He was standing opposite the bier. At his side was Justine. Before him
Dr. Gonfallon, rector of the Church of Gethsemane,--of which the
deceased had been warden,--was conducting the funeral rites. To the left
was Thorold. Throughout the length and breadth of the drawing-room other
people stood--a sprinkling of remote connections, former constituents,
members of the bar and of the church, a few politicians; these, together
with a handful of the helpless to whom the dead statesman had been
trustee, counsellor too, and guide, had assembled there in honor of his
memory. At the door, sharpening a pencil, was a representative of the
Associated Press.
For the past few days obituaries of the Hon. Paul Dunellen varied from
six inches to a column in length. One journal alone had been
circumspect. No mention of the deceased had appeared in its issues. But
in politics that journal had differed with him--a fact which accounted
sufficiently for its silence. In the others, however, through
biographies more or less exact, fitting tributes had been paid. The
_World_ gave his picture.
Yet now, as Dr. Gonfallon, in words well calculated to impress, dwelt on
the virtues of him that had gone, the tributes of the newspapers seemed
perfunctory and trite. Decorously, as was his custom, he began with a
platitude. Death, that is terrible to the sinner, radiant to the
Christian, imposing to all, was here, he declared, but the dusk of a
beautiful day which in departing disclosed cohorts of the Eternal
beckoning from their glorious realm. Yet soon he warmed to his work, and
eulogies of the deceased fell from him in sonorous periods, round and
empty. He spoke of the nobility of his character, the loyalty he
displayed, not to friends alone, but to foes as well. He spoke of that
integrity in every walk of life which had won for him the title of
Honest Paul--a title an emperor might crave and get not. He spoke too of
the wealth he had acquired, and drew a moral from the unostentatiousness
of his charities, the simplicity of his ways. He dwelt at length on the
fact that, however multiple the duties of his station had been, his duty
to his Maker was ever first. Then, after a momentary digression, in
which he stated how great was the loss of such as he, he alluded to the
daughter he had left, to that daughter's husband, sorely afflicted
himself, yet, with a manliness worthy of his historic name, comforting
the orphan who needed all his comfort now; and immediately from these
things he lured another moral--an appeal to fortitude and courage; and
winding up with the customary exordium, asked of Death where was its
sting.
Where was it indeed? A day or two later Mistrial found time to think of
that question and of other matters as well. It was then six weeks since
the birth of the child, and Justine, fairer than ever before, was
ministering to it in the adjacent room. Now and again he caught the
shrill vociferation of its vague complaints. It was a feeble infant,
lacking in vitality, distressingly hideous; but it lived, and though it
died the next minute, its life had sufficed.
Already the will had been read--a terse document, and to the point;
precisely such an one as you would have expected a jurist to make. By it
the testator devised his property, real and personal, of whatever
nature, kind, and description he died seized, to his former partners in
trust for the eldest child of his daughter Justine, to its heirs,
executors, and assigns forever. In the event of his daughter's demise
without issue, then over, to Guy Thorold, M.D.
No, the sting concerning which Dr. Gonfallon had inquired was to
Mistrial undiscerned. There was indeed a prick of it in the knowledge
that if the old man had lasted much longer it might have been tough work
to settle the bills; but that was gone now: Honest Paul paid all his
debts, and he had not shirked at Nature's due. He was safely and
securely dead, six feet under ground at that, and his millions were
absolute in his grandson. Yes, absolute. At the thought of it Mistrial
laughed. The goal to which for years he had striven was touched and
exceeded. He had thrown the vitriol, the opopanax was his.
We all of us pretend to forgive, to overlook, to condone, we pretend
even to sympathize with, our enemy. Nay, in refraining from an act that
could injure him who has injured us, we are quite apt to consider
ourselves the superior of our foe, and not a little inclined to rise to
the heights of self-laudatory quotation too. It is an antique virtue,
that of forbearance; it is Biblical, nobly Arthurian, and chivalresque.
But when we smile at an injury, it is for policy's sake--because we
fear, rarely because we truly forgive, more rarely yet because of
indifference. Our magnanimity is cowardice. It takes a brave man to
wreak a brave revenge.
Mistrial made few pretensions to the virtues which you and I possess. He
was relentless as a Sioux, and he was treacherous as the savage is; he
had no taste for fair and open fight. However his blood had boiled at
the tableau of imaginary wrongs, however fitting the opportunity might
have been on the afternoon when he met his enemy at the city's fringe,
he had the desire but not the courage to annihilate him there. But
later, when the possibility which he had intercepted came, he feted, he
coaxed it; and now that the hour of triumph had rung, his heart was
glad. In the disordered closets of his brain he saw Thorold ravening at
the trap into which he had fallen, and into which, in falling, he had
lost the wherewithal to call the world his own. Ten million in exchange
for an embrace! Verily, mused Mistrial, he will account it exceeding
dear. And at the thought of what Thorold's frenzy must be, at the
picture which he drew of him cursing his own imprudence and telling
himself again and again, until the repetition turned into mania, that
that imprudence could never be undone, he exulted and laughed aloud.
Money, said Vespasian, has no odor. To our acuter nostrils it has: so
nauseating even can it be, that we would rather be flung in the
Potter's-field than catch the faintest whiff. But Mistrial, for all the
sensitiveness that ancestry is supposed to bring, must have agreed with
the Roman. To him it was the woof of every hope; whatever its
provenance, it was an Open Sesame to the paradise of the ideal. He
would have drawn it with his teeth from a dung-heap, only he would have
done it at night.
There are men that can steal a fortune, yet can never cheat at cards,
and Mistrial was one of their race; he could not openly dishonor himself
in petty ways. Many a scoundrel has a pride of his own. It is both easy
and difficult to compare a bandit to a sneak-thief, Napoleon to
Cartouche. Mistrial had nothing of the Napoleon about him, and he was
lacking even in the strength which Cartouche possessed. But among carpet
highwaymen commend me to his peer.
And now, as he thought of the will, Gonfallon's query recurred to him,
and he asked himself where was that sting? Not in the present,
surely--for that from a bitterness had changed to a delight; and as for
the future, each instant of it was sentient with invocations, fulfilled
to the tips with the surprises of dream. The day he had claimed but a
share in; the morrow was wholly his. He could have a dwelling in
Mayfair and a marble palace on the Mediterranean Sea. For a scrap of
paper he would never miss there was a haunt of ghosts dozing on the
Grand Canal. In spring, when Paris is at her headiest, there, near that
Triumphal Arch which overlooks the Elysian Fields, stood, _entre cour et
jardin_, an hotel which he already viewed as his own. And when he
wearied of the Old World, there was the larger and fuller life of the
New. There was Peru, there was Mexico and Ecuador; and in those Italys
of the Occident were girls whose lips said, Drink me; whose eyes were of
chrysoberyl and of jade. _Ah, oui, les femmes; tant que le monde
tournera il n'y aura que ca._ With blithe anticipation he hummed the air
and snapped his fingers as Capoul was wont to do. At last he saw himself
the Roland Mistrial that should have been, prodigal of gold, sultanesque
of manner, feted, courted, welcomed, past-master in the lore and art of
love.
There were worlds still to be conquered; and before his hair grizzled
and the furrows came he felt conscious of the possession of a charm that
should make those worlds his own. He had waited indeed; he had toiled
and manoeuvred; but now the great clock we call Opportunity had
struck. Let him but ask, and it would be given. Wishes were spaniels; he
had but a finger to raise, and they fawned at his feet. And then, as
those vistas of which we have all caught a glimpse rose in melting
splendor and swooned again through sheer excesses of their own delights,
suddenly he bethought him of the multiples of one and of two.
Heretofore he had taken it for granted that if Dunellen left the estate
to his grandchild the income accruing therefrom would, until the
grandchild came of age, pass through his own paternal hands. And in
taking this for granted he had recalled the fable that deals not of the
prodigal son, but rather of the prodigal father. That income should
spin. By a simple mathematical process than with which no one was more
familiar, he calculated that, at five per cent, ten million would
represent a rent-roll of five hundred thousand per annum. Of that amount
a fraction would suffice to Justine and to her son. The rest--well, the
rest he knew of what uses he could put it to.
But now, suddenly, with that abruptness with which disaster looms, there
came to him a doubt. He rememorated the provisions of the will, and in
them he discerned unprompted some tenet of law or of custom which,
during the legal infancy of the child, might inhibit the trustees from
paying over any larger amount than was needful for its maintenance and
support. Then at once the fabric of his dreams dissolved. The vitriol
had corroded, but the savor of the opopanax had gone. For a little while
he tormented his mustache and nibbled feverishly at a finger-nail. To
see one's self the dupe of one's own devices is never a pleasant sight.
Again he interrogated what smattering of law he possessed; but the
closer he looked, the clearer it seemed to be that in its entirety the
income of the estate could not pass through his hands. From five hundred
thousand the trustees might in their judgment diminish it to some such
pocket-money as ten; they could even reduce it to five; and, barring an
action, he might be unable to persuade them that the sum was absurd. The
idea, nude and revolting as Truth ever is, raised him to an unaccustomed
height of rage; he would not be balked, he declared to himself; he would
have that money or--
Or what? The contingency which he then interviewed, one which issued
unsummoned from some cavern in his mind, little by little assumed a
definite shape. He needed no knowledge of the law to tell him that he
was that brat's heir. Did it die at that very moment the estate became
absolute in him. There would be no trustees then to dole the income out.
The ten millions would be his own. As for the trustees, they could
deduct their commission and retire with it to New Jersey--to hell if it
pleased them more. But the estate would be his. That there was no
gainsaying. Meanwhile, there was the brat. He was a feeble child; yet
such, Mistrial understood, had Methusaleh been. He might live forever,
or die on the morrow. And why not that night?
As this query came to him, he eyed its advance. It was yet some distance
away, but as it approached he considered it from every side. And of
sides, parenthetically, it had many. And still it advanced: when it
started, its movements were so slow they had been hardly perceptible;
nevertheless it had made some progress; then surer on its feet it tried
to run; it succeeded in the effort; at each step it grew sturdier,
swifter in speed; and now that it reached him it was with such a rush
that he was overpowered by its force.
He rose from his seat. For a moment he hesitated. To his forehead and
about his ears a moisture had come. He drew out a handkerchief; it was
of silk, he noticed--one that he brought from France. Absently he drew
it across his face; its texture had detained his thought. Then on
tip-toe he moved out into the corridor and peered into the room at the
end of the hall.
It was dimly lighted, but soon he accustomed himself to the shadows and
fumbled them with his eyes. On the bed Justine lay; sleep had overtaken
her; her head was aslant on the pillow, her lips half closed; the
fingers of one hand cushioned her neck; the other hand, outstretched,
rested on the edge of a cradle. She had been rocking it, perhaps. From
the floor above sank the sauntering tremolo of a flute, very sweet in
the distance, muffled by the ceiling and wholly subdued. In the street a
dray was passing, belated and clamorous on the cobblestones. But now, as
Mistrial ventured in, these things must have lulled Justine into yet
deeper sleep; her breath came and went with the semibreves a leaf uses
when it whispers to the night; and as he moved nearer and bent over her
the whiteness of her breast rose and fell in unison with that breath.
Yes, surely she slept, but it was with that wary sleep that dogs and
mothers share. A movement of that child's and she might awake, alert at
once, her senses wholly recovered, her mind undazed.
Mistrial, assured of her slumber, turned from the bed to the cradle, and
for a minute, two perhaps, he stood, the eyebrows raised, the
handkerchief pendent in his hand, contemplating the occupant. And it was
this bundle of flesh and blood, this lobster-hued animal, that lacked
the intelligence a sightless kitten has,--it was this that should debar
him! _Allons donc!_
His face had grown livid, and his hand shook just a little; not with
fear, however, though if it were it must have been the temerity of his
own courage that frightened him. At the handkerchief which he held he
glanced again; one twist of it round that infant's throat, a minute in
which to hold it taut, and it would be back in his pocket, leaving
strangulation and death behind, yet not a mark to tell the tale. One
minute only he needed, two at most; he bent nearer, and as he bent he
looked over at his wife; but still she slept, her breath coming and
going with the same regular cadence as before, the whiteness of her
breast still heaving; then very gently, with fingers that were nervously
assured, he ran the handkerchief under the infant's neck: but however
deftly he had done it, the chill of the silk must have troubled the
child; its under lip quivered, then both compressed, the flesh about the
cheek-bones furrowed, the mouth relaxed, and from it issued the whimper
of unconscious plaint. The call may have stirred the mother in some
dream, for a smile hovered in her features; yet immediately her eyes
opened, she half rose, her hand fell to her side, and, reaching out,
she caught and held the infant to her.
"My darling," she murmured; and as the child, soothed already, drowsed
back again into slumber, she turned to where her husband stood. "What is
it?"
From above, the tremolo of the flute still descended; but the dray long
since had passed, and the street now was quiet.
"What is it?" she repeated. She seemed more surprised than pleased to
see him there.
Mistrial, balked in the attempt, had straightened himself; he looked
annoyed and restless.
"Nothing," he answered, and thrust the handkerchief back in his pocket,
as a bandit sheathes his dirk. "Nothing. I heard that bastard bawling,
and I came in to make him stop."
"Bastard? Is it in that way you speak of your child?"
As she said this she made no visible movement; yet something in her
attitude, the manner in which she held herself, seemed to bid him hold
his peace, and this he noticed, and in noticing resented. "There," he
muttered; "drop the Grand Duchess, will you? The brat is Thorold's; you
know it, and so do I."
For a little space she stared as though uncertain she had heard aright,
but the speech must have re-echoed in her ears; she had been sitting up,
yet now as the echo reached her she drooped on the pillow and let her
head fall back. In her arms the child still drowsed. And presently a
tear rolled down her face, then another.
"Roland Mistrial, you have broken my heart at last."
That was all; the ultimate words even were scarcely audible; but the
tears continued--the first succeeded by others, unstanched and
undetained. Grief had claimed her as its own. She made no effort to
rebel; she lay as though an agony had come from which no surcease can
be. And as one tear after the other passed down and seared her face
there was a silence so deathly, so tangible, and so convincing, that he
needed no further sign from her to tell him that the charge was false.
In all his intercourse with her, whatever cause of complaint there had
been, never had he seen her weep before; and now at this unawaited
evidence of the injustice and ignominy of his reproach he wished she
would be defiant again, that he might argue and confute. But no word
came from her--barely a sob; nothing, in fact, save these tears, which
he had never seen before. And while he stood there, visited by the
perplexity of him to whom the unawaited comes, unconsciously he went
back to the wooing of her: he saw her clear eyes lifted in confidence to
his own, he heard again the sweet confession of her love, he recalled
the marks and tokens of her trust, and when for him she had left her
father's house; he saw her ever, sweet by nature, tender-hearted,
striving at each misdeed of his to show him that in her arms there was
forgiveness still. And he recalled too the affronts he had put upon her,
the baseness of his calculations, the selfishness of his life; he saw
the misery he had inflicted, the affection he had beguiled, the hope he
had tricked, and for climax there was this supreme reproach, of which he
knew now no woman in all the world was less deserving than was she. And
still the tears unstanched and undetained passed down and seared her
cheeks; in the mortal wound he had aimed at her womanhood all else
seemingly was forgot. She did not even move, and lay, her child tight
clasped, the image of Maternity inhabited by Regret.
And such regret! Mistrial, unprompted, could divine it all. The regret
of love misplaced, of illusions spent, the regret of harboring a ruffian
and thinking him a knight. Yes, he could divine it all; and then, as
such things can be, he grieved a moment for himself.
But soon the present returned. Justine still was weeping; he no longer
saw her tears, he heard them. Surely she would forgive again. It could
not be that everything had gone for naught. He would speak to her, plead
if need were, and in the end she would yield. She must do that, he told
himself, and he groped after some falsity that should palliate the
offence. He would tell her that he had been drinking again; he would
deny his own words, or, if necessary, he would insist she had not heard
them aright. Indeed, there was nothing that might have weight with her
which he was not ready and anxious to affirm. If she would but begin, if
in some splendor of indignation such as he had beheld before she would
rise up and upbraid him, his task would be diminished by half. Anything,
indeed, would be better than this, and nothing could be worse; it was
not Justine alone that the tears were carrying from him, it was the
Dunellen millions as well. Oh, abysses of the human heart! As he
queried with himself, at the very moment he was experiencing his first
remorse, the old self returned, and it was less of the injury he had
inflicted that he thought than of the counter-effect that injury might
have on him. In the attempt to throttle the child he had been balked,
yet of that attempt he believed Justine to be suspicionless. Other
opportunities he would have in plenty; and even were it otherwise, the
child was weakly, and croup might do its work. With the future for which
he had striven, there, in the very palm of his hand, how was it possible
that he should have made this misstep? But he could retrieve it, he told
himself; he was a good actor, it was not too late. For a little while
yet he could still support the mask, and, recalling the sentimental
reveries of a moment before, the forerunner of a sneer came and loitered
beneath the fringes of his mustache.
"Justine!" He moved a step or two to where she lay. "Justine--"
His voice was very low and penitent, but at the sound of it she seemed
to shrink. "Could she _know_?" he wondered.
Then immediately, through the scantness of the apartment, he heard the
outer bell resound. Enervated as he was, the interruption affected him
like a barb. There was some one there whom he could vent his irritation
on. He hurried to the hall, but a servant had preceded him. The door was
open, and on the threshold Thorold stood.
Mistrial nodded--the nod of one who is about to throw his coat aside and
roll his shirt-sleeves up. "Is it for your bill you come?" he asked.
Thorold hesitated, and his face grew very black. He affected, however,
to ignore the taunt. He turned to the servant that still was waiting
there. "Is my cousin at home?" he asked.
"She is," Mistrial announced, "but not to you."
"In that case," Thorold answered, "I must speak to someone in her
stead."
Mistrial made a gesture, and the servant withdrew.
"I have to inform my cousin," Thorold continued, "that Mr. Metuchen came
to me this evening and said that when my uncle died he was in debt--"
"Stuff and nonsense!"
"He asked me to come and acquaint Justine with the facts. They are
here." With this Thorold produced a roll of papers. "Be good enough to
explain to her," he added, "that this is the inventory of the estate."
And, extending the documents to his host, he turned and disappeared.
In the cataleptic attitude of one standing to be photographed Mistrial
listened to the retreating steps; he heard Thorold descend the stairs,
cross the vestibule, and pass from the house. It seemed to him even that
he caught the sound of his footfall on the pavement without. But
presently that, too, had gone. He turned and looked down the hall.
Justine's door was closed. Then at once, without seeking a seat, he
fumbled through the papers that he held. The gas-jet above his head fell
on the rigid lines. In the absence of collusion--and from whence should
such a thing come?--in the absence of that, they were crystal in their
clarity.
There were the assets. Shares in mines that did not exist, bonds of
railways that were bankrupt, loans on Western swamps, the house on
Madison Avenue, mortgaged to its utmost value, property on the
Riverside, ditto. And so on and so forth till the eye wearied and the
heart sickened of the catalogue. Then came the debit account. Amounts
due to this estate, to that, and to the other, a list of items extending
down an entire page of foolscap and extending over onto the next. There
a balance had been struck. Instead of millions Honest Paul had left
dishonor. Swindled by the living, he had swindled the dead.
"So much for trusting a man that bawls Amen in church," mused Mistrial.
As yet the completeness and amplitude of the disaster had not reached
him. While he ran the papers over he feigned to himself that it was all
some trick of Thorold's, one that he would presently see through and
understand; and even as he grasped the fact that it was not a trick at
all, that it was truth duly signed and attested, even then the disaster
seemed remote, affecting him only after the manner of that wound which,
received in the heat of battle, is unnoticed by the victim until its
gravity makes him reel. Then at once in the distance the future on which
he had counted faded and grew blank. Where it had been brilliant it was
obscure, and that obscurity, increasing, walled back the horizon and
reached up and extended from earth to sky. The papers fell from his
nerveless hand, fright had visited him, and he wheeled like a rat
surprised. Surely, he reflected, if safety there were or could be, that
safety was with Justine.
In a moment he was at her door. He tried it. It was locked. He beat upon
it and called aloud, "Justine."
No answer came. He bent his head and listened. Through the woodwork he
could hear but the faintest rustle, and he called again, "Justine."