildersedge was a dying man; the bitterness of the
approaching hour, the sordid realism of his past, only incensed him
against his fate. There was none of the mild solemnity of death in that
dark room. Nothing but malice seemed quick in the lean body, nothing but
mocking anger alive in the dim eyes.
“Is it my money you want?” he panted. “I am to be deserted, am I, and
then squeezed on my death-bed like a sponge, to keep you and your
blackguard from the gutter? Gold, is it? Curse them, they’re all
scrambling for it—the parson, the doctor, that woman in the kitchen.
What do they care about me—what do they care about me, I say? By God,
wench, I won’t give you a farthing!”
He sank back upon his pillows, seized with a spasmodic fit of coughing.
His face grew dusky, his eyes suffused. The veins were turgid and
swollen in the straining neck; one claw of a hand was hooked in the
collar of his shirt.
Joan stood and gazed at him, mute and impotent. His words had stunned
her and she could not think. Rain came rattling against the window;
storm-clouds darkened the room; the wind moaned in the chimney and
whistled over the roof.
The old man upon the bed had recovered his breath. He struggled up and
gestured at her with one trembling hand, his eyes shining with a
peculiar brightness in his dusky face.
“Get out from here!” he cried.
“Father!”
“I’ll not be bled upon my death-bed. Away, you wastrel! Starve, starve!
I’ll not pay for your shame.”
She drew back from him, shuddering. An utter hopelessness descended upon
her soul. She knew full well at last that there was no pity in her
father’s heart.
“I will go,” she said, moving towards the door.
“Out of my house, you wanton.”
He was leaning from his pillows, his face distorted, one outstretched
hand pointing her away. Joan had opened the door; she halted for a
moment on the threshold.
“God forgive you,” she said.
“Forgive me!” he screamed; “by God, you have the impudence of the
devil!”
Joan went out and closed the door, leaned against the wainscoting with
her hand over her eyes. Slowly her strength came back to her. She passed
down the old gallery, filled with sad memories of the past, took her hat
from off the window-sill, and went down the stairs. In the dusk of the
hall Mrs. Primmer met her. Joan swept by the woman without a word,
unlatched the door, and went out into the wind and rain.
But before night came Zeus Gildersedge lay dead.
XXXIX
HAGGARD and weary, Joan turned her back upon her old home, and struggled
on against the wind towards Rilchester and the sea. Brave woman that she
was, the tragic hour beside her father’s bed had benumbed her courage
and deepened the forebodings that crowded upon her heart. She had gone
hungry since the morning, and for the last two months she had faced
starvation with Gabriel in the great city. As she held on against the
whirling wind under the gray and hurrying sky, her strength began to ebb
from her like wine from some cracked and splendid vase. Her feet lagged
along the broad high-road as the wind moaned and the rain beat in her
face.
Coming to the cross-roads where the highway from Saltire curled from the
woods, she sank down on a granite heap under the shelter of the hedge.
In the utter distress of the hour, she still held her old straw hat
forgotten in her right hand. Great faintness came over her as she sat
there half sheltered from the wind. With trembling fingers she
unfastened the collar of her dress, and bowed her head down almost to
her knees.
It was as Joan grieved thus with her golden head adroop under the sullen
sky that one of those strange crossings of the threads of fate knitted
two destinies into one common coil. From Rilchester up the long,
listless road came the slim figure of a woman, clad in gray with a knot
of violets over her bosom, and her pale face turned wistfully towards
the heavens. It was Judith Strong who walked with the wind, returning
from one of those long rambles she and Gabriel had enjoyed of old. The
days had passed very heavily for Judith since her brother’s tragedy. She
loved to be alone amid the woods and by the sea, brooding on the strange
sadnesses of life, its lost ideals, and its broken dreams.
Judith, coming to the cross-roads, saw the bowed figure throned on the
heap of stones under the hedge. There was something so forlorn and
piteous about the woman seated there that Judith stood still, forgetful
of her own sad thoughts. She saw the bowed head, the hanging hands, the
desolate pose of the whole figure. Her woman’s sympathy awoke at once,
for those who have grieved are quick to discover grief.
Joan, hearing footsteps on the road, looked up and turned her face to
the mild, questioning eyes that stared her over. Judith had halted by
the grass. Some hidden flash of sympathy seemed to leap instinctively
from heart to heart. Where had they met and touched before? What common
bitterness had smitten both? There were vague memories in Judith’s mind,
a prophetic instinct that seemed to tell of all the sadness they had
known together.
The two women looked into each other’s eyes with one long, unwavering
look that hid some mystery from them both. Judith was the first to break
the silence. She might have passed on, but that was not a true woman’s
way.
“Are you ill? Let me help you.”
At the sound of that voice, so like Gabriel’s in its mellow tone, a wave
of color warmed Joan’s face, for she half guessed who stood before her.
There were the same clear eyes, the same delicate features, pure and
mobile, sensitive as light. Yet Joan’s heart failed her for the moment;
her pride was quick in her despite her misery.
“I am tired,” she said, hanging her head a little, “and have walked too
far. I shall be better soon.”
To Judith there was a pathos in the voice that made her heart open like
a budding rose. Some deep instinct urged her on, to take rebuffs if they
should come.
“Have I not seen your face before?”
Drawing near, she sat down beside Joan on the stones. The move was too
sudden to be prevented. Yet Joan would not look into Judith’s eyes, but
drew her wet cloak round her and hardened her heart.
“I am only tired,” she said; “please do not trouble over me. I shall be
strong again when I have rested.”
Judith touched the other’s cloak.
“Why, you are drenched!” she said; “have you far to go?”
There were lines as of pain about Joan’s mouth; she shivered in the wind
and seemed to strive for her breath.
“To Rilchester,” she said, “and then—”
“And then?”
“To London, if I can catch a night train.”
There was sudden silence between them, such a silence that their very
hearts seemed to beat in rhythm, one with another. Judith’s eyes were
full of light, a lustre of pity as though she guessed some part of the
sorrow the other bore. Her heart grew full of dim surmises like a sky
half smitten with the dawn.
“To London?” she asked.
Joan did not answer her.
“You must not go to-night or you will catch your death chill. Have you
not got a home near?”
Then, like the breaking of gossamer by too heavy a dew, Joan’s courage
seemed to fail her of a sudden and she broke into piteous weeping. No
petulant child’s tears were they, but the grief of one whose cup of
suffering was full. Judith’s words had shaken her very soul. She covered
her wet face with her hands and bowed her head down over her knees.
As for Judith, the strong presence of such grief as this stirred to the
deeps her woman’s nature. A meaner woman would have fallen to texts, or
to juggling glibly with God’s name. Judith’s heart beat straight towards
the truth, and she did not squander empty words.
Putting her arm about Joan’s waist, she drew her close to her, even into
her bosom, feeling the intake of her breath under the damp clothes and
the rain-drenched cloak.
“Tell me,” she said, “what troubles you. Am I not a woman, also? May I
not have some share in this?”
Joan took her hands from before her face. In her eyes there burned a new
courage, shining through a mist of tears. Should she not tell the truth
for good or evil, silence this friend, or challenge her full trust?
“Tell me,” she said, “are you Judith Strong?”
“I am Judith Strong.”
“And I am Joan—Joan Gildersedge.”
The two women sat and looked into each other’s eyes, as though each were
striving to read the other’s thoughts. Judith’s arm rested on Joan’s
shoulder. She did not flinch from her or turn away.
Perhaps Joan felt the earnest searching of Judith’s eyes, eyes that
watched a brother’s honor. The fear of her condemnation grew great
within Joan’s heart, the dread that calumny had outpaced her here.
“Yes, I am Joan Gildersedge,” she said, speaking as though her breath
were short, with sharp pauses between each sentence; “you know all, yes,
don’t speak to me yet. Gabriel—Gabriel and I went away together; for
when they accused us falsely my father turned me from my home. Gabriel,
who is always noble, surrendered all for my sake, and we lived together
through those awful days. They said I ruined him; but no, no, it was not
I who ruined Gabriel, but those who lied and perjured the whole truth.
Gabriel was always noble, and he loved me, and I him.”
Judith swept out her right hand as though to clasp her, but Joan’s hand
put her back.
“Listen,” she said, still speaking breathlessly, “for I would have you
hear the whole. Gabriel and I—Gabriel and I hid ourselves in London and
tried to live as best we could. We had but little money, and no work
came. Soon we began to starve and starve, and in my anguish for him I
came here again to see my father, even that he might take pity on us and
give us help. But no; though he is dying, he turned me away with curses.
And that is why I sit here in the rain.”
There was a clear light in Judith’s eyes, like the light in a mother’s
eyes whose pride is perfected in her child. She set both her hands upon
Joan’s shoulders, held her at arm’s-length, and looked into her face.
“Joan Gildersedge,” she said.
“Judith.”
“Well did I know my brother’s heart; now I know also the full reason of
his great love. Were I a man, should I not love you even as Gabriel
loves? Come, you are my sister, and I am proud of it.”
Silently, while the wind whistled over the hedgerows, these two good
women looked long into each other’s eyes. The tears were dry upon Joan’s
cheeks, but on Judith’s lashes there were fresh tears. Bending herself,
she kissed Joan Gildersedge upon the mouth, held both her hands clasped
fast between her own.
“That men have lied,” she said, “I believe full well, since I have seen
you, I who am Gabriel’s sister. Yet is there not joy in such a grief as
this, since love has triumphed over wrong and pain?”
Joan looked at her, even as one who sees pure water bubbling in a desert
place.
“I had not thought that any could believe,” she said, “for the whole
world seems built upon distrust.”
Judith took the wet cloak from Joan’s shoulders. Her own gray coat was
dry, for she had sheltered from the showers under the trees. She gave it
to Joan and would not be rebuked therefrom.
“To London,” she said, “you must not go to-night.”
Joan blushed, touched by an act that had more honest sympathy than had a
hundred words. Since she was weary and tired at heart, such tyranny was
very sweet.
“But what of Gabriel?” she asked.
“Gabriel can wait,” Judith answered her, with a smile; “you are my
charge, and I will play my brother’s keeper. Shall I risk your health on
such a night! No, I have come by other plans. Can you walk with me one
short mile?”
Some faint color had risen to Joan’s cheeks. She stood up like one half
dazed, one hand still clasped in Judith’s, the other holding her wet
skirt.
“Where shall I go?” she asked.
“Come; leave the where to me.”
Not a mile from the cross-roads towards Saltire lived an old widow whom
Judith had mothered in her winter years. The widow’s cottage was set
back from the road amid trees and meadows, all alone. To this same
cottage Judith took Joan that windy evening, like some kind fairy
radiant in doing good. She would lodge Joan there for her sake and for
Gabriel’s, and tread the dream-path she herself had made.
Thus these two, sisters in charity, came that evening to the little
cottage and knocked at the door under the tiled porch. Judith went in
while Joan waited in the twilight. She heard the voice of Gabriel’s
sister conjuring for her comfort in the cottage room. Nor did the old
woman hesitate to comply, for Judith’s asking was law with the honest
poor.
Widow Milton was soon laying wood in the parlor grate and setting a
chair for the drying of Joan’s wet clothes. Judith came out to Gabriel’s
wife in the twilight, with a wonderful smile on her pale face.
“Go in, sister,” she said, “the old lady can be trusted. Stay, promise
me, till I come again.”
And Joan promised, with her arms about Judith’s neck.
XL
MAJOR MALTRAVERS had taken a “hunting-box” early in the year in perilous
proximity to Gabingly Castle. Maltravers had remained a god above the
clouds through the autumn and early winter, both for expediency’s sake
and to prevent any unnecessary linking-up of incidents. His name had not
appeared in the cause of justice, for Gabriel’s undefended suit had led
to no ransacking of evidence on Ophelia’s side. The soldier had soon
become popular in the neighborhood, and he was even formally introduced
to Ophelia on the hunting-field by Miss Mabel Saker, who posed as a
mutual friend. Maltravers, being an excellent horseman and a good man at
the flask, had soon won the esteem of the “young bloods” of the
neighborhood. His keen, jockey-like face and trim, tailor-made figure
were to the fore in many a gusty gallop, and his voice rang as clear as
the huntsman’s horn.
Ophelia had ridden to many a meet, sitting her thoroughbred like a
queen, and staring full in the whole world’s face. There was no wavering
of her vivid eyes, no tinge of discomfort upon her cheeks. Had she not
been proved an honest woman, one who had been wronged and whom the law
had righted? A fair dame she seemed with her coat buttoned tight over
her smooth, full bust, her rich hair closely plaited under her hat. Men
saw that Maltravers was often beside her, twirling his mustachios,
staring in her face. Her friends whispered that she would soon be
comforted for the loss of a husband and a home.
Yet human schemes come often to naught when the raw elements are in the
ascendant. As the year wore on towards the spring a pair of brown eyes
had challenged the blue. Miss Mabel Saker had been established at
Gabingly since the autumn as Ophelia Gusset’s bosom friend. It was noted
by the vigilant at the “meets” that Maltravers’ black horse stood more
often beside Miss Saker’s bay mare. The soldier was one of those mutable
beings whose honor was “blinkered” by an immoderate vanity. As for Miss
Saker, she was his very twin in such sentiments as cheated the heart.
Possibly none of the sweet gossips of the neighborhood saw much in the
drama to point a moral, for, superficial as is the veil that covers
deceit, it is rarely rent by the professional gossip, but rather by the
hand that scorns all guile. There is more error in habitual prejudice
than in that calm sincerity which is slow to condemn, and the pessimist
sees his own sour face reflected in all things, be they foul or clean.
Maltravers’ name had never entered the zone of scandal that had played
about Gabriel’s honor. He was considered to be a mere sportsman who had
heard of the excellence of the Rilchester pack and had come for a gallop
over the Mallan meadows.
Whatever the reasons might be, the fact remained that Maltravers was
less Ophelia’s hero than he had been when she was Gabriel’s wife.
Possibly she had expected too much from a man whose vigorous egoism
clashed with her own. Such a passion as theirs was utterly selfish, and
as such was doomed to no true consummation.
Ophelia was the last woman in the world to abide a rival, even in the
minor matter of dress. Moreover, she had always considered Miss Mabel
Saker as a protégée and a disciple, a foil to her own more lavish
beauty. She had never been jealous of her friend, for the simple reason
that she had never possessed sufficient respect for Miss Saker’s
fascination to inspire the passion. Hence she had been slow at first to
realize the change in Maltravers’ humor, nor did she suspect him of any
inward disloyalty to herself.
There was no great vice in Mabel Saker. She was mischief personified, a
vain, merry creature, with a mind like a spice-box and eyes like amber.
If a man admired her, she had neither the heart nor the character to
treat him with surliness. Being so inured to sentimental pleasantries,
she was not easily frightened by anything she might see in a man’s eyes.
Flirtation was merely a recreation with her, an amusement no more
serious than fly-fishing or the aesthetic appreciation of a musical
comedy. She was a woman of no ideals, few convictions. She lived her
sensuous, merry existence in the sun, and never delved around her for
the problems that yawn like primeval forests about the fair meads of
life.
Maltravers jested with her, and she took his jests as she would have
taken a flask of scent or many such trifles, in delicate acknowledgment
of her own charms. She did not consider Ophelia’s powerful pride or her
aggressive egoism that could suffer no shadow. Hence she was unable at
first to comprehend Ophelia’s change of temper, her petulance, the true
reason of their frequent bickerings. Miss Saker had much of the vixen in
her, in the spiteful sense. She was too shallow and boisterous to
appreciate the negative passions in a friend; she had too little
sympathy to treat seriously and honorably the injured pride of a
fellow-woman. Hence she tossed her head and bridled at what she was
pleased to call Ophelia’s “whims.” And, being a creature of
contradictory impulses, she took pleasure in aggravating her friend’s
impatience and in playing the tormentor with true feminine agility.
Gay swimmer that she was, Miss Saker soon discovered herself beyond the
shallows of her frivolous philosophy. The climax came with an abruptness
that startled even her futile soul. And since Mabel Saker was a woman
who heartily detested any troubling of her sensuous good-humor, she was
soon every whit as bitter as Ophelia and as reasonless as a frightened
ape.
The storm broke one evening after a dinner-party at the castle.
Maltravers had lavished his fascinations in Miss Saker’s service and had
left Ophelia to a casual friend. By the fatefulness of coincidence,
Ophelia had come upon the pair seated under the palms in a corner of the
conservatory. Moreover, she had seen Maltravers take the flower the
brunette had pinned over her heart.
About midnight, the very night after Joan had taken lodging in Widow
Milton’s cottage, Mabel Saker was in her bedroom unravelling her dark
hair. To her came Ophelia fully dressed, her face pale as china, her
lips almost bloodless, her eyes peculiarly bright. There was a
restrained fury in her look, an atmosphere about her that boded ill for
the friendship between the two.
It was a woman’s quarrel that night, swift, malicious, and contemptible.
As is the case in some such feminine fracas, the disputants grew the
more bitter, the more icily eager with every word. Gibe stabbed at gibe
and taunt at taunt. There was no generosity in their passion to give
human pathos to the scene.
Ophelia leaned against an escritoire and watched with her hard blue eyes
the flushed and dishevelled woman before her. They were both breathless
for the moment, like two duellists who shrink back dazed after some
fierce locking of their swords. The younger woman tossed back her hair,
her bosom rising and falling rapidly as in an ecstasy of unspeakable
anger.
“Are you mad?” she said. “This is too utterly ridiculous.”
Ophelia laughed, her white face shining with her scorn.
“It is the fashion to think others ridiculous,” she retorted, “when all
the folly is one’s own.”
“Tell me, whose fault is it?”
“I am asking you the same question.”
“Because a man pays me small attentions am I to snub him like a
barmaid?”
“Small attentions—well phrased, indeed!”
“Is it my fault if he prefers me to you?”
“Is it his fault if you throw yourself under his feet every hour of the
day? Leave him alone, or you shall pay for it.”
Miss Saker sat up stiffly in her chair, her face quivering as the words
smote her.
“This is your gratitude after I have been such a friend to you! Oh, my
God, I will be even with you, and that quickly. What of Gabriel Strong,
and the girl you ruined? What of Jim’s cunning and bribery? Don’t I know
all about this? Pay for it, indeed!”
Miss Saker recovered her composure of a sudden, went to the glass and
began to braid her hair. She held the pins between her quivering lips,
her hands working feverishly, her eyes hot and strained. Ophelia watched
her as though half repentant, more from fear of what might follow than
out of pity for her friend.
“What are you doing, Mab?”
Mabel Saker paid no heed to her, but went to the wardrobe, drew out a
morning gown and coat, donned them, and took a hat from the bonnet rack.
“Have I hurt you, Mab?”
The brunette turned on her with eyes afire. She was a woman out of whose
heart all pity and forgiveness had fled. Nothing but infinite resentment
ruled her impulses.
“I will not stay in this house another hour.”
“But it is midnight; what will people say?”
“I don’t care. You have insulted me too badly, and you shall pay for
it.”
She started aside towards the wall and seized the bell-rope that hung
beside the bed. Ophelia moved towards her with hand outstretched. She
was too late, however, either for penitence or intimidation. Ten times
or more Mabel Saker had jerked at the cord, and the bell clamored
distantly in the silence of the house.
XLI
A LETTER came to Gabriel in his dingy rooms, where he was waiting to
hear news of Joan and of her quest. There had not been money enough to
take both of them to Rilchester, when possible defeat would have
burdened the journey home. Gabriel had never known the full divinity of
Joan’s love till she parted from him with a brave smile in her dear
eyes. Her womanly courage had revealed itself to him in all its pathetic
beauty when her golden head sunned the shadows of the room no more.
Gabriel was at his supper, a sorry meal enough, when the letter came to
him from Rilchester. He had been in a desperate mood all day, nor had he
slept the previous night, with dark doubts fluttering through his brain
like bats through a ruin. Why had not Joan returned? At the dim and
half-desolate station, Gabriel had watched, waiting and waiting as each
night train came in. He had spent the next day in Lincoln’s Inn Fields
and by the river, hanging a haggard face over the stone parapet, too
sick at heart to eat. How often had defeat smitten hope down into the
dust! Ever and again he had wandered back to the hot, dusty by-street,
hoping to find that Joan had returned.
When Gabriel looked at the letter that the dirty servant tossed onto the
table, he flushed like a boy, and his heavy, sleepless eyes grew bright.
The writing was Judith’s. Visions of green woods and golden meadows
flashed up before him like romance, the warm scent of a woman’s hair,
the memory of her pale face and shadowy eyes. Judith! How he loved that
name! Were not all truth and beauty built therein, purity and pity, the
divine tenderness that makes earth heaven?
He tore open the envelope and read the letter, leaning forward a little
towards the window, his hands trembling markedly:
“MY DEAREST BROTHER [it began],—At last I am able to write to
you after all these months of silence and distress. Oh, strange
fate, that in finding a woman fainting on the road to Rilchester
I should find my brother!”
The letter, warm and fragrant with the love of a good woman, went on to
tell how Joan and Judith had come together after Joan’s flight from Zeus
Gildersedge’s death-bed. The outpourings of hours of solitary yearning
seemed to flow in the eager and impassioned words. Of Joan, Judith wrote
with a fervor that brought a strange smile to Gabriel’s face:
“Now I can understand your love, brother, and your strong
heroism in defying society for a woman’s sake. This dear Joan is
blood of my blood, heart of my heart. In two days we have become
as sisters. Ah, Gabriel, I would trust her, even if she had come
to me from the gate of hell. But methinks she is more like
Beatrice out of paradise.”
From such sisterly exultation Judith digressed to speak of John Strong:
“Father has aged since the autumn. He is whiter and stoops a
little, and his eyes look tired. Poor father! he has always been
a hard man, but I believe the ice is broken about his heart.
Would to God he would be less proud! And yet I love this pride
of his when he faces the prattlers here like a Brutus, and
frowns back those he does not trust.
“Moreover, I am convinced that father has changed his opinions
greatly, though he says but little. That woman—pardon me,
Gabriel, for I hate her—has been brazening it about like any
countess. That she is none too honest I would stake my soul. We
of Gabingly and Saltire are like border barons locked in a death
feud. Maltravers. Have you ever heard the name from Ophelia’s
lips? Father has hinted that he has had his suspicions aroused
by some casual circumstances that have been brought to his
notice. Would to Heaven he would be more frank with me!
“Now, Gabriel, my own brother, let me plead with you as a
sister. Joan must remain here; I have my reasons, and a woman’s
wit is worth more than a lawyer’s tongue. As for yourself, stay
in London till I bid you come.
“Joan is well. See, I enclose a short letter from her. Also a
little money out of my allowance. Use it, dear Gabriel, and God
bless you!
“Pardon the vagueness of all this; I write in great haste.
“JUDITH.”
Gabriel sat there in the twilight with the letters and bank-notes laid
upon his knee. From without came the sound of a woman singing, singing
in one of the dim and narrow rooms below his window. To Gabriel it
seemed for the moment as the voice of some aspiring spirit climbing from
the squalor of life into the more splendid land of dreams. It was but a
poor, struggling child of art who sang, mocking with her melody the
coarse cares of a loveless world.
He took Joan’s letter and read it as through a mist, halting often as
though to hold and possess each word.
“DEAR HEART [it ran],—Judith, your sister, will have told you
all; how we two have come together and how she has helped me. I
had dreamed of noble women in the past, and now I have found one
of my own flesh and blood and crown and all. Judith is
wonderful; were she a queen, I could die for her as easily as I
could fall asleep.
“Of my father I need write nothing, save that he is dead.
“Oh, my own, I stretch out my arms to you, and my heart is full.
Yet must I stay here in exile, even as you must wait for what
God shall give to us. I have great joy and faith in Judith, for
like an angel she seems to press the clouds back from the world.
“Gabriel, good-night. There is a spirit in me that bids me
hope.”
The man sat a long while in the silent room, while the night came down
and the gloom increased. Out of the dusk, under the shadow of
fruit-trees, within beck of a red rose, Gabriel beheld two women
standing, fair women whose faces seemed to cleanse the world. Horror and
despair seemed to faint away like black waters ebbing from before their
feet. For in either hand there was a lamp, golden-tongued and stately,
Faith out of Heaven.
The singing had ceased in the room below, and over the myriad roofs rose
the solemn arch of the moon. Gabriel watched it climb the sky, till it
seemed to hang like a mighty halo behind the iron cross of a church.
XLII
THEY buried Zeus Gildersedge in Saltire churchyard, Mr. Mince
officiating, bleating through the burial service with his usual
sentimental unction.
“Earth to earth, and dust to dust.”
Good gold also to the greedy, and the dead man’s store consecrated to
strangers and to hirelings. Thus Zeus Gildersedge, who had never given a
penny away gladly in his life, went to his last resting-place, and,
Lazarus-like, lay in Charity’s bosom, while his child was barred out
from before the gates of “the worthy.”
There was a goodly gathering about the grave, for the funeral had
excited the curiosity of the villagers. Mrs. Mince was there in black
gloves and black bonnet; also James Marjoy, pulling his ragged mustache;
also his wife, eying creation irritably through her brimming glasses.
Mrs. Primmer, hard mouthed and self-satisfied, stood beside the
gravestone of a girl who had died in child-bed, dabbing her eyes at
intervals with a large, white handkerchief. To judge by the dignity of
the display, Zeus Gildersedge might have been one of the most respected
of patriarchs, a man whose sympathies had fathomed the woes of many a
poor fellow’s pocket.
At the end thereof, the crowd dwindled through the lych-gate, under the
green chestnut-trees, and by the school-house where the children were at
work. Mrs. Primmer, whose tongue had been busy ascribing Zeus
Gildersedge’s death to his daughter’s “shocking interference,”
accompanied Mrs. Mince up Saltire High Street to the vicarage. Mrs.
Primmer carried a little black hand-bag, wherein lay the handkerchief
she had used at the funeral, her post-office savings book, and several
trinkets she had appropriated from Joan’s bedroom at Burnt House. Mrs.
Primmer, in acknowledgment of her many virtues, was to be received once
more at the vicarage as cook.
Dr. Marjoy and his wife drove home together, uninspired above their mean
level of materialism by the miser’s funeral. The suggestiveness of the
scene had been lost upon them—the subtlety of those significant words,
“dust to dust.” They discussed the profits of the case over the
tea-table, discussed it with that complacency that had accustomed them
to existing upon the misfortunes of others.
“I should send in my account at once to the executors,” said the lady,
eying the carpet and debating inwardly how much it would cost her to
replace it with a new one.
“Mince and Lang are acting in the matter.”
Mrs. Marjoy frowned and fidgeted in her chair.
“How much have you charged?” she asked.
“Thirty pounds or so.”
“Make it fifty, dear; dead men can afford to pay. I am sure you were
backward and forward enough.”
“I think it is only fair,” said the doctor, “that one should recuperate
one’s self from the wealthy for the amount of time one has to waste
gratuitously on the poor. It is an extraordinary thing, but whenever I
get a bad diphtheria case it is always in a cottage, and one gets
nothing out of it.”
“I thought the Robinsons’ baby was really going to have whooping-cough
at last,” added Mrs. Marjoy, “but it turned out only a cold. That would
have been a good case, James; people are always ridiculously anxious
about an only child.”
The doctor sipped his tea.
“I think I might charge old Gildersedge’s estate sixty guineas,” he
observed. “I spared the daughter any inquiries about that last attack of
syncope.”
“His death lies at her door,” said Mrs. Marjoy, pursing up her mouth.
“Infamous wench—attacking an old man on his death-bed. Nothing more has
been seen of her; I suppose she has gone back to that young blackguard
of a Strong.”
“At all events, Zeus Gildersedge did not leave her a farthing.”
“Vice must be suppressed,” quoth Mrs. Marjoy, with irritable unction.
Judith Strong had heard in Saltire of Zeus Gildersedge’s death, but she
had kept the news from Joan, knowing that Gabriel’s wife had had
sufficient sorrow since the autumn. The same day that the old man was
buried in Saltire churchyard, Judith had ordered out her dog-cart and
persuaded her father to drive with her towards the sea.
Judith seemed to be the one being in the world for whom John Strong had
any sentimental respect. The merchant was a hard man, even as many men
are hard who have buffeted their way to the van in their strenuous and
materialistic struggle of the day. The aggressive and self-reliant
elements of his nature had been exaggerated to a degree that rendered
him often offensive to folk of finer fibre. John Strong’s vindictiveness
towards his son had originated largely from outraged vanity and
imbittered pride. It was not so much the offence, but the destructive
and thorough sincerity of the deed that had made John Strong so
implacable a Minos. Doubtless he would have ignored a guarded
indiscretion. Gabriel’s whole-hearted enthusiasm in consummating his own
social overthrow had maddened his father, to whom prudence was one of
the prime virtues.
Yet John Strong had a heart in him under all the grim and orthodox
materialism that had contracted about his character. Judith could
remember the time when her father, less cumbered by the cult of gold,
had romped with her like a great boy. Nor was it imbittered ambition
alone that had whitened his hair and bowed his broad shoulders a little
those winter months. Deep under the granite surface John Strong had
loved his son, and loved him still with a doggedness that he himself
perhaps would never have allowed.
Judith, warm-hearted woman, had suspected this same truth, and had drawn
her dreams therefrom. Had not her father, silent and stubborn, watchful
as some grizzled dog, confessed that he had received rumors that had set
him pondering anew? There was old Symes, the solicitor at Rilchester, a
fast friend, who had seen Ophelia at St. Aylmers while he was taking his
own holiday there. Had not Symes sworn in confidence that he had seen
this same Maltravers with Ophelia, this Maltravers whose name was now
linked with hers? Then there were certain of The Friary servants, hired
creatures whom John Strong had distrusted, and had taken pains to
strengthen his distrust. Some such suggestive hints as these had fallen
casually to him since the autumn; nor was he the man to throw a hint
away.
John Strong climbed heavily into the dog-cart that day, and sat himself
down beside Judith, telling the groom they did not need him for the
afternoon. Judith touched the brown mare with the whip, and they swung
away down the drive and under the great oaks of the home park. John
Strong’s eyes wandered almost wistfully over the rich meadow-land, the
woods, the fish-ponds glimmering below the garden. Had he not held this
for his son, that son whom he had hoped to see more of an aristocrat
than was his father?
As they went through Saltire they heard the church-bell tolling, slowly
and heavily, from the tall spire.
“Who’s dead?” John Strong asked, as he saw people moving towards the
gate.
“Zeus Gildersedge,” Judith answered, glancing at him slantwise as she
drove.
She saw her father’s figure stiffen unconsciously, his forehead grow
full of lines under the brim of his shooting-hat. His lids were half
closed over his keen, gray eyes as they drove on down the street in the
full glare of the sun.
“Zeus Gildersedge is dead, is he?”
“Yes, father.”
“His daughter’s doing, I suppose?”
“No, not that. He has been killing himself for years with wine and
opium.”
“So. But how do you know that?”
Judith colored.
“Every one knows of it,” she said.
John Strong sat silent, staring southward where he could see Cambron
Head and a streak of sea-blue in the distance. His mouth was not so
implacable as of old, and there was something in his eyes that half
suggested to Judith the thoughts that were in his heart.
“Girl,” he said suddenly.
Judith tightened her hold upon the reins.
“Did you ever see this wench? Don’t be afraid of telling the truth.”
“I have seen her, father.”
“Mere baggage, I suppose.”
“Gabriel thought her a noble woman. I think as Gabriel did.”
John Strong cast a rapid glance at his daughter’s face. There was some
movement about his mouth—the hard lines were softer, the gray eyes less
repellent.
“You mean to tell me that the woman is presentable?”
“Far more presentable than I am. Do you think Gabriel would have risked
all for a slattern?”
John Strong winced.
“Then whose fault was it?” he asked.
“Whose, indeed?”
“You tell me that Gabriel is an honest man, that the girl is all that
she should be, while the law has declared for the Gusset woman. How can
these things harmonize?”
“My dear father, do you trust Ophelia Gusset?”
John Strong considered his reply a moment, like a witness confronting an
expert advocate.
“The law trusted her,” he said.
“What is the law?”
“Common-sense, girl.”
“It was Ophelia’s word against Gabriel’s. You believed Ophelia.”
“The evidence was on her side. And why the devil should the woman kick
up such a dust if she had suffered nothing?”
“Because that marriage was a mockery; because she did not love Gabriel;
because she wanted to get back her liberty.”
John Strong leaned back and stared sullenly under his bushy brows
towards the sea. Judith knew that he was thinking deeply, and that his
thoughts were tinged with bitterness, the bitterness of a proud and
self-righteous man half moved to confess himself deceived. Had not his
own reason uttered these same words that he heard from Judith’s lips,
and had he not hurled them again and again out of his heart with scorn?
“Judith,” he said, “I would give my right hand to know whether my son
was a fool or a knave.”
“And the proof lies—”
“Partly with the woman for whom he ruined himself. Gabriel was always a
dreamer and an enthusiast. I tried to break him of his Quixotism. That’s
where we clashed.”
“And Joan Gildersedge?”
“The girl may have been an adventuress, or a mere twin fool to Gabriel.
If I could have that girl’s heart like an open ledger before me, I wager
I could discover who falsified the accounts.”
“You think so, father?”
“I have seen something of the world.”
“And Ophelia?”
He answered with an oath.
Before them ran a straight road. On the left towered a beech-wood, where
huge trunks pillared the gloom under the dense cloud of green. On the
right ran meadows ablaze with gold. Set back from the road stood a
red-tiled cottage under the shade of two poplars and an elm. The white
garden-gate blinked between two yew-trees at the end of a path that ran
over the meadow.
Judith drew up suddenly by the roadside and sprang down into the grass.
She took a strap from under the seat and tethered the mare to a stake in
the hedge. Her father watched her with no great interest. Judith had
many poor folk on her charity, and such visits as this were by no means
rare.
“Come with me,” she said, holding out her hand to him.
“Who lives yonder? Old Milton? You don’t want me on these occasions.”
“Yes, I do want you, father. Old Widow Milton was very grateful for the
seeds you sent her.”
“Seeds I sent her?”
“Yes, you remember, for her garden. Come. Jenny will be safe tied to the
hedge.”
John Strong, rising with something betwixt a grunt and a sigh, clambered
out of the trap and followed Judith over the stile. He did not trouble
himself to understand her humor, and, moreover, he was busied with
reflections of his own that drove Dame Milton and her small affairs into
oblivion. He was thinking of Gabriel, and of what Judith had said to him
as they drove from Saltire. Like a man who had lost his way in a fog, he
peered round him into space, ignorant that the very path he sought
curled close to his feet.
They came to the gate and entered the little front garden, bright with
its flowers. Judith turned off along the brick path that ran round the
cottage to where several fruit-trees overhung a patch of grass. Beds of
cottage flowers bloomed in barbaric abundance about the lawn. Under a
plum-tree was set a table covered with a clean, white cloth, and in an
old arm-chair sat a girl reading.
John Strong had followed his daughter round the cottage, with his hands
in his coat-pockets and his hat tilted over his eyes. He glanced half
listlessly at the flowers, as though the opulence of his own garden had
spoiled him for the humbler broideries of nature. He had no definite
consciousness with regard to externals for the moment, and had followed
Judith more from lack of thought than from any desire to speak with
Widow Milton. Thus when he came to a sudden halt on the grass behind the
cottage, and saw a pale, slim woman standing under a fruit-tree with an
open book held in both her hands, he started, stiffened at the hips, and
seemed not a little nonplussed by the unexpectedness of the vision.
His surprise was increased the more by Judith’s behavior. He saw his
daughter go to the woman standing under the tree, kiss her, and thrust
her back gently into the chair. A look, a word or two passed between
them. Instinctively John Strong had taken off his hat. He stood
irresolutely in the middle of the lawn, holding his hat between his
hands, staring first at Joan and then at Judith.