Mrs. Bosworth had left the drawing-room, ten minutes before, they had
been arguing the old, old point, and both held their old positions.
"Then you will never, never give your ideas up?" he sighed, with
mock-seriousness that was wholly serious.
"Then you will never, never give your ideas up?" she repeated in the
same tone.
"Never, never."
"Never, never."
They looked at each other steadily for a moment, then their make-believe
lightness fell from them.
"We certainly do disagree to perfection!" he exclaimed.
"Yes. So perfectly that the more I think of what you've asked for, the
more inadvisable does it seem."
"But you'll change yet. A score of drawn battles do not discourage me of
ultimate victory."
"Nor me," she returned quietly.
Their skirmish was interrupted by the entrance of a footman. Helen took
the card from the tray and glanced at it.
"Show her into the library and tell her I'll join her soon." She turned
back to Mr. Allen. "Perhaps you remember her--she was a maid at your
house a little while--a Miss Morgan."
"I remember her, yes," he said indifferently.
His face clouded; he made an effort at lightness, but his words were
sharp. "Where, oh where, are you going to stop, Helen! You are at St.
Christopher's twice a week, not counting frequent extra visits. Two days
ago, so you've just told me, that Mr. Aldrich was here. To-day, it's
this girl. And the week's not yet over! Don't you think there might at
least be a little moderation?"
"You mean," she returned quietly, "that, if we were married, you would
not want these friends of mine to come to your house?"
"I should not! And I wish I knew of some way to snap off all that side
of your life!"
She regarded him meditatively. "Since there's so much about me you don't
approve of, I've often wondered why you want to marry me. Love is not a
reason, for you don't love me."
The answers ran through his head: He admired her; she had beauty,
brains, social standing, social tact, and, last of all but still of
importance, she had money--the qualities he most desired in his wife.
But to make a pretence of love, whatever the heart may be, is a
convention of marriage--like the bride's bouquet, or her train. So he
said:
"But I do love you."
"Oh, no you don't--no more than I love you."
"Then why would you marry me?--if you do."
"Because I like you; because I admire your qualities; because I believe
my life would be richer and fuller and more efficient; and because I
should hope to alter certain of your opinions."
"Well, I don't care what the reasons are--just so they're strong
enough," he said lightly. He rose and held out his hand; his face grew
serious; his voice lowered. "I must be going. Four more days,
remember--then your answer."
After he had gone she sat for several minutes thinking of life with him,
toward which reason and circumstances pressed her, and from which, since
the day he had declared himself, she had shrunk. This marriage was so
different from the marriage of her dreams--a marriage of love, of common
ideals; yet in it, her judgment told her, lay the best use of her life.
She dismissed her troubling thoughts with a sigh and walked back to the
library. As she entered Kate rose from a high-backed chair behind the
great square library-table, whose polished top shone with the light from
the chandelier. Kate's face was white, the mouth was a taut line, the
eyes gleamed feverishly amid the purpled rings of wakeful nights.
Helen came smiling across the noiseless rug, her hand held out.
"I'm very happy to see you, Miss Morgan."
Kate did not move. She allowed Helen to stand a moment, hand still
outheld, while her dark eyes blazed into Helen's face. Then she abruptly
laid her hand into the other, and as abruptly withdrew it.
"I want to speak to you," she said.
"Certainly. Won't you sit down?"
Kate jerked a hand toward the wide, curtained doorway through which
Helen had entered.
"Close the door."
"Why?" asked Helen, surprised.
"Close the door," she repeated in the same low, short tone. "Nobody must
hear."
The forced voice, and the repressed agitation of Kate's bearing,
startled Helen. She drew together the easy-running doors, and returned
to the table.
Kate jerked her hand toward the open plate-glass door that led into the
conservatory.
"And that door."
"There's no one in there." But Helen closed the heavy pane of glass.
"Won't you sit down," she said, when this was done, taking one of the
richly carved chairs herself.
"No."
Kate's eyes blazed down upon Helen's face; her breath came and went
rapidly, with a wheezing sound; her hands, on the luminous table-top,
were clenched. Her whole body was so rigid that it trembled.
The colour began to leave Helen's face. "I'm waiting--go on."
Kate's lips suddenly quivered back from her teeth. She had to strike,
even if she struck unjustly.
"People like you"--her voice was harsh, tremulous with hate--"you always
believe the worst of a man. You throw him aside--crush him down--walk on
him. You never think perhaps you've made a mistake, perhaps he's all
right. Oh, no--you never think good of a man if you can think bad." She
leaned over the corner of the table. "I hate your kind of people! I hate
you!"
"Is this the thing you wanted no one to hear?" Helen asked quietly.
Kate slowly straightened up. After two days and two nights--a long,
fierce, despairing battle between selfish and unselfish love--she had
decided she must come here; but now her rehearsed sentences all left
her. For a moment she stood choking; then the bald words dropped out:
"He's not a thief--never was one."
"Who?"
"David Aldrich."
Helen came slowly to her feet. Her face was white, her eyes were wide.
For a moment she did not speak--just stared.
"What do you mean?"
"He did not take the money from the Mission."
Helen moved from the corner of the table, her wide eyes never leaving
Kate's gleaming ones, and a hand clutched Kate's arm and tightened
there.
"Tell me all."
"You hurt me."
Helen removed her hand.
Kate crept closer and stared up into her face.
"Does it make any difference to you?" she breathed, tensely.
"Tell me all!"
Kate drew back a pace, and leaned upon her clenched hands. "You knew Mr.
Morton," she said, in a quick strained monotone. "When he was young, he
lived with a woman. He wrote her a lot of letters--love letters. She
turned up again a few months before he died, and threatened to show the
letters if he didn't pay her. He had no money; he took money from the
Mission and paid her. Then he died. His guilt was about to be found out.
But David Aldrich said he took the money and went to prison. He did it
because he thought if Mr. Morton's guilt was found out, the Mission
would be destroyed and the people would go back to the devil. You know
the rest. That's all."
Helen continued motionless--silent.
"It's all so," Kate went on. "The woman herself told me. She knew the
truth. She'd been making David pay her to keep from telling that he was
innocent. She told me before him. He had to admit it."
Kate leaned further across the corner of the table. "He made me promise
never to tell." For a moment of dead quiet she gazed up into Helen's
fixed face. "And why do you think I've broken my promise?" she asked in
a low voice, between barely parted lips.
Helen rested one hand on the back of a chair and the other on the table.
She trembled slightly, but she did not reply.
"Because"--there was a little quaver in Kate's voice--"I thought it
might sometime make him happy."
There was another dead silence, during which Kate gazed piercingly into
Helen's face.
"Do you love him?" she asked sharply.
Helen's arms tightened. After a moment her lips moved.
"You love him yourself."
"Me?--it's a lie. I don't!"
Kate moved round the corner of the table and laid a fierce hand on
Helen's arm.
"Do you love him?" she demanded.
Silence. "Thank you--for telling me."
Kate laughed a low, harsh laugh, and flung Helen's arm from her.
"You!--you think you're way above him, don't you! Well--you're not!
You're not fit for him!" Her eyes leaped with flame. "I hate you!"
Again a moment of silence. A tremor ran through Helen. She moved
forward, and her hands reached out and fell upon Kate's shoulders.
"I love you," she whispered.
Kate shrunk sharply away. Her eyes never leaving Helen's face, she
backed slowly toward the doors. She pushed them apart, and gazed at
Helen's statued figure. Kate's face had become ashen, drawn. After a
moment she slipped through the doors and drew them to.
As the doors clicked, Helen swayed into a chair beside the table, and
her head fell forward into her arms.
CHAPTER VI
ANOTHER WORLD
At half-past eight o'clock that evening David walked up the broad steps
of the Chambers's house and rang the bell. The footman left him in the
great hall, rich with carved oak and old tapestries, and went off with
his card. As he waited, he continued to wonder at the telegram he had
received half an hour before from Helen, which had merely said, "Can you
not call this evening?" Why could she so suddenly desire to see him? He
had no faintest guess.
In a few minutes the footman returned, led him up the stairway and
directed him into the library. A wood fire was burning in the broad
fire-place, and on a divan before it she was sitting, all in white.
She rose. "Will you draw the doors, please," her voice came to him.
He did so, and went toward her eagerly. But his steps slowed. Two or
three paces from her he came to a stop. She stood, one hand on the
divan's arm, gazing at him with parted lips, and wide, marvelling eyes.
The look put a spell upon him; he returned it silently, with a growing
bewilderment.
For several moments her whole being was brought to a focus in the awed
wonder of her face. Then her breast began to rise and fall, her face to
twitch, her eyes to flood with tears. The tears glinted down her cheeks
and fell upon her swelling breast. She gave them no heed, but continued
to hold her quivering face full upon him.
"What is it?" he whispered.
She stretched out her hands and slowly moved toward him, her eyes never
leaving his face. He automatically took her hands. They were warm and
tight, and through them he felt her whole body trembling. He thrilled
under their pressure and under her look--under her glorious, brimming
eyes.
As she gazed upon him his last five years ran through her mind--his
trial, his prison life, his struggle for a foothold, his dishonoured
name. A sob broke from her, and upon it came her low, vibrant
voice--quavering, awed:
"It was God-like!"
He could barely ask, "What?"
"What you did."
He could not find a word, he was so bewildered, so thrilled by her gaze,
by her clinging hands.
Her tears continued to drop from her eyes to her heart. There was a
momentary silence, then the awed, quavering voice, said slowly:
"You never took the money!--the Mission money!"
For a space he was utterly dazed. The room swam; he held to her hands
for support. Slowly the bewilderment of ignorance passed into the
greater bewilderment of knowledge. She knew the truth! The secret of his
life that he had hidden from her, thought always to hide from her, she
had found out!
He realised this, but no more. It did not occur to him even to wonder
how she had learned--and her words, "Miss Morgan told me," lodged an
explanation in his mind that would waken after a while, but did not now
stir a single thought regarding Kate. That she knew, had burst upon him
so suddenly as to set everything whirling within him--to overwhelm,
outcrowd all else. He sank to the couch, and she sank to a place beside
him, their hands and eyes still clasped.
"Oh, you never took it!"
The voice dripped with tears, vibrated with a rising note of triumph.
"To think what you've gone through!" she marvelled on, quaveringly.
"Your struggles--such struggles!--and everybody believing you
dishonoured. And all the time, you being this splendid thing that you
are!" A great sob surged up.
He was still whirling and still saw her face hazily. But his faculties
were coming back. "What I did was not active--it was merely passive," he
said.
"To achieve by suffering, and be repaid by dishonour--what can be
higher?"
She gazed at him, and gazed at him. "And to think that I believed
you--you!--guilty! To think that I never sent you even a single word
while you were in prison! How I drew away from you when I found you sick
in that poor room! How since then I have tried to help you reform! Ah,
the irony of that now! And the irony of my proposing to you to pay back
the money you never took!"
The words, the voice, had reached the ears of his heart; it was going
madly. He gazed into her glorious face, quivering, tear-splashed, into
her glorious, swimming eyes. Even in his daringest fancy he had never
pictured his innocence affecting her so! He felt himself suddenly a
wild, exultant flame. The insuperables were swept out of the world. He
was the lover he had tried seven years to stifle.
He had thought the words would never be spoken. But they came out
boldly--with a rush.
"I love you!"
She paled slightly. For a moment she looked wonderingly into his eyes.
Her head slowly shook.
"Ah--how can you!" she whispered. "After I've had no faith!--after I've
treated you so!"
She tried to draw away. But he caught her hands, held them tight.
"I love you!"
Again her head shook. "I'm ... not worthy."
"But you're glad--I did not take it?"
There was silence. Her eyes held steadfastly to his.
"It's another world!" she whispered.
Her glorious self looked at him, leaned toward him, from her divine
eyes. His soul reeled; awe descended upon him. One hand loosed itself
from hers, and weak, tingling, fearful, crept slowly about her, drew her
toward him. She came at his touch. He bent down breathless. He felt her
tremble in his arm. Her face was white, but it did not waver; her eyes
glowed into his. As their lips touched, her free arm slipped about his
neck and she shook with sobs.
"Yes ... another world!" she breathed.
* * * * *
When he had finished the long story of his acceptance of Morton's guilt
and of what had followed, she sat gazing at him with her look of awe.
"I shall never stop being amazed that a man could do a thing like that,"
she said. "It was wonderful!"
He shook his head. "No," he said slowly, "the real wonder is that you
could learn to love a man whom you believed to be a criminal." For a
moment he looked silently into her eyes; this great thing that had come
to pass still seemed hardly true. "That's the wonder--Helen."
It was the first time he had used her name, and he spoke it with a
fervent hesitancy. He repeated it softly, "Helen!"
She flushed. "I loved you long before I thought you were guilty," she
said. "It seems that I have always loved you."
"Always!" he repeated, amazed. "Always?--just as I've always loved you?"
"Yes."
For a space he was lost in his astonishment. "It doesn't seem possible.
What was there in me to make you love me?"
"I loved you because of your idealism, because there was an indefinable
something in you that was good and great. I loved you--Oh, I don't know
why I loved you. I just loved you. And how I felt when I thought you had
taken the money! Oh, David, it was----"
"Say it again!" he broke in.
"What?"
"David."
She smiled. "David."
Her face became serious. "It was weeks before I could sleep. I tried to
forget you. As the years passed I sometimes thought I had; but when I
tried to listen to other men talk of love, I knew I hadn't. I never
forgot you. I was on trial with you. I was in prison with you. Though I
kept away from you, I suffered with you when you were sick in that poor
little room. I have searched for work with you. I have struggled with
you to regain place in the world. Haven't you ever felt me beside you?"
"I have always thought of you as far away from me. Of you here"--his
eyes swept the library--"in this life."
The glance about the room was an abrupt transition. For an hour or more
he had been oblivious to all things save herself and himself. Now the
library's material richness recalled to him the circumstances his
rapture had for the time annihilated--her wealth, her social position,
his poverty, his disgrace. Slowly these forced upon him one relentless
fact. His face became grave, then pale.
"Why, what's the matter?" she cried.
"After all, we are as inexorably separated as ever," he said. "We can be
merely friends."
"Why?"
"I'm poor--without position in life--covered with dishonour."
"It's your soul that I love," she said. "It's rich, and full of honour."
Her look, the ring in her voice, made him catch his breath.
"What!--you don't mean you'd marry me--as I am!"
"Yes."
Wild joy sprang up within him. But he choked it down.
"No--No! You couldn't. You haven't thought. You couldn't give up all the
richness of your life, all your friends, for my poverty, my
friendlessness. And this isn't all--nor the worst. There's my disgrace."
He paused a moment before the great fact that must always be a barrier
between them. "Do you realise, Helen," he went on, "that I can never
clear myself. To do that would be to destroy the people of St.
Christopher's. I can never do that. I never will."
She was thoughtful for several moments. "No, you never can," she said
slowly. Then a glow came into her face, and she added suddenly in a tone
that vibrated through him:
"But I shall marry you anyhow!"
He caught her hands. "God bless you!" he said huskily.
He shook his head slowly, with pale resolution. "But no. I love you too
much, honour you too much, to drag you from your place--to let you marry
a criminal!"
CHAPTER VII
AS LOVE APPORTIONS
After David had gone Helen sat gazing into the rich romance of the
glowing logs, reproached by the remembrance of her treatment of David,
awed by his long sacrifice, thrilled with love and the knowledge of his
innocence. Her imagination showed her scenes of David's trial, of his
prison life, of his struggles to regain place in the world, and she
cried softly as she looked upon him amid these travails. That she had
not believed in him despite appearance and his own declaration, she
regarded as evidence of her weakness, and she told herself that her five
years of suffering were too light a punishment for her lack of faith.
She should have learned his innocence--and lost him!
Presently her mind, rehearsing the evening, came to David's statement
that, for St. Christopher's sake, he must always remain a guilty man.
She paused before the declaration. Yes, he was right. As she admitted
this a calm fell upon her, and she saw, as she had not seen before, the
distance that lay between them. He could not come to her; he was bound
where he was. If they came together, she must go to him.
Could she go? She loved the ease and beauty which surrounded her; and
this love now pointed out that going to him meant resigning all the
comforts of her father's house, all things that thus far had comprised
her life. And not alone resigning them, but substituting for them the
cramped, mean surroundings of a poor man. Was the love of a poor man
sufficient to balance, and balance for the rest of life, the good things
that would be given up?
She had said to David with ringing joy, "I shall marry you anyhow!"--and
now, with the same glow of the soul, she swept her present life out of
consideration. Yes, she could give it up! But following immediately upon
the impulse of renunciation came the realisation that David was not only
a poor man--he was, and must be always, to the rest of the world a
criminal. Was her love strong enough, and was she strong enough, to
share a criminal's dishonour and struggles--even though she knew him to
be guiltless?
While this question was asking itself her father entered, and with him
her Aunt Caroline--in an ermine-lined opera cloak and a rustling
cream-lace gown, about her plump throat a collar of pearls and in her
gray hair a constellation of diamonds.
"Why, Helen, sitting here all alone, and at one o'clock!" her aunt
cried. "Well, at any rate it means you're feeling better." Helen had had
her dinner brought to her sitting-room, and had excused herself from the
opera on the plea of indisposition.
Helen returned the kiss with which her aunt, bending over, lightly
touched her cheek. She would have preferred to say nothing of David's
visit, but she knew her aunt, who had charge of the servants, would
doubtless learn of it on the morrow from the housekeeper.
"But I haven't been alone the whole evening," she returned quietly. "Mr.
Aldrich called."
Mrs. Bosworth hopelessly lifted her shoulders, whose fulness her
fifty-odd years had not impaired. "What'll your help-the-poor ideas make
you do next!" she cried. "Think of giving up Melba to be bored a whole
evening by an East Side protégé! And such a lot of your friends came to
our box, too. Mr. Allen was very disappointed."
"It seems to me, too, Helen," said her father who stood with his back to
the fire, "that you're carrying your philanthropy a little too far in
having your brands-snatched-from-the-burning so much at the house."
Helen did not answer.
"Well, I suppose you must find some satisfaction in it or you wouldn't
do it," Mrs. Bosworth sighed. "Good night, dear."
They kissed again, perfunctorily. Helen liked her aunt in that moderate
way in which we all like good-natured, fate-made intimates whose
interests touch our own at few points. And Mrs. Bosworth's complacent
good-nature there was no denying--even if her interest did pause,
way-worn, after it had journeyed out as far as those remote people who
had only twenty-five thousand a year.
"Don't sit too long," said her father, bending down. During the last
four weeks she had tried to wear before her father an unchanged manner.
So she now met his lips with her own. "Only a few minutes longer; good
night," she said.
When they had gone her gaze returned to the fire, and her mind gathered
about her father. Since she had learned he was a great highwayman whose
plunderings were so large as to be respectable, her days and nights had
been filled with thoughts of him, and of her relation to him and his
fortune. She realised that if he were seen by the world as he actually
was, and if the world had the same courage to condemn large thefts that
it had to condemn small thefts, he would be dishonoured far below David.
She realised that his great fortune was founded on theft, that the food
she ate, the dresses she wore, the house she lived in, were paid for
with money that was rightly others!
What should she do?--for almost a month that question had hardly left
her: Should she beg her father to change his business ways, and to
restore his money to whom he had defrauded? She knew the power was not
in her, nor any other, to change him. Since he was going to continue
gathering in other people's money with his own, should she keep silent
and remain by him, and see that the money was spent in service of the
people? Or should she, refusing to live on dishonest income, withdraw
from his house and shape her own life?
She came out of her thoughts with a start to find herself shivering, the
bronze clock on the mantel pointing at two, and the glowing romance in
the fire-place cooled to gray ashes. When she reached her sitting-room
she remembered a yellow photograph of David that on the day he had
confessed his guilt she had tried to burn, and which she had since
tried to forget, but which she had often taken from its hiding-place and
gazed at in pained wonderment. She took this out of the drawer of her
writing desk, went into her bedroom and set it upon the reading-table
beside her bed. After preparing herself for sleep she lit the candles on
the table, turned out the gas, and lying with her head high up on the
pillows she looked with glowing eyes on the open boyish face. After a
time she reached a white arm for the picture, pressed a kiss upon its
yellowed lips, then snuffed the candle and held the picture against her
heart; and, lying so, she presently drifted softly away into sleep.
Paradise walked home with David that night. He did not think of the
barrier that stood between Helen and him--that must always keep them
apart despite her declaration that she would marry him. He thought only
of her love. This fact was so supremely large that it had filled his
present. At times he thrilled with awe, as though God had descended and
were walking at his side. Again he could barely hold down the eruptive
cries of his exultation; he clenched his hands, and tensed his arms, and
flung his face up at the far, white stars.
He strode through the night, too excited to think of anything but Helen
and himself. He and she--they were the world. But presently, after hours
of walking, his thoughts went to people without the walls of his
paradise. He thought of Rogers--and the misery of Rogers was an
accusation against his joy. He had gained everything--Rogers had lost
everything. He was ashamed of himself, and he tried to subdue his
happiness by thinking of Rogers's failure and hopelessness.
And the thought of Kate shot through him a great jagged pain. He
realised how fierce must have been the struggle that had preceded her
call on Helen; he realised that he owed his paradise to the apotheosis
of her love; and he realised, too, how utterly beyond his power it was
to make her any repayment.
When, toward three o'clock, he reached his house, he was surprised to
see that a light burned in Roger's office. The office door was unlocked,
and he entered. Beside her desk stood Kate, suddenly risen, and on the
desk's arm lay a few note-books, a dictionary and a pair of sateen
sleeve-protectors.
"I've come for my things--I've got a new job," she said after a moment,
in a dry unnatural voice.
David saw instantly through her pitiful craft--knew instantly how long
she had been waiting there. He filled tinglingly with a quick rush of
pity and pain and tenderness. He wanted to thank her, but he felt the
emptiness of words, and dared not. So, confusedly, awkwardly, he stood
looking at the white face.
Her eyes holding to his like a magnetic needle, she moved across the
room, paused a pace away, and stared, hardly breathing, up at him. Her
burning, questioning eyes, ringed with their purple misery, forced from
him a low cry of pain.
"Oh, Kate!--Kate!"
She trembled slightly at his voice. "You've seen her!" she whispered.
"Yes."
He felt tears scalding his eyes. Suddenly he caught her hands and broken
words leaped from his lips.
"What a wonderful soul you are!--I can't speak my thanks, but in my
heart--"
She jerked her hands away and drew back. "Don't!" she gasped. "Don't!"
He hated himself for the suffering he was causing her--for his
helplessness to thank her, to say the thing in his heart.
She continued to stare up at him with the same quivering tensity. After
a moment she asked in a dry whisper:
"And she loves you?"
"Yes."
A sharp moan escaped her. She put an unsteady hand out and caught her
desk, and the edge of David's vision saw how the fingers clenched the
wood.
"I knew it--from the way she acted," she said mechanically.
For several moments more she looked up at him, her face as pale as
death. Then she turned and, thoughtless of her belongings, walked toward
the door, a thin, unsteady figure. As she reached for the knob he sprang
across the room with a cry and caught her outstretched hand.
"Oh, Kate--forgive me!--I hate myself!--Forgive me!"
Her hand tightened spasmodically on his, her body swayed, her eyes
flamed up into his. "Oh, David!" burst from her in a low moan of
infinite pain and loss. For a moment she was all a-tremble. Then she
clenched herself in an effort at self-control, answered him with a slow
nod, and dropping her head turned and went through the door.
CHAPTER VIII
A PARTIAL RELEASE
When David, after leaving Helen at the end of the next afternoon, sat
down to his early dinner in the almost empty Pan-American, the Mayor
came swaying toward him. During the last two weeks the Mayor had been
daily seeking David for sympathy over his marriage, or advice upon his
wedding clothes and upon arrangements for the ceremony that was to make
his life a joyless waste. He took an opposite chair, sighed heavily and
regarded David in steady gloom.
"D'you, realise, friend," he burst out, "that it's only one day more?
Twenty-four hours from to-night at nine o'clock! Only one day more o'
life! If God had to make me, why didn't he put a little sense into
me--that's what I'd like to know!"
He shook his head despairingly. But after a few moments his face began
to lighten and he leaned across the table. "But anyhow, friend, don't
you think my weddin' clothes is just about proper!"
David agreed they were, and in the discussion of the marriage garments
the Mayor forgot the marriage and became quite happy. From garments he
passed on to a description of the preparation for the wedding
festivities, which were to be held in the Liberty Assembly Hall.
He leaned proudly back and glowed on David. "It's goin' to be the
swellest ever," he said, with a magnificent wave of his right hand.
"It's goin' to have every weddin' that was ever pulled off in this part
o' town, simply skinned to death--yes, sir, simply faded to nothin'."
He flamed upward into the very incandescence of pride. But on the morrow
his pride was ashes. Never did another bridegroom have so severe an
attack of the bridegroom's disease as did the Mayor. All the afternoon
he kept David beside him, and once when David tried to leave for a few
minutes the Mayor frantically caught his arm and would not let him go.
The Mayor was too agitated to sit still, too nerveless to move about,
too panic-stricken to talk or to listen to David; and when, after
dinner, it came to putting on his wedding raiment, he was in such a funk
that David had to dress him. He had but one coherent idea, and that he
often expressed, his glassy, fearful eyes appealingly on David, with a
long-drawn moan: "Friend, ain't it hell!"
When it came time to leave, the Mayor collapsed into a chair and glared
defiantly at David. "I ain't goin' to go!" he announced in a tremulous
roar. But David, by the use of force and dire pictures, finally got him
into the dressing-room of the Liberty Assembly Hall where he was to meet
Miss Becker. She was already there, and she came toward him with a
blushing smile. He stood motionless, his tongue wet his lips, a hand
felt his throat. He gazed at the white gown and at the veil as a
condemned man at the noose. He put a limp, fumbling hand into hers.
"Howdy do, Carrie," he said huskily.
Some men are cowards till the battle starts, then are heroes. When the
Mayor and his triumphant bride, radiant on his arm, paused a moment
outside the hall door for the march to begin, he was still the agitated
craven. But when he saw within the hall the scores of gorgeous guests,
and realised that he was the chief figure in this pageant, his spirit
and _savoir-faire_ flowed back into him; and when Professor Bachmann's
orchestra struck into the wedding-march he stepped magnificently
forward, throwing to right and left ruddy, benign smiles. He bore
himself grandly through the ceremony; he started the dancing by leading
the grand march with Mrs. Hoffman in his most magnificent manner; and at
the wedding supper, which was served in an adjoining room, he beamingly
responded to the calls for a speech with phrases and flourishes that
even he had never before equalled.
At the end of the supper the party resumed dancing, and the Mayor had a
chance to pause a moment beside David. He swept a huge, white-gloved
hand gracefully about the room, and demanded in an exultant whisper:
"Didn't I tell you, friend, that this was goin' to be the swellest
weddin' that ever happened? Well, ain't it?"
"It certainly is," agreed David.
The Mayor tapped David's shirt-front with his forefinger. "It certainly
is the real thing, friend. Nothin' cheap-skate about this, let me tell
you. Everything is just so. Why, did you notice even the waiters wore
white gloves? Yes, sir--when I get married, it's done right!"
He leaned to within a few confidential inches of David's ear. "And
say--have you sized up Carrie? Ain't she simply _It_! Huh, she makes
every other woman in this bunch look like a has-been!"
A little later, during a lull in the dancing, the Mayor and his bride,
who had quietly withdrawn, suddenly appeared in the doorway of the hall,
hatted and wrapped.
"Good-bye!" boomed the Mayor's mighty voice. "Same luck to you all!"
Mrs. Hoffman's finger-tips flung a kiss from her blushing lips to the
guests, and the Mayor's hand gathered a kiss from amid his own glowing
face and bestowed it likewise. The guests rushed forward, but the couple
went down the stairs in a flurry, into a waiting carriage, and were
gone.
The dancing continued till early workmen began to clatter through the
streets--for in the supper-room was enough cold meats and cake and punch
and ices to gorge the guests for a week, and Professor Bachmann has been
paid to keep his musicians going so long as a dancer remained on the
floor. But David slipped away soon after the bride and groom.
When he got home he found Kate Morgan sitting by Rogers's side. He
looked at her in constraint, and she at him--and it was a very
uncomfortable moment till Rogers announced:
"She's going with me."
David turned to his friend. There was an excited glow in Rogers's dark
eyes.
"What?" David asked.
"She's going with me--to Colorado."
David stared at him, and then at Kate, who nodded. "Oh, I see!" he said.
Kate's features tightened, and she looked at him defiantly. "It isn't
what you think. I offered to marry him, but he wouldn't let me."
"What, let a woman marry a wreck like me!" exclaimed Rogers. "No, she's
going as a nurse. I've begged her not to go, but she insists."
"Why shouldn't I?" Kate asked, still with her straight, defiant look
full on David. "My father's now in an asylum. Mr. Rogers needs me: he'll
be lonely--he ought to have someone to take care of him. I know
something about nursing. Why shouldn't I?"
David looked at her slight, rigidly erect figure, standing with one hand
on the back of Rogers's chair, and tried to find words for the feelings
that rushed up from his heart. But before he could speak she said
abruptly, "Good night," and, very pale, marched past David and out of
the room.
The following afternoon, as David was helping Rogers with the last of
the packing for the western trip, which was to be begun that night, a
messenger brought him a letter. He looked at the "St. John's Hospital"
printed in one corner of the envelope in some surprise before he opened
the letter. It read:
"DEAR SIR:--
"There has just been brought here, fatally injured from being run
down by an express wagon, a woman whose name seems to be Lillian
Drew, judging from a packet of old letters found on her person. As
your address was the only one about her, I am sending you this
notice on the possibility that you may be an interested party."
The note was signed "James Barnes, House Surgeon." David's first thought
was, Morton's letters have been read and the secret has begun to come
out! For a space he did not know whether this was a hope or a fear. On
the way to the hospital it was of the glory that would follow this
disclosure, and not of the disaster, that he thought. He saw his name
cleared, himself winning his way unhampered into honour, free to marry
Helen--he saw a long stretch of happiness in work and in love.
On reaching the hospital he was led to a small room adjoining the
operating-room. Here he found Dr. Barnes, a young fellow of twenty-five,
shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows, aproned in a rubber sheet, head
swathed in gauze. He was beginning to wash his hands at an iron sink.
"Are you a near friend or relative?" Dr. Barnes asked after David had
introduced himself.
"An acquaintance," David answered.
"Then I can break the news point-blank. She died a few minutes ago."
David hardly knew what the young surgeon was saying--his mind was all on
the letters.
"It's the old, old story," added the surgeon, with a shrug.
"Intoxicated--got in the way of a truck--a cracked skull. I've been
trying to do what I could for her"--he nodded toward the open door of
the operating-room,--"but she died under the operation."
"In your note," David said as steadily as he could, "you mentioned some
letters."
"Oh, yes. I wanted to find the address of friends, so I read a few of
them." He smiled at David as he rubbed a cake of yellow soap about in
his hands.
David leaned heavily against a window-sill. His mind was reeling.
"They were from relatives?" he forced from his lips.
The surgeon gave a short laugh. "Hardly! They were love letters--and
warm ones, too! All about twenty years old. Queer, wasn't it."
He rinsed the soap from his arms and began to rub them with a white
powder. "But I got nothing out of them. They were merely signed 'Phil.'"
David's control returned to him, and he was conscious of a tremendous
relief. "I suppose," he said, "there's no objection to my claiming and
taking the letters."
"We usually turn anything found on a body over to the relatives or
friends. But pardon me--I don't know that you're the proper person."
"There's no one else to claim them. I'm perfectly willing to give you
security for them."
"Oh, I guess it'll be all right. They're merely a package of old
letters."
He walked over to where several coats were hanging, and pointed a
scoured hand at one. "I've just washed up for another operation, so I
can't take them out for you. You'll find them in the inside pocket."
David transferred the yellow packet to the inside pocket of his own
coat. He had thanked the surgeon and said good-bye, when the fear
seized him that perhaps the dead woman might after all not be Lillian
Drew. He turned back and asked if he might see the body. The surgeon led
him into the operating-room where two attendants were starting to push
out a wheeled operating-table, burdened with a sheeted figure. The
surgeon stopped them, and at his order a nurse drew back the sheet from
the head. David gave a single glance at the face. His fear left him.
With the letters buttoned inside his coat he left the hospital and set
out for Helen's, on whom he had promised to call that afternoon. At this
moment he had not for Lillian Drew that understanding, sympathy even,
which he was later to attain; he did not then consider that she, too,
might have had a very different ending had her beginning been more
fortunately inspired. For such a sympathy he was too dazed by the
narrowness of his escape from vindication and of the Mission's from
destruction. Had the letters been signed by Morton's full name, then the
house surgeon, in trying to learn who Philip Morton was, would certainly
have started a scandal there would have been no stopping. But now his
secret was safe: Lillian Drew would menace him no more, and the two
women who knew his story would keep it forever locked in their hearts.
He chanced to reach the Chambers's home at the same moment as Mr.
Chambers, who bowed coldly and passed upstairs. As Mr. Chambers went by
the drawing-room door he saw Helen and Mr. Allen at the tea-table. He
entered and shook hands cordially with Mr. Allen.
"How are you, Allen?" he said. "But I just stopped for a second. I'll
try and see you before you go."
At this moment a footman handed Helen David's card. "Don't you think,
Helen," her father asked quietly, "that you're letting that fellow make
himself very much of a bore?" Without waiting for an answer he passed
out.
"Will you show Mr. Aldrich up," Helen said to the waiting footman. Mr.
Allen had begun, before her father's entrance, to draw near the question
he had come to put. She shrunk from answering it, so David's coming was
doubly welcome.
"A minute, please," Mr. Allen called to the servant. "Now, Helen, is
this treating me fair?" he demanded in a whisper. "You know I want to
see you. Can't you send down word that you're engaged?"
"He's in the house--I'm here--I can't deny him," she said rapidly.
"Besides, for a long while I've been wanting you to meet him. Show him
up, Mitchell."
"Well, if I must meet him, I suppose I must," Allen said with a shrug,
sharpness cutting through his even tone. "But I warn you, Helen--I'm
going to outstay him."
A moment later David entered the room. He was crossing eagerly with a
hand held out to Helen, when he saw Allen beside the tea-table. He
suddenly paused. Allen slowly rose, and for a space the two men stared
at each other.
"So," Allen said, with slow distinctness, "You're Mr. David Aldrich?"
David went pale. He knew, from what Helen had told him of Allen, that he
was in the power of a man whose ideas of justice and duty made him
merciless. For a moment David had, as on the night Allen had forced him
to unmask, a glimpse of the inside of a cell.
"I am," he said.
Helen had looked from one to the other in surprise. "What--you know each
other?"
David turned to her. "You remember I told you that about a year ago I
broke into a man's house. It was his house."
"What!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, your protégé is a thief!"
There was a vibration of triumph in Allen's voice. An old idea had
flashed back upon him. He had often thought that if he could, by some
striking example, show Helen the futility of her work, show her that the
people whom she thought were improving were really deceiving her, then
her belief in her efforts would be shattered and she would abandon
them--would come nearer to him. This man Aldrich here summed up to her
the success of her ideas.
"I think I shall leave you for a while," Allen said.
He moved toward the door.
David knew where Allen was going. Helpless to save himself, he stood
motionless, erect, and watched Allen start from the room.
Helen, very pale, blocked Allen's way. "You intend to have him arrested.
It's in your face."
"I certainly do."
"You must not!" cried Helen, desperately. "Why, he took nothing--you
yourself told me he took nothing."
"That doesn't make him any less a thief," returned Allen. "He had good
reason for not taking anything--he was frightened away."
He started to pass around her, but she caught his arm. "You must not!
You'll be committing a crime!"
He looked at her almost pitingly. "Really, Helen, he must have
hypnotised you. You know he's a thief. I caught him in the act; he's
confessed to you. What more can you want?"
She gazed steadily up into his face. "Won't you let him go if I assure
you that in arresting him you'll be making the mistake of your life?"
"No. Because I know that you, in believing that, are mistaken."
She was silent a moment; her brown eyes never left his face. "Won't you
let him go because I, a friend, ask it as a favour?"
"You are making it very hard for me," he said in genuine distress. "You
know it's a duty to society to put such men where they can do no harm."
"Nothing can prevent your arresting him?" she asked slowly.
"It's my duty," he said.
Her face was turning gray with despair, when her eyes began to widen and
her lips to part, and she drew in a long, slow breath and one hand crept
up to her bosom. She looked about at David.
"Will you please wait for me in the library," she said; and she added
immediately to Allen, "I'll give you bond for his return when you want
him."
David bowed and left the room.
Helen caught the back of a chair. The hand above her heart pressed
tightly. "You have left me but one thing more to say for him," she said
in a low voice.
"And that?" asked Allen.
"I love him."
He stepped back and his face went as pale as her own. Several moments
passed before words came from him.
"You love Mr. Aldrich?" asked a strange whisper.
"I love him," she said.
Again several moments passed before he spoke, and when he did speak his
words were to himself rather than to her.
"And this is my answer?"
"Forgive me--because it came this way," she begged.
There was silence between them.
"He is safe," he said. He continued gazing at her several moments, then
without speaking again he left the room.
CHAPTER IX
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
For several minutes after Allen had gone, Helen sat, her face in her
hands, waiting for the refluence of her strength. Then she walked back
to the library, where she found David pacing restlessly to and fro. He
saw that she was very white and that she was trembling, and forbearing
to question her he led her to a deep easy-chair before the open wood
fire. But she saw his suspense and at once told him that Allen would be
silent.
Gently, reverently, David laid his hand upon her hair, and of all the
things in his heart he could only say, "You saved me."
She drew his hand down and held it against her cheek and gazed up into
his eyes. He sat down on the arm of her chair. They had both been
through too great a strain to fall into easy converse, and for several
minutes each was filled with quivering thoughts. Presently David
remembered what he had forgotten since entering the house--his
experience at St. John's Hospital. He told her the story, and when he
had ended he drew out the packet containing the yellow letters, the
photograph and the two notes of five years before.
"Well, they'll make no more trouble," he said, and started toward the
fire-place.
She laid a hand upon his arm. "What are you going to do?"
"Burn them."
She shook her head and held out her hand. "No--you must not. Give them
to me."
He laid them in her hand. "But why do you want them?"
"Didn't you ever think, David, that there may come a time, years from
now, when you may want to clear your name? Well, these letters will
help. I shall keep them for that time. They're precious to me, because
they contain your good name."
She slipped the soiled and worn packet into the front of her dress. In
the silence that followed, her mind, as it was constantly doing these
days, reverted to her father's business practices, and again she was
beset by the necessity of telling David her new estimate of her father.
She gathered her strength, and, eyes downcast, told him briefly,
brokenly, that her father was not an honest man. "So you see," she
ended, "I have no right to any of these things about me--I have no right
to stay here."
David had suffered with her the shame of her confession. He took her
hands. "Oh, I wish I had the right to ask you to come to me, Helen!"
She raised her eyes. "I'm coming to you," she said.
"But I'd be a brute to let you. You can leave your father, and yet keep
almost everything of your present life except its wealth--your friends,
your position, your influence, your honour. I can't let you give up all
these things--exchange them for my disgrace. I can't let you become the
wife of a thief! I love you too much!"
"But I'm ready for it!"
"I can't do it, Helen! I can't!"
She gazed at his pain-drawn, determined face--her eyes wide, her lips
loosely parted, her face gray. "And you never will?" she whispered.
"I can't!" he groaned huskily.
His arm dropped from the chair back about her shoulders, and they sat
silently gazing into each other's eyes. They were still sitting so when
the library doors rolled back and Mr. Chambers appeared between them.
David sprang up, and Helen also rose. Mr. Chambers gave back a pace as
to a blow, and his hand gripped the door. For a moment he stared at
them, then he quietly closed the door and crossed the room.
Rigidly erect, he paused in front of Helen, his face pale and set and
harsh, and looked squarely into her face. He turned a second to David;
his gray eyes were like knives of gray steel. Then his gaze came back to
Helen.
"What's this mean?" his quiet voice grated out.
Helen's face was like paper and her eyes, held straight into his, had a
fixed, wild stare. She gathered her strength with a supreme effort.
"I'm going to marry him," she said.
For a moment he merely stared at her. Then he reached out a hand that
trembled, caught her arm and shook her lightly.
"Helen?" he cried. "Helen?"
"I'm going to marry him," she repeated, with a little gasp.
"You're--really--in--your--senses?"
"I am."
He loosed his hold, and studied her strained face. "You are!" he
whispered, in low consternation.
David's defiant hatred of Mr. Chambers was beginning to rise. He was
willing that Mr. Chambers should feel pain; but Helen's suffering
because of himself, this would not let him keep silent.
"But, Helen, you know you're----"
She stopped him with a touch on his shoulder. "This is my moment. I've
been expecting it. It is I that must speak."
Mr. Chambers slowly reddened with anger. "Marry that thief? You shall
not!" he cried.
Her face was twitching, tears were starting in her eyes. "Forgive me for
saying it, father," she besought tremulously, "but--can you prevent me?"
"Your reason, your self-respect, should prevent you. Have you thought of
the poverty?"
She put a hand through David's arm. "I have. I'm ready for it."
"And of the disgrace?"
"I'm ready for it."
He paled again. He saw the utter social ruin of his daughter, and it
gave him infinite pain--and he saw the social injury to himself. She
would sink from her present world, and her sinking would be the year's
scandal; and that scandal he would have to live with, daily meet face to
face.
"Yes," he said slowly, "but your act will also disgrace your family,
your friends. You are willing to disgrace me?"
For three weeks conscience had demanded one attitude toward him, love
another. "Please let's not speak of that!" she begged.
"You're willing to disgrace me?" he repeated.
She did not answer for a moment; then "Forgive me--I am," she whispered.
"And you're decided--absolutely determined?"
She nodded.
"My God, Helen!" he burst out, "to think that you, with open eyes, would
destroy yourself and dishonour your father!"
"Forgive me!" she begged.
He turned to David, his face fierce with rageful contempt. "And Aldrich!
Let me say one thing to you. Any man in your situation who would ask a
decent woman to marry him is a damned cad!"
Helen raised a hand to stop the retort that was on David's lips. "It is
I that insist on marriage--he refuses me," she said quietly.
Mr. Chambers stared long at her, astounded as he had never before been
in his life. "There's something behind all this," he said, abruptly.
She was silent.
Even in this tense moment his readiness did not desert him. Sometimes
one is stronger than two, sometimes weaker. This time one would be
weaker.
"Mr. Aldrich," he said quietly, "would you be so kind as to leave us.
There are matters here to be talked over only between Helen and me."
Helen felt the moment before her she had for a month been fearing--felt
herself on the verge of the greatest crisis of her life. "Yes--please
do, David. It's best for us two to be alone."
She gave David her hand. He pressed it and silently withdrew.
Mr. Chambers stepped close to Helen and gazed searchingly into her face.
"There's something back of this. You're telling me all?"
"I can't--please don't ask me, father!"
"You propose--he refuses," he said meditatively. He studied her face for
several moments. "I think I know you, my child.--I would have staked my
fortune, my life, that you would never have given yourself to any but a
man of the highest character."
His face knitted with thought; he began to nod his head ever so
slightly. "I recall now that there were some queer circumstances
connected with his taking the money. His motives, what he did with it,
did not seem particularly plausible to me."
His eyes fairly looked her through. His mind, trained to see and
consider instantly all the factors of a situation, and instantly to
reach a conclusion, sought with all its concentration the most logical
explanation of this mystery.
After a moment he said softly: "So--he didn't take the money after all?"
She gazed at him in choking fascination.
"If he had taken it, if he was what he seems to be, you would never have
offered to marry him," he went on in the same soft voice. "I've guessed
right--have I not?"
She did not answer.
"Have I not?" he repeated, dominantly.
It seemed to her that the words were being dragged from her by a
resistless power. "Yes," she whispered. The next instant she clasped
her hands. "Oh, why did I tell!" she cried.
"I guessed it," he said.
They looked silently at each other for a space. When he spoke his tone
was quiet again.
"Since I know the main fact I might as well know the minor ones. Why did
he pretend to be guilty?"
She hesitated. But he knew the essential fact--and, besides, he was her
father, and she had the daughter-desire for her father to appreciate
what manner of a man this was whom she loved. So she told the story in a
few sentences.
"It's remarkable," he said in a voice that showed he had been affected
deeply. "I can see that it was a deed to touch a woman's heart. All the
same--he's not the match I'd prefer for you."
He was thoughtful for several moments. He knew the quality of Helen's
will--knew there was no changing her determination to marry David. The
problem, then, was to arrange so that the marriage would bring the
minimum disgrace.
"No, he's not the match I'd prefer for you. Still, if he'll publicly
admit and establish his innocence, I'll have not a word to say against
him."
"But we've agreed that he can't do that," she said. "I've already made
plain to you that to clear himself would be to destroy St.
Christopher's."
"Nothing can change that decision?"
"No."
Mr. Chambers again thought for a minute. "I think you exaggerate the
effect of the truth on St. Christopher's. However, for the moment, I'll
grant you're right. From what you told me I gather Mr. Aldrich has some
rather large philanthropic ideas. Well, if he will clear himself, I'll
settle upon you any amount you wish--ten million, twenty million. That
will enable him to carry out his ideas on any scale he may like. The
good he can do will more than balance any injury that may be done to St.
Christopher's. On the one hand, he will have, and you with him,
powerless disgrace. On the other, clear name, love, fortune, unlimited
power to do good."
She slowly shook her head. "It's all thought over--he can't do it."
"And nothing can change your determination to marry him?"
She held out a hand to him. "No. Forgive me, father," she whispered.
He gazed steadily at her--and again his quick mind was searching for a
solution to the situation. He pressed her hand. "I want to think. We'll
speak of this again."
He started out, but she stepped before him. "Wait--there's something I
must say. But first, you must never tell what you've just found out."'
He did not answer.
His silence stirred a sudden new fear. She crept close to him and peered
up into his face. "Father--you're not going to tell, are you?"
Again he was silent.
Her face paled with consternation. She drew a long breath, and her voice
came out a thin whisper. "You are going to tell, father! I see it."
He looked into her wide brown eyes and at her quivering face. "I think,
Helen, you can leave the proper action to my discretion."
She swayed slightly, and then her whole body tightened with effort. "You
are going to make his innocence public," she said, with slow accusation.
"You can't deny it."
"I am," he said shortly.
She stepped a pace nearer him. "You must not! You must not!" she cried.
His jaw tightened and his brows drew together. "I shall!--you hear me?"
"But, father--it isn't your secret. You haven't the right."
"I have the right to protect my own daughter and myself!"
"But to destroy others?" she implored. "You know it will ruin hundreds.
Have you the right to do that?"
"A man's first duty is to those nearest him."
"But don't you see?--you destroy hundreds to save yourself, and me!"
"You have my answer," he said.
She looked at him despairingly. "Then nothing can stop you?"
"Nothing." His face was firm, his voice hard. "And now, Helen, I'm
going," he said shortly. "There's nothing more to be said."
Helen caught his arm. "Not yet!" She gazed at him, her face gray and
helpless.... Then the crisis gave her inspiration. A new view of the
situation flashed into her mind. She considered it for several moments.
"Father," she said.
"Well?"
She spoke slowly, with a frantic control, with the earnestness of
desperation. "Listen, father. Suppose you tell--what will be the use?
David will deny your story. I, who shall be with him, I shall deny the
story. And there is the decision of the court. All say the same. On your
side, you have no proof--not one bit. The world will say you made up the
story just to save yourself. The world will honour you less, because it
will say you've tried to save yourself by disgracing Mr. Morton....
Don't you see, father?--it will do you no good to tell!--don't you see?"
He gazed at her, but did not answer.
"The story will create a great scandal--yes," she went on. "For you to
accuse Mr. Morton--you know how that will injure St. Christopher's
before the public--you know how it will lessen the Mission's influence
in the neighbourhood. The story will do great ill--so very great an ill!
But it will not help you a bit, father--not a bit!"
She paused a moment. "Please do not tell it father! Please do not ... I
beg it of you!"
He did not reply at once. He realised the truth of what she had
said--but to yield was hard for the Chambers's will, and it was hard to
accept the great dishonour. He swallowed with an effort.
"Very well," he said.
"Then you'll say nothing?" she asked eagerly.
"No."
"Oh, thank you!--thank you!" she cried, her voice vibrating with her
great relief.
They looked into each other's eyes for a long space. "I hope this is
all," he said.
"There's one more thing," she answered, and tried to gather herself for
another effort. Her breast rose and fell, and she was all a-tremble.
"There is something else--something I must say--something that has been
upon my heart for weeks. Say that you forgive me before I say it,
father!"
"Go on!"
Her voice was no more than a whisper. "I have learned that the
stories ... about your not being honest ... are true."
His face blanched. "So--you insult your own father!"
"Don't make it any harder!" she besought piteously.
"You do not understand business matters," he said, harshly.
She did not hear his last words. "This is the other thing--I'm going to
leave home," she went on rapidly. "Perhaps I would not decide to do what
I am going to do, if I thought I could help you--to be different. But I
know you, father; I know you will not--be different; you do not need
me--you are strong and need no support--you will have Aunt Caroline. So
I am going to go.
"I'm going to leave home because it seems to me that I have no right to
it--to it and the other things of my life. You understand. So I want to
ask you not to send any of these things to me. I want nothing--not a
cent."
He was silent a moment. The determination in her face again kept him
from argument or intercession. He saw that to her this break was a
great, tragic, unchangeable fact, and so it also became to him.
"But how are you going to live?" he asked.
"I have the money mother left me--that's enough."
Despite the tragedy of the moment a faint smile drew back the corners of
his mouth. "That's two thousand a year--that doesn't begin to pay for
your clothes."
"I shall wear different clothes. It will be enough."
"Very well." His face became grim. "And I have my reason why I cannot
give you anything! Do you realise, Helen, that you are driving me, in
order to protect my reputation, to disown you publicly if you marry Mr.
Aldrich?"
She did not reply. "But don't forget," he went on after a moment, "that
you are escaping my fortune only temporarily. It will all go to you on
my death."
"No--no! I don't want it!"
"But you can't escape it, if I choose to leave it to you."
"If you do," she said slowly, "I shall use it to make restitution, as
far as I can, to the people it--it came from." She added, almost
breathlessly, "Why not do that now, father? It's the thing I've been
wanting to ask you, but have not dared."
"I have not noticed any lack of daring," he observed grimly.
There was a brief silence. "Then this is all," she said.
Suddenly she stretched out her arms to him, and tears sprang into her
eyes. "Forgive me, father!--forgive me!"
Standing very erect, his hands folded before him, he gazed fixedly into
her imploring face while his mind comprehended their new relations.
She dared a step nearer and laid a hand upon his arm. "Forgive me--won't
you please, father?" she whispered.
His face twitched, and he put his hands on her shoulders almost
convulsively. "You're taking my heart out!" he said huskily.
"Forgive me!" she sobbed. "I can't help it! I'm the way God made me."
"And God made you very much like your mother," he said, his mind running
back to scenes not unlike this. He drew her to him and she flung her
arms about his neck and they kissed.
"I love my father--I always shall--it's the business man that"--but her
voice trailed away into sobs.
They drew apart. "We shall never speak of this matter again," she said
tremulously. She held out her hand. "Good-bye ... father. I shall see
you again--yes. But this is the real good-bye."
He took her hand. "Good-bye," he said.
They gazed steadily into each other's eyes. "Good-bye," she repeated in
a low voice, and, head down, walked slowly from the room.
* * * * *
He sat long before the fire while upon him his new situation pressed
more heavily, more sharply. It was the bitterest hour of his life. Upon
him bore the pain of impending public disgrace, the pain of the loss of
his daughter--and cruellest of all, the pain of being judged by the one
person of his heart, disowned by her. And this last bitterness was given
a deep-cutting, ironic edge as he realised afresh that, to protect
himself, he must disown her--that, cast off by her, he must make it
appear to the world that he had cast her off.
And how the world would take this! His imagination saw in the papers of
some near day, across the first page in great black head-lines, "Miss
Helen Chambers Marries Ex-Convict--Disowned and Disinherited By Her
Father--Social World Horrified!" The irony of it!
But even in this hour, pained as he was by Helen's judgment, he felt no
regret for those deeds for which he had been judged. For thirty years
and more he had had one supreme object--to take from life, for himself,
all that life could be made to yield. All his faculties were pointed to,
attuned to, acquisition. His instinct, his long habit, his mighty will,
his opportunity-making mind, his long succession of successes, the
irresistible command of his every cell to go on, and on, and on--all
these united in a momentum that allowed him neither to recoil from what
he had done nor to regard it with regret. He felt pain, yes--but mixed
with his pain was no other feeling, no impulse, that would swerve his
life even a single degree from its thirty-years' direction.
CHAPTER X
THE BEGINNING OF LIFE
In five minutes the long, heavy express was due to pull out of the
station and go lunging westward through the night. Kate's and Rogers's
hand luggage was piled in Kate's seat, and across the aisle and a little
ahead, in Rogers's seat, were the two travellers, side by side. Facing
them sat David and the Mayor, the latter just back from his brief
honeymoon, and standing in the aisle was Tom.
"Well, got everything you need for the trip?" asked the Mayor, in tones
that filled the sleeper.
"There's enough in our trunks and in those bags"--Rogers nodded backward
towards Kate's seat--"for a trip to the moon. Aldrich tried to buy out
New York."
"There's nothin' like havin' too much," declared the Mayor. "Oh, say
there, captain," he cried to the porter who had just brushed by. "See
here."
The porter turned back. "Yes suh." There was even more than the usual
porterly deference in his manner, as he instantly measured the authority
in the Mayor's florid person and took note of the silk hat and the
imposing beflowered vest. "Yes suh."
"These here two people are friends o' mine. You want to see that they
get everything that's comin' to 'em, and a few more besides.
Understand?"
"Yes suh."
The Mayor, with some effort, got into and out of a trouser pocket, and
held forth a dollar. "If you ain't bashful, take that. And stick it some
place where your willingness'll know you've got it.
"There's nobody'll treat you as white as a well-tipped nigger," he
remarked as the porter passed on. He leaned forward and laid a hand on
Rogers's knee, his smiling face redly brilliant under the Pintsch light.
"Just as soon as you get your bellows mended and some meat on your
bones, I'm goin' to write you a letter handin' you some straight
advice."
The edge of his glance slyly took in Kate. "No, I ain't goin' to wait.
I'll tell you now and be in the price o' the stamp. Friend--get
married!"
Kate rose abruptly, walked back to her seat and began to fumble about
the baggage.
The Mayor nodded his head emphatically. "There's nothin' like it!"
The cry, "All aboard," sounded through the car, and they rose. The Mayor
said good-bye, and after him Tom. Then David took Rogers's thin hand.
The two men silently gazed at one another for a long moment; each
realised he might never again look into the other's face.
"Good-bye, old man," breathed David, gripping his hand. "I hope it's
going to be as you hope. God knows you deserve it!"
Rogers's large eyes clung to him. "I've never had a friend like you!"
he said slowly. "Good-bye--and if it's to be the long good-bye, then ...
well, good-bye!"
He broke off, then added: "You're going to try to help change some
things we both know are wrong. Never forget one thing: the time to
reform a criminal is before he becomes one. Save the kids.--God bless
you!"
The car began slowly to move. They gripped hands again, and David
hurried back to Kate, whom the Mayor had just left and who was kissing
Tom good-bye. David took her hand, and on gazing into her dark eyes and
restrained face, it rushed upon him anew how much joy she had brought
him and how much misery he had given her; and suddenly he was without a
single word to say farewell.
"Good-bye," she said with a forced calmness.
"Forgive me!" he burst out in a whisper. "Your heart will tell you what
I'd like to tell you. Forgive me!"
Her head sank forward in affirmation. "But you've done nothing."
There was no time to reply to that. "God bless you, Kate!--Good-bye!" he
cried in a low voice. He ran out of the rapidly moving car and swung
himself to the platform--unconscious that Kate's eyes had followed him
to the last.
He joined the Mayor, and together with Tom they walked out of the
station and into the street, talking of the friends they had just left.
But the Mayor, who had met the party at the station, and consequently
had not had a confidential word with David, was bubbling with his own
affairs, and he quickly left Kate and Rogers to travel their way alone.
"Friend," he said with joyful solemnity, slipping his arm through
David's, "I'm the biggest fool that ever wore pants!"
"Why?"
"For not lettin' Carrie marry me before."
"Then you're happy?"
"Happy?" A great laugh rose from beneath the Mayor's vest, and he gave
David a hearty slap upon the back. "Yes, sir! Happy!--that's me!
"Yes, sir," he went on, after they had boarded a car, "I've got only one
thing agin Carrie, and that is that she didn't rope me in before. Say,
she's all right--she's _It_. No siree, friend, there ain't nothin' like
gettin' married!"
The Mayor continued his praise of his present state till David and Tom
bade him good night and left the car. As they walked through the cross
street a sense of loneliness began to settle upon David; so that when
Tom slipped a hand through his arm he drew the hand close against his
side.
"You're not going to leave me, are you?"
"Me?" Tom hugged the arm he held. "Not till you turn me out!"
They walked in silence for a block. "Pard," Tom began in a low voice, "I
don't know why you've been so good to me. I don't know nuttin', an' I'm
a lot o' trouble. Mebbe sometimes you t'ink I don't appreciate all what
you've done for me. But I do. When I t'ink about when I tried to steal
your coat a year ago, an' den when I t'ink about now--I certainly do
appreciate. I'm goin' to work hard--an' I'm goin' to study hard--an' I'm
goin' to do what you tell me. If I do, d'you t'ink I'll ever make
somebody?"
David pressed the arm closer. "My boy, you're going to make a splendid
man!"
Tom looked up; tears were in his eyes. "Pard--I'd die tryin'--for you!"
he said.
When they reached the apartment house that held their new home, David
sent Tom upstairs and set out for St. Christopher's Mission. His sense
of loneliness made his mind dwell upon Mr. Chambers's offer of millions;
for earlier in the evening a messenger had brought a note from Helen
which gave the substance of her talk with her father. He would not have
returned an answer different from hers--yet in this moment he ached for
those things which had been refused in his name, and the aching drew him
to look upon that for which he had given them up.
He paused across the street from St. Christopher's and gazed at the
brilliant windows of the club-house and at the great window in the
chapel that glowed in memory of Morton. Then he crossed the street and
entered the club-house. A few young men and women were coming down the
stairway, and a few struggling late-comers were mounting to the floors
above. He stood irresolute, then noticing that farther down the hall the
door of the assembly room was open, he cautiously joined the little knot
of people who stood about it.
The room was crowded with men and women, all in their best clothes.
David quickly gathered from the talk of the officers on the platform,
all women, that this was a meeting of the Women's Club, held for the
double purpose of installing new officers and entertaining the members'
husbands. He had been gazing in but a few minutes when the new
president, a shapeless little woman, was sworn into office. The audience
demanded a speech, and her homely face glowing with happiness and
embarrassment, she responded in a few halting, grammarless phrases. "I
hope I can do my duty," she ended, "so good that Dr. Morton, who got us
to make this club, won't never be ashamed when he looks down on it."
Her other sentences had been applauded, but this last was received in
that deep silence which is applause at its highest; and it came to David
afresh that Morton was still the soul of St. Christopher's. All the
while that other officers were being installed this closing sentence and
its significance persisted in his mind, and so engrossed him that he was
startled when the folding chairs began to be rattled shut and stacked in
one corner of the room. A little later a piano and a violin started up,
and part of the fathers and mothers began stumbling about in a two-step,
and part crowded against the walls and made merry over the awkwardness
and disasters of the dancers.
David slipped out of the building. Clearer than ever before had come to
him a realisation of the responsibility of sacrifice: when one gives,
the gift no longer belongs to one--it belongs to those who have builded
their lives upon it.
Across the street, he looked back. Only once before had the Morton
Memorial window seemed to him more significant, more warm and powerful
in its inspiration--and that was on the day of his discharge from prison
when it had first flashed upon his vision. Above the glowing window the
chapel's short spire, softened by the round-hanging poetry of night,
seemed to his imagination to be the uplifted, supplicatory hands of the
neighbourhood.... Well, their Morton was safe.
When David reached home he found that Tom was in bed and fast asleep. He
walked through the scantily furnished rooms. They were still strange to
him, for this was his first night in them--and their strangeness, and
the fresh loss of two of his best friends, and the sense, which grew
heavier and darker, that he and Helen must remain apart, sharpened his
loneliness to a racking pain. He tried to dissipate it by thinking of
the ground he had gained--progress that a year ago, when all men refused
him a chance, he would have thought impossible; by thinking of the
greater achievements the future held. But he could not beget even an
artificial glow of spirits; his success seemed but ashes. So he ceased
to struggle, and gave himself over to his dejection.
He turned down the gas in his little sitting-room, and raising the shade
of a window he sat down and gazed into the street. It was always a quiet
street--and now, at half past ten, only an occasional figure moved
darkly along its sidewalks. Far above the line of opposite housetops, in
a moonless sky, gleamed thousands of white stars. Leaning back in his
easy chair, and gazing up at the remote points of light, he went over
anew the problem of his relations with Helen, and he asked himself again
if he had decided rightly. Yes, he had done right to save her.... And
yet, how he longed for the thing she was willing to give! How empty his
life seemed without it--what a far, far stretch of loneliness!
His gloom was pressing heavier and heavier upon him, when suddenly there
came a ring of his bell. Wondering who could be calling on him at that
hour, he crossed the room and opened the door. A tall figure, heavily
veiled and wearing a long coat, stepped in. Despite the veil and the
dusk of the room, he knew her instantly.
"Helen!" he exclaimed in an awed whisper.
She did not speak. He closed the door and turned up the gas, and he saw
she carried a small travelling bag in one hand.
"Helen!" he said.
She set the bag on a chair, and drew her veil up over the front of her
hat. Her face was pale, determined.
"I've come to stay," she said slowly.
He could only stare at her.
"I've come to stay," she repeated.
"Helen!" he breathed.
"I've left home--for good. I belong with you. I shall not go away."
"Helen!"
"We shall be married to-night."
He gazed wordless at her white face, and he vaguely realised what her
mind had passed through since he had left her five hours before. A wild
joy sprang ablaze within him--yet he held fast to his old decision.
"But Helen----"
"I've thought it all over," she broke in. "Everything. Heretofore you've
been the rock. Now I'm the rock--I can't be changed.... I understand
that you've refused me because you want to save me, and I love you for
it. But I have searched my soul--I know what I want, I know what I can
bear, I know what is best for us both. I know, David!--I know! Since you
would not take me, I have come here to force you to take me. You cannot
avoid it. I shall not go away."
His heart thrilled at her words, at the steadfastness of her erect
figure. "But Helen!--when I think of the disgrace that will fall upon
you--oh, I can't let you!"
"The truth is not known about either of us," she returned, steadily. "If
the truth were known and if justice were done, my father would be
disgraced and I would share his disgrace, and you would be exalted. It
would be I who would dishonour you. If I do get a part of your false
disgrace, I only get what is due me.
"You have borne this disgrace for years," she went on. "Don't you think
I have the strength to bear, supported by you and love, what you have
borne alone?"
His heart drew him toward her with all its tremendous strength.
"I've come to stay!" she repeated.
He wavered. But his old decision had still another word. "There's one
more thing, Helen. We can speak of it--we are no longer children."
"No," she said. Her mind fluttered back a month to when they had stood
together at the window of the Mission, and she smiled tremulously. "I'm
twenty-eight."
He remembered the day, too, and smiled. "And I'm thirty-one--and see,
the gray hairs!"
His face sobered. "There's another thing--children. Would it be fair to
them?--to be born into disgrace?"
A faint colour tinged her cheeks. "I have thought of everything--that
too," she returned steadily. "In a few years you will have won the
respect of all; it will be an honour, not a disgrace, to be your child."
Suddenly she stretched out her hands to him. "Oh, I want to share your
sorrows, David! I want to share your sorrows! And there will be glories!
I want to help in the good you are going to do. My life will count for
most with you ... I've come to stay, David! I belong with you! I'm not
going away! Take me!"
He sprang forward. "Oh, Helen!" his soul cried out; and he gathered her
into his arms.
* * * * *
A few minutes later, when he returned from telephoning an old clergyman
whom she knew well, she met him with a glowing smile. "I've been all
through it--I shall love it, _our_ home!"
He thought of the home she had just left. He caught her hands and gazed
into her deep eyes. "Darling--you'll never regret this?" he asked
slowly.
"I never shall."
"God grant it!"
"I never shall. This is the day when my life begins."
"And mine, too!" He drew her to him, and kissed her. "But we must go. He
said he'd be waiting for us. Come."
She lowered her veil, and they stepped into the hall. In the darkness
they reached for each other, their hands touched and clasped; and so,
hand in hand, they went down the stairs and forth into the night--and
forth into the beginning of life.