"My name," he said, with a face of stone, "is Henry G. Surface, Jr."
"Your father!" she echoed lifelessly.
Shocked and stunned, she turned her head hurriedly away; her elbow
rested on the broad chair-arm, and her chin sank into her hand.
Surface's son looked at her. It was many months since he had learned to
look at her as at a woman, and that is knowledge that is not unlearned.
His eyes rested upon her piled-up mass of crinkly brown hair; upon the
dark curtain of lashes lying on her cheek; upon the firm line of the
cheek, which swept so smoothly into the white neck; upon the rounded
bosom, now rising and falling so fast; upon the whole pretty little
person which could so stir him now to undreamed depths of his being....
No altruism here, Fifi; no self-denial to want to make _her_ happy.
He began speaking quietly.
"I can't tell you now how I found out all this. It is a long story; you
will hear it all some day. But the facts are all clear. I have been to
New York and seen Tim Queed. It is--strange, is it not? Do you remember
that afternoon in my office, when I showed you the letters from him? We
little thought--"
"Oh me!" said Sharlee. "Oh me!"
She rose hastily and walked away from him, unable to bear the look on
his face. For a pretense of doing something, she went to the fire and
poked aimlessly at the glowing coals.
As on the afternoon of which he spoke, waves of pity for the little
Doctor's worse than fatherlessness swept through her; only these waves
were a thousand times bigger and stormier than those. How hardly he
himself had taken his sonship she read in the strange sadness of his
face. She dared not let him see how desperately sorry for him she felt;
the most perfunctory phrase might betray her. Her knowledge of his
falseness stood between them like a wall; blindly she struggled to keep
it staunch, not letting her rushing pity undermine and crumble it. He
had been false to her, like his father. Father and son, they had
deceived and betrayed her; honor and truth were not in them.
"So you see," the son was saying, "I have a close personal interest in
this question of the money. Naturally it--means a good deal to me
to--have as much of it as possible restored. Of course there is a great
deal which--he took, and which--we are not in position to restore at
present. I will explain later what is to be done about that--"
"Oh, don't!" she begged. "I never want to see or hear of it again."
Suddenly she turned upon him, aware that her self-control was going, but
unable for her life to repress the sympathy for him which welled up
overwhelmingly from her heart.
"Won't you tell me something more about it? Please do! Where is he? Have
you seen him--?"
"I cannot tell you--"
"Oh, I will keep your confidence. You asked me if I would. I
will--won't you tell me? Is he here--in the city--?"
"You must not ask me these questions," he said with some evidence of
agitation.
But even as he spoke, he saw knowledge dawn painfully on her face. His
shelter, after all, was too small; once her glance turned that way, once
her mind started upon conjectures, discovery had been inevitable.
"Oh!" she cried, in a choked voice.... "It is Professor Nicolovius!"
He looked at her steadily; no change passed over his face. When all was
said, he was glad to have the whole truth out; and he knew the secret to
be as safe with her as with himself.
"No one must know," he said sadly, "until his death. That is not far
away, I think."
She dropped into a chair, and suddenly buried her face in her hands.
Surface's son had risen with her, but he did not resume his seat. He
stood looking down at her bowed head, and the expression in his eyes, if
she had looked up and captured it, might have taken her completely by
surprise.
His chance, indeed, had summoned him, though not for the perfect
sacrifice. Circumstance had crushed out most of the joy of giving. For,
first, she had suspected him, which nothing could ever blot out; and
now, when she knew the truth about him, there could hardly be much left
for him to give. It needed no treacherous editorial to make her hate the
son of his father; their friendship was over in any case.
Still, it was his opportunity to do for her something genuine and large;
to pay in part the debt he owed her--the personal and living debt, which
was so much greater than the dead thing of principal and interest.
No, no. It was not endurable that this proud little lady, who kept her
head so high, should find at the last moment, this stain upon her
lover's honor.
She dropped her hands and lifted a white face.
"And you--" she began unsteadily, but checked herself and went on in a
calmer voice. "And you--after what he has done to you, too--you are
going to stand by him--take his name--accept that inheritance--_be_ his
son?"
"What else is there for me to do?"
Their eyes met, and hers were hurriedly averted.
"Don't you think," he said, "that that is the only thing to do?"
Again she found it impossible to endure the knowledge of his fixed gaze.
She rose once more and stood at the mantel, her forehead leaned against
her hand upon it, staring unseeingly down into the fire.
"How can I tell you how fine a thing you are doing--how big--and
splendid--when--"
A dark red color flooded his face from neck to forehead; it receded
almost violently leaving him whiter than before.
"Not at all! Not in the least!" he said, with all his old impatience. "I
could not escape if I would."
She seemed not to hear him. "How can I tell you that--and about how
sorry I am--when all the time it seems that I can think only
of--something else!"
"You are speaking of the reformatory," he said, with bracing directness.
There followed a strained silence.
"Oh," broke from her--"how could you bear to do it?"
"Don't you see that we cannot possibly discuss it? It is a question of
one's honor--isn't it? It is impossible that such a thing could be
argued about."
"But--surely you have something to say--some explanation to make! Tell
me. You will not find me--a hard judge."
"I'm sorry," he said brusquely, "but I can make no explanation."
She was conscious that he stood beside her on the hearth-rug. Though her
face was lowered and turned from him, the eye of her mind held perfectly
the presentment of his face, and she knew that more than age had gone
over it since she had seen it last. Had any other man in the world but
West been in the balance, she felt that, despite his own words, she
could no longer believe him guilty. And even as it was--how could that
conceivably be the face of a man who--
"Won't you shake hands?"
Turning, she gave him briefly the tips of fingers cold as ice. As their
hands touched, a sudden tragic sense overwhelmed him that here was a
farewell indeed. The light contact set him shaking; and for a moment his
iron self-control, which covered torments she never guessed at, almost
forsook him.
"Good-by. And may that God of yours who loves all that is beautiful and
sweet be good to you--now and always."
She made no reply; he wheeled, abruptly, and left her. But on the
threshold he was checked by the sound of her voice.
The interview, from the beginning, had profoundly affected her; these
last words, so utterly unlike his usual manner of speech, had shaken her
through and through. For some moments she had been miserably aware that,
if he would but tell her everything and throw himself on her mercy, she
would instantly forgive him. And now, when she saw that she could not
make him do that, she felt that tiny door, which she had thought
double-locked forever, creaking open, and heard herself saying in a
small, desperate voice:--
"_You did write it, didn't you_?"
But he paused only long enough to look at her and say, quite
convincingly:--
"You need hardly ask that--now--need you?"
* * * * *
He went home, to his own bedroom, lit his small student-lamp, and sat
down at his table to begin a new article. The debt of money which was
his patrimony required of him that he should make every minute tell now.
In old newspaper files at the State Library, he had found the facts of
his father's defalcations. The total embezzlement from the Weyland
estate, allowing for $14,000 recovered in the enforced settlement of
Surface's affairs, stood at $203,000. But that was twenty-seven years
ago, and in all this time interest had been doubling and redoubling:
simple interest, at 4%, brought it to $420,000; compound interest to
something like $500,000, due at the present moment. Against this could
be credited only his father's "nest-egg"--provided always that he could
find it--estimated at not less than $50,000. That left his father's son
staring at a debt of $450,000, due and payable now. It was of course,
utterly hopeless. The interest on that sum alone was $18,000 a year, and
he could not earn $5000 a year to save his immortal soul.
So the son knew that, however desperately he might strive, he would go
to his grave more deeply in debt to Sharlee Weyland than he stood at
this moment. But of course it was the trying that chiefly counted. The
fifty thousand dollars, which he would turn over to her as soon as he
got it--how he was counting on a sum as big as that!--would be a help;
so would the three or four thousand a year which he counted on paying
toward keeping down the interest. This money in itself would be a good.
But much better than that, it would stand as a gage that the son
acknowledged and desired to atone for his father's dishonor.
His book must stand aside now--it might be forever. Henceforward he must
count his success upon a cash-register. But to-night his pencil labored
and dragged. What he wrote he saw was not good. He could do harder
things than force himself to sit at a table and put writing upon paper;
but over the subtler processes of his mind, which alone yields the rich
fruit, no man is master. In an hour he put out his lamp, undressed in
the dark, and went to bed.
He lay on his back in the blackness, and in all the world he could find
nothing to think about but Sharlee Weyland.
Of all that she had done for him, in a personal way, he had at least
tried to give her some idea; he was glad to remember that now. And now
at the last, when he was nearer worthy than ever before, she had turned
him out because she believed that he had stooped to dishonor. She would
have forgiven his sonship; he had been mistaken about that. She had felt
sympathy and sorrow for Henry Surface's son, and not repulsion, for he
had read it in her face. But she could not forgive him a personal
dishonor. And he was glad that, so believing, she would do as she had
done; it was the perfect thing to do; to demand honor without a blemish,
or to cancel all. Never had she stood so high in his fancy as now when
she had ordered him out of her life. His heart leapt with the knowledge
that, though she would never know it, he was her true mate there, in
their pure passion for Truth.
Whatever else might or might not have been, the knowledge remained with
him that she herself had suspected and convicted him. In all that
mattered their friendship had ended there. Distrust was unbearable
between friends. It was a flaw in his little lady that she could believe
him capable of baseness.... But not an unforgivable flaw, it would seem,
since every hour that he had spent in her presence had become roses and
music in his memory, and the thought that he would see her no more
stabbed ceaselessly at his heart.
Yes, Surface's son knew very well what was the matter with him now. The
knowledge pulled him from his bed to a seat by the open window; dragged
him from his chair to send him pacing on bare feet up and down his
little bedroom, up and down, up and down; threw him later, much later,
into his chair again, to gaze out, quiet and exhausted, over the
sleeping city.
He had written something of love in his time. In his perfect scheme of
human society, he had diagnosed with scientific precision the instinct
of sex attraction implanted in man's being for the most obvious and
grossly practical of reasons: an illusive candle-glow easily lit,
quickly extinguished when its uses were fulfilled. And lo, here was love
tearing him by the throat till he choked; an exquisite torture, a
rampant passion, a devastating flame, that most glorified when it burned
most deeply, aroar and ablaze forevermore.
He sat by the window and looked out over the sleeping city.
By slow degrees, he had allowed himself to be drawn from his academic
hermitry into contact with the visible life around him. And everywhere
that he had touched life, it had turned about and smitten him. He had
meant to be a great editor of the _Post_ some day, and the _Post_ had
turned him out with a brand of dishonor upon his forehead. He had tried
to befriend a friendless old man, and he had acquired a father whose
bequest was a rogue's debt, and his name a byword and a hissing. He had
let himself be befriended by a slim little girl with a passion for Truth
and enough blue eyes for two, and the price of that contact was this
pain in his heart which would not be still ... which would not be still.
Yet he would not have had anything different, would not have changed
anything if he could. He was no longer the pure scientist in the
observatory, but a bigger and better thing, a man ... A man down in the
thick of the hurly-burly which we call This Life, and which, when all is
said, is all that we certainly know. Not by pen alone, but also by body
and mind and heart and spirit, he had taken his man's place in Society.
And as for this unimagined pain that strung his whole being upon the
thumb-screw, it was nothing but the measure of the life he had now, and
had it more abundantly. Oh, all was for the best, all as it should be.
He knew the truth about living at last, and it is the truth that makes
men free.