degenerate into melodrama. She put a chair forward, took her father’s
hat, smiled at him as though the situation was the most natural thing in
the whole world.
“Sit down, father dear.”
And John Strong sat down.
Judith had flown to the cottage door.
“We are ready for tea, please, Mrs. Milton; there are three of us.”
She was back again in her white dress like a beam of light, her eyes
tremulous, her face eager with the inspiration of the moment. Was not
the delicate balance poised upon her diplomacy? She gave Joan one long,
loving look, and then turned to watch her father.
As for John Strong, he sat there a man very ill at ease within himself,
neither knowing whether to be angry nor upon what reason he could base
his anger. Who was this white-faced woman with the splendid hair, whose
half-frightened and mesmeric eyes stared at him from under the shadow of
the tree? How had she come there, and what was she to Judith? John
Strong’s eyes twinkled nervously over the half-reclining figure. He was
expecting an introduction, but no such trite formality released him from
his ignorance.
Judith’s voice reached his ear. It was a perilous hour for Gabriel and
for Joan, and Judith’s courage rose to the occasion. Father and sister
both looked to her for promptings, and Judith sustained the burden of it
all.
“My father is a great gardener,” she said, flashing a look into Joan’s
eyes.
“Ah, yes; I, too, know something of flowers, for I love them all.”
John Strong, autocrat though he was, accepted the opening gladly, even
as a callow boy welcomes a partner’s sympathy at a dance. He awoke and
expanded, grew warm and even eager. The two women encouraged him with
that luminous interest that a philosopher loves in his disciples.
Mysteries were unfolded, the subtleties in horticulture were discussed.
John Strong, enthusiast that he was, grew the more surprised at the
knowledge this mere woman possessed. Nor was her knowledge mere
book-lore concerning birds and flowers, but the vivid wisdom of one who
had waded through dew-drenched fields at many a dawn and watched wild
life from many a woodland hermitage.
John Strong was very partial to a pretty woman, provided she had _l’air
spirituel_ and a certain stateliness that suggested “birth.” This
stranger under the fruit-tree was wonderfully intelligent, nor was there
anything of the “blue” about her to arouse distrust. What eyes she had,
and what a mouth! Who the dickens was she? What a goose Judith was to
forget the decent formalities of society. Gabriel’s wife? Could it be
possible?
Tea came. Mrs. Milton, in a clean apron and cap, beamed upon them like a
ruddy cottage rose, honest and uncultivated.
Joan drew to the table, and John Strong watched her white, delicate
hands hovering over the cups. He had grown silent of a
sudden—thoughtful, restless. Joan’s eyes wavered up to his, large,
limpid, and entreating.
“May I give you sugar?”
“Three lumps, please.”
“Cream?”
“Cream, thank you.”
“Won’t you sit in the shade. It is such a glare out there in the sun.”
John Strong edged his chair under the tree, while Judith watched him,
smiling out of her dark eyes. It was all very simple, yet very strange.
She wondered what thoughts were working in her father’s brain.
Half an hour passed, smoothly enough, and then came the leave-taking.
Joan, very pale and a little defiant for all her wistfulness, stood up
and looked into John Strong’s face. The gray eyes and the blue ones met
and challenged each other steadily. Judith was watching Joan as a mother
watches a child taking the first step on the stair of fame. It was
Joan’s instinct that triumphed in that moment. She went straight up to
John Strong, put up her mouth to him to be kissed.
And John Strong kissed her.
“Thank you,” was all she said.
As for Gabriel’s father, he spoke never a word as he drove home with
Judith towards Saltire. His daughter watched him, biding her time,
wondering whether he were angry or not, and what would follow if his
pride should prove too strong.
It was not till he had entered his own lodge gates that John Strong
spoke to Judith of the woman he had met at the cottage.
“Is she—?” he said.
“Yes—Gabriel’s wife.”
John Strong was silent again for fully a minute. Then he asked Joan a
single question.
“Was this a plant?”
His daughter looked him full in the face.
“No, father,” she said; “I did not know we should drive there till after
we heard the death-bell tolling.”
“This is the truth?”
“Have I ever lied to you in my life?”
XLIII
THE morning after Zeus Gildersedge’s burial, John Strong walked the
terrace before Saltire Hall, a man much troubled within himself.
Sentiment had always seemed so doubtful a virtue to the tea-merchant
that he had for years regarded any such ebullition of the soul with
intense suspicion. After a long talk with Judith the preceding night he
had gone to bed in a mood so generous and pliant that his own daughter
had been astonished at the sudden surrender of her father’s pride.
But with the morning, that sober hour when the mind gleams like a sphere
of marble in the sun, John Strong’s emotions had cooled discouragingly.
He viewed them on rising much as a masker regards the gay clothes he had
worn the night before, when wine had cozened him out of his saner self.
John Strong went down to breakfast and faced Judith stolidly over the
massive oak table. She saw speedily that his mood had changed, and that
he was much more the father she had known of old.
Judith, with a sense of emptiness at her heart, left him alone after the
meal, to his papers and his pipe. John Strong smoked vigorously, biting
the amber mouth-piece, twisting his papers to and fro with the
viciousness of a man irritated by his own indecision. Judith, on the
watch, saw her father pass out onto the terrace with his favorite dog
following at his heels. By instinct she went to the organ that stood in
the great gallery above the hall, and began to play some sad,
heart-searching melodies religion had drawn from the deeps of the soul.
The solemn tones pealed out into the sunlight with a passion that
throbbed from the woman’s heart.
John Strong stood still to listen. The lines softened somewhat on his
face and a slight tremor played about the dogged mouth. Few men, be they
blunt Philistines, are inert to music when the tide of trouble runs
deep. John Strong leaned against the balustrading of the terrace, and
felt once more the throes of tenderness that sleep had wiped from out
his brain.
It was even as he pondered thus, pacing to and fro, then halting for a
time as though thought claimed every red spherelet coursing in his
blood, that John Strong heard the sound of wheels upon the
carriage-drive beyond the garden. The sound skirted the pines and
laurels and the three great cedars, and ceased before the entrance on
the northern front of the Hall. John Strong, with a shadow as of
displeasure upon his face, turned towards the library window that opened
upon the terrace.
Then he heard voices, a woman’s and a man’s. A door closed. John Strong
halted in the sun. To him from the window came a man-servant, sleek and
clean-shaven, treading deferentially towards his master.
“A lady to see you, sir.”
“What name?”
“She would give no name, sir.”
“Hum.”
“I showed her into the library.”
“What sort of lady, William?”
“Young, sir; came in a cab, one of Dixon’s traps from Rilchester. Hope I
did right, sir; the lady said it was important.”
“Quite right,” said John Strong, moving in the direction of the library.
Within he found a smartly dressed, brown-haired woman in a pink toque
seated with constrained precision in the middle of the sofa. The perfume
of Parma violets filled the room. The stranger was palpably nervous, a
little hot and flurried, like a woman who had hurried to catch a train.
John Strong stared at her, hat in hand, questioned her as to the reason
of the favor her presence conferred upon him.
“Mr. Strong?” she asked, tentatively, smiling forcedly, rising, and
sinking again into her seat.
“I am John Strong, madam—”
“I have come on a very delicate matter—”
The ex-tea-merchant took a chair and settled himself so that he could
see the woman’s face.
“A delicate matter?” he repeated, scenting charity, or a hospital
donation.
“Most delicate, and to me—painful, Mr. Strong. Excuse me if I seem
disconnected. I want you to promise—”
She hesitated a moment, and sat staring half apologetically into the old
man’s face.
“Well, madam, what am I to promise?”
“That this visit of mine shall be kept a profound secret.”
John Strong elevated his eyebrows.
“If you will first tell me your name, madam—” he suggested.
“My name?”
“I shall be better able to understand the situation.”
The lady in the pink toque drew off her gloves with nervous jerks and
laid them neatly in her lap. Then she put her veil up and moistened her
lips with her tongue.
“My name is Mabel Saker,” she said, with her eyes fixed on the man’s
face; “probably you remember that name.”
Most certainly John Strong remembered it. The expression on his massive
and determined face betrayed the unpleasant familiarity of those few
syllables. He sat in silence for the moment, his gray eyes fixed on the
woman before him.
“So, madam,” he said, “you desire this interview to be kept secret. Will
you kindly inform me what its purpose is?”
“Does my name suggest it to you?”
“I have my suspicions.”
“And you will consider any information I may give you as privileged?”
“How privileged, madam?”
“That you may make use of it where and when you like, provided my name
is never mentioned.”
John Strong settled himself firmly in his chair like the man of weight
and substance that he was.
“Well, madam,” he said, “I make you this promise. I suppose what you
have to tell me concerns my son.”
Miss Saker touched her lips with her handkerchief and coughed
suggestively. She assumed an air of reluctance with a cleverness that
did her adaptability credit.
“Mr. Strong,” she said, impressively, “I have suffered greatly in my
mind since certain unfortunate facts came to my knowledge. Doubt and
indecision have made a martyr of me. You will sympathize, Mr. Strong,
when I confess to you that I have been torn between friendship and a
sense of duty.”
John Strong nodded like a judge.
“Let me assure you, madam, that you have my sympathy,” he said.
Miss Saker pressed her hand tragically to her forehead and aped the
manner of a popular actress whom she admired.
“How dreadful a thing it is,” she observed, “to find that one has been
deceived!”
“Most painful, madam.”
“Your son, Mr. Strong—”
“My son, yes, madam.”
“Was absolutely innocent, as was the girl whose honor they traduced.”
Miss Saker’s brown eyes were fixed expectantly upon the old man’s face.
She had promised herself some dramatic excitement in watching the effect
of her disclosures upon Gabriel’s father. The result was less
sensational than she could have imagined. She saw the old man sink more
deeply into his chair. His head was bowed down over his chest, and there
was a sudden spasm as of pain upon his face.
“Please explain,” he said, in a strange voice.
Mabel Saker, somewhat frightened, pretended inordinate concern.
“Oh, Mr. Strong, the truth has been too much for you. I have been
clumsy. Oh—”
The old man quieted her with a gesture of the hand.
“If you would be kind to me,” he said, “please tell me quickly all you
know. It was a conspiracy, I suppose.”
Miss Saker began to lose her melodramatic action.
“Major Maltravers—”
“Major Maltravers. Exactly.”
“He was in love with Ophelia Gusset.”
“Exactly.”
“Ophelia was sick of your son.”
“So I have heard.”
“People wrote anonymous letters.”
“People do that sort of thing—women, I should have said.”
“You understand me.”
“Perfectly, madam; and the witnesses?”
Miss Saker put two plump fingers before her mouth.
“Bribery,” she lisped; “inquire at Callydon, Mr. Strong, and elsewhere;
inquire at St. Aylmers. I need not advise you in this.”
“And the decree has been made absolute?”
“Six months—”
“It is too late, thank God, for mere intervention.”
Miss Saker stared.
“Why do you say ‘thank God’?” she asked.
“Because, madam, I would not have my son re-wedded to a devil.”
There was a short but impressive silence between them for a moment. Then
Miss Saker stood up, tugging at her gloves. John Strong also rose like a
man who was very tired.
“You understand, Mr. Strong,” she said, “what a terrible ordeal this has
been to me.”
“I understand, madam, and, believe me, I am grateful.”
“And your promise?”
“A promise, Miss Saker, is a promise.”
The woman in the pink toque smiled, but the smile vanished utterly as
she met the old man’s gray eyes. There was something so subtle and
contemptuous in the look he gave her that her vapid self-esteem and her
facile hypocrisy seemed to wither in a moment.
“Good-bye,” she gushed, holding out a hand.
John Strong touched her fingers and walked with her towards the door.
“Good-bye, madam,” he said. “I hope you will have a pleasant drive to
Gabingly.”
“Gabingly? Not Gabingly, Rilchester.”
“Pardon me, I was forgetting.”
“Rilchester. I leave for London to-night.”
When the woman in the pink toque with her silks and perfumes had gone,
and the sound of the carriage wheels had died beyond the meadows, John
Strong passed back to the library and found Judith standing by the
window. There was so strange a look upon her father’s face that Judith
gazed at him and was mute. Haggard as he looked, a certain grim joy
seemed to shine in his gray eyes, a joy that betrayed the passions that
were working in his heart. Judith went to him and held his arm.
“Father, what is it?” she asked.
He partly leaned upon her, with one hand upon her shoulder.
“I was in the wrong,” he said, doggedly.
“Father!”
“Gabriel shall come home.”
“Home!”
“And I, John Strong, will stand and fight beside my son.”
XLIV
THE master of Saltire was no mean enemy to be pitted against in such a
feud as had arisen over Gabriel, his son. There was much of the
bull-terrier about John Strong. He had been born of solid yeoman stock,
folk who would have gone stubbornly to the stake rather than admit the
power of the pope. Moreover, the ex-tea-merchant had learned to the full
in his commercial life the sure power of gold. He had always laughed at
socialism. Even Judith could remember him standing before a public
building in France and staring contemptuously at the inscription:
“LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ”
“Bosh!” he had ejaculated; “the Revolution did not abolish bullion.”
John Strong was not only a stubborn and a very wealthy man, but he was
in that pugnacious mood that had served him so well in his commercial
struggles in the past. He threw himself into the cause with something of
the spirit of an old British sea-dog laying his ship “gun to gun”
against the crack “thunderer” of the French fleet.
The day after his interview with Miss Saker, John Strong left by an
early train for Rilchester, travelling alone, with no luggage to cumber
him. Judith had driven over with him to Rilchester and had taken leave
of him there. For fully a week John Strong was absent from Saltire Hall.
He returned one evening unexpectedly, looking the more grim and resolved
about the eyes, and having the air of a man very well satisfied with his
venture.
The following morning he ordered his carriage out and drove in the
direction of Gabingly, passing the castle on the south. Half an hour
later he drew up before an old manor-house packed with tall chimney
stacks and straggling gables. The garden was a wilderness, the house
itself smothered in creepers. John Strong walked up the grass-grown
drive, pulled the rusty bell-handle, and, withholding his name, desired
to see Major Maltravers.
The master of Saltire was shown into the dining-room, that smelled of
stale cigar-smoke. The room was but shabbily furnished in the early
Victorian style, the panelled walls being hung with sporting prints, the
heavy table littered with cheap periodicals, gloves, pipes, and ragged
novels. It was some minutes before Maltravers entered, to find a stout,
bull-necked little gentleman standing stolidly in the middle of the
hearth-rug. The soldier was dressed as for riding, in checks and yellow
gaiters, with a gold pin fastening his white stock. He took John Strong
for a Rilchester tout or a travelling agent, and was more peremptory
than polite in his method of address.
“Morning. Your business?”
“My business, sir, is of a private nature.”
“Private, eh? Take a seat. I’m busy; you must excuse me being in a
hurry.”
The master of Saltire remained standing. There was a look of such
implacable earnestness upon his massive face that Maltravers regarded
him with more consideration than before.
“Well, sir,” he said, “what can I do for you?”
“Your ability to meet my demands is dependent upon circumstances.”
The soldier elevated his arched eyebrows, smiled, and showed his white
teeth. He was in debt to no man, and yet this stout little fellow was
wondrous like a dun.
“Demands?” he asked.
“I will explain them.”
“May I ask who the devil you are?”
“Certainly, sir; I am John Strong of Saltire.”
The soldier thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and slouching his
shoulders, looked at the ex-tea-merchant with his alert, black eyes.
“Mr. Strong?” he repeated.
“John Strong.”
“Have we met before?”
“I guess not.”
“Will you sit down, sir?”
“No, sir; I prefer to stand.”
“As you like,” said the soldier, with a sniff; “kindly explain your
business.”
John Strong did so; neither was the matter thereof particularly
encouraging to James Maltravers’ self-esteem. The ex-tea-merchant was
not a man given to mincing his epithets or performing his facts. He hit
straight from the shoulder, and with solid effect.
Doubtless, according to dramatic ideals, Maltravers should have lit a
cigarette and poised himself on the back of a chair with a cool and
insolent complacency. He should have smiled, glittered with
Mephistophelian cunning, and played his part like the clever egotist
that he was. On the contrary, the soldier appeared suspiciously
uncomfortable, and betrayed a certain uneasiness that even his military
hauteur could not hide.
“Really,” he observed with much affectation of surprise, “these are
extraordinary remarks, Mr. Strong. You must have been sitting in the
sun.”
“No, sir, I have been at Callydon.”
“Callydon, eh?”
“And at St. Aylmers.”
“A pretty place enough.”
“And at Messrs. Goring’s office in London.”
The two men remained some seven paces apart and looked each other over.
The soldier, suave and angular, stood with his feet planted wide apart,
his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his riding-breeches.
“I should be much obliged, Mr. Strong,” he observed, “if you would stop
speaking in riddles.”
“Certainly,” retorted the other.
“Am I to understand—”
“You are to understand this, sir—I shall have you prosecuted for
conspiring to defeat justice.”
“A large order, Mr. Strong.”
“A damned large order, sir—an order upon which I shall spend fifty
thousand pounds with pleasure.”
The soldier stared at him, somewhat stupidly, it must be confessed, for
one whose wit was usually so nimble. The whole truth was that Maltravers
was a coward, not in the mere physical sense, but rather morally and
ethically. Like many a selfish and sensual man, he could play the Pistol
when his own sleek interests were threatened. His philosophy was
Epicurean in the vulgar sense, a philosophy that shirked any
overshadowing of its comfort.
“So, sir, you consider me a criminal?”
“I have my facts.”
The soldier seemed amused despite the gravity of the occasion; the elder
man’s face was as stubborn as ever.
“I doubt very much whether you can prove anything.”
“You admit conspiracy.”
“Mr. Strong, am I a fool?”
A flicker of a smile passed over the master of Saltire’s face.
“One of your chief witnesses has confessed to me,” he said.
“Who?”
“Never mind, sir; keep to the point.”
Now it was only by subtle sword-play that such a man as John Strong
could be delicately baffled. Maltravers, who now had his temper
admirably under control, had adapted himself to the situation with the
adroitness of an athlete. He was not fool enough to indulge in sword and
buckler work, or to suffer himself to be bullied by an old plutocrat who
had both the will and the means to make matters vastly uncomfortable for
a gentleman of fashion. It was matador’s work this, to dangle the red
rag of a woman’s honor before this bovine and stolid being, and to
reserve the steel to consummate his own safety.
Thus Maltravers had the wit to see that he might turn the situation to
his own credit by performing sundry subtle gyrations about the truth. He
might victimize John Strong by making a victim of the very woman who
trusted him. No very noble strategy this! But, then, who would be the
wiser if the trick succeeded, and if John Strong recoiled from
sacrificing a woman? Maltravers’ easy sophistry was capable of
anæsthetizing his own none too vivid conscience.
“Believe me, Mr. Strong,” he began; “let me be frank with you. As an
English gentleman, I should be sorry to see a woman’s honor dragged in
the mire.”
“Don’t preach to me, sir, on honor,” quoth John Strong; “what about my
son’s honor?”
“Your son, sir, was perhaps more fool than knave.”
“Indeed!”
“It seems to me, Mr. Strong,” said the soldier, with admirable
magnanimity, “that we are both waxing hot over a matter which has passed
beyond our control. Let us talk more calmly. What has been done has been
done, and we are all of us human. You are aware, of course, that no
legal readjustment can be made.”
“Fully aware.”
The soldier smiled again.
“Then I am to understand that your chief desire is to drag me down into
the mud.”
“Exactly.”
“My dear sir, you are mistaken. Your vengeance would not fall upon me,
nor should I be the one to suffer.”
“You insinuate—”
“I make no insinuations, sir. I repeat the suggestion that you only
would sacrifice a woman.”
John Strong planted his feet more firmly on the hearth-rug and knitted
his brows.
“Explain,” he said.
Maltravers adopted a more graceful and easy attitude, and spoke as a man
who knew something of the world.
“Firstly, sir,” he observed, “you have to prove that I am a scoundrel.”
“True.”
“What are your chances? They are not very great, I must confess. But,
Mr. Strong, have you considered the other side of the question. You
desire to justify your son.”
“I do.”
“So you think you can improve matters by dragging all concerned again
before the world. I presume you know something of the British public,
what they would say in the matter. The pot and the kettle—there is much
truth in the proverb. Another big scandal; all the old ladies shaking
their heads over ‘a depraved and corrupt society.’”
John Strong was silent.
“Why not let matters stand?” said the soldier. “Perhaps I am not so bad
as you think me. There is another person more deeply concerned, as I
have suggested to you, but I will not betray a woman’s secret. If you
persist, what will be the result? Two women besmirched the more and your
own son rendered doubly ridiculous.”
The master of Saltire squared his shoulders and looked Maltravers over
with his keen, gray eyes. There was much logic in the soldier’s
argument, and John Strong, even in his most obstinate mood, was not a
man who was blind to prudence.
“There is something in all this,” he observed, “but—”
“Well, sir?”
“I shall stand out for two things.”
“State them, Mr. Strong.”
“That you leave the neighborhood within a week.”
Maltravers’ black brows lifted a moment, but he smiled as before and
seemed perfectly agreeable.
“A small matter,” he said. “I was preparing to leave, intending to
travel abroad. There will be no difficulty in this.”
John Strong could not refrain from blurting out his thoughts.
“And Ophelia Gusset?”
“The Honorable Miss Gusset, Mr. Strong, is nothing to me.”
“Nothing to you?”
“Nothing, sir—nothing. What I have done I have done; it belongs to the
past. Take the hint, sir; but understand, as a gentleman, I will not
betray a woman. Her affairs are her affairs; I meddle no further. And
the second demand?”
“That you inform me who it was that wrote a certain anonymous letter
concerning my son.”
Maltravers, suave diplomat, contrived to conjure up a laugh over the
question.
“Really, Mr. Strong,” he said, “I have not the faintest notion.”
“Impossible.”
Turning suddenly, the soldier strode to a bureau, unlocked it, fumbled
in a pigeon-hole, drew out a crumpled sheet of note-paper, tossed it on
the table before John Strong.
“The very letter,” he said, apparently much amused; “take it, sir, and
unravel the mystery for yourself. Eve might have written it, so far as I
am concerned.”
“And now—”
“We had better shake hands, Mr. Strong. Your son was innocent, perfectly
innocent. This, of course, is in confidence. In the witness-box I should
swear the opposite.”
“By God!” said the elder man, “where are we, on our heads or on our
feet?”
“Ask God, sir,” said the soldier, “for is not God Himself a paradox?”
Thus, with this last gross piece of inconsistency, the parley ended, as
many such a passage of passion has ended, and will end. Maltravers had
sheltered himself behind the woman who had trusted him. Wrong-doer and
avenger cried a truce over the business, shirking the last death-grip,
the one from selfishness, the other because hearts more dear would have
been the more deeply wounded. For man cannot conquer truth at times save
by dragging the innocent through the dust, even as Achilles dragged
Hector about the walls of Troy.
XLV
IN her turret-room at Gabingly, Ophelia sat before an open window with a
letter lying in her lap. There was a look of apathy upon her face, an
apathy so deep and utter that life seemed stagnant in her as though her
heart stood still. Her eyes stared over the woods and meadows towards
the sea, eyes that beheld nothing, comprehended nothing. Only her deep
breathing betrayed the passions that still worked within.
It was Maltravers’ letter that lay open in her lap, the letter of a
coward and a hypocrite, full of euphemistic cunning and of subtle
sentiment. For an hour or more Ophelia had sat silent and motionless
before the window, with the glib sentences ebbing and flowing through
her brain. Anger had failed her in that hour; shame and loneliness
seemed closing about her soul.
“MY DEAR PHYL [began the epistle],—I write to you in great
haste, for my news is of such a nature that the more speedily it
is told the better.
“Understand, in the first place, my dear girl, that what I am
now doing is for your welfare, and goes grievously against the
grain with me. We have ventured so much for each other in the
past that this flouting at the eleventh hour comes like a
thunderclap upon my soul.”
After some such preamble, Maltravers proceeded to paint a vivid picture
of their betrayal and of John Strong’s relentless determination to
unearth the truth. He described the interview at the manor, and
recounted his own heroic stand and his desperate attempts to impress
upon the master of Saltire the hopelessness of his cause. The letter
went on to state that, though his arguments had brought John Strong to a
temporary stand-still, he feared that the old man, “like a mad elephant,
would soon break through the net.”
Finally came the real inspiration of the letter. The further linking of
their names would be injudicious in the extreme. Maltravers would
sacrifice himself. In fact, he had already left the neighborhood, having
timed his flight so that the epistle should reach Ophelia after he had
gone. This was “to insure the inevitable ending of a relationship that
could only bring misery and misrepresentation upon both.”
Such in outline was the document with which this English gentleman
relieved himself of a responsibility that he had so passionately
assumed. There was much vapid and offensive sentiment, much pathetic
posing crowded therein. Yet the letter reeked of hypocrisy—hypocrisy of
the basest sort, even because it was pitched in a spiritually tragic
key. Its scented sentiments stung far more deeply than the rough truth
would have done, for there was an insult in the very cleverness of the
thing, an insult exaggerated by the florid profession of feelings that
the writer had never felt.
A woman is rarely deceived by a man whom she has loved, and Ophelia had
gleaned the truth little by little those many weeks, the truth that the
man’s passion had cooled, and that her love was no more to him the magic
wine of life. Possibly she had fought against the conviction, even as a
woman will fight against that which she knows in her heart of hearts to
be true. The blow in itself was no sudden one to Ophelia, but the method
of its administration appealed to her as brutal in the extreme.
She pictured the whole drama to herself as she sat at the window,
brooding and brooding over the letter in her lap. She could see
Maltravers confronted by John Strong, the leopard and the bull, guile
and gold. She could imagine the disloyal promptings of his heart, his
selfish scheming, his desire to escape from a predicament that had lost
its passionate charm. Her woman’s instinct served her wonderfully in
this. She could read the truth in every studied phrase of Maltravers’
letter.
The nature of her position dawned upon her relentlessly as the evening
sunlight streamed in upon her sensual face and haughty eyes. The shame
of it! the shame of it! This it was that smote her vanity to the core.
Her overstrained imagination portrayed the future to her with a mordant
realism that made her quail. She was only a woman, if a very imperfect
one, and the motive towards audacity had vanished, leaving her
unshielded and alone.
She reasoned thus as the day declined. John Strong would speak, for he
was not the man to remain long silent. The whole country-side would take
up the cry. The women, those women who loved her little, would point at
her mockingly and clamor, “Clear yourself before us and the world, or be
known as an adulteress and a liar.” They would shriek at her, these
smug-mouthed women. And whence could come the refutation? Society would
throw the gauntlet down, and who should stoop to take the challenge up?
Maltravers? Ay, he was the man, and thence rose the bitterest mockery of
all. His very cowardice would condemn her, for like a false god he would
not hear her cry, and fanaticism would rend her for his silence. For him
she had risked all; for her he would venture nothing. Ignominy!
ignominy! What was life worth to her that she should face such shame?
* * * * *
That night there was much hurrying to and fro in the galleries of the
castle. Bells rang. White-faced servants stood gaping in the
passageways, whispering together, awed and frightened. A lamp flashed to
and fro in the stable-yard, where two grooms were saddling and bridling
a horse, Ophelia’s horse, as good a beast as ever rode to hounds. Soon
there came the sparking of hoofs on the cobbles, a scattering of pebbles
along the drive.
A woman’s voice cried from the porch.
“This note, quick, John, to the doctor.”
“Saltire?”
“You know the house.”
“Damn it, yes.”
“Get on! get on!”
The man went away at a canter, a canter that steadied into a hard gallop
as he passed the lodge and swung out into the high-road. He pulled his
cap down over his eyes and gave the beast the whip. Overhead a full moon
was shining, splashing the silent trees with silver, glimmering upon the
distant sea. There was the scent of new-mown hay upon the warm night
air. In the castle porch servants stood huddled, listening to the sound
of hoofs that died away along the road.
Above in the turret bedroom Blanche Gusset, with her brown hair tumbled
about her face, half lay upon the pillows, holding her sister in her
arms. Outside in the gallery a smart maid stood listening, running every
now and again to the stairhead to peer down into the hall beneath. A
shaded lamp burned in the room, whose angles were full of solemn
shadows. Ophelia, her face a dusky white, the pupils of her eyes
dilated, lay in her sister’s arms breathing spasmodically with shallow
span. She seemed half torpid, like one near death.
A table stood by the bed, bearing a glass and a flask of brandy, also a
bottle of smelling-salts. Blanche, half witless yet methodical for all
her terror, was bathing her sister’s face with scent. A crumpled letter
and an empty phial lay near on the scarlet coverlet of the bed.
“Phyl,” she said, “Phyl,” putting her mouth close to her sister’s ear.
There was some slight brightening of the dilated eyes. Ophelia’s lips
moved. Her hands, flickering to and fro, entwined themselves in
Blanche’s hair.
“Jim,” she said—“I hear Jim’s voice—”
In some such fashion she maundered on. Blanche, vigorous being that she
was, shuddered as though a cold wind played upon her bosom. She reached
for the glass, gulped down some brandy, coughed, and called to the girl
without the door.
“Florence! Florence!”
The door opened a very little and a white face peered in.
“Yes, miss.”
“How long—”
“How long, miss?”
“Oh, you fool. How long has John been?”
“Half an hour, miss.”
“Oh, my God, only half an hour!”
“The doctor’ll be here soon, miss; ’tis only four miles to Saltire.”
“Go down and listen.”
“Yes, miss.”
“Shut the door. Oh, my God!”
She turned again and hung over Ophelia, staring into the bedewed and
dusky face. All the beauty had fled therefrom, for it was as the face of
death, gray and inanimate. The widely dilated eyes seemed to gaze into
the unknown, as though fathoming many a solemn truth.
Blanche trickled brandy between the parted lips, poured scent into the
palm of her hand and dashed it in her sister’s face. She dragged her
higher upon the pillows, the head with its golden mass of hair rolling
upon her shoulder. The blue veins showed in the white neck, where all
the muscles seemed tense as cords, striving and laboring for life and
air.
Then through the window came the distant sound of wheels upon the road.
Blanche gave a cry like a woman who hears the voice of a rescuer through
the smoke of a burning house. The beat of hoofs came near apace. There
was a hoarse grinding of the gravel before the house, hurried steps upon
the stairs, the sound of a voice, quiet but confident, giving commands
to the maid Florence.
James Marjoy entered, roughly dressed, as though he had but risen from
bed. Calm and self-reliant, he was a changed being in such an hour as
this; and though but “Mrs. Marjoy’s husband” in his own home, he was the
man when ministering to the sick. His assistant, a tall, morose-faced
Scotchman, followed at his heels. Blanche, freeing herself, ran to James
Marjoy and seized his arm.
“Thank God you have come,” she said.
“Cocaine?”
“Cocaine, yes; the bottle is yonder—and that scoundrel’s letter. I
heard her ring and found her like this. My poor father is away.”
The Scotchman was busy taking a hypodermic syringe from its case, his
big, bony hands steady and unflurried, his solemn face devoid of all
emotion. James Marjoy had given one glance at the figure upon the bed.
He took Blanche Gusset gently by the arm and thrust her towards the
door.
“Go, Miss Gusset,” he said.
“But—”
“Time is precious. We shall do better alone.”
The night was wellnigh spent and the moon hung low in the west when
James Marjoy, haggard of face and weary about the eyes, came down to
Blanche Gusset in the dining-room. A single candle burned upon the
mantel-piece. Blanche, white as the bed-gown under her dressing-jacket,
ran to the doctor and held his arm. Her eyes had that strange and
terrible earnestness so tragic when seen in the eyes of a woman.
“Well?”
“We were in time.”
“Doctor—”
“Your sister will recover.”
“Thank God! thank God!”
She kissed James Marjoy’s hand and flung herself upon a sofa, weeping
unrestrainedly like a little child.
XLVI
GABRIEL STRONG came up the road from Rilchester, swinging along between
the high hedgerows, with the morning sun behind him. The sky was of
limitless blue above, and beyond the deep woods and the green meadows
rose Cambron Head, a purple height stemming the greens and azures of the
sea. So lusty was the sunlight that the sand and shingle edging the
great bay gleamed like bronze above the foam.
Gabriel, leaving the high-road, struck out a path over the meadows. The
tall grass was ablaze with flowers—buttercups and golden trefoil, great
white daisies, clover, purple vetches, delicate flax. Wild roses were
opening upon the hedges. Odors of honeysuckle and of hay were in the
air.
By an old oak that grew in the midst of a grass field Gabriel halted to
rest and look upon the scenes he knew so well. Yonder was the hoary sea,
and nearer still were the magic hills below old Rilchester where Joan
had sunned the woodlands with her hair. Was it but yesterday that he had
moped like an exile in that great labyrinth of brick and stone, knowing
no man, known of none? Was it but yesterday that he had received that
letter saying, “Come, come; the day is ours”?
That morning Gabriel had risen soon after dawn, like a school-boy
yearning towards home. He had left London by the earliest train, and
found the good borough of Rilchester but waking from its sleep. Even
Judith had foreseen no such prodigal energy as this. There had been no
one to meet him at the station, but Gabriel’s ardor was not to be damped
that June.
With new color in his cheeks and a tremulous eagerness in his eyes, he
came that morning towards the cottage in the fields where Joan, his
wife, was lodged. He entered in at the little gate, smiling to himself
even as a man might smile who climbed to meet love at the gate of
heaven. Humble enough was the rose-grown porch, and humble the janitor
who stood within. Yet all was heaven to Gabriel that June morning.
“Lor’, Mr. Strong!”
“Good-morning, Mrs. Milton.”
“Good-morning, sir. Glad to see you, sir. Come inside, sir.”
“My wife is here, Mrs. Milton?”
“Your wife, sir? To be sure, there is a lady here.”
Gabriel smiled, but there was no suspicion of bitterness in his eyes.
“My wife is with you, Mrs. Milton,” he said.
“Lor’, Mr. Strong, I was just now going to say—”
“Shall I find her in the garden?”
“If you please, sir. And may I say, sir, if it ain’t presumption in an
old woman, that I never did believe them lies.”
Gabriel colored a little, but smiled in the old woman’s kindly face.
“Thank you, Mrs. Milton,” he said.
“’Twas this way, sir. Miss Judith, she says to me, sir, ‘My brother,
Mrs. Milton—my brother is an English gentleman’; and what Miss Judith
says, sir, might, I reckon, satisfy the old gentleman hisself.”
Gabriel, sped by a kindly gleam from the old lady’s eyes, passed round
the cottage to the garden at the back. Under a fruit tree Joan was
seated, gazing up at the sky through the green tracery of the leaves. An
open book lay in her lap, a book that wept with those who mourned and
rejoiced with those who sang.
Gabriel stood there in silence before her, waiting till her eyes should
end their communing with heaven. The sunlight, flashing through the
boughs, set a golden coronet upon her hair. At last she looked to the
earth once more, saw Gabriel standing near the cottage, his hands
stretched out to her, a lover’s hands.
She gave a low cry, did Joan, and thrusting the book aside, rose up and
sped to him.
“Gabriel!”
“Wife!”
The woman’s head was on the man’s shoulder and his arms were close about
her body. In that glad meeting came the full consummation of all prayer
and hope. Together they stood under the summer sky, while the spirit of
June breathed over field and garden. The red rose had kissed the white,
and heaven’s dew had touched the heart of many a flower.
“God has answered us,” said Joan, at last, lifting up her radiant face.
And Gabriel kissed her.
“You are happy?” he asked.
“Happy! What can mere words declare?”
“That by your martyrdom you have made of me a man.”
Even at that moment Judith came flashing in, a fair vision of womanhood
under the orchard trees. She had not dreamed to find Gabriel so soon
returned. For all the bowl of life seemed brimming with joy that
morning. Brother and sister stood hand to hand, looking deeply into each
other’s eyes.
“Gabriel,” said the sister, “there is justice in this old world yet.”
“Who works for justice?”
“God,” she answered him, very simply. “Has science slain Him? Nay. Can
the glib pen, the cunning instrument, tell us yet more than all our
hearts have dreamed. The grander deeps are far beyond us still.”
Gabriel stood, gazing beyond the hills.
“You women are wonderful,” he said.
Joan smiled at Judith, Judith at Joan.
“Come, sister, read me the riddle.”
“Is it not faith,” she said, “that makes love love indeed?”
Before noon father and son had met in Saltire garden, under the
cedar-tree at the end of the long lawn. They had gripped hands like men,
and now paced shoulder to shoulder over the grass, talking together
frankly and without restraint. The great trouble that had fallen upon
both seemed to have strangled pride and to have broken down that barrier
that had always stood between them. John Strong’s face was strangely
altered. He seemed younger by some years, and he no longer stooped.
“Gabriel,” he said, bluntly, “whatever the past has brought us, let it
be granted that I was the greater fool.”
“Not so, father,” retorted the son.
But even in the quaint thoroughness of his self-abasement, the elder
man’s obstinacy played its part.
“Hang argument,” he said; “the facts are plain. No man likes owning that
he was wrong, and I, sir, am no exception. But you struck for a
principle, I for a prejudice. There is the truth in a nutshell.”
But Gabriel was not convinced.
“The fault was in measure mine,” he said, “even because I did not trust
you as a son should.”
Under the trees, over the green grass below the banks of burning
flowers, they saw Joan and Judith walking hand-in-hand. A calm light
played upon Gabriel’s face; a smile flickered over John Strong’s
stubborn mouth.
“Confound these women!” he said; “how they shame us.”
“True, sir, I have learned as much.”
“My own daughter has taught me a lesson.”
“And Joan has made a man of me.”
They met together under the cedar, Joan and Gabriel, Judith and her
father. It seemed that they had communion in that hour and that the same
spirit inspired them all.
John Strong reached out his hands to Judith and the other two.
“Come, lassies and lads,” he said, with a grim yet merry light in his
gray eyes, “take hands and let us make our vow.”
“What shall we vow?” asked Judith, holding her father’s arm.
“To stand against slander.”
“Against slander,” said they all.
“Till death us do part.”
XLVII
WITH strange swiftness tidings of a fellow’s misfortune are carried by
the wind and wafted into every willing ear. People are the more quick to
receive the news of another’s failure in preference to some small glory
that may have blessed some one among them. Save to the generous few, the
follies of humanity fall like libations poured before the eternal ego. A
man’s so-called friends are his most subtle enemies, for they stand ever
ready to stab him, claiming hypocritical candor in justification of the
deed. The world loves disaster even that it may point the obvious moral,
smite its self-righteous bosom and exclaim, “God, I thank thee that I am
no fool.”
Now in Saltire charity abounded and the milk of human kindness flowed
like water. The good news had spread even as a fire spreads over a dry
heath before a western wind. The ladies of Saltire were in their
element. For when a fair sister errs, her fellow-women lift up their
voices and rejoice in that unctuous patois that passes for sure piety.
“Ophelia Gusset attempted to commit suicide!”
Then there was much wagging of heads, much holding up of hands. In
tavern and in drawing-room the same tale was told, embellished with many
a detail, colored with many a suggestive tint. Vain had been Blanche
Gusset’s efforts to gloze and cover her sister’s deed. Hirelings are
ever hirelings, and their tongues run fast. Groom, maid, and stable-boy
spread the truth. Moreover, John Strong had spoken fearlessly, daring
the law. Maltravers had fled, and Gabriel had returned home.
Many an inquiring spirit had analyzed the truth, not for the pure
truth’s sake, but for the incense that might be extracted therefrom to
delight the nostrils of society. Maltravers had evaporated; his horses
had been sold in Rilchester. Ophelia Gusset had gone to Scotland for
“her health.” The gates of Gabingly Castle were closed over the
emptiness within, while John Strong and Gabriel his son had been seen in
Saltire, side by side. The inference was obvious, the truth
self-evident.
One of the first persons to call at Saltire Hall was Mr. Mince,
glib-tongued and benignant. He shook hands with Gabriel with much
fervor, like one welcoming a wronged man out of prison. He, Mr. Mince,
had never doubted the matter for a moment. Moreover, John Strong’s gold
piece had been absent from the plate for many months.
“As a Christian minister,” he said, “may I congratulate you, sir; on the
wonderful workings of God’s providence.”
There was a subtle something in Gabriel’s eyes that even Mr. Mince’s
complacency could not ignore.
“Ah, sir,” said the clergyman, “you think perhaps that we are
hypocrites. As a humble and forgiving Christian, I do not resent the
thought.”
“The world takes us, Mr. Mince,” Gabriel had answered him, “for what we
seem and not for what we are.”
“But, Mr. Strong, is not the diagnosis often one of extreme complexity?”
“Not so complex, sir, to those who prefer to discover the evil rather
than the good.”
Meanwhile John Strong had other strategies in view. He had ransacked his
escritoire, where in the many pigeon-holes letters lay carefully
hoarded. Methodical man that he was, he had sorted the documents
through, reserved such as seemed needful, and enclosed them, with the
anonymous letter Maltravers had surrendered to him, to a certain expert
who dealt in the subtleties of caligraphy. John Strong had found that
the hand-writing of the anonymous letter tallied with that of a certain
epistle written to him by Mrs. Marjoy for her husband, concerning one of
the Hall servants whom the doctor had attended. But the master of
Saltire waited for an unbiassed opinion. He would make sure of his
weapons before he attacked the redoubtable dragon of Saltire.
Thus, one afternoon, late in June, Mrs. Marjoy was darning stockings in
her drawing-room when she received the news that John Strong of Saltire
stood as a suppliant upon her threshold. Mrs. Marjoy sniffed at the
necessity. She edged her work-basket under the sofa with her foot and
deigned to receive the master of Saltire Hall. Doubtless these vulgar
plutocrats desired to court the serene approval of her seraphic
countenance.
She received John Strong with the air of a woman whose extravagant sense
of “respectability” made her a fit compeer of the gods. Moreover, Mrs.
Marjoy confounded staring and red-faced hauteur with stately aloofness
and a distinguished air of reserve. She always glared at strangers
through her spectacles as though she would demand many and abundant
proofs of their gentility before she could deign to relax her vigilance.
Mrs. Marjoy delighted in what she was pleased to call “a select circle,”
acquaintances who were aristocratic enough to be toadied to, or friends
familiar enough to deserve patronage.
Without rising from her chair, she extended a bony hand towards John
Strong. It had always been her constant complaint that the Hall folk
were “so detestably healthy.”
“Good-afternoon, Mr. Strong,” she observed; “I am afraid my husband is
out.”
“So much the better, madam,” said the ex-tea-merchant. “I have driven
round to have a short talk with you.”
Mrs. Marjoy stared. There was an expression upon John Strong’s face that
she did not understand. Moreover, his confident and masterful air
irritated her perpetual propensities towards tyranny. Mrs. Marjoy always
regarded the spirit of independence in others as insufferable arrogance.
“One of your servants is ill, I suppose. My husband is very busy. Will
to-morrow do?”
“On the contrary, madam, it is entirely a personal matter.”
“A personal matter, Mr. Strong?”
“Strictly personal.”
“Please explain.”
“With pleasure, madam.”
John Strong, drawing out his pocket-book with studied deliberation,
unfolded a much-soiled sheet of note-paper and spread it upon his knee.
The doctor’s wife watched him with the sincerest curiosity. As yet there
was no suggestive irony in the appearance of the crumpled document.
“I have here, madam,” he said, “a certain letter.”
Mrs. Marjoy was sitting very stiff and straight in her chair.
“A letter that was written to my late daughter-in-law—”
“Indeed!”
“Containing certain libellous statements concerning my son.”
Mrs. Marjoy’s usually florid face grew a shade ruddier; her manner grew
instantly more aggressive, and she began to twitch her shoulders, an
infallible storm-signal to those who knew her.
“Well, Mr. Strong, what has all this to do with me?”
“Simply this, madam, that you wrote this letter and that I desire to
discuss the situation with you.”
Mrs. Marjoy’s first impulse was to slap this stolid and masterful old
gentleman’s face. She restrained herself from such a physical retort,
remembering a certain fracas she had once had with a cook.
“How dare you, sir, make such an insinuation?”
“I insinuate nothing, madam.”
“Sir!”
“I am merely stating a fact.”
“You mean to tell me to my face that I am a liar?”
John Strong emphasized his words by beating his closed fist rhythmically
upon his knee.
“No, madam, I am merely stating a fact. You wrote this letter. I should
recommend you not to dispute the truth.”
Mrs. Marjoy half started from her chair. There was a look of such
unsophisticated malignity in her brown eyes that John Strong gave thanks
inwardly that he was not her husband.
“Am I to be insulted in my own house?” she asked.
John Strong ignored the side issue, being thoroughly convinced that he
had the lady within his power.
“Libel, madam,” he continued, with great callousness—“libel is a
serious matter. As you know, I am a wealthy man, a man of influence in
the neighborhood.”
“Your vulgar money, sir!”
John Strong smiled, one of those peculiarly exasperating smiles that
betray to the weaker disputants their own palpable inferiority.
“My vulgar money, madam,” he said, “could easily upset your husband’s
trade. Why, by my soul, I have already bought this rented house of yours
over your heads. I could drive you step by step out of Saltire, ay, and
subsidize a dozen pill-peddlers in the neighborhood. My vulgar money,
madam, is not a power to be scoffed at.”
Mrs. Marjoy seemed staggered.
“You consider yourself a gentleman?”
“I am an honest man, madam, and I am going to stand by my son.”
“Your son—poof!”
Mrs. Marjoy’s red face blazed. John Strong seemed as calm and
undisturbed as though he were giving orders to a groom.
“Let me but catch one tag of scandal from your tongue, madam,” he said,
“one single fabrication compromising my son’s honor, and, by my immortal
soul, my vulgar money shall make Saltire too dear for you.”
“Preposterous!”
“The profession, madam, this noble profession, must stand well with
society. A soft answer turneth away wrath, and a good manner bringeth in
guineas. I like your husband, madam, for he has a heart in him. But
remember that a doctor is dependent upon whims, and that your tongue may
do much to work his ruin.”
Mrs. Marjoy was a woman whose whole courage resided in her temper. Her
heroism was in this respect spasmodic, impressive, yet uncertain. She
overpowered others by her gift of making life unlivable for those who
withstood her will. Her husband had always preferred surrender for the
sake of his own peace. But, like most women, when thoroughly frightened
she was no longer the Medusa whose face petrified her enemies. In John
Strong she had met her match.
Thus, after one shrewd glare at the tea-merchant’s obdurate face, she
subsided somewhat suddenly in her chair and gave way to semi-hysterical
tears. It was, indeed, an impressive sight to see Mrs. Marjoy weep. Yet
there was no subtlety, no dramatic purpose in her grief. Her tears were
the tears of an angry and impotent woman.
“This is mere brutality,” she said.
“Of course, madam, that letter was not brutal.”
“It was an honest letter.”
“You think so.”
“Mrs. Mince and Miss Snodley helped me to write it.”
“Indeed!” said John Strong, “then I trust that you will advise them to
desist from such recreations in the future.”
“I shall appeal to my husband.”
“Do so, madam. Doubtless a libel action would improve his practice.”
John Strong, like a clever diplomat, had taken the measure of his
adversary’s resources. He had frightened her sufficiently to prove that
he was in grim earnest. Being no mere bovine bully, he adapted his
methods to the exigencies of the situation, and proffered the lady a
chance to regain her dignity.
“A year ago,” he began, “you probably believed that letter to be honest
and sincere. But being a woman of sense, you will doubtless acknowledge
that one’s opinions must change when new facts have been brought to
light.”
Mrs. Marjoy mopped her glasses.
“I may have been mistaken,” she confessed.
“Of course, of course. We all make mistakes in life. You must pardon me
if I have seemed over hard with you. Put yourself in my place, madam.
Imagine how you would feel if a child of your own had suffered great
wrong.”
Mrs. Marjoy’s tears still flowed. She swayed to and fro in her chair and
dabbed her red face with her crumpled handkerchief. John Strong rose and
prepared to depart.
“Come, madam,” he said, “I think we have talked sufficiently to bridge
an understanding between us in this matter. Remember that facts are
proving that my son is not the scoundrel you once believed him to be.
Whether he was a fool or not, such a question is beyond the immediate
issue. Now let me suggest to you that your course of action is plain.”
“Plain, Mr. Strong!”
“Respect the truth, madam, and I will respect your sex. May we be good
friends in the future, for straight speaking does nobody any harm. But
remember, madam, that I shall keep this letter, and that vulgar gold is
a good lawyer. Also understand that this house you live in is my
property, that half Saltire is in the palm of my hand. And remember,
above all things, madam, that a woman’s tongue may ruin her husband.”
After the enunciating of such blunt truths, John Strong departed,
leaving the lachrymose lady to her darning and her meditations. But Mrs.
Marjoy was not a peaceful penitent. Though cowed and beaten, the
original sin still stirred in her, for neither man nor angel can convert
a shrew.
“Guor—how I hate that man,” she reflected. So to ease her temper, she
proceeded to the kitchen and scolded her cook.
XLVIII
IT was evening, and Joan and Gabriel walked together under the great
cedar-trees in the garden where the slanting sun streaked the long lawns
with gold. The slim cypresses glittered under the sombre spirelets of
the yews. Above, the garden, with its dreamy tapestries wrought out of
living color, stretched towards the old house whose casements gleamed
towards the sea.
Under the hoary and massive trees Gabriel and Joan walked hand-in-hand.
Beauty seemed with them, as though they had stepped into some dim
legend-land, where romance breathed over rich meadows and through waving
woods. An Arthurian tenderness lived in the hour; envy and strife seemed
banished even from thought.
Joan, radiant as faith, leaned within the hollow of Gabriel’s arm.
“Then even dreams come true,” she said to him.
There was an ardent light in the man’s eyes, such a light as kindles in
the eyes of a seer.
“Was I not once tempted,” he answered her, “to embrace the thing that
men call pessimism. For I was wounded of my fellows and knew not where
to look for help. And there seemed so much horror in the world that even
I half learned to jeer with those who mocked at my ideals.”
“No true man is a mocker, Gabriel.”
“Ay, and those who sneer betray the emptiness of their own mean minds.”
For a while they stood in silence, looking out towards the west. There
was calm joy in the woman’s face, the joy of a woman whose love had
conquered.
“The wise man ignores the vain, self-seeking, jealous horde,” she said,
“where the envious intellect has stifled honor. Give me life where
hearts are warm, where dissolute sophistry is unknown.”
Gabriel smiled at her, a lover’s smile.
“And once I doubted whether happiness could be found,” he said, “but
now—”
“But now?” she asked.
“In a good woman’s love man comes near heaven. Give me simplicity: a
quiet home, no matter how humble it may be, books, a few honest friends,
some poor whom I may help.”
“Ah!” Joan said, “the city taught us that.”
“Vast Babel where every soul’s cry clashes. God, how my heart sickened
in that place, where men scramble like swine over an unclean trough,
gnashing against each other, wounding that they may live. Oh, material
necessity, base need of gold! Happy are they who strive not but are
content.”
The sun sank low behind the trees and the east was purpled with the
night. So great was the silence that the very dew seemed to murmur as it
fell from out the heavens. The utter azure was untroubled by a cloud;
the windless west stood a vast sheet of gold.
“Have we not learned our lesson,” said the man—“to trust and labor and
aspire?”
“Ah, Gabriel,” she answered, “to stand aside from those who bicker and
deride, from those who stab their rivals with a lie, defaming truth in
securing their own ends.”
“Yet, lest we forget—”
“Those whom prejudice has poisoned and gross greed crushed.”
“Ah, wife, God keep us children, blessed ever with an ever generous
youth.”
Upon Joan’s face there shone an immortal glory, a look that was not
begotten of the world.
“To help others,” she said. “May many a tired face brighten to my own;
may weary eyes speak to me of the Christ; may Heaven descend in every
good deed done.”
“Poverty and pain have taught us much.”
“To love pure living, the clean wind blowing from the sea, the scent of
meadows streaming towards the dawn. To succor the unfortunate! To give,
even as God has given to us!”
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. A few
obvious typesetting errors have been corrected without note.
[The end of _The Slanderers_ by Warwick Deeping]