Title: The reaping
Author: Taylor, Mary Imlay
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.

*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The reaping" ***


THE REAPING


[Illustration]



  THE
  REAPING

  By
  MARY IMLAY TAYLOR

  AUTHOR OF “ON THE RED STAIRCASE,” “MY LADY
  CLANCARTY,” “THE IMPERSONATOR,” ETC.

  With a Frontispiece in Color by
  GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS

  BOSTON
  LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY



  Copyright, 1908,
  BY MARY IMLAY TAYLOR.

  _All rights reserved_

  Printers
  S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.



BOOK I



THE REAPING



I


“WILLIAM FOX? He’s the most brilliant man they’ve got, but a two-edged
sword; they’re all afraid of him!”

The speaker had just left the swinging doors at the foot of the
staircase from the Rotunda, under the old Library rooms in the west
front of the Capitol, and his companion, who was also a member, was
working himself slowly into his greatcoat.

“No wonder; he’s got a tongue like a whiplash and his smooth ways
only make its sting worse,” he retorted, between his struggles with a
recalcitrant sleeve lining and a stiff shoulder.

“That’s it, his tongue and his infernal sarcastic humor,” Fox’s admirer
admitted with reluctance, “but his logic--it’s magnificent,--his mind
cuts as clean as a diamond; look at his speech on the Nicaraguan
affair. Lord, I’d like to see the opposition beat it! They can’t do
it; they’ve done nothing but snarl since. He’ll be President some
day--if he doesn’t cut his own throat.”

“Pshaw, man!” retorted the other irritably, “he’s brilliant, but as
unstable as water, and a damned egoist!”

They had reached the top of the wide steps which descend from the west
terrace, and Allestree lost the reply to his outburst in the increasing
distance as they went down into the park below. He stood looking after
their indistinctly outlined figures as they disappeared slowly into
the soft mist which enveloped the scene at his feet. It was about six
o’clock, an early December evening, and already night overhead where
the sky was heavily clouded. The streets, streaming with water, showed
broad circles of shimmering light under the electric lamps, and the
naked trees and the ilexes clustered below the terrace made a darkness
through which, and beyond, he saw the long, converging vista of the
Avenue, lined on either side with what seemed to be wavering and
brilliant rainbows, suspended above the wet pavements and apparently
melting into one in the extreme distance, as though he looked into the
sharp apex of a triangle. The whole was veiled and mystically obscured
by a palely luminous vapor which transformed and softened every object,
while the vehicles and pedestrians, constantly hurrying across the
foreground, loomed exaggerated and fantastic in the fog. Now and then
a keen point of light, the eye of some motor-car, approached, flashed
past the Peace Monument and was lost at the elbow of the Hill.

The terrace, except for Allestree, was deserted, and the continuous
murmur and roar of city life came up to him slightly softened and
subdued, both by the atmospheric depression and the intervening space
of the park. Behind him both wings of the Capitol were vividly lighted,
for the House had just risen after a heated debate, prolonged, as he
amusedly surmised, by the eloquence of William Fox.

At the thought, that much discussed figure arose before his mind’s eye
in a new aspect created by the fragment of conversation which had just
reached him. He was in the habit of viewing Fox from that intimate
standpoint which, discovering all the details, loses the larger effect
of the whole; as the man in the wings of the theatre, disillusioned
by the tinsel on the costume of an actor and the rouge on his face,
loses the grand climax of his dramatic genius and sees instead only
the charlatan. Yet Allestree’s affection for his cousin was strong
enough to embrace even those defects, of which he was keenly aware, and
personal enough to feel a thrill of elation at the constant evidences
of an increasing recognition of Fox’s really great abilities. Yet there
was something amusing in the fear which he was beginning to inspire in
his opponents; amusing, at least, to one who knew him, as Allestree
did, to be a man of careless good humor and large indifference.

Knowing all Fox’s peculiarities, his not infrequent relaxations, and
the complex influences which were at work upon his temperament--the
irresponsible temperament of genius--Allestree could not but speculate
a little upon that future which was beginning to be of poignant
interest to more than one aspirant in the great arena of public life.

But his reflections were cut short at this point by the abrupt
appearance of Fox himself. He came out of the same door which had,
a few moments earlier, emitted his critics, and as he emerged upon
the terrace the keen light from the electric globes at the head of
the steps fell full on his remarkable face and figure. For, while by
no means above the average in stature, Fox possessed one of those
personalities which cannot be overlooked. Genius like beauty has
magnetic qualities of its own and, even at night and out of doors,
Allestree was fully aware of the singular brilliance and penetration of
his glance.

“Well, Bob,” he said genially, as he joined his cousin, “you’re a lucky
dog, out here in the open! The House has steamed like the witches’
cauldron to-night and brewed devil’s broth, tariff revision and all
manner of damnable heresies.”

Allestree smiled grimly in the dusk. “Then you must be the father of
them,” he retorted; “I just heard that you’d been making a speech.”

“Eh? you did, did you?” Fox paused an instant to light his cigar; “so
I did,” he admitted, tossing away the match, “I talked tommyrot for an
hour and a half to keep the House sitting; I might be going on still
if old Killigrew hadn’t got to his feet and howled for adjournment. He
usually dines at six sharp, and it’s a quarter to seven now; he had
death and starvation in his eye, and I yielded the point as a matter of
humanity.”

“According to recent information you have very little humanity in you,”
Allestree replied, as they descended the long flight of steps from the
terrace, “in fact, you are a ‘damned egoist.’”

Fox threw back his head with a hearty, careless laugh. “Which of my
enemies have you been interviewing?” he asked, with unruffled good
humor.

His cousin briefly related the result of his accidental début in the
rôle of eavesdropper, incidentally describing the two men.

“I know who they are,” Fox said amusedly; “one is Burns of
Pennsylvania, and the other a fellow from Rhode Island who is picking
flaws in everything and everybody; the government’s rotten, the
Senate’s corrupt, the Supreme Court is senile--so on and so on _ad
infinitum_! Meanwhile there’s some kind of a scandal attached to his
own election--no one cares what! He reminds me of Voltaire’s enraged
description of Jean Jacques with the rotten hoops off Diogenes’ tub.”

“That is not all; even your admirer feared the suicidal effects of your
tongue,” continued Allestree teasingly, “which is said to be two-edged,
while your sarcasm is ‘infernal.’”

“Oh, that’s a mere _façon de parler_,” laughed Fox, “I’m really as mild
as a lamb and as harmless as a dove!”

“Quite so!” retorted his cousin dryly, “yet I think most of your
enemies and some of your friends resort to the litany when you cut
loose for an oratorical flight.”

“Well, it’s said that even the devil goes to prayers on occasions,”
said Fox with a shrug, “so why not my enemies? By the way, the
nominations were sent to the Senate just before adjournment to-night,
and the Cabinet changes are slated; I heard it as I came out.”

“Does Wingfield go out?” Allestree asked, after a momentary pause, as
they threaded their way between the electric cars and the carriages
which were slightly congested at the crossing below the Peace Monument.

Fox nodded. “And Seymour gets his place, while Wicklow White is made
Secretary of the Navy.”

His companion looked up quickly and caught only his pale profile
outlined against the surrounding fog; his expression was enigmatical.
“Upon my word!” exclaimed Allestree, “White’s luck is stupendous--you
remember what a block-head we always thought him at Harvard? Well,
well, Margaret will have her heart’s desire,” he added amusedly.

Fox slightly frowned. “So!” he said contemptuously, “you think the sum
total of a woman’s desire is to see a chump of a husband with his foot
in the stirrup?”

His cousin smiled coldly. “My dear fellow, it was for that Margaret
married him,” he retorted, “that and his money. When I see her, as I
saw her the other night, the most beautiful and charming creature,
in a miracle of a costume,--she knows how to wear clothes that make
pictures,--I longed to say to her:--

  “‘You that have so fair parts of woman on you,
  Have too a woman’s heart: which ever yet
  Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty.’”

“Pshaw, you dreamer of dreams and painter of pictures; it’s a hollow
show, an ugly travesty! What has a man like White to give such a woman?
The husks of the prodigal!” Fox’s luminous dark eyes kindled with
anger, “when I see him--” he checked himself abruptly and walked on
rapidly, his long, easy stride carrying him ahead of Allestree. “Pearls
before swine!” he muttered to himself after a moment, plunging his
hands into his pockets and relapsing into an angry silence.

They walked on at a smart pace, having occasionally to thread their
way single file through the increasing throng, as the long blocks
slipped behind them and they approached the heart of business life
near Fourteenth Street. When they came together again after such a
separation, Allestree asked Fox if he could come home with him to dine
but Fox declined rather curtly, pleading an early evening engagement,
and Allestree said no more, having his own surmises as to the nature
of that engagement, and being somewhat guiltily aware that he was not
an entirely involuntary party to his mother’s conspiracy to draw Fox
away from a dangerous attraction. Both men were, in fact, conscious
that a discord had arisen in their usually confidential relations, and
neither of them desired to broach any subject which would add acrimony
to the conversation; with the usual masculine instinct of self-defense,
therefore, they relapsed into silence. However, at the entrance of
a large hotel on the corner, their hurried progress was interrupted
to give way to a visitor who was crossing the wide pavement to her
carriage, escorted by one of the attendants and a footman. The light
from the lobby, brilliantly illuminating the space beneath the awning,
outlined her as sharply as a silhouette against the darkness, and
her figure,--she was a young and slender girl,--was thrown into high
relief; the quiet elegance of her dress, the sables on her shoulders,
as well as the large picture hat which framed her face, being merely
superfluous accessories to beauty of a type at once unusual and
spiritual.

Fox, startled out of a revery which was largely pervaded by the
personality of another woman, could not but observe this radiant
picture; there was a vitality, a power of expression in every feature
of her face and every movement of her tall, lithe figure which at once
specialized her. She seemed to belong to a different race of beings
from those who were hurrying past her through the fog, whose figures
lost themselves at once to vision and memory, dissolving into the
masses of the commonplace, as completely as the individual sands at the
seashore are lost in the larger sweep of the dunes.

She turned her head, saw Allestree and smiled. “How are you?” she said,
with the easy manner of an old intimacy; “I hardly dare look at you--I
know I broke the appointment and several of the studio commandments!”

Allestree had hurried forward at once, apparently forgetting his
companion, and was helping her into her carriage. “You did,” he said,
“and shamelessly; but you must come and make amends.”

She laughed, her hand on the carriage door, and her eyes, involuntarily
passing him to Fox, were as quickly averted. “I will, on Saturday
at twelve--will that do, Bobby? Don’t be too exacting. I’ve a dozen
engagements, you know,” she added lightly, in a tone of careless
propitiation.

Fox did not catch his cousin’s reply, it was too low spoken, and in a
moment the horses started and the carriage passed him on its way to F
Street. Secretly a little piqued at Allestree’s failure to present him,
and yet amused at his discovery of his cousin playing knight-errant to
a beauty, Fox walked on a few moments in silence, aware that the other
was not a little confused.

But at last: “Who is she, Bob, wood-nymph, dryad, or Psyche herself?”

Allestree’s face sobered sharply. “It was Miss Temple,” he said, a
trifle stiffly.

Fox gave a moment to reflection. “Ah,” he observed, “I recollect, Judge
Temple has a daughter. I had never seen her; I’ve heard her spoken of,
though, a hundred times; her name is--?”

“Rose Temple.”

William Fox glanced at his companion obliquely and smiled, but he made
no attempt at pleasantry. After a little, however, as they approached
the residential quarter and neared his club, where he intended to dine,
he returned to the subject. “You are painting Miss Temple’s portrait?”

“Yes, attempting it,” assented Allestree, with marked reluctance; he
felt it to be almost a sacrilege to speak of a piece of work which had
become, in more ways than one, a labor of love.

He was indeed painting Rose Temple’s portrait, for he was already
a notable portrait painter, but he was doing it much as Raphael
may have painted the Sistine Madonna, with a reverence which was
full of ineffable tenderness and inspiration, and he was too keenly
aware of Fox’s intimate knowledge of him and his unmerciful insight
into human motives to endure the thought of Fox in possession of
his inmost secrets and on terms of friendship with Rose. Fox! one
of the most enigmatical, the most dangerous, the most fascinating
personalities--Allestree had seen the potency of that spell--to be
brought in contact with any woman, and most of all with a young and
imaginative girl.

After a moment Fox’s laugh interrupted him. “My dear Allestree,” he
said provokingly, “why not paint the Angel Gabriel?”

His companion, whose sensitiveness amounted to an exquisite
self-torture, bit his lip and made no reply.

At the door of the club they both paused as Allestree prepared to take
a car uptown while his cousin went in to dine.

“Sorry you can’t come to us,” he said, in a tone which was a shade less
cordial than usual; “mother will be disappointed; there is no one else
coming, and she always counts greatly on a talk with you.”

“Give her my love instead,” Fox retorted, with easy kindness, “I’m
sorry, but I dine here and then go up to the Whites’. I promised;
there’s to be music--or something--to-night.”

Allestree slightly shrugged his shoulders. “So I supposed,” he said
dryly, and signalled his car.



II


A FEW hours later William Fox presented himself at the home of the
new Cabinet minister. He was an intimate habitué of the house; a fact
which created no little comment in social and political circles, for
Fox and White were naturally almost antipodal personalities and had
often engaged in political controversies, which had inevitably ended
in White’s defeat at the hands of his daring and brilliant adversary.
But it was not their antipathies or their rivalries in politics which
aroused the gossip, of which Fox was vaguely and carelessly aware, but
the presupposed existence of an old sentimental relation between him
and White’s wife. However, gossip of all kinds troubled Fox but little,
and he followed his own inclinations with the indolent egoism of a man
who has been for many years the spoiled darling of fortune.

The house was one of the old landmarks of Washington, and the true
values of space and effect were consequently somewhat diminished by
low ceilings and small old-fashioned doors. As Fox entered he heard the
buzz of conversation in the distance, in more tongues than English, and
when the butler announced him he came upon a group of dinner guests
who were gathered around the immense fireplace at the end of the
ballroom--a huge addition to the original house especially designed
for the elaborate entertainments for which the host and hostess were
already famous--and the warm glow of the leaping fire increased the
effect and brilliance of the scene.

At his name his hostess detached herself from the group and tossing
her cigarette into the fire held out her hand in greeting. “You
inconsequent wretch!” she said, shaking an admonishing finger, “late
as usual--we expected you to dinner and M. de Caillou tells us that,
instead, you made a great speech! Pray, what became of you afterwards?”

“Total oblivion for the space of three hours,” replied Fox gaily; “I
come now to congratulate you! The next step will be the Presidency,
White,” he added, as he shook hands with his host.

“If I can keep you out of it,” retorted the secretary, dryly.

Fox laughed, acknowledging the intimate greetings of the other guests.
At a glance he saw that the gathering was as notable as usual, and
was secretly amused at White’s attitude which seemed to accept all
this as his own achievement, ignoring the influence of his wife. The
French ambassador was there, a Russian prince, an Austrian savant, an
Italian ex-diplomat, the chancellor of the British embassy, two other
Cabinet ministers, a literary celebrity, a Roman Catholic dignitary,
and a somewhat notorious French journalist and socialist who had
dipped his pen in gall during the controversy between France and the
Vatican. Margaret’s usual selections, Fox thought with a smile, and
noted that the only other woman was Mrs. Osborne, the former wife of an
American ambassador to Russia, whose divorce had created a sensation
as distinct and startling as her beauty, which was of that type which
somewhat openly advertises the additions of art. A woman, in fact, who
had given rise to so much “talk” that the old-fashioned wondered at
Margaret White’s complacence in receiving her and even admitting her
upon terms of intimacy at the house. But Margaret’s personality was as
problematical as it was charming. She stood now regarding Fox with a
slightly pensive expression in her gray eyes, which seemed unusually
large and bright because of the dark shadows beneath them, while her
small head was set on a slender white neck which supported it like the
stem of a flower. She was thin, but with a daintiness which eliminated
angles, and she possessed in a marked degree, as Allestree had said,
the talent for artistic costumes; her slight figure, which had the
grace and delicate suppleness of some fabled dryad, had the effect, at
the moment, of being marvellously enveloped in a clinging, shimmering
cloud of soft, gold-colored silk and embroidery out of which her white
shoulders rose suddenly; she was much décolletée, and, except for the
jewelled shoulder-straps, her slender but beautiful arms were bare.

She rested her hands on the high back of a chair, apparently listening
to all, but actually attentive only to that which immediately concerned
Fox and her husband, who were exchanging commonplaces with the purely
perfunctory manner of men who cordially detested each other at heart.

“White only pretends indifference,” said Louis Berkman, the literary
genius, who was one of the famous writers of the day; “actually he
is overjoyed at the exit of Wingfield; that is the very pith of the
matter, isn’t it, Mrs. White?”

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “Why not?” she retorted; “what was it
Walpole said? ‘One tiger is charmed if another tiger loses his tail.’”

There was the general laugh at this, which always followed Margaret’s
careless and daring candor.

“It was certainly a case of ‘heads or tails’ with the President,” Louis
Berkman retorted, with the ease of political detachment in the midst of
the inner circle of officialdom; “we shall have a budget now which will
carry a billion dollar naval increase.”

“You’ve lived too long in England,” said Fox amusedly, “you don’t get
our terms, Berkman. But we shall insist on Mrs. White christening all
the new ships.”

“To be sure--I forgot that I was speaking to the money supply, Fox,” he
replied; “heaven help White if he gets into your clutches; I should as
soon expect mercy from an Iroquois Indian!”

“I don’t mind that from you,” laughed Fox,--“we expect anything from
the ‘outs,’--as long as you don’t write us up for the magazines!”

“The gods forbid!” said Berkman sharply, “I’m not ‘the man with the
muckrake;’ now if--” he turned his head and, catching a glimpse of the
French journalist engaged in an animated discussion with the Italian
ex-diplomat, who fairly bristled with suppressed anger, he bit his lip
to hide a smile.

One of the secretaries leaned forward to select a new cigarette from
the elaborate gold box on the table. “Berkman,” he remarked, “I read
that article of yours on the Duma with a great deal of interest, but
I got an impression that you lost sight of the main issues in your
passion for artistic effects.”

The author responded at once to this challenge with an eagerly
indignant denial, and Fox found himself again slightly detached from
the group and still standing beside his hostess. She had been taking
no part in the conversation and seemed to be in a dreamy mood which
ignored alike her environment and her social duties. There was always
something in Margaret’s aspect which differentiated her from other
people, a spiritual aloofness from the passing moment which could
fall upon her suddenly, even in her wildest and gayest moods, and
which always carried with it a mystical, uninterpreted suggestion of
some tragic destiny, which cast a long shadow before it across the
unthinking sybaritism of her life.

“It seems some time since I saw you last,” said Fox; “the House has
been very exacting lately and abominably dull. What have you been
doing with yourself?”

“Oh, learning to dance,” she replied, “I’m to be a Merry Andrew now,
you know, for the delectation of the dear public. Wicklow insists that
I must have public receptions; good heavens, what an endless bore!”

Fox smiled. “He takes it seriously then, I see! We must look higher, in
that case; you may as well study for the White House rôle at once.”

Margaret laughed derisively, glancing across at her husband who
was leaning over Mrs. Osborne’s chair with a quite apparent air
of absorption. “Look at them!” she mocked, her eyes gleaming with
malicious mischief; “see the pose; Lily Osborne is playing now for a
Madame d’Épinay; she discusses French literature and the philosophers.
Can you imagine Wicklow as Jean Jacques? I must get him a black cloak!”

Fox laughed involuntarily, but said nothing; Margaret’s free speech
sometimes offended his finer discrimination, and the notion of
criticizing White to White’s wife did not coincide with his masculine
code. “I heard that Mrs. Osborne won the cup at the fencing contest,”
he remarked, after a moment.

“She did; Wicklow gave it, you know,” Margaret smiled sarcastically.
Then she looked at him suddenly. “Where did you dine to-night?--with
Allestree?”

“No, at the club. I really didn’t understand that I was expected here.”

“I must have forgotten how to write notes, or I have too much else to
say to you. I’m going to let Bobby Allestree paint my portrait; you
know he’s been trying to do it for years.”

Fox smiled. “I admire Allestree’s work,” he said, “but there are
limitations; one can’t paint intangible sprites.”

“Do you mean to infer that I’m not human?” she retorted with a frown;
“wait and see how beautiful I shall be.”

“You don’t really want compliments from me, Margaret?”

She was silent a moment, then she lifted her softest glance to his
face, her own pensive again and slightly shadowed with thought. “No, I
don’t!” she said abruptly, “I don’t think I should believe in them--it
makes me shiver sometimes to even imagine what you must think of me!”

Fox hesitated how to reply; he was by no means a prudent man, but he
was instinctively aware of the dangers of her mood, and he had swiftly
entertained and rejected two or three answers which would have led
them into yet deeper intricacies, when they were happily interrupted
by the approach of the French ambassador, a gentleman who united with
great astuteness and diplomatic suavity a strong resemblance to an
intelligent and bewhiskered French poodle.

“We have heard so much of those dancing steps, Mrs. White; when shall
we have the pleasure of seeing them?” he asked, smilingly courteous and
attentive.

“Oh, now!--on the instant,” Margaret retorted, her mood changing like a
flash and her eyes sparkling a gay defiance; “there’s no time like the
present. William, are the musicians there?”

Fox looked across at the palm-screened alcove, and catching a glimpse
of a violin, assented. She clapped her hands. “Tell them to play me the
Spanish piece which they played on Tuesday,” she commanded.

At the first note there was a general cessation of conversation, and
every eye turned quickly toward her. She stood in the centre of the
room, her slender arms raised and her hands clasped behind her head, a
dreamy expression on her half lifted face, the shadowy masses of her
pale brown hair framing a white brow. Her eyes drooped, her whole
aspect seemed to change, like the chameleon’s, to become an embodiment
of the dreamily seductive strains which floated softly into space,
then, as the music quickened and developed, she began to sway slightly,
dancing down the long room alone, her clinging, shimmering skirts
trailing around her feet, flowing in and out, but never seeming to
arrest the wonderful rhythmic swing of her movements. With her, dancing
was an interpretation of music, an expression of some subtle mystery of
her nature, the very personification of an enchanting grace.

There was an almost breathless attention on the part of her guests,
and no one was conscious of the displeasure on White’s full flushed
face. No one but his wife; as she danced to and fro, weaving in the
fantasy of strange figures, her eyes rested occasionally on him, and
the mockery of her glance was a revelation to those who could read it.
It was but little observed, however, nor was she understood when, at
last, with a sudden swift movement she caught up her filmy draperies,
displaying two slender ankles and a pair of wonderfully shod feet, as
she executed a deliberate fandango which not a little amazed the more
sedate of her guests.

In answer, perhaps, to some secret signal of White’s, the music stopped
abruptly and with it Margaret’s astonishing performance. Quite unmoved,
and ignoring the interruption, or rather treating it as the natural
termination of her dance, she turned with a graceful swirl of gleaming
silks and received the rather effusive applause of her guests with
heightened color and flashing eyes.

Louis Berkman alone had lost all the bizarre effect of the finish, and
been absorbed in the dance. “A poem in motion, superb!” he exclaimed,
with such genuine enthusiasm that Margaret’s expression softened.

The French ambassador was still softly applauding. It appeared that
he had seen Bernhardt execute the same figures once; “but madame’s
performance was more exquisite, an interpretation, the very expression
of the music itself!”

“Naturally,” laughed Margaret maliciously, “I’m an American,
ambassador. Did you dream that even Bernhardt could excel one?”

“_Bien!_ I admire your patriotism, also,” he replied smiling.

“Oh, it’s only the screech of the eagle! Of course you are all
enthusiastic--all except you, William,” she added abruptly, whirling
around to confront Fox with a teasing glance, “you are mute; didn’t I
please you?”

He smiled. “You bewildered me; the sudden transitions are confusing.
Where did you learn the dance?”

She put her head on one side. “Last week--that’s all I shall ever tell
you!” she replied, “but I want Bobby Allestree to paint my portrait
dancing. Wicklow would prize it so highly,” and she laughed wickedly.

“Allestree is painting a portrait now, I think,” Fox said, to turn her
aside from a dangerous channel, “Miss Temple’s, I believe.”

Margaret’s eyes widened and she looked keenly at him, an indescribable
change in her face. “Rose--yes,” she said slowly, “have you seen it?”

He shook his head. “I saw her for the first time to-night.”

She made no immediate reply. M. de Caillou and Berkman had begun
to talk together, and the others were already engaged in animated
conversation; the controversy between the Italian and the Frenchman
having been resumed was rising in a staccato duet. Fox was abruptly
aware of a stir in the room beyond and surmised the arrival of evening
guests, but his hostess was apparently oblivious.

“She is supremely lovely at times,” she said quietly, after a moment,
“but--but not exactly a beauty. What do you think of her?”

Fox parried the question easily. “My dear Margaret, I only saw her for
a moment getting into her carriage.”

She gave him a searching glance and bit her lip. He thought he had
never seen her wear so entirely the air of a spoiled child; her flushed
cheeks, her slightly rumpled hair and the angry droop of her eyes, all
appealed for praise and resented criticism. “Allestree is painting her
on his knees,” she said, with a little bitter laugh; “he doesn’t regard
her as human; you will see that he will make me the imp to her angel,
he--”

“Margaret!” Mr. White was hurrying forward, with the ruffled manner of
an affronted host; “are you blind as well as deaf, my dear?” he asked
curtly, “here are your guests!”

She turned haughtily and looked over her shoulder, her smallest
attitude always seeming to defy him, while Fox had an uneasy feeling
that he was more acutely aware than usual to-night of the impossible
relations between the two. Meanwhile, the entrance to the long room was
already filling with the rapidly arriving throng which seemed, to the
casual observer, a mass of satin and jewels and lavishly exposed necks
and shoulders, with here and there a sprinkling of the black coats of
the men.

In spite of this influx, however, the young hostess stood a moment
longer looking at them with a glance of malicious amusement in her
drooping eyes, noting the whole effect of White’s large and rather
florid personality as he received the first enthusiastic advance,
responding genially to the murmur of congratulations. Then she turned
and swept across the wide intervening space, her small head thrown
proudly back, her whole grace of figure and dignity of pose--in
direct contradiction to her former wild gayety and audacity--at once
suggesting the _grande dame_ assuming her rightful and appropriate
place. But Fox found it impossible to as easily free himself from the
haunting sorrow of her beautiful haggard eyes. Sometimes she seemed
to him to be as fragile, as exquisite and as perishable as a bit of
delicately carved ivory. Yet he was forced to dismiss the analogy,
for ivory, no matter how marvellously carved in imitation of a living
creature, is inanimate, while she was the very personification of
unrest; it seemed rather that some wild and beautiful sprite must have
been enthralled into temporary captivity, and was wearing its way to
liberty through the exquisite clay which had been fashioned into human
shape for its mortal disguise, that the touch of inevitable sadness
which sometimes came upon her was the moment when the sprite relapsed
into the melancholia of prolonged captivity.



III


IT was a little past noon on Saturday when Rose Temple went to
Allestree’s studio accompanied by Aunt Hannah Colfax, a faithful
old negro woman who had been devoted to her from childhood and now
performed the dual duties of maid and duenna with all the complacence
and shrewdness of her age and color.

Passing the quaint show-windows of Daddy Lerwick’s curiosity-shop on
the first floor, in which were displayed--in amazing medley--pewter
cups, old line engravings, camel’s-hair shawls and horse-pistols,
they ascended the long narrow flight of stairs to the rooms above. On
reaching them, Aunt Hannah promptly ensconced herself and her knitting
under the window on the landing, while Rose pushed aside the portière
and entered the studio, unconsciously carrying with her some of the
crisp out-of-door atmosphere from whence she came and of which, in
her buoyant and radiant youth, she seemed a visible and triumphant
embodiment.

“It’s perfectly angelic of me to come to-day, Robert,” she remarked, as
she greeted him, “for I’m not in the mood for a sitting and, of course,
I shall behave abominably.”

“And you wish me to be bowed in the dust with gratitude for your
angelic determination to behave abominably?” he replied dryly, looking
at her with all an artist’s perception of her beauty and a reluctant
consciousness that the glow in her eyes and the color in her cheeks
were purely responses to the keen winter air, and that neither had ever
been inspired by his presence nor called into being by his words.

Meanwhile Rose moved unconsciously before the long mirror, and removing
her hat, slightly and deftly rearranged her beautiful and luxuriant
hair as she answered him. “Why not?” she said banteringly; “you can’t
believe that any one likes to pose for an hour--even to be made into
one of your delightful pictures--but I’ll try to behave beautifully if
you’ll answer all my questions, instead of going on with your painting,
with a cigarette between your teeth and with the face of a sphinx, as
you did the other day!”

“When you asked a dozen questions I couldn’t answer!” Allestree was
selecting his brushes and contemplating the canvas on his easel with a
despairing eye.

He had already outlined Rose’s figure and decided on the desired pose,
but it seemed to him impossible to do justice to the exquisite charm of
her beauty. It was a simple picture; he had endeavored to preserve what
seemed to him the keynote of her personality, and had forborne to use
any of those effects of brilliant color, rich draperies and elaborate
accessories which a portrait painter commonly loves to lavish on a
beautiful subject; instead, he had made her figure, with its superb
poise, stand out in absolute simplicity. To Allestree she personified
all the glorious possibilities of youth, with its buoyant hopes, its
poignant truth, its magnificent faith in life, in the world, in itself.
But when he looked from her to the canvas--where he had hoped to
express something of all this--he felt deeply discouraged; his brush
might be touched with the magic of a deep if unspoken passion, but it
could never paint her as she appeared to him!

“I do not remember asking anything but the simplest questions,” she
remarked, as she took her seat in the carved armchair which he had
placed for her before a curtain of soft deep blue which seemed to
suggest an April sky; “only you didn’t want to answer them. I warn you
that I mean to be answered to-day! There’s nothing so abominable as
your silences.”

Allestree smiled a little as he began to paint, with a slow and
reluctant touch, feeling his way toward some achievement which might
at least foreshadow success. “I fancied there was a virtue in silence;
there’s a copy-book axiom to that effect,” he remarked; “besides, you
would never come here at all punctually if you are not left in doubt on
some mooted point. Mystery lures a woman as surely as magic.”

Rose gave him a reproachful glance. “And you think I like to sit here
and listen to Mammy Hannah snore while you smoke and paint?” she said
in a vexed tone, “for you always smoke and she always falls asleep.”

“Which is a special providence,” he retorted, “and the greatest virtue
I ever met in a duenna.”

Without replying Rose looked absently around her, observing the details
of his workshop more carefully than usual and noticing the harmonious
effect of the colors, which he had grouped in his hangings. There was
the high northern light concentrated on his subject, but beyond, in
the corners, there were invitingly rich shadows, and here and there a
bold, half finished sketch had been nailed to the walls. A well worn
Turkey rug covered the portion of the floor occupied by his model, and
a table in the window was set with a chafing-dish, a box of Egyptians
and an odd shaped bronze tea-pot with some egg-shell cups which he had
purchased in Japan. In a way Rose knew the history of everything in
the room and almost the cost, but there was a touch of luxury about it
which vaguely irritated her; it often seemed that Allestree was too
well off to ever be a great artist,--he lacked the spur of necessity.

“Shall you paint for a living if you are ever poor?” she asked
abruptly, resting her chin in her hand and contemplating him with a
clear and impersonal gaze.

Allestree looked up, and observing the delicate hand with its tapering
fingers and the jewelled chain which clasped her throat, smiled. “Shall
you sing?” he asked, amused.

She sighed softly. “I wish that I might--and in opera too!” she
replied, “I fear I should to-day but for father. You think me a very
useless person, I see,” she added, smiling a little, “and perhaps I am.
But isn’t it because I’ve had no chance? Girls are trained up in such
an objectless way unless they are brought up to marry. Thank heaven, I
escaped that; father is as innocent of such designs as a baby! But if
I had been a boy I should have been given a profession, I should have
had something to do instead of being expected merely to dress well and
look ornamental!”

As she spoke her face lost a little of its vivid color and animation,
but the slight pensiveness of her look seemed to Allestree to increase
the poignancy of her spell; there was a subtle suggestion of that
imaginative longing for the fulfilment of those vague youthful
conceptions of happiness and life and love which stir in all young
things, as the sap stirs in the trees in springtime and the bud forms
under the leaves.

He did not immediately reply, but continued to work on the portrait
before him which seemed to him more and more hopelessly colorless and
lifeless compared with his model. “Perhaps my point of view is too
concentrated to be of much value,” he said at length; “to me the mere
fact of your existence seems enough to compensate for the loss of a
good many more actively employed and earthly individuals who must be
working out your privileged season as a lily of the field.”

She gave him a quick, slightly amazed look, and blushed. “You speak as
though I were selected from the rubbish heap!” she exclaimed laughing,
“as though I profited by the misfortunes of others. I don’t know
whether to regard it as a compliment or not!”

But Allestree was quite unmoved, absorbed indeed in his work. “Did I
ever pay you a compliment, Rose?” he asked, after an instant, meeting
her glance with one that was so eloquent of deeper feeling that she
withdrew hers, vaguely alarmed.

“I don’t believe you ever did,” she replied hastily, with an
instinctive desire to put off any suggestion of passion on his part,
for much as she liked him and long as she had known him, Allestree was
only a lay figure on her horizon; he had never stirred her heart, and
she dreaded a break in that friendship which she dreamed of prolonging
forever with a girl’s usual infatuated belief in the possibilities of
such a friendship between a man and a woman. The channel into which
their talk had unconsciously drifted so alarmed her indeed that she
rose abruptly and went to the window and stood looking down into the
street, her perfect profile and the soft upward sweep of her beautiful
hair showing against the dark draperies which she had pushed aside,
and moving the painter in turn to still deeper depths of artistic
self-abasement.

“Robert,” she said suddenly, after a moment’s embarrassed silence, “who
was that with you the other evening? Was it Mr. Fox?”

Allestree glanced up quickly, and then stooped to pick up a brush which
had dropped to the floor. “Yes,” he said quietly, “how did you happen
to recognize him?”

“I was not sure--but I’ve seen two or three pictures of him in the
magazines and the weeklies. One can’t forget his head, do you think?”
and she came slowly back to her chair, unconscious of the change in
Allestree’s expression.

“Well, I never tried,” he confessed; “I’ve known William Fox all my
life, and he’s my own first cousin besides. It’s rather odd,” he added,
“by the way, that you never met him, but then you have been away from
the city when he has been here.”

Rose regarded him thoughtfully, her composure fully restored. “He has
a very remarkable face,” she observed, “and it is fine and pale like a
bit of old ivory.”

“Oh, yes, all the women fall in love with him,” Allestree assented with
impatient irony.

“Do they? That doesn’t sound interesting, but I should not believe
it of his face, he doesn’t look like a lady’s man! Is it true--” she
added with a moment’s hesitation--“that he has never loved any one but
Margaret White?”

“It’s true that Margaret treated him abominably,” said Allestree
bluntly; “she was engaged to him when they were both very young and
threw him over to marry White.”

“What a singular choice,” Rose observed, “White has nothing attractive
about him, and he is so selfish, so hard; they say he treats her badly.”

“He should--in poetic justice,” replied Allestree laughing, “for
she married him for his money and his position. Fox was a poor man
then with no prospects but his brains and, strange to say, Margaret
underestimated their possibilities.”

“And yet she is very clever. Did he really feel it so much?” she
added, her natural sympathy for a sentimental situation touched and
strengthened by the remembrance of Fox’s clear-cut face, which had
appeared to her vision cameo-like against the night.

“Now you are beginning to ask me your unanswerable questions,” he
retorted smiling grimly, with a keen sense of annoyance that Fox
could intrude so sharply into their talk. “I know he was very much in
love with her then, but he is on good terms with them both now and--”
he stopped abruptly; his quick ear had caught a step on the stairs
accompanied by another sound which startled him with an impatient
certainty of a surprise.

It was the tread of a large Scotch collie who lifted the portière on
his nose and walked deliberately into the room. Allestree laid down his
brush with a peculiarly exasperated expression.

“Well, Sandy,” he said, not unkindly, addressing the dog.

Rose turned and held out her hand. “What a beautiful creature,” she
remarked; “who does he belong to? Who is coming?”

Her companion gave her an enigmatical glance, observing the collie as
he approached and laid his head against her knee. The step on the stair
had now reached the landing, and they heard Aunt Hannah’s chair scrape
as she moved and her knitting needles rattled on the floor, for she had
been startled out of a nap.

“Who is it?” Rose repeated, framing the question with her lips.

“Fox,” replied Allestree dryly, laying down his palette and lighting a
cigarette; “he has an uncommonly retentive memory it appears.”

She glanced at him quickly, a suddenly illuminated understanding in her
eyes, and blushed exquisitely, for she was still young enough to be
easily embarrassed. At the same moment Fox pushed aside the portière
and entered the room.

“Hello, Bobby,” he began, and then paused abruptly at the sight of
Rose. “I fear I’m an intruder,” he added courteously.

Allestree smiled grimly and presented him to Miss Temple. “On the
contrary, I think you got the time pretty closely,” he remarked
ironically.

Fox laughed. “Guilty!” he exclaimed with perfect good humor; “down
Sandy!” he added sharply to his collie; “you’ve bewitched the dog, Miss
Temple; he rarely makes friends with strangers.”

“Then I appreciate all the more his advances,” she replied smiling, “a
dog always knows a friend.”

“And an honest man,” said Fox; “I’m free to confess that I don’t trust
one who dislikes dogs.”

“Every man has his crank,” remarked Allestree, walking to and fro
before his easel, “and if you begin on dogs with William there’s no
end.”

Rose laughed, glancing from Allestree’s slightly vexed countenance to
the serenity on the brow of his cousin, who had seated himself on the
edge of an elaborate brass-bound chest which was one of the studio
properties. “I can sympathize, Mr. Fox,” she said; “we’ve always had
dogs.”

Fox gave her one of his brilliant inscrutable looks. “I entirely agree
with Lamartine, Miss Temple,” he replied; “when a man is unhappy God
gives him a dog.”

“Good Lord, Billy, are you making a bid for our sympathy?” exclaimed
Allestree with exasperation.

Both Fox and Rose laughed merrily.

“He’s only quoting the modern classics,” she replied gayly.

“What I should like to know is how he gets out of school in the middle
of the day,” said Allestree dryly; “for a man who is supposed to be a
leader, he manages to desert at the most remarkable moments. One of the
party whips told me the other day that Fox was as hard to trail as a
comet.”

“Nothing of the sort,” replied Fox, with indolent amusement; “we
adjourned over, last night, until Monday, and I came around here as
usual to sit for my portrait.”

Allestree bit his lip, conscious that his irritability was thrown
into sharp relief by his cousin’s imperturbable good humor, and
resenting, with a sting of premonition, the effect of Fox’s pose upon
Rose Temple. He was not a dull man and could not close his eyes to the
fact that she had apparently come to life, been revivified and animated
by Fox’s entrance, and he knew well enough the interest that the
touch of romance in his past history added to his cousin’s brilliant
personality. However, it was useless to sulk at the inevitable
misfortune which had destroyed his hour with Rose, and he turned his
attention to hospitality.

“Will you make tea for us, Rose, if I set the kettle boiling?” he
asked, as he drew forward the table, “I’ve got some cakes in the
cupboard and a few sandwiches.”

“Why, of course; it will be delightful,” she assented readily, rising
from her chair to help him find the tea caddy. “I’m eternally indebted,
Mr. Fox; he’s going to let me off a half-hour’s posing,” she added,
smiling over her shoulder at him.

He laughed, moving over apparently to study the half outlined portrait
on the easel, but really enjoying the sight of the graceful figure
bending over the table, and her delicate hands engaged in opening
the caddy and measuring the tea into Allestree’s old tea-pot. As she
did so the light from the window fell vividly on her bright head,
and the exquisite details of her profile, the curve of her cheek and
chin, the thick lashed white eyelids, the short upper lip, the little
pink ear, all engaged Fox’s critical and appreciative eye. Like most
men who are forced to live in bachelor apartments, he felt keenly the
domesticity of the little scene and the touch of gracious femininity
which her presence lent to the tea-table. There was a charm, too, in
her unconsciousness, and he was almost sorry when she finally turned
with a steaming cup in her hands.

“You’ll have to take lemon,” she said, “for Robert never has cream
unless it’s sour, but do you take sugar?”

“He takes three lumps to a cup,” interposed Allestree bluntly; “but
he’ll probably deny it--he’s a politician.”

Fox laughed. “And in the house of my friends!” he said; “but that is
only a _coup d’état_ on his part,” he added, “to keep me from asking
for his last lump, Miss Temple; I saw him looking for more just now.”

“We’ll draw lots for it, Robert,” said Rose gayly, taking her seat at
the table and smiling across at Fox from pure pleasure in the little
unconventional picnic.

But Allestree’s attention had been arrested by something in the street
below, and he interrupted them with a gesture of despair. “Mrs. Osborne
is coming!” he announced with a grimace.

Rose glanced hastily at the clock. “Oh, I must be going,” she
exclaimed; “I had no idea it was so late!” and she rose hurriedly and
reached for her hat.

Allestree murmured something uncomplimentary to his approaching
visitor, and Fox set down his cup of tea. The first tremor of an
earthquake shock could scarcely have broken up the little group more
abruptly. Rose had put on her hat and adjusted her filmy veil, and it
was Fox who helped her with her coat and her furs. Allestree, instead,
threw a cloth over the picture on the easel.

Rose held out her hand. “Good-by,” she said with a charming smile;
“I know I’m a trying model, but you’re a perfect angel of patience,
Robert.”

As she spoke there was a frou-frou of skirts in the hall, and Lily
Osborne came slowly and gracefully through the portière. She was a
handsome woman with an abundance of reddish gold hair and long black
eyes which had the effect of having no white, a peculiarity possessed
by Rachel and also, we are told, by the devil.

The two women bowed stiffly and Rose slipped out, attended by Fox
and Sandy, leaving Allestree to devour his chagrin and receive his
accomplished visitor.



IV


ALLESTREE lived alone with his widowed mother in a roomy, old-fashioned
mansion in one of the older residential sections, which stand now like
decadent environs of the more brilliant quarters where the millionaire
and the multi-millionaire erect their palaces. But these changes, in
matters of fashion and display, did not trouble the serene bosom of
old Mrs. Allestree, who felt that she held her place in the world by
the inalienable rights of birth, blood, and long established family
position, for, happily, she had as yet no notion of the shadowy
nature of such claims in the event of financial disaster, which is
as impersonal as the deluge. She was contentedly aware that her
old-fashioned drawing-rooms had been the scene of many a brilliant
gathering even before her nephew, William Fox, became such a figure
in the public eye that his frequent presence in her house was enough
to draw there the most distinguished and representative men at the
capital. But the old lady herself was clever, shrewdly conversant with
the world and its affairs, and not averse to giving ear to the current
gossip; she was, indeed, often amused at her son’s aloofness from
these worldly concerns which pleased and interested her the most. For,
though a detached spectator, because of her age and her comparatively
delicate health, she was yet keenly aware of the drift of events both
social and political, and possessed the advantages of age in being able
to make comparisons between the past and the present, with a touch of
eclecticism amusing in one who had been so devotedly attached to the
frivolities of fashion. She could draw more accurate deductions than
many who were more intimately concerned in the whirling conflict of
social and political ambitions which was raging around her. When the
President quarrelled with the party leaders, when Congress administered
a rebuke by withholding a vote of confidence, she was able to recall
this or that parallel case, this or that precedent for an action which
to many seemed unprecedented, and when the entertainments at the White
House began to evolve a new system of exclusions she could point out
an incident when some former President’s wife had tried to introduce a
similar measure and had met with disaster on leaving her stronghold,
lost at once in the current of a social millrace which whirls to
oblivion the queen of yesterday and the leader of to-day, engulfing all
past glories in a maelstrom of forgetfulness; the inevitable condition
in a republican society where there can be no hereditary distinction
and those of class are constantly fluctuating with the rise and fall
of fortunes, the manipulations of the Stock Exchange, while birth and
breeding have no consideration at all in comparison with the purchase
power of gold.

Fully aware of these things, and rejoicing in the rich memories of a
varied past, when she had known all the great men of her day, old Mrs.
Allestree delighted in observing the world of fashion from her retired
corner and, though devoted to her son and admiring and believing in his
talent, she sometimes suffered a keen pang of regret that her sister
and not she had borne William Fox. But she was jealously afraid of this
secret thought, scarcely admitting it even to herself, because of her
intuitive feeling that Allestree had already suffered and might suffer
more at the hands of his brilliant and careless cousin, and that he was
supremely gifted in the refinements of self-torture.

It was twilight, and Mrs. Allestree sat alone by her drawing-room
window watching for her son’s return from his workshop. She had been
a very handsome woman, and even in age retained much of her beauty
and dignity, and her figure and face were finely outlined as she sat
against the folds of heavy velvet curtains, looking down into the
street where the lamps had just been lighted and shone with the vivid
whiteness of electricity on the smooth pavements, while the carriages
and motor-cars were beginning to wheel by on their return from
afternoon receptions, teas, and matinées. Below, at the circle, she saw
the gayly lighted electric cars sweeping around the curve and receding
to a final vanishing point of light at the top of a distant hill, while
above it the sky was still bright with the afterglow and one star shone
like the tip of a naked sword. The city in this retired quarter showed
its most kind and friendly aspect, suggesting nothing of the struggle
and rush of modern life, but only the whirl of winter gayety, the
ceaseless rounds of society.

Within was an atmosphere of repose and comfort; the tea-table was
set by the open fire, and the rose-patterned, silver tea kettle was
emitting a little cloud of steam when Allestree finally opened the door.

“Well, mother, you here alone in the dark?” he remarked, as he
turned on some light and revealed the warm homeliness of the large
old-fashioned room, with its mahogany furniture, its soft rugs and
velvet hangings, and its long, oval mirrors framed in gold and
surmounted by cupids and lovers’ knots.

“Never less alone than when alone,” she replied brightly, and then
glancing shrewdly at his slightly perturbed expression, she added:
“you’ll take some tea, you look tired.”

“No,” he replied, throwing himself into an easy chair by the fire;
“Rose made some tea in the studio, and it’s a bit too late now for
another cup.”

“So Rose kept her appointment? I hope you got on with the portrait.”

Allestree shrugged his shoulders. “Impossible, Fox came and then
Lily Osborne. The gods don’t mean that I shall finish that picture.
And Reynolds painted several of his best in eight hours!” he added
despairingly.

But his mother ignored the latter part of his speech. “Fox?” she
glanced at him keenly, “then the House adjourned?”

“Yes, and he knew Rose was to be there,” Allestree laughed a little
bitterly; “it was the merest chance in the world, he was with me when
I met her the other day. Of course he came in as handsome, as gay as
ever--and as careless!”

Mrs. Allestree had left her seat by the window and was mechanically
pouring out a cup of tea, her fine old hands under their falls of
lace as firm and deft as a girl’s. “I wish he was less careless,” she
observed quietly; “I’ve just heard some more gossip about him; Martha
O’Neal was here to lunch. It appears that he was really selected for
the Navy, could have had the portfolio for the lifting of his finger
and, at the last moment, when there was no apposite reason for a
change, there was a deal and White got it.”

“Well, we can’t blame him for that, can we?” said her son smiling, “you
know the saying is that the Administration will not ‘stand hitched.’”

She shook her head. “That’s not it--he made the deal himself; he
deliberately favored White, and you can imagine what is said; every one
believes that silly story that he’s desperately in love with Margaret
still, and, of course, it looks like it. He could have saved Wingfield,
and he didn’t, and you know Mrs. Wingfield hates Margaret!”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Allestree calmly; “Fox is too
much of an egoist. Probably he didn’t want to go into the Cabinet; in
fact I’ve heard him say it was a safe receiving-vault for the defunct
candidates. Can’t the women ever forget that he was in love with
Margaret?”

“Possibly they could,” his mother replied shrewdly, “if Margaret wasn’t
in love with him.”

“Good Lord, how you all flatter Fox!” her son exclaimed, with
exasperation, “for my part, I can’t fancy that Margaret ever loved him;
she treated him abominably to marry White, and now she has everything
she wants, money, luxury and power; she’s a perfect little sybarite.”

The old woman looked at him with an expression of affectionate
tolerance. “My dear boy,” she said quietly, “Margaret is wildly
unhappy; money never yet purchased happiness; that’s the reason she
behaves so outrageously. Have you heard of her latest? She danced a
kind of highland fling or a jig after her dinner the other night. White
was furious, and they’re telling a story of an open quarrel after the
musicale when he swore at her and she laughed in his face.”

“White is a brute, but Margaret chose him with her eyes open,” he
replied, “and I think Fox feels it. At any rate there’s nothing in
that gossip about Wingfield; he had quarrelled with the President. You
know the story is that he was found walking up and down his hall, the
Wednesday after Congress met, shaking his fist and shouting about the
message. ‘That damned message!’ he said, ‘it will ruin the party--if
I’d only been here!’ He was away at the time it was written and, of
course, that paragraph did virtually condemn his administration of the
department. He had to resign; that goes without saying!”

“I suppose so, and Mrs. Wingfield talked; we all know what a tongue she
has!”

Allestree laughed, leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped
behind his head. “Well, she’s going, anyway.”

“But she isn’t,” sighed Mrs. Allestree; “she’s to stay over two months,
heaven knows why!”

“The Lord deliver Margaret then!” exclaimed her son, still laughing.

Mrs. Allestree nodded sagely. “Margaret can hold her own though,
Robert, and everybody knows how she has insulted Mrs. Wingfield.
Margaret’s _bon mots_ have convulsed the town time and again. You know,
as well as I do, that it was Margaret who set half the stories going
about her. Margaret can do and say the most shocking and heartless
things at one moment and be the most charming creature at the next. She
often seems to me to be a perfect Undine, to have no soul! Really,
sometimes her treatment of White is impossible. Even Lily Osborne
professes to be shocked at the dance the other night; she told Martha
O’Neal that it was as suggestive as Salome.”

“Mrs. Osborne is a hypocrite,” retorted Allestree scornfully; “by the
way, I’m to paint her portrait. I put it at a figure which, I thought,
was prohibitive and precluded all possibility of an order, but she
closed it at once, without turning an eyelash.”

Mrs. Allestree gave him a long, comprehending look. “White pays for it
then,” she remarked dryly.

“Of course,” he replied, “and White pretends to quarrel with his wife’s
wild ways!”

The old woman set down her teacup and looked mournfully into the fire.
“It’s a terrible business from beginning to end,” she said finally;
“when I think of those two poor babies! Little Estelle is just
beginning to notice things too, and Margaret seems utterly indifferent
to them. What is the world coming to?”

Allestree laughed and patted his mother’s hand. “You can’t regulate it,
mother,” he said cheerfully.

“Heaven forbid! There are too many divorces; one can’t go out now
without meeting men with two wives and women with a plurality of
husbands; yet we are objecting to seating the Mormons in Congress!”

“After all, is a divorce worse than such a marriage as Margaret’s?” her
son rejoined, indolently enjoying the controversy.

“There should have been no marriage,” she retorted firmly, pushing back
her chair and rising with a rustle of silks, “White could never have
loved her, he hasn’t been true to her for a moment. Her beauty pleased
him, or that charm which is more subtle than beauty and which makes her
what she is. Now he’s lost his head over the gorgeous coloring, the
flesh and blood of Lily Osborne; she would have pleased Rubens, Robert.
By the way, Martha O’Neal told me of a curious rumor about her; it is
said that she is in the secret employ of the Russian Government; you
know she has no conscience.”

“A spy?” Allestree laughed, “but why here? We’ve done Russia a good
turn, it’s Japan that is chewing the rag.”

“Robert! what a disgusting expression. But of course you know the tales
of the Black Cabinet and that our embassy dispatches were tampered
with.”

“Now you’re in your element, mother; you love a mystery!”

The old woman put her hand on his head, stroking back his hair with a
fond gesture. “Tell me about Rose,” she said, watching him narrowly,
with all her maternal intuition alive; “did she sit patiently--and will
your portrait please you? That’s really the only question; every one
else is sure to be pleased.”

He shook his head. “I can’t get it to please me,” he replied quietly;
“after all, Rose’s beauty is less a question of feature than I thought.
I might interpret a soul if I were a Raphael or a Fra Angelico--as it
is, it will never look like her.”

“Nonsense! Rose is very human; don’t put her on too high a pedestal,
my dear,” his mother counselled wisely; “you are too sensitive, too
imaginative. Fox would never make the mistake of treating a woman like
a saint on a pillar!”

Allestree made an inarticulate sound and rose also. “Fox--no!” he said
a little bitterly; “Fox could make love to Saint Catherine without
offending her; he’s one of the men whom women love!”

His mother smiled but made no reply; at heart she was fully aware that
there was much truth in the saying. Old as she was, she felt the
indescribable spell of Fox’s genius, and knowing her son’s heart as she
did, she foresaw difficulties in the way of his happiness if his cousin
should forget his old love and find a new one. Much as she had desired
and endeavored to break up the unfortunate intimacy between Fox and the
Whites, she had not foreseen that her own son’s happiness might be, in
a way, dependent on Margaret’s power to hold her place in the regard of
her early lover. As she stood looking at the fire in silence the shrewd
old woman reflected that the ways of Providence are inscrutably hard to
divine and that, after all, it is sometimes fatal to thrust one’s hand
into the fire to save a brand from the burning.



V


THAT Mrs. Allestree’s divinations were not very far short of the truth,
or unlikely of fulfilment, would have been apparent to her could she
have looked in, a few weeks later, on Rose and Fox together in Judge
Temple’s fine old library. In the judge’s estimation the library
was the one spot of the house, the sanctum sanctorum, and its noble
book-lined walls imparted a warmth of color and an erudite dignity to
a room of fine proportions lighted by an immense southern bow-window
which overlooked the walled garden, where Rose had cultivated every
flower which blooms in summer and every evergreen vine and ilex which
lives in winter.

Over the high wide mantel was one fine old painting which testified
both to the extravagance and distinctive taste of the judge’s
grandfather, and on the book littered table stood a slender vase
filled with roses. There was an exquisite delicacy, a refinement, an
atmosphere of culture, even in such minutiæ as these, which gave a
detailed charm to the perspective of the entire house.

Rose herself sat in a high-backed chair by the open fire, her bright
head and slender figure outlined against the dark background, while
she listened, with all the freshness and enthusiasm of girlhood, to
Fox’s gay, easy talk, his dog, Sandy, lying stretched on the hearthrug
between them in the blissful content of physical comfort and the
instinctive assurance of safety and friendship which Rose’s presence
seemed to increase.

To Fox, half the girl’s charm lay in a certain rigid mental
uprightness, a clear ethical point of view, which was entirely
different from the careless tolerance of the smart set in which he
had hitherto almost exclusively moved. Fox had no religion; Rose was
devout, and swift in her denunciation of wrong, for she had all the
terrible unrelenting standards of youth and the religion of youth which
is wont to be the religion of extremes. Her character was indeed just
emerging from that raw period of girlhood which is full of passionate
beliefs and renunciations as well as a shy pride which can inflict
keen mental suffering for a little hurt; a season when the mind is
wonderfully receptive and the young, untried spirit full of beautiful
inspirations, hopes, and beliefs which are too frequently destined to
woeful annihilation in later years.

Fox had recently made a great speech, a speech which had filled both
the floor and the galleries of the House to suffocation, and even
thronged the corridors with spectators who could gain no admittance,
yet, while it had thrilled Rose’s pulses with excitement and enthralled
her with the spell of its eloquence, her rigid sense of the proprieties
had been shocked; she had felt its flowing periods its scornful
references to mysteries which seemed to Fox as rotten as they were
immaterial, and the fact that she had taken umbrage at phrases of his,
which seemed to him sufficiently innocuous to escape all criticism,
amused and pleased him. It was a new point of view; he liked to tease
her into expressing a shy opinion, or into a sudden outburst of
righteous disapproval which brought the color to her cheek and the
sparkle to her eye. It delighted him to feel that even disapproving
of him she could not hate him, for in their dawning intimacy he found
ample assurance of her liking, and the unguarded friendliness of her
feeling showed in her eagerness to win him to her side on any mooted
question.

He leaned back in his chair, watching her with a keen appreciation
of her loveliness and her unconscious betrayal of her own emotions.
“So! after all you didn’t approve of me the other day?” he said, with
perfect good humor; “you were really condemning my ethics while you
applauded--you know you did applaud, you told me you congratulated me
on my ‘great speech.’”

Rose returned his teasing look seriously. “I did congratulate you; it
was a great speech, but I didn’t like it,” she said in a low voice and
with an evident effort.

“And why?” he asked, his brilliant gaze bent more fully on her.

She turned away, her cheek red, and resting her chin on her hand she
fell to studying the fire though she was still courageous. “I didn’t
like the tone of it; you belittle your own great gifts,” she said
softly, hesitating slightly and choosing her words with care; “you make
them of your own creation when they are really given you, given you as
the five talents were given to the man in the Scriptures. You haven’t
laid them away in a napkin; why then are you ashamed to give the glory
where it is justly due? You can’t deny that there is glory in it all!”

He smiled. “You make me feel like a thief. To be entirely honest, I’m
not religious, but I read the Bible and Shakespeare as dictionaries of
eloquence. Do you think me a dreadful sinner--worse than those on whom
the tower of Siloam fell?”

Rose bit her lip. “I’ve no doubt you think me a hypocrite!” she replied.

“I should like to tell you what I think of you,” he said softly,
leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, looking across at her, “but
I’m afraid--afraid of you!”

She laughed a little with a charming diffidence, for she had met the
sweetness of his glance which was full of gentle admiration.

“I sometimes wonder,” he continued, “how you would meet a great moral
question which involved your happiness and, perhaps, that of another
whom you loved.”

She shivered a little, stretching out one slender hand to the fire.
“Ah,” she said, with a faint smile, “I hope I may never meet such a
question! I see you make me a Pharisee.”

“God forbid!” he replied quickly, “you belong rather to the Christian
martyrs; I’m either a Barbarian or a Scythian!”

They both laughed softly at this, and Rose forgot her momentary
embarrassment. “I should try to be just!” she said.

He shook his head with that rare smile of his which seemed half
mocking, half caressing. “You couldn’t be!” he retorted provokingly,
“you are a little Puritan, narrow, firm, righteous; I begin to be more
and more afraid of you!”

She lifted her chin. “You think me too narrow to be just? Isn’t that
the charge that you worldlings always bring against--against--”

“The righteous?” he supplied quickly.

They laughed again. “You convict me out of my own mouth; I shall dare
no more arguments!”

“Ah, now you know how I feel under your criticisms!” he flashed back at
her.

His manner wore its happiest aspect, it was delightful to be with her;
through all contradictions he began to feel the temperamental sympathy,
and she, too young to understand these subtleties, was aware of the
glow and warmth of his presence, the sweetness of his manner which
could be, when he was neither stern nor angry nor self-absorbed, one of
a delicacy and sentiment uncommon in a man; with all his egotism, his
spoiled acceptance of the world’s homage, he retained qualities that
were inherently noble and lovable.

“But I have more reason,” she declared with warmth, “it’s unworthy of
you to espouse any cause for the mere sake of party, ‘to stand pat’
when your heart is against the issue; I don’t believe in it!”

“You have been reading revolutionary documents; you are full of this
new heresy,” he retorted, still laughing softly; “you are like some of
the new politicians; they pull down the pillars of the temple on their
own heads.”

She leaned forward eagerly, her eyes sparkling. “Do you know what this
party worship reminds me of?” she said, “this devotion in a man to
his party? The tomb of Rosicrucius and the statue which crushed the
worshipper who entered there! So your party’s graven image crushes out
a man’s originality.”

“Little heretic!” he mocked, “little revolutionist! A party is a great
machine; we can’t do without it!”

She shook her head vehemently. “The children of Israel thought they
couldn’t do without the golden calf! You were not so strong a party man
five years ago, do you remember?”

He looked at her quickly. “Do you?”

“I read your speeches,” she confessed with charming ingenuousness,
her eyes kindling with emotion; “I read the first speech they ever
printed in the newspapers here. I’ve wanted to tell you how beautiful
I thought it, how eloquent!”

He regarded her a moment in silence; he felt suddenly that there had
always been a link between them, that across space and time he had
spoken not to the public but to her, and even been understood by
her; that the virgin whiteness of her young soul had received the
inscription of his mind. Then he was as suddenly and vividly conscious
of his folly, his egotism, his unworthiness! She was too lovely and too
innocent to have received the impression of his spirit; and he--the
thought of his careless life, his worship at Margaret’s shrine, the
strength of the old fetters which bound him, made him suddenly humble.
And then, the beauty of her smile, the warm sympathy of her temperament
created an angry impatience of such restrictions; with characteristic
scorn of conventionalities he thrust them aside. The perfect innocence
and spontaneity of her praise and appreciation was the most subtle of
all flattery, and he possessed the temperament of genius which is, at
one moment, above the consideration of either praise or blame and the
next quivers with sensibility at the breath of either. He returned her
shy but glowing look with one of unusual humility. “I feel as if I
didn’t deserve it,” he said gently; “it is an exquisite happiness to
be praised by you!”

She smiled. “And I feel ashamed to have set myself up as a judge,” she
replied quickly, “but it was because--because I didn’t want you to fall
below your own standard! You see what it is to have a record of great
achievements.”

“Hereafter I shall only seek to deserve your praise,” he rejoined, “but
I feel myself a sublime egoist; I’ve sat here talking of myself, of my
work, and meanwhile I remember that my aunt told me of your voice. Why
do you never sing for me?”

“Because you have never asked me,” she replied simply, with an
involuntary smile.

Fox leaned toward her with an eloquent gesture of appeal. “Did I
deserve that? Am I such a miserable egoist?” he exclaimed, and then: “I
ask you now.”

Rose was entirely unaffected, and she went at once to the piano in
the room beyond, and seating herself began to play the first soft
notes of a prelude. Fox had followed her and took his place near the
instrument, again observing her with keen appreciation; her sweetness,
her whiteness of soul had taken possession of his imagination with
a force which he had supposed, until this moment, impossible. For,
after one bitter and humiliating experience in the drama of love and
passion, he had withdrawn with seared sensibilities, and assuming a
new attitude had regarded women as a detached spectator, fancying that
he possessed a high degree of eclecticism in comparing the emotional
phases of their existence which should be henceforth quite apart from
his; love and marriage were mere episodes in a man’s life, and feeling
no need of assuming either the duties or the responsibilities of the
latter state he had not seriously contemplated the former as anything
but a remote possibility. Besides, in a curious way, his life seemed
to be linked with Margaret White’s; she continued to make claims upon
him, to tacitly presuppose his devotion, and he had been too uncertain
of himself, too indolent, too easily drifting with the tide to make any
effort to free himself from the shackles of that old love affair. But
all these things slipped out of mind as he sat listening to Rose’s song.

It was a simple Italian love-song, soft, caressing, gently plaintive,
and peculiarly suited to her voice, but the air and the words were
nothing compared with that voice. When Mrs. Allestree spoke of it,
Fox had thought of it as the usual vocal accomplishment of a raw
schoolgirl, something young and sweet, no doubt, but full of crudity
and weakness. Instead, he was suddenly aware that he was listening to a
voice which had a scope and richness beyond any that he had ever heard
except in opera, and there were but few of the great singers who had
such a gift as this. The thrill and exquisite freshness of its tones
touched his very soul. He found himself listening with a keen feeling
of depression; this gift of hers lifted her at once into another sphere
than his, and he reflected that her beautiful body was an exquisite
envelope for the spirit, her voice its divine interpretation.

His mind drifted back to the sweeter and more sacred relations of life,
to those simple emotions which approach more nearly the divine. The
complex affairs of the world, of politics, passion, intrigue, slipped
away from him, and the holier aspects of a pure and devoted life took
visible shape to his imagination in this young and beautiful girl. He
had never fully appreciated his own susceptibility to the uplifting
power of music, and the charm of her voice seemed more poignant because
so unexpected; he lost himself in a delightful revery, the poet in him
awoke with a thrill of pleasure,--the joy we feel in discovering a new
power, a larger grasp; he was no longer conscious of his surroundings,
but only of the supreme delight of her presence.

As she finished singing, her hands slipped from the keys into her lap
and she turned and looked at him, smiling, expecting some applause,
unconscious of the depth of his emotion. For a moment he said nothing,
then he rose and held out his hand, his eyes eloquent of feeling.

“Exquisite!” he said, and she blushed with pleasure, knowing that he
could not express his appreciation in words.

She laid her hand in his, rising too. “Thank you,” she exclaimed, “I’m
so glad!”

As she spoke and while he still held her hand, intending to tell her
how profoundly she had moved him, they were both suddenly aware of some
one’s entrance, and turned to see Mrs. White standing just inside the
drawing-room door. She had entered unannounced, and stopped abruptly as
she came upon the little scene. She was elaborately dressed in black
velvet with ermine furs, and an immense bizarre hat of violet velvet
and chiffon with masses of violets on the wide brim. Under her arm was
a toy Pomeranian as black as her gown and as glossy as silk, its little
black head just appearing over her immense ermine muff. She had evaded
the servant’s intention of announcing her, she had thought only of
surprising Rose at her music and had come upon this! She stood still,
a sudden spiritual perception sweeping over her and thrusting a blade
of agony into her heart. Every vestige of color ran out of her cheeks,
her gray eyes dilated. When they turned they surprised a look on her
face which distorted its usual gayety and defiance. Then she thrust it
aside with a great effort of will, with the force of a new and vivid
determination, and greeted their amazement with her light little laugh.

“Caught!” she said, “next time I shall send a footman--or ring a bell!”

Rose came forward with a blushing but eager welcome, but Fox stood in a
moment of awkwardness which both vexed and amused the woman. Men have
no resources, she thought bitterly.

As for him he experienced a shock of dismay; he was trying to shake
off a vague feeling which possessed him that he had no right to be
there, that he owed allegiance still to Margaret, that her look, her
manner, her very presence demanded it while, in fact, she had long ago
forfeited all claims upon him.

Meanwhile she had led the way back to the library, driven Sandy away
from her Pomeranian, and was seated in Rose’s chair, an elegant and
conspicuously important figure, at once the centre of the stage; she
had one of those personalities which are immediately predominant in
society. “So,” she said lightly, “this is why William deserted my
Sunday afternoons; I should have looked for him in vain!”

“It seems you are yourself a deserter,” Fox retorted, “this is your day
at home.”

“You thought me safely anchored?” she laughed, with a little mocking
intonation, caressing the Pomeranian’s ears; “I should be, but I had
to make a call of condolence. Wicklow insisted; you know he’s so
conventional and so determined upon being the popular public man! Mrs.
Wingfield lost her grandmother two weeks ago so, of course, I must call
and make my condolences!”

Fox laughed softly; her manner brought back the normal tone of affairs
and he knew her moods to perfection. “Of course you condoled?” he said.

She shrugged her shoulder, looking at Rose. “My dear,” she said, “you
will be interested; no mere man could understand. I’ve always been
uncertain in my mind about the correct mourning for a grandmother; now
I know,--it’s settled beyond appeal.”

“By Mrs. Wingfield?” Rose smiled her incredulity.

“By Mrs. Wingfield--it’s shrimp pink!” Margaret said, “she had on a
tea-gown with lace ruffles; it was a violent, vivid shrimp pink, and
her nose was red. Of course I said all manner of appropriate things.
Everybody stared, then I made a grand finale and departed. She was
furious. And Wicklow sends me out to make his way for him!” and she
threw out her hands with a little gesture of mock despair.

“Why do you tease that poor soul so?” Rose protested laughing, “she
falls an easy prey, too. I heard they were going abroad soon.”

“In three months,” Margaret said, “to the Riviera; they tried
Switzerland, she told me, a year ago, but she found ‘it wasn’t really
fashionable.’”

“Margaret!” Rose shook an admonishing finger, “you make her say such
things, you know you do!”

Mrs. White raised her eyebrows, her eyes haggard. “One would suppose me
a Sapphira. She truly said it and I kept on asking her what she said;
she repeated it twice,--they were all listening of course, and M. de
Caillou tried to look plaintive.”

“He’s solemn enough anyway, Margaret,” Fox said, amused; “he might well
be shocked at your levity.”

“Oh, I always want to make him sit up and beg for a lump of sugar,” she
retorted scornfully.

As she spoke she rose and went to the window, looking out with an
abruptness of manner which seemed to take no account of their presence.
She was struggling with an overwhelming dread; with the keen intuition
of unhappiness she read Fox’s mood, and her very soul cried out
against it. But she was an actress, an actress of long training and
accomplishment. She turned carelessly, lifting her Pomeranian to her
shoulder and resting her cheek against its long black fur. “There’s my
motor back,” she said, catching a glimpse of it through the long window
in the drawing-room. “I’m going home to receive Wicklow’s public. Can I
borrow Fox, Rose?”

Rose turned easily, mistress of herself and aware of his annoyance,
keenly alive to the possibility that his old love for Margaret might
still be a factor in his life. “I’m afraid I haven’t asked Mr. Fox to
take a cup of tea,” she said laughing; “father is late and you know we
dine early on Sundays; we’re very unconventional and old-fashioned.”

Margaret was trailing slowly to the door, her velvet draperies and her
long ermine stole seeming heavy and burdensome on her slender figure.
“Oh, I know,” she retorted, “you’re Old Testament Christians; I’m
always expecting to see the scapegoat caught in your fence-railing!
In spite of my shortcomings though, you are going to sing for me some
Sunday, Rose, and make my sinners think they’ve found the gate of
Paradise.”

But Rose shook her head, laughing. “Ask father,” she said; “he declares
that I shall not exhibit!”



VI


“MAMMA, give me the beads!”

Margaret turned reluctantly and looked down at the child, a girl
between five and six years old, without even the ephemeral beauty of
babyhood, and showing already a strong resemblance to her father. “By
all means, only don’t swallow them; it’s after the doctor’s office
hours,” she replied carelessly.

She was seated before her toilet-table clad in a silk kimono, and her
maid had just finished doing her hair and gone in search of some minor
accessories of the toilet, for her mistress was dressing for a large
dinner at Mrs. O’Neal’s. Meanwhile Margaret sat looking into the oval
mirror in front of her, making a keen and critical survey of her own
face and figure. As she did so she moved a candle slightly, and thus
throwing a stronger light on her features was startled by the haggard
look in her eyes, the purple rings beneath them, the hollowing of her
cheeks. Was she beginning to lose her beauty? The thought alarmed her,
and she leaned forward looking at herself more closely. Yes, there
were lines, and she was thin, deplorably, unquestionably thin. The
vivid misery of her expression in this unguarded moment was apparent
even to her. Heavens, did she look like that to others? The thought
was pregnant with fierce mortification; she must be wearing her heart
upon her sleeve! And Fox? Was she losing him? The keen pang of agony
which had shot through her at the sight of Fox and Rose together, at
the glimpse of that little scene by the piano, recurred to her with a
burning sense of humiliation. Was she to taste this bitter cup also?

She had known for years the miserable mistake of her choice of White,
she had grovelled in the dust of repentance, but there had been one
drop of honey in the cup of gall, one saving grace in the situation;
she was sure that Fox still loved her, that he would be true to her.
No other woman had been set up in her shrine. She knew how deep the
hurt had been, and she had fondly believed that she alone could heal
it. Through all those arid years, those years of gayety, of luxury, of
false happiness and false show, she had hugged her secret to her heart;
Fox still loved her!

And now? What had she read in the kindled sympathy of that look at
Rose Temple? She bit her lip, staring into the mirror with haggard
eyes. Could he give her up? She, who knew so much of the brutal egotism
of which a man can be capable, she who had seen such a nature as
White’s revealed in the scorching intimacy of married life,--dared she
picture Fox as unselfish enough to be still true to her, to content
himself with comforting her wretchedness when love and youth and
beauty--beauty such as she had never worn--might be his? Her sore heart
throbbed passionately in her bosom. She had expiated her mistake, she
had suffered for her fault, she had a right to be happy! She would be
happy; it is the eternal cry of the human soul. “Every pitifullest
whipster,” says Carlyle, “seeks happiness, a happiness impossible even
for the gods.” And Margaret’s wilful soul cried out for happiness; why
should it not be hers? She was shackled, it was true, with fetters of
her own forging, but--the eager thought of liberty darted through her
mind like an arrow--others had been so bound and were now free, others
were making new lives out of the old, and the ease with which such ties
can be dissolved was not the least of her temptations.

Her glance fell suddenly on the child, Estelle, playing soberly with
the amethyst beads which she had begged for. The little girl had
learned to be quiet; if she was noisy or in the way she was immediately
dismissed to the nursery, and she had her lesson by heart; she was
making no noise but a soft crooning sound as she fondled the beads.
Her hair was flaxen, her face dull and not pretty, her eyes like her
father’s. Margaret shuddered and averted her gaze; how cruel that she
should look like him! And the baby, only two years old but already like
him; she felt it her curse, the retribution of her loveless marriage,
that these two living and visible links to bind her to her vows were
both like the man she had married without love and without respect,
because she could not give up her life and its luxuries to be poor. A
marriage with Fox then would have meant the renunciation of everything
which seemed to her essential to existence, it would have combined
the miseries of cheap living and self-denial, of small and hideous
economies, which made her shudder even to contemplate; she had always
been a sybarite. Brought up by an extravagant, pleasure-loving mother,
by a father who had spent all to live well, Margaret had been unable
to conceive anything more horrible than genteel poverty, and White had
offered her a dazzling vista of wealth, position, social success. She
was very young, raw, untried, and the temptation had been too great.

As she sat there, idly, at her toilet-table, surrounded by all the
beautiful and splendid luxuries of a boudoir which had been fitted
up with reckless expense to meet her whims and self-indulgences,
she remembered with keen self-contempt her excitement over her own
magnificent wedding, her tour through France and Italy in a motor-car
which had cost a fortune; then a keen pang wrung her heart as she
remembered the boy they had killed in the little crooked Italian
village and the people who had stoned them! She had felt it then as a
cruel prognostication of ill luck, a terrible beginning of her married
life and now, whenever she closed her eyes, she could see again the
narrow street, the brown Italian houses, that seemed ready to topple
over on them, the children playing, the vivid sky above--then the
cry, the awful scene, the child’s dead face. She shuddered; so had
her gilded dream of happiness ended; a cry, a rush of misery, and
now her sore heart to hide, the dance of death to go on to the end
unless--again came the haunting thought; it had beset her lately,
tempted her, teased her. It was so easy, it would be so easy to break
the bonds, and who could blame her? To be happy!

“Mamma, it broke!” Estelle cried suddenly, with a quivering lip, “I
didn’t do it!”

Margaret turned and looked at her. “No matter,” she said strangely, “it
broke easily, didn’t it, Estelle? Thank heaven, one can break chains!”

As she spoke there was a knock at her door, and White himself entered.
He was not a large man but his face was broad and heavy, his hair had
been light but was now gray above the ears, and his jaws were slightly
purpled by high living. There were some who thought him distinguished,
chiefly those who always perceive a halo around officialdom and wealth.
Actually he belonged to that type of man who has been in clubs,
political and social, from boyhood, who has unlimited money, a mighty
egotism and the unfailing preference for his neighbor’s wife. Meeting
Margaret’s challenging glance he paused near the door, his hand on a
chair, and looked at her with a cold fixed eye which neither changed
nor wavered as he spoke.

“I have something to say to you,” he began in a hard dry tone; “it
seems to me about time to speak out. I don’t know what’s come over you;
you’re clever enough, but you seem to forget that I’m a public man. You
were absolutely rude at the reception this afternoon, and your whims
are intolerable. It’s all very annoying! If I choose to open my house
to the public I expect my wife to accept the rôle and then to play it
to the end.”

Margaret looked at him. “I fail to understand you,” she said
ironically; “is this a lecture?”

“You may call it what you please,” he retorted angrily, walking to and
fro; “you know well enough!”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m dressing for dinner--you’d better wait
until another time,” she remarked with a yawn.

“There’s no time like the present,” he said harshly; “your manners were
detestable to-day; you treated people like dogs!”

She laughed bitterly. “For instance?” she said, “Lily Osborne?”

“Mrs. Osborne knows better than to care!”

“She should!” Margaret mocked, “she should expect it; I congratulate
you on her admirable humility.”

He gnawed his lip, the veins swelling in his forehead. “I warn you!”
he cried fiercely, “I will not permit such behavior--your dance at the
musicale is the talk of the town, and now you receive people who come
here with indifference--and I’m a Cabinet minister!”

“Which is a miracle!” his wife replied, laughing softly and
provokingly; “you made a mistake in your marriage, Wicklow; you should
have chosen a more popular person.”

“I’m aware of my mistake!” he retorted, still walking, and picking up
first one knick-knack and then another and setting them down again; “I
was a damned fool! I thought you witty and fond of society; I fancied
you a success and you can be one if you choose, but everything’s upside
down with your whims. You keep Fox hanging around here--you know that
he and I are at sword’s points in politics, you know that he--”

“Leave him out please!” Margaret interposed in a cold, hard voice. She
had risen and her eyes glowed with passion.

White turned a lowering look on her. “Fox didn’t marry you!” he said
cuttingly, “he was too wise!”

She made no reply; she could have answered that she had given up Fox
to marry him, but the sting of the insult cut her to the quick, his
allusive familiar tone was a whiplash. She turned away, her white face
set, a singular light in her eyes. The passion of her hatred of him at
that moment was almost beyond restraint; her very flesh quivered under
the throb of her maddened nerves. His coarseness, his brutality, his
sensuousness revolted her; she felt, under the sting of his lecture, a
mere bondswoman, and her fetters fairly burned into her soul. It seemed
to her that she could no longer breathe the same air with him.

The child caught her sleeve timidly. “Mamma, don’t!” she whispered,
“please don’t make papa look so--I’m afraid!”

Margaret looking down at her saw anew that hateful likeness. “Go away!”
she shuddered, “you’re just like him--I can’t bear it; go, I tell you!”

The child’s hand dropped and her lip quivered with impotent anguish;
she could not understand, but she read her mother’s chilled, repellant
look and it frightened her still more; she drew her arm across her face
and fell away with a sob. Margaret, whose heart would have been touched
at another moment, hardly heard her.

“I want you to understand,” White began again, angrily, unmindful of
the little girl’s presence, “my position. I’m a--”

Margaret interrupted him with an impatient gesture. “Gertrude is coming
with my gown,” she said coolly, “I think you may spare me any more at
present.”

White turned with a frown, and seeing the maid at the door with
her arms full of white satin and lace, he gave way with a growl of
discontent while his wife smiled calmly at the startled girl and bade
her hurry; it was nearly eight o’clock.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the dinner Margaret was the most conspicuous and observed figure at
the table; she was strikingly dressed in white satin, her lace bodice
fastened on the shoulders with jewels, her long, slender throat wound
with pearls, and the black lace scarf--which she wore in deference to
her hostess who was dining a cardinal--only accentuated the peculiar
pallor of her face and the whiteness of her bare arms. She was radiant,
witty, vivacious; her reckless tongue never ceased its unmerciful
chatter. She talked Spanish to the Spanish ambassador, Italian to the
Papal delegate who sat opposite, she entertained the cardinal. Every
eye was on her; she was at once the most unusual and the most talked of
woman in Cabinet and Diplomatic circles, and she had a wit as keen as
it was unmerciful.

White watched her with an increasing feeling of uneasiness, he read
defiance in her manner and began to dread some overt challenge; he had
been untimely in his remonstrance, and he felt it too late.

Meanwhile their hostess loved the fair offender, and aided and abetted
her in her wild sallies. Martha O’Neal was an old, old woman, the
widow of a famous and wealthy jurist, and she was herself famous as
a hostess and a social leader. Her eyes were still bright and keen,
though her hair was white as snow; she knew everybody, everybody knew
her; a worldly old woman who pursued society with the eagerness of a
young débutante, played bridge for high stakes, smoked cigarettes in
an exquisite holder of gold and amber, hurried to receptions, balls
and routs with a tottering gait and a slightly vibrating head; a woman
of large knowledge of the world, shrewd political partisanship and,
withal, an eager and determined Romanist. Her dinners were famous;
no more than ten ever sat down at her table, and usually five or six
was the limit; she believed in conversation, not in isolated pairs.
She had a service of gold, she would have no lights but candles. Huge
candelabra were set in niches in her walls and on her table; her cut
glass was famous, her roses the rarest money could purchase, yet
nothing was lavish, nothing glaring or vulgar or new. The flavor of
her old wine was as famous as the subdued taste of her surroundings;
in a season of display and a city where riches are ostentatious, her
drawing-room had the effect of space and repose, there was no crowding
of useless and glittering furniture, no blaze of gold, no medley
of bric-à-brac and sculpture. What she possessed represented the
expenditure of a small fortune; for the rest, her beautiful mahogany,
her rare silver were inherited.

The old woman, with the keen perception of long social training,
had discovered all Margaret’s gifts as an entertainer, and her
occasional outbreaks--as the famous dance and other not less bizarre
performances--only gave her an additional value as an element of the
unexpected. Mrs. O’Neal, therefore, rarely gave a dinner without asking
Margaret, though she included Margaret’s husband with a grimace and a
shrug. To-night she was delighted with her guest’s gayety, her wit,
her endless vivacity, and she watched her across the wide table with
some curiosity, much too keen not to observe the haggard misery which
Margaret tried in vain to hide. The dark, Italian face of the delegate,
the broad heaviness of White, who wore a perturbed frown, the keen,
fine lines of the Spanish ambassador, the placid commonplace fairness
of the ambassadress, the vivid coloring of Lily Osborne, the thin,
ascetic face and keen eyes of the cardinal were all in sharp contrast
to the pale face, the shadowy hair, the brilliant eyes of Margaret
White. Mrs. O’Neal, watching her, wondered and was amused.

The dinner was a splendid affair, the delegate talked with the smooth
ease, the habitual guarded courtesy of the Italian churchman, the
ambassador was genial and responsive, the cardinal said little,
throwing in a word now and then, but a word which set the ball rolling,
and Margaret never failed. She had never appeared so witty, so sweet,
so dangerously amiable.

It was over at last, the cardinal leaving early, and as he rose to
depart, the women present being all ardent Catholics except Margaret,
rustled forward to kneel and kiss his ring, while Mrs. O’Neal,
following the old custom abroad, had bidden her footmen bring the
candles, and the Romanists present were gathered at the head of the
stairs to light his eminence to the door.

There was a little pause, and Margaret, a slender, white-robed figure,
her shoulders veiled in a diaphanous black scarf, came forward to bid
the cardinal farewell. White, who stood apart uneasy and conventional
in the midst of the dramatic little scene, turned in time to see her
kneel devoutly and kiss his eminence’s ring.

       *       *       *       *       *

They drove home early through the lighted streets and neither spoke
a word during the short drive to their own door. The footman helped
Margaret with her wraps and attended her up the steps; White had
entered ahead of her, and when the servants were gone and she had
crossed the hall to the stairs he called her. She turned, with one foot
on the lowest step and her hand on the balustrade, and seeing the deep
flush on his heavy face she smiled a little with a slightly scornful
shrug.

He looked across at her with an expression of savage anger,
ill-suppressed. “Your conduct passes all patience!” he said bitterly,
controlling himself with an effort; “you know where I stand, that I
want to be President, and you flaunt your defiance!”

She returned his look, her head thrown back, her eyelids drooping, the
delicate hollows in her cheeks apparent in the half light. “Pray, what
is it now?” she asked provokingly.

He gnawed his lip, the cords standing out again on his forehead. “You
know,” he said in a low voice, “you make yourself ridiculous by
kissing the cardinal’s ring! I don’t care a damn for your religion, but
I do care for the Protestant vote; they’ll have this in the papers!”

She laughed a tormenting laugh. “I’m thinking of becoming a Romanist!”
she said.

He stared at her,--words were inadequate but his face whitened. The
slim elegance of her figure in its splendid dress, her dusky hair, the
dazzling white of her forehead, all seemed to him so many additional
reasons to hate her. He had bought her for these things, for her charm,
her wit, her daring, and she had turned every weapon against him and
defied him. He felt a shiver of rage sweep through him, controlled it
and turned away at last with clenched hands.

She remained standing, one hand on the balustrade, the other lightly
holding her cloak which was slipping from her bare shoulders, and her
eyes followed him with ineffable scorn and mockery.



VII


MEANWHILE William Fox was plunged deeply into the vortex of a busy
session. The holidays were over and Congress had settled down to its
task; it was the short session year, and the bulk of the large supply
bills were being pushed steadily through the House,--the routine
of business being constantly interrupted by the _fanfaronnade_ of
noisy members and the agitation of tariff revision which hung like a
nightmare over the party in power, and was a delightful fetich for the
minority to drag out of its hiding-place and dangle before the eyes of
their opponents. Fox, who was a leader, besides being a great orator,
was constantly employed in holding down his followers, stamping out any
sparks of rebellion and silencing the enemy.

He was sharply conscious, too, of the tongues which were busily engaged
in circulating rumors about him, for there was more than the proverbial
mustard seed of truth in the story which Mrs. Allestree had heard. He
had indeed been on the point of entering the Cabinet, but White’s
double dealing and not his voluntary surrender had been the cause of
the exchange. There had been an agreement between the two men who were
both from the same state; White had been allowed to come to the Senate
to serve out an unexpired term of two years under a pledge to keep out
of Fox’s way in the matter of Cabinet changes. He had broken his word
at every point and had succeeded in a shrewd manœuvre to prejudice the
Administration against the more clever man, no difficult matter where
jealousy of Fox already existed. Moreover White had the inevitable
prestige of great wealth, powerful connections and an easy conscience.

Fox had known many of these things when White received his portfolio,
but his later discoveries had placed him in a position where he no
longer cared to be so frequent a guest in White’s house; to break
bread with the man who had wilfully maligned him was an offence to
his coldly scrupulous pride. Fox was careless of public opinion, fond
of indulging his own whims and fancies, and easy in his tolerance of
offenders against himself, but when a man transgressed the laws that
he laid down in matters of personal honor and integrity he could be
uncompromisingly severe and contemptuous. Of late, therefore, Fox had
absented himself from White’s table and from those evenings--famous
among the favored few who obtained invitations--when Margaret
entertained the brains and the talent of the capital. Literary men
were always there, artists, musicians, scientists; it was said of Mrs.
White that she would entertain a famous thief if he had wit. But there
had been another and a more potent attraction for Fox; he had found
the seclusion of Judge Temple’s library, the old judge’s slow and
studious speech, the magnificent voice of Rose, more potent charms than
the conversation and music of Margaret’s _salon_. Having discovered
the temperamental sympathy and ingenuous friendship in this young and
beautiful girl, Fox had begun to pursue that interesting study of
character which leads to but one result--whether it be tragic or happy.

At this stage, too, of the matter, Fox ignored the feelings and the
possible claims of his less brilliant cousin; he was aware that
Allestree loved Rose, but he considered it as an affair of little
moment because he perceived clearly that Rose did not love him, that
not even the most scrupulous adjuration on his own part could convert
her indifference into a more tender feeling toward the painter. At
first he had entertained very little serious thought of the matter, but
the charm of Rose’s personality, both spiritual and physical, had very
soon begun to take hold of his imagination, and if he secretly compared
her fresh, sweet immaturity with Margaret’s worldliness and finish it
was to plunge the thought instantly into oblivion. The girl was so
young, so fresh, so easily responsive to his wit and his eloquence,
that it was like discovering a pure and beautiful flower in a hedge
of thorns. Between his work, therefore, and his study of Rose he had
managed to refuse more than one invitation to the Whites’, and his
absence was beginning to be sharply observed.

There was a rumor that White had quarrelled with him about Margaret,
that Margaret had herself openly dismissed him, that he was vexed
at the loss of the Cabinet place; in short, the usual crop of idle
ingenious stories which spring up in the height of a winter season,
like a growth of noxious weeds, were in full bloom and strength.

Fox was watching the slow progress of an important bill through the
lower House, and busily engaged at the same moment on the Naval
Appropriation Bill in which White was intimately concerned, and which
offered a wide scope for the surmises of those who were watching
the two men. It was an open question whether Fox intended to thwart
the Secretary of the Navy or to support his effort to get a larger
appropriation. Conscious of the scrutiny to which he was subjected,
Fox worked on, with an enigmatical smile, and betrayed nothing of his
thoughts or his position.

It was late one Thursday afternoon and he had been speaking on an
important matter for more than an hour, endeavoring to close up a
question which threatened to be of international significance, and,
thoroughly fagged, he finally left the floor of the House amid a
tremendous outburst of applause. As usual the galleries had been
packed to hear him, and he managed to make his way out with many
delays, stopped on all sides by members and personal friends, eager to
congratulate him on another great speech.

Once out of the lobby, he was crossing the corridor on his way to
a committee-room when he heard his name spoken, and turned, to see
Margaret detach herself from a party of fashionables who had been
in the Diplomatic Gallery, and come toward him. As they met he was
immediately aware of the change in her that a few weeks of absence
had made sharply apparent. She was extremely pale and her eyes seemed
abnormally large and shining under the brim of her immense picture
hat, her elaborate dress only accentuating the slightness of her
figure. She held out her hand without smiling. “I want to speak to
you,” she said, almost with an air of command, “where can we go?”

He turned, hesitating a moment as to some suitable spot, arrested by
the thought that Margaret’s presence there or anywhere, alone with him,
would be so much fuel to the fire.

But she solved the problem for him. “Come outside,” she said; “it’s
heavenly on the terrace, the sun is setting. Besides, I can’t breathe
here in these corridors--heavens, where do they get their tobacco?”

“Not where you buy your Egyptians,” Fox laughed.

She shrugged her shoulders. “The doctor says I mustn’t smoke any more,”
she said, “but I shall.”

“The doctor?” Fox cast a startled glance at her white face; “what’s the
matter, Margaret?”

“A cigarette heart, I suppose!” she replied laughing, and then as the
smile died on her lips an expression of dull misery fell like a veil
over her features.

They had crossed the Rotunda together and gone out by the same
door where Allestree had waited months before. As they emerged upon
the terrace they were enfolded in a radiant atmosphere, the sun was
setting, and the whole western façade of the Capitol, the fluted
columns of the loggia before the old library rooms, the long rows of
shining windows, the magnificent arch of the dome, were bathed in the
glowing light which seemed to flood the world. There was still a little
snow on the sheltered slopes of the terrace and under the trees, but
the promise of spring was in the air and in the deep blue of the sky
above them. Margaret stopped abruptly and stood looking down at the
panorama at their feet; absorbed in her own emotions, she did not
immediately perceive the expression of her companion’s face; it was one
of extreme reluctance, of reserve, almost of resentment. He had a man’s
hatred of a scene, of being “talked about,” and he knew that such a
circumstance as their tête-à-tête at such a time could scarcely escape
unnoticed. He was annoyed and disturbed, but for once she was blind to
those potent signs.

Keen as Margaret’s perceptions were, she shared with other women the
passionate blindness to change in another when her own heart was
clamoring to be satisfied; her vision was warped by one aspect of
it all; she remembered those moments, long past, of comradeship and
sympathy and passion on his part; she remembered and she refused to
believe that change was even possible.

The silence for a moment was almost oppressive, then she spoke without
trusting herself to meet his eyes. “You have refused two invitations to
dinner, and you have quite deserted my evenings and my Sundays,” she
said in a low voice.

Slightly embarrassed he began some conventional excuse, but she
lifted her hand with a peremptory little gesture. “I know--I quite
understand,” she said; “Wicklow has behaved abominably but--am I to
suffer, too?”

“My dear Margaret,” he replied, without too deep emotion, “such a
possibility is absurd!”

She looked up, searching his face, and her smile was the shadow of
itself, pale and suddenly controlled. “You do not mean to accept his
hospitality again?” she said, with an effort.

He was deeply annoyed; why must she force this issue upon him? He was
capable, at times, of extreme hardness toward others. To-day she was
unfortunate enough to jar upon him, to recall too sharply White’s
conduct. “I’m not prepared to say,” he replied with some impatience;
“can’t we avoid the subject? Tell me of yourself, Margaret, you look
tired and pale.”

She bit her lip, a sudden color refuting his charge. “I am very well,”
she replied coldly; “I danced until two o’clock this morning; at
eleven I received a delegation of Wicklow’s jackdaws; at two I lunched
with Madame de Caillou--she is so diplomatic that she only discusses
generalities and parrots; she has three--M. de Caillou not included; he
belongs to the poodle class. At four I came here with Mrs. O’Neal and
Lily Osborne; I give a dinner to-night and then go to the opera. It is
much the same to-morrow. Have you a cigarette, William?”

He opened his case and she selected one and lit it; Fox was not
smoking. “I presume that it will be in the newspapers to-morrow
that I was seen with a cigarette on the terrace talking to the next
President,” she remarked dryly; “I mean you to be the candidate,” she
added, “Wicklow is playing for it but--” she laughed, blowing the
cigarette smoke into rings before her face.

“He will probably be nominated,” Fox rejoined easily; “he has a large
following; I shall like to see you in that rôle, Margaret.”

“To see me?” she shrugged her shoulders; “my dear William, do you
happen to know what Lily Osborne is doing?”

He laughed. “Ask me something easier!”

Margaret stopped in her promenade and looked out over the city;
it seemed to float in a golden mirage, all commonplaceness, all
familiarity lost in the radiance of the western sky, against which,
here and there, a cross-crowned spire thrust its slender, tapering
height, or a campanile rose, dark and sharply pictured, above shining
roofs. Far off the bells were ringing, sweetly and insistently, an
evening chime.

“She is using Wicklow to attain her ends,” Margaret said, a little
mocking smile on her pale face; “he is dull and infatuated. I am told
she’s in Russian employ and there is information, plenty of it, in his
reach. You mark my words, she’ll ruin him--he’ll never be a candidate.”

Fox frowned. “Pardon me,” he said abruptly; “I cannot listen.”

She tossed her cigarette over the terrace and watched it descend, a
mere spark in the dusk below, where evening lay in purple shadows.
“Forgive me,” she returned lightly, “I forgot--men are such
conscientious creatures and I--I’m an unscrupulous wretch, but I’m not
cruel, William!”

“Nor I!” he replied, with a slight change of color, “but, Margaret,
can’t you see how impossible--”

She laughed bitterly. “I’m very dull,” she remarked.

A shuddering recognition of some new, terrible barrier between them
tore her heart. She held out her hand. “Good-by,” she said in a low
voice, “I’m going to ask you to dine again--will you come?” her
feverishly glowing eyes fixed themselves on his face.

Fox colored again, conscious that he must seem an ill-mannered brute.
“Of course I’ll come,” he assented, vexed at himself and touched by the
sudden sweetness of her manner.

But her smile was wan; she felt as if the universe moved beneath her
feet; as yet the moment was delayed when her wounded heart would refuse
to submit, and her whole passionate, sensuous nature rise up to battle
for life and love.



VIII


ROSE let the bridle lie loosely on her horse’s neck as they halted at
the elbow of the path. Rock Creek, leaping over its gray boulders and
flowing between them with little swirls of foam, comes rushing madly
past, slips under the trailing branches of a weeping birch and suddenly
widening, hushes its tumult and drops placidly below the ford, where,
in summer, in a wide shallow basin, the swan and the little white
ducks lie. The scene was wild; the untouched forest rose behind them,
its bare gray limbs against the sky, the black green of an occasional
spruce or cedar breaking the monotony above the brown-leafed earth and
closing the long vistas of stripped tree trunks which stand on the
shoulder of the hill in serried ranks in the teeth of the north wind,
like soldiers, with their faces to the foe. Below, the stream gurgled
and murmured; on the farther bank the dense growth of young maples
showed here and there a scarlet bud. The air was sweet, redolent with
fresh pine and the promise of the spring; overhead the crows were
flying by twos and tens and twenties, lost at last in the soft blue
distance.

Fox, who was riding with Rose, dismounted and turning back the dead
leaves on a sunny slope found a single spray of arbutus. She uttered a
little exclamation of pleasure, holding out her hand.

He laughed. “When I was a boy I always found the first wild flowers,”
he said; “I knew just where the blood-root grew and the anemone. Since
then I’ve been making speeches at the primaries and getting votes for
my party. There’s no comparison between the two pursuits!”

She had the arbutus in her hand and gave him a challenging glance; she
began to understand him better, but her convictions were too strong to
be subdued. “You mean that you’ve given up your life for politics, just
to be a part of a machine?”

He assented, still smiling as he remounted, and the horses moved on at
a walk.

“I can’t see why you think it noble to be merely a politician,” she
persisted.

“Am I?” his amused eyes met hers.

“Yes!” she retorted, “a statesman is above his party, before it; he
guides, moves, sways it. You like to call yourself part of a machine!
You don’t vote against a bill which concerns the party--that’s being a
politician!”

“But I can’t betray my party,” he objected, unmoved.

“You should be independent of it.”

“You can’t judge,” he argued, with his teasing laugh, “your coat is of
another color.”

“Well, at least it isn’t Joseph’s!” she exclaimed vexed.

“You think I can’t be trusted?” He pursued the subject with a boyish
enjoyment of her red cheek and kindling eye.

“I didn’t mean that--of course party men can be honest, but I don’t
call it the highest honesty to vote against your own convictions for
any party.”

“Yet that is what I did on a bill the other day,” mused Fox, “because
the party opposed it.”

“Was it a good bill?”

“Excellent.”

“And you voted against it when you believed in it?” indignantly.

“I’m the guilty creature,” he replied, laughter in his eyes but his
face sober.

Rose bit her lip.

“You see it’s a bad moment to make a split in the party; next year is
the Presidential campaign,” he continued provokingly.

She could not restrain her indignation. “Aren’t you ashamed to go
against your own conscience for that?” she cried; “it isn’t worthy of
you.”

“Then you think better things of me?” he argued softly, “you see a
chance for my redemption?”

She looked up and met his glance fully but with a sudden feeling of
confusion. “It is because you are meant for so much greater things that
I speak,” she said finally; “I think you will be a greater man than you
are now at last.”

His manner softened at once, with that subtle gentleness which no
man knew better how to use. “Your belief should make me so!” he said
gravely; “a man might accomplish much to justify your belief in him!”

She averted her face, her lip trembling. Around her the woodland seemed
suddenly transfigured, the tumult of the stream, breaking here in
little cataracts, scarcely leaped more wildly than her pulses; before
them the long road narrowed in a beautiful perspective where trailing
branches locked their spectral arms and the evergreen honeysuckle hung
on gray rocks.

Fox leaned forward in his saddle, trying to meet her eyes, but seeing
only the soft curve of her cheek and throat. “Will you try to believe
in me?” he asked, with that new sweetness of tone which took the sting
out of his jests.

But she had touched her horse lightly and he shot ahead, trotting down
the long road, his rider swaying and bending slightly to avoid an
occasional sweeping bough. Fox followed quickly, and overtaking her,
the two horses galloped together while their riders relapsed for a
while into a significant silence.

“Did you know that my portrait is nearly finished?” Rose said at last;
“I think that Robert has painted it out and in again just five times.”

“It isn’t in the least like you,” retorted Fox sharply, “he has made a
failure.”

“Oh, no, every one likes it!” protested Rose.

“Not at all,” said Fox; more calmly; “I don’t--neither does Allestree.”

“He has too high a standard for his work,” she replied laughing, “but I
hoped you liked it.”

“No picture of you could ever please me,” he retorted significantly;
“when I shut my eyes I can still see your face. Allestree’s wits have
been wool-gathering; he has made an image, nothing more--he--”

Rose interrupted laughing. “Please don’t tell father; he likes it, and
Mrs. Vermilion was so pleased that she and Mr. Vermilion have ordered
life-sized portraits of the entire family, _en masse_ and singly;
Robert’s fortune is made.”

“The Vermilions are parvenus,” said Fox, with a shrug; “poor Bob!”

“And why poor Bob?” she objected lightly; “it seems to me the greatest
good fortune.”

“Does it?” Fox looked down at the creek musingly; “and yet I say, ‘poor
Bob.’”

She colored, scarcely conscious of the cause of her blush, unless Fox’s
dreamy sympathy for Allestree touched a responsive chord in her own
bosom when she remembered how lightly she had thought of him and his
unspoken but candid devotion to her; a little thing, a word, a gesture
reproached her with ingratitude, for how easily she had passed over
all those years and forgotten Allestree in the charm of his cousin’s
presence! Then she remembered all the stories she had heard of Fox’s
love for Margaret Ward before she married White; steadily as she had
tried to forget them, to cease to think of his past where it touched
another woman’s life, the stories suddenly took tangible shape and it
seemed to her that Margaret was concerned with his existence and she--a
mere intruder. Rose, whose heart had been hitherto as untouched as a
child’s, shrank with infinite shyness and reluctance from those old
dead leaves of passion which had never yet sullied the whiteness of her
soul.

Some intuition, perhaps, of her feeling warned him, for he began to
tell her stories of his boyhood and gradually spoke of his home, his
dead mother, his father who had been a distinguished jurist, and so,
little by little, won her from her mood. His gentleness, his kindling
speech, the tenderness of his eyes thrilled her again with that
wonderful attraction which was part of the man’s genius and which even
his enemies found incontrovertible.

He told her of his mother’s gentleness, her profound religion, her
meekness compared with his father’s fierce severity, an Old Testament
Christian who beat his boys if they did not go to church three times on
Sunday and also to meeting on Thursday nights. “And out of that home I
grew up a heathen and a publican,” he said with a smile.

Rose looked steadily before her; far off the road dwindled, and she saw
Sandy racing a squirrel to a tree. “How can you?” she said at last, in
a low voice.

“Confess it?” He leaned forward and touched her hand; “will you convert
me?”

She looked up, their eyes met with the shock of sudden feeling. Her lip
trembled like a child’s. “I’m not wise enough,” she replied simply;
“you would end by laughing at me!”

His face sobered. “Am I so utterly unworthy?” he demanded.

She was silent; the water rushed and murmured beside them, and the
still bright atmosphere seemed to palpitate with some great mystery;
were all barriers really disappearing and a new sweet understanding
emerging from the challenge of their two opposing temperaments? Her
heart trembled and beat fast at the thought; it was so wild, so
improbable, so dangerously sweet. Then she made one great effort to
master her emotions, to be herself. She schooled herself to meet his
eyes again, with that new subtle sweetness of expression in them, that
delicate understanding of her mood which frightened her!

“Who am I that I should judge?” she said tremulously, with a charming
smile, full of youth, simplicity, unconscious confession.

Something in the very girlishness and purity of her face, and her
unguarded mood smote Fox with sudden humility; he felt himself the
veriest worldling and sinner compared with her. What right had he to
thrust his life into hers? His hand closed over hers with unconscious
force. “Who are you?” he repeated passionately, “my guardian angel.”

Rose smiled; there were tears in her eyes but his emotion had the
effect of crystallizing hers, she understood her own heart at last, and
with a woman’s intuition began to hide it; she withdrew her hand gently
and the horses went on.

Neither spoke; both had been deeply moved and there was a new happiness
in mere companionship. It was one of those rare moments, in the higher
relations between man and woman, when a new situation emerges from the
old, a more beautiful understanding is established, and the exquisite
gentleness of his mood was a revelation to her of a phase of his
character which she had only dimly perceived.

The road had left the creek now and following the rising ground lay
through a growth of stunted cedars; the stillness was broken suddenly
by the full sweet note of a robin.

Rose turned with kindling eyes. “Hark!” she exclaimed softly; “doesn’t
that make you think of apple-blossoms? There must be periwinkles
somewhere!”

The spell was broken and he smiled, turning to look back for the
singer. At the same moment Sandy stopped and pricked his ears.

There was a full sound in the air, a throbbing and buzz of some machine
and a big motor-car swung suddenly around the curve and bore down
upon them. The road was narrow and both riders had to turn out on to
the short turf beside the cedars. The car came on, and then abruptly
slackening its speed it stopped a few yards beyond them and some one
called to them.

Rose looked back startled and met Margaret’s eyes. Mrs. White was
leaning on the door of the car and beckoning to them, her great crimson
hat flaming against the dark background. Meanwhile Louis Berkman had
slipped down from the farther side and came up to Rose smiling, hat in
hand.

“I feel myself as fortunate as Balaam’s ass,” he said gayly, “since I,
too, have met an angel in the way!”

“Never mind, Rose,” interposed Margaret laughing; “Louis is a poet and
he’s had a terrible experience, he isn’t quite himself!”

“I don’t in the least mind being called an angel; I rather like it,”
Rose retorted with amusement; “it is only a little startling. What has
happened, Mr. Berkman?”

“Nothing of the least importance,” he answered, a trifle stiffly; “only
Mrs. White is laughing at me.”

Margaret still leaned on the door of the motor-car, her face as white
as paper against her flame-colored hat, but her laugh was light and
careless; the fierce pain tugging at her heart demanded a mask and she
wore it gayly and well. “He went to the White House last night,” she
exclaimed maliciously.

“What new form of insanity overtook you, Berkman?” asked Fox; “went to
a crush?--and it wasn’t compulsory either!”

“Oh, I’ve repented,” Berkman retorted, with a harsh laugh; “I’ll never
be taken alive again!”

“What happened?” Rose asked, laughing softly, her hand on her saddle
and the reins hanging loose while the horse cropped the dry turf and
dead leaves.

Margaret’s laugh interrupted again. “Let me tell them, Louis,” she said.

Berkman shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of assent, coloring a
little in spite of himself.

“He got an invitation without the cabalistic sign,” Margaret began,
her eyes dancing, “and, in the ignorance of his soul, he went. He
was an hour and a half getting in,--you know how they come--two and
two--like the couples that left the ark. They had to keep on the
carpet; he says one of the ushers kept shouting: ‘move on--keep on the
carpet, don’t scratch the floors!’ Louis, did you wear hobnails or
sabots?”

“I wish I’d worn overshoes!” he retorted disgustedly; “fancy it--I’ve
been received at Buckingham Palace and in Berlin and Vienna; it’s the
first time I was ever told ‘to keep off the grass!’”

“Your own fault!” laughed Margaret, “you should have come to me. He
never got into the Blue Room at all! Tell us what you saw in the East
Room, Louis?” she mocked.

“What I saw?” Berkman drew a deep breath of indignation; “a damned lot
of goats like myself; the sheep were figuratively roped off in sacred
precincts--I saw you going to supper.”

“Served you right!” laughed Fox; “no sane person goes without the open
sesame--unless forced to. What will happen when your personality is
revealed? You can trust Margaret for that. You’ll be invited to lunch.”

“Sha’n’t go!” said Berkman angrily.

“Hoity-toity! you’ll have to!” cried Margaret teasingly, “it’s in the
nature of a police summons, you know!”

“I’ll get out of jurisdiction! I’ll go hang myself,” Berkman retorted,
with a reluctant laugh; and then to Rose: “I’ve just seen your
portrait, Miss Temple, and it seems Allestree has established his fame;
it is beautiful, as it should be.”

“I’m so glad you like it,” she replied; “Mr. Fox has just been abusing
it.”

“He’s a notorious unbeliever!” said Berkman; “don’t mind him; it’s
inspired. Mrs. Vermilion hopes to look like it!”

“With the immortal bonnet?” said Fox laughing, but with a glance which
perceived every detail of Rose’s beautiful young face and figure
radiant in the sunshine.

Margaret saw it; a shudder of perception passed over her and she drew
back into her corner of the motor-car with a little sigh of agony,
dragged from her very heart, but happily unnoticed. Her whole being
rebelled against fate, against submission, against loss!

Berkman was still laughing, uncovered, at Rose’s bridle, and Fox sat
listening, idly amused. The clear atmosphere cut every detail out,--the
low growth of cedars, the sweeping slope of the dun colored hill
behind it, the dark ribbon of woods in the hollow where the creek
flowed unseen, the long vista of the road which seemed to meet the sky.

Margaret called to them. “Good-bye,” she said, “I’m engaged to receive
the _canaille_--as Madame de Caillou calls it--at five. Come, Louis, or
else we’ll send you to the East Room again.”

“The gods forbid!” he exclaimed, and ran to the motor amid more gay
laughter.

A moment later Margaret’s white face smiled at them as she was whirled
away.



IX


MARGARET leaned over the glass show-counter in Daddy Lerwick’s
curiosity-shop and looked down at the pathetic medley within.

Her figure, in its usual elaborate elegance, was in sharp contrast to
the dingy surroundings. The fine camel’s-hair shawls hung up behind
her, the old velvet curtain with its tapestry border, the moth-eaten
furs, the tarnished Mexican sombrero, the ancient horse-pistols, the
innumerable curious articles which heaped every corner of the room,
down to the chintz curtain, screening the rear end of the shop in a
weak-minded and fluttering way, formed a patchwork background.

In the case was an ivory fan of antique workmanship which had drifted
here at last, carrying with it a history which might frame many a tale,
and with it a tortoise-shell comb, with a top eight inches high, some
gold link cuff buttons, a string of pearls that had clasped the throat
of a beauty in 1776, but lay now, pale and lustreless and forgotten,
the price, perhaps, of a week’s lodging or of a grave, God knows!

But Margaret was interested in a bracelet set with topaz, still
beautiful, still radiant, still warm with a life’s history. She passed
the stones to and fro between her slender fingers, pricing them with
careless indifference. The romance and the sorrow of it would have
touched Rose Temple and sent her shuddering from the purchase. To
Margaret they signified nothing but jewels and the value of jewels, for
her life of selfish ease, of social prominence, her endless quest for
pleasure, had nearly atrophied those finer and more tender emotions of
sympathy and love for her fellow creatures.

Daddy Lerwick himself waited on her. He was a short, thickset man with
the face of an underdone pudding, his gray whiskers attached like wings
below the ears. His small dull eyes seemed to observe little, but he
was notorious for driving a shrewd bargain and nothing really escaped
him.

“The stones are good stones,” he commented, clasping his fat creased
hands on the case in an attitude which displayed the solitaire on his
little finger, “and the price very low, madam.”

Margaret laughed, her eyes haggard again. “You get them second-hand,”
she observed carelessly; “who brought these?”

He looked at her without surprise and unclasped his hands. “I have the
name,” he said; “the law requires that we take the name, but I don’t
think they ever give the right one, and we don’t tell it--usually. It
was a young girl, madam, quite a young girl.”

“Never mind!” Margaret dropped the chain, her mood changing. “I really
didn’t want to know,” she said with a shrug, “why should I? I don’t
know why I asked. I’ll take the gold cigarette-case, if you can get the
monogram off, and the tea-pot. Bring them over and I’ll send the check.”

The man bowed and rubbed his hands. He knew Margaret very well and
profited largely by her careless and profuse use of money. Knowing
the world too, as he did, and the people in it, he thought her more
wretched than the girl who had traded the bracelet, or the owner of the
gold cigarette-case who, he happened to know, had since shot himself
and now lay in an unmarked grave. Daddy Lerwick, indeed, knew more than
was good for him but, perhaps, not more than many others who stand thus
at the gateway between the upper stratum of gilded pleasure and the
lower stratum of sordid misery, and receive the tolls!

Meanwhile, unconscious of his eyes and certainly proudly disdainful
of his thoughts, the society beauty, the Cabinet minister’s wife,
trailed through the dingy shop and passed out by the side door, which
Lerwick opened for her, to the stairs of Allestree’s studio. As she
ascended, the cloud which had rested on her face slightly cleared and
her expression grew more decisive; the desolate misery of her heart had
taken a more concrete form, she had arrived at last at a resolution.
She had reached a point where she must resist or die. Her bruised
heart throbbed with continuous pain and she was proudly aware that she
was losing all--losing it, too, without an apparent struggle. She,
Margaret, who had always borne herself proudly and defiantly to the
world, was she to be a mendicant asking the alms of love and asking it
in vain?

She swept on, crossed the landing under Aunt Hannah’s accustomed
window, and thrusting aside the portière entered upon a tableau of the
artist and his two new clients, Mrs. and Miss Vermilion, and her enemy,
Mrs. Wingfield. The two older women stout, tightly laced, gorgeously
over-dressed, the younger, slender and well done by the best French
art and with that indescribable air of disdain which, commonly assumed
by the parvenu to be the sign manual of birth and breeding, might be
called the bar sinister of society. At the sight of Margaret, however,
she unbent with an alacrity which was as amazing as it was sudden.

“Dear Mrs. White,” she chirped, “do come and advise me; mamma wants
me painted, and really I can’t choose a pose! I saw a picture of the
Duchess of Leinster which was lovely, but Mr. Allestree says he never
copies even attitudes! Isn’t it confusing?”

Margaret shrugged one shoulder and held out two fingers to the elder
women. “Try Aphrodite rising from the sea,” she suggested with a
provoking drawl, “I dare say Bobby can do waves, he’s admirable on
flesh tints.”

The girl colored furiously and bit her lip. It was impossible to know
where to meet Mrs. White, she reflected, without daring to provoke
another catastrophe by retaliation.

But Mrs. Wingfield had felt the sting of Margaret’s rudeness too often.
She moved to the door with the rustle of silk draperies. “I hear Mr.
Fox is to marry Miss Temple,” she said pointedly, looking Margaret full
in the face.

“And I heard that Mr. Wingfield was to get the mission to Brazil,”
retorted Margaret unmoved.

Mrs. Wingfield’s cheek crimsoned and the feathers on her bonnet
trembled. “Nothing of the sort! You don’t mean to tell me you heard
that?”

Margaret shrugged her shoulders again. “One hears everything, you
know!” she said, with a dangerous smile.

Mrs. Wingfield breathed hard and opened her lips, but Mrs. Vermilion
was a wiser if a duller woman; she laid a restraining hand on her arm
and propelled her gently but firmly toward the exit.

“You’re coming to my ball next week, Mrs. White?” she ventured with a
propitiating smile.

“Oh, is it next week?” drawled Margaret, with elevated brows, “I never
know. Little Miss English keeps my books; if she didn’t I should go to
the wrong place every night and forget the White House.”

“I thought your memory more accommodating,” Mrs. Wingfield retaliated
pointedly; “I remember when you forgot to come to my dinner after you’d
accepted.”

Margaret laughed. “Did I?” she said, “I’m evidently a sinner. Tell
Mr. Wingfield that I heard who wrote in those corrections in that
paragraph of the message--but I really can’t tell.”

Mrs. Wingfield turned away with a red cheek.

“Margaret!” remonstrated Allestree sharply, as the three women
withdrew, “how can you? Good Lord, talk about the brutality of men!
Women are Malays and North American Indians--you have no mercy! I’m
blushing all over now at the thought of it!”

She laughed, her short, even white teeth set close together, her eyes
sparkling. “Wasn’t I horrid?” she said, “I haven’t any manners and they
hate me.”

“I should think they would!” he replied warmly, “Margaret, why do you
do such things? It isn’t like you, it isn’t--”

“Well bred!” she concluded dryly, “I know it. The other night, too, I
did something that horrified Wicklow. We were dining at Mrs. O’Neal’s;
I knelt, and kissed the cardinal’s ring. Wicklow was wild; he seemed to
have an A. P. A. nightmare at once. It was all in the New York papers
yesterday,” Margaret laughed again, resting her arms on the back of the
carved chair where Rose had sat.

Allestree laid down his brushes; he had been working on a sketch of
Margaret herself, and, lighting a cigarette, he passed his case to
her. She took one mechanically and lit it at his. As the spark flamed
up between them, he caught the hollowness of her eyes, the startling
pallor of her face.

“What in the world is it, Margaret?” he asked sharply; “you’re ill.”

She turned and looked over her shoulder into the mirror. “Do I look
so?” Something she saw in her own image, in the deeply shadowed eyes,
the sharpened curve of the cheeks startled her. “What a fright I grow
to be! No wonder that Vermilion girl stared. What an Aphrodite she’d
make--in French corsets and a trail!” Margaret laughed silently.

Then catching a look on Allestree’s face which she read too easily.
“Were you born proper, Bobby?” she said, knocking the ashes from her
cigarette, “or did you achieve it, or was it thrust upon you?”

“I can’t paint you in this mood, Margaret,” he said dryly, “you
wouldn’t look like yourself; you’d remind me of a malicious elf.”

She leaned her elbow on the chair back again, resting her chin in the
hollow of her hand. “There!” she said, “I told William Fox that you’d
make me the imp to Rose’s angel.”

“I’d like to make you what you are, a fascinating, wilful woman with no
heart at all!” he retorted.

“No heart!” she laughed, tossing her cigarette away; “that’s true,
Bobby, I’ve no heart!”

As she spoke she moved over to Rose’s portrait which still rested
on an easel in the corner. It was a magnificent piece of work, the
artist had dreamed his heart into it; the young head symbolized youth,
purity, hope. The figure had the simplicity and loveliness of some
beautiful Greek inspiration when the art of Greece was young. Margaret
stood looking at it in silence, herself unaware of the sharp contrast
between the pictured youth and enthusiasm of this girl and her own slim
beauty, her subtly charming and unhappy face, which seemed to have
lost that magic touch which is like a breath from the Elysian fields,
the presence of belief, of hope, most of all of love. She turned at
last and met Allestree’s thoughtful glance. “Bobby,” she said briefly,
“you’re a fool.”

He smiled. “What else, oh, mine enemy?” he asked.

“Everything;” Margaret threw out both hands with a gesture which seemed
to appeal to earth and heaven; “a blind fool, Bobby! You love her, she
probably loves you, and yet you stand by and let her go! Fool, fool!”
Margaret drew her brows down, her cheeks flaming:

  “‘He either fears his fate too much,
  Or his deserts are small,
  Who fears to put it to the touch,
  To win or lose it all!’”

she quoted defiantly.

Allestree lighted another cigarette. “My dear Margaret,” he said, “let
me show you this sketch of my mother.”

Margaret bit her lip and stood watching as he turned over two or three
sketches. As he did so her quick eye caught familiar outlines. “So,
that is Lily Osborne?” she said, with a hard little laugh; “I’m not
sensitive, Bobby, let me see it. Did you know the latest gossip about
her?”

Allestree shook his head. “Spare me!” he said smiling.

“Not a bit of it, you deserve no quarter!” Margaret took the sketch
and looked at it, ignoring the one of Mrs. Allestree; “it’s good,” she
commented with amusement; “how fine and full blooded she looks, and
reptilian. The gossip is that she’s caused the recall of the Russian
Ambassador; she’s been telling tales out of school, the female
diplomatist, you know! What did you do, by the way, when she met Rose
here?”

“Oh, we got on,” said Allestree laughing; “what of it?”

“You haven’t heard?” Margaret laughed; “Rose went there to one of
madame’s small and earlies; you know the kind? It seems they played
bridge and Rose didn’t understand it was for money; imagine a lamb in
the hands of wolves! Poor little simpleton! Well, Lily told her at last
that she owed two hundred. Rose fled home, and the judge--” Margaret
laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “Old Testament Christian, you know!
He sent the check but he told Rose to cut her dead.”

“I knew there was something; Rose never told me, but they speak,” he
rejoined, “the way you women do! In spite of your shrugs, Margaret, you
know the ethics of the thing were abominable; it’s swindling.”

Margaret continued to laugh. “My dear Bobby,” she said, “Rose isn’t
sixteen and we all play bridge; I lost six hundred last night; she
should have known. It’s tiresome to be a madonna on a pillar!”

“Still Rose was right,” he said bluntly.

“Oh, granted!” Margaret touched his arm lightly; “and you love her!”

Allestree made an impatient movement. “Don’t torture me, Margaret!” he
said sharply.

She whirled around and held out both hands, her eyes moist. “I’m a
brute, Bobby!” she cried; “forgive me--I always say the wrong thing
unless some one sets me a copy; let’s talk about Mahomet’s coffin!”



X


WITH Margaret things had reached a crisis long before that culminating
moment of remorseful emotion in Allestree’s studio; at last the
realities of life--as they appear separated from its pleasures and its
follies--were forced upon her. Too young at the time of her marriage to
comprehend its full significance, as a mere act of barter and exchange,
she had never seriously anticipated her position as White’s wife; it
had been shrouded in a nebulous haze of gratified vanity, of pleasures
and indulgences, for she was glad to shirk the thought of it. Her
awakening, therefore, had been accompanied with a shock of horror and
disgust.

White had been kind to her at first; even the most common and violent
of brute creatures is often kind to its chosen mate, and he was proud
of her beauty, determined to get the value of his money out of her
social distinction; but her capricious temper, her bitter tongue and
her indifference soon had their natural effect. His kindness wore
itself out and when angry he could be tolerably brutal, for his temper,
at best, was coarse and exacting. She had come at last to look upon the
beautiful house, the lavish display, the sumptuous living as so much
gilded misery, and, possessing no talisman to give her contentment, her
stormy nature spent itself in rebellion and in a growing regret for
her own folly. She saw, at last, in Fox all the qualities which she
most admired; her mind answered his with a subtilty, a kindred sympathy
which seemed to assure her of his love, to justify her assumption that
his feeling had never changed. In her eager pursuit of happiness she
had thought to purchase it first with beauty, then with money and now
with love--the beggar’s price! It was the absorbing impulse of her
being; religion she had none, except the religion of self-indulgence.
Standing on the brink of disaster she still demanded happiness; it was
her creed, her gospel, her divine right. The temptation of it, too,
pursued her; how easy to obtain a divorce from Wicklow, a word almost
and it was done! It was true that there would be a great scandal but,
after all, the scandal could only add a zest to her social success; she
was young, beautiful, distinguished, and if she broke the shackles that
bound her could she not begin all over again? Intoxicating dream,--how
full of temptation it was, of alluring sweetness! After all, does not
the devil appear to us in the shape of an angel of light?

What were ethics compared with her inalienable right to be happy? The
thought of it made her draw a keen breath of relief. Free!--She alone
knew the value of that word.

The children crossed her mind only occasionally; Estelle was more and
more like her father every day, and as for the baby? Margaret had only
vague conceptions of his possibilities; she had seen but little of him
since his birth, except in his nurse’s arms, but she had recognized
that odious likeness to the Whites. Of course old Mrs. White would
take them; she adored them, and Margaret felt that she knew more about
them than she did. After a while when they grew up--but Margaret could
not afford to dwell upon it. They were associated with her misery, her
captivity, as she chose to call it, and she could not love them; she
shrank, indeed, from the thought of them, and the responsibility that
their existence had thrust upon her, as so many links in her chains.

She returned from her interview with Allestree in a curious frame
of mind. Her unreasonable discourtesy to the Vermilions and Mrs.
Wingfield--people who really only hovered on the edge of her
horizon--her insistent attacks upon Allestree’s sore heart, had all
been prompted by her own feverish misery. Once alone in her room she
went to the mirror, and holding up one of the candelabra, gazed long
and fixedly at her own reflection, asking over again the question she
had asked herself on the night of Mrs. O’Neal’s dinner. Had she lost
her beauty? Was the potency of her spell destroyed in some mysterious
way? Hideous thought--was she growing old?

She saw, indeed, all that she had seen in Allestree’s mirror, and more;
the misery that looked out of her own eyes frightened her, and there
were more delicate lines than there had been on that previous occasion,
or else the light was stronger. This was the reason then of the
senseless stare of Miss Vermilion’s china blue eyes--Margaret wondered
vaguely why girls of that sort always had china blue eyes?

She set down the candelabrum, and sinking into a chair by the open fire
began to brood over her troubles, forgetful that she must be dressed
soon for her own reception; it was the night when her weekly guests
assembled at those already famous evenings. Her thoughts reverted to
Fox; the remembrance of his love for her was like the sudden fragrance
of violets in a desolate place.

He had loved her; it never seemed possible for a moment that a word, a
sign, could not reanimate his passion, as a breath of air will strike
fire from the smouldering embers. Now, too, she could appreciate and
understand his love; she was no longer a raw slip of a girl or a stiff
little Puritan like Rose Temple! But she knew the barrier which existed
between them; never by a word or a sign had Fox trespassed against
White’s hospitality, he would never urge her to desert her husband, but
if she were free--

She rose and began to walk about the room, touching first one object
and then another with restless fingers; the thought of freedom was
like wine, it went to her brain; the vision of the divorce court, the
lawyers, the judges, the newspapers, floated into space. She stretched
her clasped hands high above her head and drew a long breath, her soul
almost shouted for joy. Freedom!

It was, next to happiness, the desired of the gods! And after all did
not one involve the other, was not one absolutely essential to the
other?

She wondered, with a smile, why they talked so much cant about
marriage and divorce? Had they suffered as she had suffered they would
rejoice, as she did, at the thought that there were divorces, that one
could be free again!

Free--good heavens! Not to see him every day, not to hear his voice,
with that mean, trivial rasp in it, not to be one of his chattels!

And Rose? Margaret did not allow herself to dwell too long upon that
vision of the girl’s young figure, her fair, animated face against the
background of the cedars and the sky. Was she jealous of her? That was
an ignominy too deep to contemplate without bitter self-abasement; she
refused to believe it! The shuddering certainty which had drained the
life-blood from lip and cheek became now, on reflection, a fancy of her
feverish brain. Such a raw, simple creature as Rose was no mate for
William Fox; that indisputable attraction of opposites, which is one of
the laws of nature, for a moment lost its significance in her eyes; she
would not believe it. It was not quite natural for her, though, to take
this view, even for a moment, for a woman, as a rule, has less faith in
the endurance of a man’s love than he has in it himself, because she
has usually discovered that the heart of the ordinary male creature is
uncommonly like a pigeon-cote!

She was determined to forget all these things; she walked to and fro
battling with herself, her restless hands sometimes at her throat and
sometimes clasped behind her head. The strong passion of rebellion
which shook her being amazed even herself. She would never give him
up! She could not--to Rose or to any one; her starved heart cried out
against surrender and defeat, he was hers--_hers_.

Her maid’s knock at the door startled her, she stopped short and passed
her hands over her eyes, her face burned; she no longer lacked color,
her cheeks had the flush of fever. The girl, coming in to dress her,
was surprised by her high colored beauty, the brilliance of her eyes,
and began to lay out the gown and its accessories with nervous fingers,
half expecting one of Margaret’s wild bursts of temper. But her
mistress seemed only concerned with her toilet; one gown after another
was tried on and rejected until at last she was arrayed in a shimmering
dress of violet and silver which was as delicate as the tints of the
sky at moonrise. She allowed no ornament on her white neck and arms
except a single diamond star which clasped the ribbon around her throat.

Nothing could have been more perfect than her manner to her guests. It
was one of those occasions, growing constantly more rare, when White
had no reason to complain. She was charming to all, from the most
distinguished to the most socially obscure, she forgot her prejudices,
she even forgot to snub her husband’s political protégés--to their
infinite and undisguised relief--and to her own particular coterie she
was the old, charming, inimitable Margaret. As on the occasion of her
musicale, men predominated, and among those men were all the notables
at the capital. Speaking several languages, Margaret had made her house
a Mecca for all Europeans; it was an open secret that she espoused
the cause of the Russian ambassador against his secret enemy, Lily
Osborne, and espoused it with a zeal which caused a whispered sensation
in official circles. It was an anxious question what Mrs. White might
not dare to do, for it was believed that she would pause at nothing in
her determination to defeat Mrs. Osborne. Yet it was never hinted that
she concerned herself even remotely with White’s devotion to the fair
_divorcée_. Her indifference to her husband was a fact too generally
accepted to cause even a ripple in the stream.

There had been much secret comment on her changed and haggard looks,
but her dryadlike loveliness to-night silenced every whisper, and her
gayety, her ease, her clever, reckless talk proclaimed her the same
Margaret they had always known and loved and feared, whose wit was as
keen as it was cruel.

Mrs. O’Neal was the first to bid her good-night. The old lady in her
gorgeous panoply of silk and velvet tottered on, like an ancient
war-horse answering the bugle call, her white head vibrating as she
talked. Still athirst for social power and success, no one was a keener
judge of achievements, and she patted Margaret’s hand.

“My dear,” she whispered, “you’re the most charming creature in the
world when you choose! I’m old enough to tell you.”

“I can never equal you,” Margaret retorted lightly, “even when I
choose!”

“There! It was worth the risk to get the compliment!” the older woman
laughed back; “and your husband, he looked most distinguished to-night,
and those dear children--I saw them in the park! Be good, my child,
and you’ll be happy!” and she smiled complacently at the axiom as she
moved away, a figure of ancient gayety in tight shoes and costly stays.
An hour later when her maid had taken her to pieces, she presented a
spectacle at once instructive and amazing.

Following Mrs. O’Neal’s exit, the accepted signal for departure,
Margaret’s guests began to flow past her in a steady stream, stopping a
moment for the individual farewells or congratulations on the pleasures
of a brilliant evening. She was standing just inside the ballroom door
alone, for White had been summoned unexpectedly to the White House a
half-hour previously, his departure adding to the zest of gossip and
speculation upon the political situation. Margaret’s slim figure in
its shimmering dress, her animated face, the peculiar charm of her
smile, had never been more observed; she was beautiful. Those who had
questioned it, those who had been only half convinced and those who had
denied it, were alike overwhelmed with its manifestation. It seemed as
if the intangibility of her much disputed charm had vanished and her
beauty had taken a visible shape, was crystallized and purified by some
fervent emotion which made her spirit illuminate it as the light shines
through an alabaster lamp.

One by one they pressed her hand and passed on, feeling the inspiration
of her glance; one white haired diplomat bent gracefully and kissed
her fingers, an involuntary tribute which brought a faint blush to her
cheek.

Fox was among the last to approach, and as he did so she stopped him
with a slight but imperative gesture. “Stay a moment, William,” she
murmured, with almost a look of appeal, “I want to speak to you.”

Thus admonished he turned back, conscious that by so doing he startled
a glance of comprehension in the eyes of Louis Berkman, who was
following him, which annoyed him for Margaret’s sake. He went over to
the fireplace and stood watching the falling embers while the remaining
guests made their adieux, then as the rustle and murmur of their
departure grew more distant and lost itself in the rooms beyond, he
turned and saw her coming down the long room alone and was startled
by the extreme youthfulness and fragility of her appearance, and by
the discovery, which came to him with the shock of surprise, that her
radiant aspect had slipped from her with her departing guests, that her
face was colorless and pinched, though her eyes were still feverishly
bright.

“It was good of you to stay,” she said, coming to the fire and holding
out her hands to the blaze; “how cold it is for the first of April.
Sit down, William, and let me send for wine and cigarettes; you look
tired.”

He raised a deprecating hand. “No more hospitality,” he said firmly;
“you’ve done enough; you’ve lost all your color now.”

“Except what I put on with a brush,” she said dryly, clasping her hands
and letting her long white arms hang down before her as she looked
across at him with a keen glance. “I know--you’ve eaten nothing here
since Wicklow broke his word and the rest of it. You won’t eat his
bread!”

Fox colored. “Should I be here in that case?” he asked.

She shook her head, glancing at the fire. “You can’t fool me--I
understand.”

“Come, I must go,” he said firmly; “it is very late and you look
wearied to death. You must be, you were absolutely the life of it
to-night; you should have heard old de Caillou rhapsodize!”

“Did I do well--did I look my best?” she asked, her lip quivering like
a child’s, her eyes still on the fire.

“You were your own happy self!” he replied.

She looked up, her slight figure swaying a little as she wrung her
hands together; the tears rained down her cheeks. “Billy,” she sobbed,
“I’m wretched--I--I can’t stand it any longer, it will kill me!”



XI


FOX stood aghast at the force, the agony, the abandon of Margaret’s
confession. Any presentiment which might have warned him had been
disarmed by her previous gayety.

Almost unconsciously his hand met hers, which was stretched out in
a mute appeal. He drew her to a chair. “Sit down,” he said, in an
unsteady voice, with an impotent impulse of resistance; “try to calm
yourself! This is dreadful!”

She obeyed him mechanically; sinking into the great armchair and
turning her face against it, she continued to weep, her whole delicate
frame shaken and quivering with her emotion.

Fox stood still holding her hand and looking down at her in deep
perplexity. He was intuitively aware of the extreme peril and delicacy
of the situation for them both, only too certain of her wild and
unguarded impulses, and that moment--more supremely than ever--revealed
to him the absolute demise of his own passion. He tried to quiet her,
speaking a few gentle and soothing words, sharply conscious of their
inadequacy.

But she scarcely heeded them. After a moment the storm spent itself,
and she turned, revealing her white, tear-stained face which was still
beautiful in spite of her weeping. “There comes a time,” she said, in a
low voice, “when one can bear it no longer--when one would rather die.”

“For God’s sake, Margaret, don’t say such things!” he exclaimed,
profoundly moved.

Her lips quivered. “Is it so dreadful to say them?” she retorted
passionately; “when you feel them? When they are burned into your
flesh? I’m so weary of conventionalities. I tell you that I can’t bear
it, that I will not bear it any longer!”

As she spoke she rose and stood facing him, her eyes feverishly bright
and moist with unshed tears. “You ask too much of me, you have no right
to ask it--no one has!” she continued, her lip quivering again; “I
cannot be silent--it’s killing me by inches!”

Fox colored deeply; he was suddenly forced into an impossible position.
“My dear Margaret,” he said gravely, “I have no words to meet it; you
must know how profoundly I feel it!”

“If I did not--if I were not sure of you!” she replied, a little
wildly, “it would kill me sooner. Sometimes I have wanted to die. The
doctors say that I have heart trouble--I hope I have! If I believed in
prayer I should have prayed to die.”

“Margaret! is it as bad as that?” he cried, in sudden uncontrollable
pity; he remembered her as so young, so beautiful, so happy!

Her lips twitched. “As bad as that?” she repeated wildly; “I feel like
a trapped squirrel, a rabbit in a snare, I can only shriek because it
hurts me--it isn’t bad enough yet to kill! I’m caged--oh, William,
William, help me get out!”

“Margaret!” he exclaimed sharply, “don’t you know that I can’t hear
this? This is White’s house, I’ve broken his bread. My God, how
dreadful it all is!”

Her hand clenched unconsciously at her side, her white neck rose and
fell with her tortured breathing, a horrible doubt had assailed her.
Then the light broke over her face; he loved her, that was it, and he
was too honorable to speak! She held out both hands. “William, forgive
me,” she murmured softly, “but what have we gained by silence? What
does it all matter to the world? But you must go, perhaps I did wrong
to tell you now! Good-night, I--I--”

Her lips quivered pitifully. “I have always loved you--don’t think me a
wicked woman.”

“Margaret!” he groaned, deeply, terribly touched, yet with a sickening
consciousness of his own unresponsive heart.

She smiled faintly, moving away from him toward the stairs. “Oh, you
must go, good-night!” she repeated, as he paused half reluctant. “I’m
resolved, nothing shall change me--in a little while--” she paused
and he saw the change in her face, its lighting up and softening, the
revelation of its beauty, its subtle charm; saw it with a slow agony of
remorse and reluctance; “in a little while,” she said, and her smile
was wonderful, “I shall be free!”

Fox scarcely knew how he got out of the house; he left it in a dream
and went directly home to his own apartments in an uptown flat. The
distance was not great and he scarcely allowed himself to think. His
mind was almost confused by the sudden and blinding climax. But as he
opened his door, and the dog, Sandy, leaped to meet him, a rush of
feeling swept away his passive resistance; he forced himself to turn
on the lights more fully and to look about at the familiar objects
which met his eyes on all sides, his books, his pictures, his littered
writing-table; he even picked up the evening mail, which his clerk had
left in its accustomed place, and looked over the pile of letters and
pamphlets. But it cost him an effort.

It was very late, but sleep was impossible, and picking up his hat
and stick he whistled to Sandy and the two went out into the almost
deserted streets. The dog leaped about him with quick, joyous barks,
rejoicing in the unexpected outing, and Fox turned his face northward,
walking steadily along the brilliantly lighted and strangely quiet
avenue which led him through the heart of the northwest section and
up on the hill. The tumult of his mind found relief in the physical
exercise and the fresh cold air of an early April night.

In spite of that central egotism of his, which was capable of much when
unkindly stirred, Fox believed that he possessed strong convictions on
the nicer points of honor. If he had drifted often to White’s house and
been much in Margaret’s society it was with no intention of offending
against his host. His indolence, his carelessness of what was mere
gossip and tittle-tattle, had made him indifferent to the conclusions
of others, but he was not unaware of the talk and the surmises of his
enemies; he was not unaware that Margaret stood on delicate ground
and that, if she separated from White, there would be a wild burst of
excited comment--the comment which costs a woman her good name. Such
being the case she had suddenly thrown herself upon his sympathy, she
had torn away the thin veil of conventionality which had saved them,
and it was for him to desert her or to defend her when the supreme
moment came.

That moment would involve not only his own happiness but--he paused in
his thoughts with a shock of feeling which flooded his consciousness
with a lucidity, an insight, which appalled him. Was he mistaken, or
did it also involve the happiness of the young and innocent girl whom
he loved? At the thought of Rose his heart sank; he felt instinctively
her abhorrence, her complete lack of understanding of his peculiar
situation. To Rose’s mind, doubtless, he would appear in the likeness
of Mephistopheles!

Good God, what would she think of him? he thought; but yesterday he
had held her hand, looked into her pure, young eyes, almost spoken
the final words which would have laid bare his very soul--and now!
He seemed to feel the heated, perfumed atmosphere, the pressure
of Margaret’s fingers on his arm, her wild, sweet smile when she
proclaimed her love for him without shame--how vividly he saw it!
And her absolute belief in his unchanged love for her! Infatuation,
madness, self-deception, it might be all these and more, but she was a
woman--and she had flung herself upon his mercy!

As yet that other aspect of the affair, the blighting of his public
career which such a scandal might in a measure effect, had not thrust
itself upon him; his only thought was for Rose. In that hour he learned
how profoundly he loved her; it was part of his nature that the very
denial of a gift increased his desire to obtain it.

He walked long and far; the night was lightly clouded; but once the
moon broke through a rift and flooded the upper sky with light. As he
turned on the heights the city lay at his feet, dark and slumbering
save for the lighted streets. A policeman tramping past glanced keenly
at him. The air had a crispness that was not wintry, and once or twice
the sweetness of hyacinths reached him from some flower-studded lawn.
Sandy trailed at his heels, faithful but anxious; the way was new and
the hour strange.

They walked on; it was toward morning when the man and the dog
returned and, when they entered his rooms again, Fox’s face was white,
his eyes and mouth were haggard, with the look of a man who has passed
through a great crisis with much agony of soul. For he had found but
one solution, and that sealed his lips.

If his careless preference for her, for her gayety and her wit, if
his thoughtless seeking of her society, if the coupling of his name
with hers, had led her to this breaking of her life, then there was no
question, there could be no question--he thrust the thought deep down
out of sight but it remained there, coiled like the serpent, ready to
strike at the heart of his happiness.



XII


IT was ten o’clock in the morning, and Rose was clipping the dead
leaves from her flowers in the bow-window of the library, while Judge
Temple still read the morning paper in his great high-backed chair; a
shaft of sunlight stealing through the open carving touched his scanty
white hair and showed the crumpled lines of the blue veins on his
temples. He was an old man; he had married late in life and Rose, the
youngest born and only survivor of five children, was proportionately
dear to him. There was a warm sympathy between them and a companionship
beautiful to see.

“There’s some trouble in the Cabinet,” he observed, as he turned his
paper; “there are hints here about Wicklow White.”

Rose looked thoughtful but continued to arrange her flowers. “Margaret
seems very unhappy and very gay, as usual,” she remarked softly.

“Too gay, my dear,” the judge commented; “old-fashioned fogies like
myself get easily shocked. Never go to her dressmaker!”

Rose laughed, her scissors sparkling in the sun. “Why, father, people
rave about her and copy her everywhere.”

“Let them,” said the judge dryly, “let them--but not my daughter! Rose,
I’d--I’d whip you!”

“You never did that in your life,” she smiled, “I’m almost tempted to
try it and see.”

“Better not,” he retorted grimly, taking off his spectacles and putting
them into his pocket; “you’d get a lesson!”

“Poor Margaret!” Rose colored a little; she had caught the glance which
Margaret had bestowed on her and Fox.

“Poor fiddlesticks!” replied the judge, rising and folding his paper;
“she’s made her bed, child, and she must lie on it; that’s the law of
life; we reap as we sow.”

Rose looked across at him affectionately, but she was wondering what he
thought of William Fox; she had never dared to ask. “It’s a hard law,
father,” she said gently, “we all want to be happy.”

“You will be--just in proportion to your right to be,” he retorted
calmly; “it’s a matter of the heart anyway, Rose, and not of external
matters.”

“I suppose so,” she replied, with a slight sigh; “but one would like to
have externals and internals agree, don’t you think?”

The old man laughed pleasantly. “Most of us would,” he admitted, “but
we never have our way in this world, not in my observation.”

As he spoke there was a stir in the hall, and a young girl appeared at
the drawing-room door.

“It’s Gertrude English,” Rose said; “don’t go yet, father, I’ll take
her away.”

But it appeared that the judge had to go to court, and he went out,
patting little Miss English on the shoulder as he passed. “We children
grow,” he said laughing.

“I wish I’d grown more,” she retorted ruefully; “everybody calls me ‘a
little thing,’ and I’m not, really, I’m five feet four.”

“Napoleon was small,” remarked the judge teasingly, “and William Third
and Louis Fourteenth.”

“I know what you think of two of those!” objected Gertrude; “we
remember our history lessons here, don’t we, Rose?”

“Well--but when a rogue’s famous!” said the judge, and went out smiling
at his own jest.

Miss English walked over to the window and watched Rose water her
plants and turn them religiously to the sun.

“Take off your hat, Gertrude,” she said pleasantly; “you really look
tired; can’t you stay awhile?”

Gertrude shook her head. “No,” she said firmly; “I’ve got about a
million notes to write for Margaret and the lunch cards to get ready
for to-morrow; to-night she dines the President. I’m tired of it; I
wish I could make money cracking stones!”

“Poor Gerty!” Rose looked at her with gentle concern; “you’re very
pale, you look as if you hadn’t slept.”

“I haven’t,” said Miss English flatly, “not a wink.”

“I hope Margaret doesn’t make you work late,” Rose murmured, beginning
to search again for dead leaves.

“Margaret?” the little secretary sat down and leaned her elbows on her
knees, her chin in her hands; “Rose, I’m so sorry for her!”

“She seems gay enough,” Rose observed quietly.

“I should say so! I was there very late last night; it was one of her
entertainments, and little Ward was sick. I sat with him. You know she
treats the children sometimes like playthings, and again--like rats!
I was in the nursery watching him and helping the nurse until all the
guests went. Then I went down stairs; I wanted to tell Margaret what
I’d done, and I went to the ballroom door. She didn’t hear me call to
her, and I went back up stairs feeling like a sneak. She was there with
Mr. Fox and she was crying dreadfully when I saw her.”

Rose’s scissors clipped sharply and a fresh young twig fell unnoticed
to the floor. There was a long pause. Miss English had mechanically
taken off her gloves and she was drawing them through her fingers, her
face full of honest trouble.

“After awhile she came up stairs,” she continued, “and came into the
room where I was--”

“Gertrude,” interrupted Rose suddenly, “ought you to tell me this?”

“Every one will know soon,” said Gertrude dryly; “she came over and
looked at the child and said she was glad he was better--he was asleep
then and the nurse had gone out of the room for some extra milk.
Margaret’s face was white, and her eyes--I never saw her eyes so
wonderful. Suddenly she flung her arms around my neck and began to cry,
softly so as not to wake the child. She told me--she’s going to get a
divorce!”

Rose put aside her scissors and sat down, looking across at Gertrude
with a strange expression, but she said nothing.

Miss English sighed, folding her gloves again. “Of course I know how
bad it’s been,” she said; “he’s a brute to her sometimes and swears at
her before everybody but, well, Rose, don’t you think you’d swear at
Margaret if you had to live with her?”

Rose smiled a little, her lips pale. “I don’t know, Gerty,” she said,
“I never did--in my life.”

“Didn’t you?” Miss English sighed again; “well,” she said, “when you’re
poor, downright, disgustingly poor, you just have to say ‘damn’ once in
awhile, if you didn’t you’d kill somebody!”

“But White isn’t poor,” objected Rose, “he’s only vulgar.”

“Well, of course there’s Lily Osborne,” Gertrude shrugged her
shoulders; “there won’t be any trouble about the divorce in the State
of New York or anywhere else, I fancy! I wonder if she means to go to
Omaha.”

“Do you believe it’s really settled?” Rose asked, with a strong
feeling of self-abasement; she thought herself a scandal-monger, an
unworthy creature, but her heart quaked within her with an unspoken
dread, and Miss English’s next remarks drove it home.

“Without doubt,” she said; “I know it is and,”--she colored a little
and looked out of the window at the April sunshine on the garden
wall--“Rose, do you believe she’ll marry William Fox?” she whispered.

Rose sat regarding her and said nothing. What could she say, poor
child? That vividly pictured scene of Margaret weeping and Fox as her
comforter was burning deep, and Rose had been brought up by an Old
Testament Christian!

“It would be a great pity,” Miss English observed, after a long
silence; “it would ruin Mr. Fox--people would say _everything_.”

Rose colored painfully. “People say very cruel things, Gerty,” she said
slowly, “and, perhaps, we’re as bad as any just now.”

Gertrude shook her head vigorously, her pleasant round face flushing
a little too. “I don’t mean to be,” she said, “of course it’s a great
temptation; we secretaries know everything, it’s like turning a dress
inside out and finding the lining’s only paper-cambric with a silk
facing; it’s all a big sham, we’re on the inside and know! But,
goodness, it would ruin Fox, and I know, Rose, I know she’s in love
with him.”

Rose looked steadily away; she, too, saw the ivy leaves fluttering
gently in the sunshine as the light breeze rippled across them.

Miss English sighed. “Well,” she said, “I don’t care; Margaret’s so
unhappy, it seems as if she ought to try over again, only there are the
children. I forgot though, Rose, you’re very stiff-necked; I suppose
you hate divorces?”

Rose shook her head. “I don’t believe in marriage after divorce,” she
said; she was very young and she had rigid standards, like a great many
people who have never had to test them in their hearts’ blood.

Gertrude English opened her mild blue eyes. “Don’t you?” she said, “I
didn’t, either, until I saw Margaret; then I began to think it was
awful to have to live out a mistake; and there’s White too; really he’s
had his trials. I don’t know whether it would be wicked or not for her
to marry again.”

“It isn’t Scriptural,” said Rose firmly, her face colorless now.

Miss English rose and began to put on her gloves. “Well, there isn’t
any marrying or giving in marriage in heaven,” she remarked, “so I
suppose most of us have got to do it all here. As far as I’m concerned,
I don’t find any rush for a poor girl. It’s amazing to me that the male
creatures can’t see the advantages of the habit of economy!” she added,
with a good humored laugh.

“I wish you’d stay to lunch,” said Rose mechanically; she had not
Gerty’s keen sense of humor, and her heart felt like lead in her bosom.

“I can’t!” the little secretary went to the mirror and adjusted her
hat-pins; “I’ve got to go and write notes. Margaret has no head, and
she’s probably in bed now. You know she really has heart trouble; I
shouldn’t wonder if she died in one of her fandangoes.”

“And she’s talking of divorce and marriage!” Rose looked gravely into
the other girl’s troubled face.

“Of course; isn’t it like her?” Miss English moved slowly to the door,
buttoning her gloves, and Rose followed.

In the hall she turned. “After all, who’s to blame?” she said stoutly;
“Margaret’s awfully unhappy, and Fox--goodness, he used to almost
live there, he was there to everything until that row with White over
the Cabinet business. I’d like to know what you think of him, Miss
Moralist, a man who flirts with a married woman!”

“I try not to think of it,” Rose replied quietly.

Miss English had opened the door and the sunlight streamed in. “Oh,
good gracious!” she exclaimed; “why, Rose, what’s the matter? You’re as
white as a sheet!”

“I’ve--I’ve got a headache,” Rose faltered, the fib lodging in her
throat, for she had been reared to tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth.

“And I’ve been teasing you! I’m a brute. Go and lie down, you poor
dear!” Gertrude kissed her affectionately and penitently; “try
phospho-caffein; your hands are like ice!”

“Oh, it’s nothing--only a headache,” fibbed Rose, more easily
the second time; she realized it with a shudder. The way of the
transgressor is not always hard, the road is wide, also it is
agreeable--but she had not discovered that yet!

“I’ll stop by to-night and inquire,” said Gertrude.

But Rose shivered at the thought of continued deception. “Oh, I’ll be
all right,” she called after her visitor, then she closed the door and
laid her head against it; everything turned dark for a minute and swam
around her.

She went back to the library and picking up her scissors put them away,
and quite mechanically arranged her father’s chair and his footrest and
looked up the book he would want in the evening. She tried not to let
her mind dwell too much on what Miss English had told her, but her lips
tightened and her eyes darkened with controlled emotion. She had led,
hitherto, a happy, sheltered life, she had never suffered much, and her
capacity for suffering was very great. Her character, which was just
emerging from the malleable sweetness of girlhood, had begun to feel
the impress of her father’s stern morality. With Rose right was right,
and wrong was wrong; there was no middle course. She had an exalted
conception of duty and the sacrifices that one should be ready to make
for a principle. She had never tested any of these admirable theories
in the fiery furnace of temptation, but she had a shadowy notion that
if she had lived in the age of Nero she should have offered her body
to be burned to save her soul alive. It is unfortunate for some of the
modern Christian martyrs that they did not live at that time; a diet
of prepared breakfast foods and French entrées is not conducive to the
production of heroes.

Rose had been so happy the day before, the birth of a new and
beautiful emotion had so transfigured her young soul, that this sudden
and dreadful revelation was in the nature of a thunderbolt from a clear
sky; her heart shrivelled and shrank within her. Yet to question Fox,
to doubt him was, to her simple, loyal nature a hideous possibility.

If this were true, if he had all the while loved a married woman--

Rose knelt down by her father’s vacant chair and laid her head on her
arms. She tried to thrust the thought away, but it haunted her and
that verse--she had been brought up on the Scriptures, she knew them
by heart, their denunciations had frightened her when she was a little
girl, they chilled her still--_For whosoever shall keep the whole law,
and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all._ She shuddered;
what should she do? O God, would it be very hard? She caught herself
pleading; was she begging off? The stern conscience in her made her
start up from her knees with a sob.



XIII


IT fell out--most unseasonably for the Vermilions--that Mrs. O’Neal had
planned her annual reception for the same night as their fancy-ball.
All the world was sure to go to Mrs. O’Neal’s sooner or later, and it
broke up the mask-ball at an unusual hour, just before the champagne
began to take effect, which was, on the whole, rather a mercy to the
Vermilions, though they knew it not and suffered some keen pangs of
anger and jealousy. Mrs. O’Neal had, of course, done it on purpose,
Cynthia Vermilion said, and, perhaps she had! Mrs. O’Neal was a
thoroughly worldly old person who would have driven her social chariot
over a hundred Vermilions, figuratively speaking, and felt a grim
pleasure in doing it. The world is not precisely the place for the
cultivation of the more tender feelings, or an undue love for your
neighbor, and Martha O’Neal had long since forgotten that there might
be really serious reasons for considering any one but herself.

So she gave her famous annual ball on that beautiful spring evening
when the scent of the lilacs in her garden came in through the open
windows. She had the house decorated with Easter lilies--it was
Eastertide--and she had made her offering from the front pew in the
most fashionable church in town, wearing her new bonnet while her head
vibrated sufficiently to make the roses dance in weird mockery on its
brim. She had remembered to mention, too, that she gave a thousand
dollars a year to the church, because it is quite useless to hide your
light under a bushel. Having done all these things she gave her ball on
the Vermilions’ evening, and it was a very beautiful, a very select and
a very famous affair, made more famous in the end by an incident which
she had not foreseen.

Those poor Vermilions! They had spent many thousands, and yet people
hurried away or came late, only to eat the supper; old Vermilion was
a magnificent provider. Of course there were some who never went to
the Vermilion’s at all, but always to Mrs. O’Neal’s; among these were
the Temples and old Mrs. Allestree, who made a point to be present at
Martha’s house, for she and Martha had been schoolmates and were still
good friends, although nothing could have been more amusing than the
contrast; the one in her old-fashioned dress with her placid face and
her kindly smile, and the other, tight-laced, over-burdened with satin
and jewels, her old head wagging and quivering under its high white
pompadour and its jewelled _aigrette_.

Her rooms were thronged; the dark polished floors, the old mahogany
furniture, the glittering mirrors, the bewildering array of candles,
tall candles and short candles, huge seven-armed silver candelabra,
short, stout silver candlesticks, the masses of white lilies, the
sweet, heavy odor of them; what a beautiful, dazzling, fanciful scene
it was, when the lovely women in their rich dresses began to throng
every room and corridor and even lingered laughing and talking on the
wide stairs and in the gallery above which commanded the lower hall
and the ballroom, where the fluted pillars were festooned with vines
and crowned with capitals of roses. The old, old woman, with her white
head and her false teeth and her gorgeous gown, receiving her guests,
chattering and smiling and proud; truly the ruling passion is strong in
death. She stood there nobly, heroically, cheerfully, though her tight
satin shoes pinched her poor, old feet, and the draughts from the door
sent a shiver of rheumatic pain across her poor, old, bare, shrivelled
shoulders; and the wide expanse of her ample neck and bosom, clad in
jewels and the imagination, felt the breeze too.

After awhile the guests from the fancy-ball began to drift in, a few
at first in costume, and then more and more, until the ballroom took
on the look of a harlequin show, and there was much gay laughter
and criticism of each new arrival from those who had disdained the
Vermilion ball or who had never been asked.

Mrs. Osborne came, beautiful and striking, dressed as an Eastern
sorceress, and almost at once she had a circle around her in the corner
of the conservatory, and was telling fortunes and interpreting dreams
with all the arts of a charlatan and the charm of a lovely woman. The
crimson tunic, the dark blue petticoat worked with gold, the shapely
ankles with broad gold bracelets, the glittering scarfs which draped
her shoulders and revealed her white arms, the dull gold band on her
forehead, binding back the masses of glossy auburn hair, all combined
to make her a charming and seductive picture. She told fortunes well;
it is an alluring art, it shows pretty hands and delicate wrists,
and the downward sweep of soft eyelashes, the arch of a white brow,
besides that swift glance upward from bewilderingly lovely eyes--

The women looked at her over their shoulders and stiffened, while the
men all had their fortunes told and found the lines on their palms of
sudden and absorbing interest. One or two elderly women, the mothers of
grown boys and girls, were seized with a sudden desire to go home, but
it was no easy matter because the elderly gentlemen belonging to them,
and also the fathers of grown boys and girls, found that corner too
attractive to leave.

Judge Temple, observing it with his shrewd common sense, smiled with
much secret amusement and looked about to see if Rose saw it, for
Rose would understand though she had not his sense of humor. But he
discovered Rose greeting William Fox with an expression on her sweet
young face which startled him. She was smiling and speaking easily, he
saw that, but what was it in her eyes, her lips, which seemed almost
too subtle to interpret? The judge stopped talking to his nearest
neighbor and looked at his own child oddly; could it be? Then he looked
at Fox and there he read something too, the look of a man in pain,
physical or mental, a pain which he meant to hide. The old judge had
been to the supper-table and was standing at the door when he saw
them; he quite forgot the plate in his hand, he almost let a strawberry
roll off on to the floor when he heard Mrs. Allestree’s voice.

“Dear me, judge, do remember that I’m wearing my one evening gown and
strawberries stain!” and she laughed as she saw his start; “there, see
what it is to be a philosopher out for an evening with a frivolous old
woman!”

“My dear Jane,” replied the judge--he had gone to school with Mrs.
Allestree--; “I’d forgotten that it wasn’t a strawberry vine. Do you
remember those we stole from old Mr. White’s patch a thousand years
ago?”

“Do I?” the old woman sighed; “Stephen,” she said, “how much nicer they
were than these! I wonder if I stole some now--”

“I should send you to jail,” he retorted, twinkling, “the second
offense, you know!”

“You stole those yourself!” she replied indignantly, “I was only
accessory after the fact! Who in the world is that?” she added,
catching her breath and craning her neck to peep through the throng.

It was Margaret White. She had just come from the fancy-ball where it
had been her whim to appear as Ophelia. Perhaps her conscience had
pinched her for her treatment of Mrs. Vermilion in Allestree’s studio,
or it had merely pleased her to go. It was often impossible to find
the key to her conduct. At any rate she had gone, and she came late to
Mrs. O’Neal’s, where she was to meet her husband, for he had refused
to go in costume to the Vermilions’. He was a man of too heavy common
sense to trick himself out in fancy dress, and on that one point he
knew his own limitations; he had never been able to play a part to his
own satisfaction, and he had too high an opinion of Wicklow White to
belittle him with a failure. So it happened that he had already had his
fortune told by the enchantress in the conservatory when a ripple of
excitement from the ballroom reached him.

When Mrs. Allestree spoke the crowd had parted to let Margaret pass
through it. She wore a flowing, soft, white gown, thin, clinging,
revealing her neck and arms and the long slim lines of her figure;
her hair, which was beautiful and an unusual tint of pale brown, was
unbound and hanging, trimmed with flowers, while her arms were full of
them.

There was a silence; every eye was on her, and there was an
instantaneous recognition of her remarkable fitness for the part; the
delicate, subtle beauty of her face, her brilliant eyes, with the
dusky shadows below them, the longing, the pain, the uninterpreted
feeling of her expression, her wild hair, her slim, graceful figure,
the appealing beauty of her slender white hands as she held them out,
offering rosemary and rue and daisies, was she really an actress born
or--the very nymph herself? That mystic atmosphere of tragedy which
sometimes seemed to pervade her being had at last found an expression
at once visible and beautiful.

It was her whim to play the part out, and people watched her,
fascinated; those who did not approve of her, those who disliked her,
as well as those who fell under her spell, watched her with undisguised
eagerness. She drew all eyes and knew it. She looked up and saw her
husband standing in the door of the conservatory; their eyes met with a
challenge; they had quarrelled woefully over her coming in this dress,
and it only needed the sight of him to kindle her wilful daring, her
abominable obstinacy. Some one called her by name and spoke to her but,
unheeding, she began to sing Ophelia’s song, throwing flowers as she
walked slowly, very slowly down the crowded room.

“Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny!” she sang.

There was a little breathless applause, but she met it with a vacant
look, coming on, tossing a rose here, a lily there, to be caught by
some ready hand.

Mrs. Wingfield, unhappily, stood in her path. She had been watching her
approach with an expression which needed no explanation, but she could
not be content with silent disapproval, she rushed upon her fate. “Why,
how do you do, Mrs. White,” she said, in her audible voice, “I really
didn’t know it was you; I thought it must be some actress!”

Margaret looked at her blankly, then she put her head on one side.
“‘Well, God ’ild you!’” she exclaimed, “‘they say the owl was a baker’s
daughter.’”

Mrs. Wingfield turned painfully scarlet. There was a titter, an audible
and wavering titter around her. Alack, there were only too many who
remembered, with the memory of society, that her father had dealt in
loaves and fishes!

But Margaret had passed on; she handed a flower to Fox as she passed,
rosemary for remembrance; she gave a rose to Rose Temple and to the
judge a sprig of rue with a little malicious smile.

“Call it herb of grace o’ Sundays!” she said lightly, and the judge
laughed good humoredly with the others, for he knew that his stiff,
old-fashioned manners and customs were often meat for jests.

After all, it was not so bad, people were obviously entertained; White
began to draw a breath of relief, he tried to signal to her to stop.
But Margaret was not done, instead, the very spirit of defiance seemed
to possess her. She suddenly knelt in the centre of the room and began
to make a wreath of flowers, singing Ophelia’s lament, her sweet, high
voice carrying far in the great rooms. The throng of gayly dressed
women drew farther away, the circle widened, necks were craned, those
behind stood on tip-toe.

It was too much for Wicklow White, he could endure no more; he walked
abruptly across the space. “Margaret,” he said, in a low peremptory
voice, “this is too much, we must go home!”

She looked up and shook back her soft, wild hair as she tossed a flower
at him.

“‘For bonny, sweet Robin is all my joy!’” she sang maliciously.

He crimsoned and bit his lip. Again some one applauded; there was a
slight murmur of talk.

Margaret rose abruptly from her knees and began to laugh, herself
again, gay, debonair, indifferent. “What a fool I can be to entertain
you,” she said, her delicate face bright as a child’s.

People gathered about her at once; she was congratulated, praised,
but in the corners others disapproved and thought her a little mad.
Mrs. Osborne glanced meaningly at her nearest friend and tapped her
forehead, and Mrs. Wingfield laughed furiously.

“What a delightful side-show!” she said; “they say White will lose his
place--no wonder!”

The throng had closed up again, the gay murmur of talk rose; the
musicians were just beginning to play a waltz and the ballroom was
filling with dancers.

Margaret, laughing and talking gayly, stood in the door. Fox, looking
across at her, experienced a feeling of deep amazement. What an
actress a woman can be! It seemed to him that he had dreamed that
scene in White’s house, that it was impossible, untrue, a phantasm of
his troubled brain. Then, as he watched her, pondering on a woman’s
unfathomable moods, he saw a sudden gray whiteness spread over her face
like a veil, her eyelids quivered, her lips parted and she swayed.

In an instant he had reached her and caught her as she fell. Judge
Temple helped him hush the stir it made, and he carried her quietly and
swiftly down stairs to a reception room below where he could get help
at once.

       *       *       *       *       *

Half an hour later Judge Temple took Rose home.

“What was it, father?” she asked, as they got into the carriage; “I
didn’t see it and I just heard that Margaret fainted. Mrs. O’Neal kept
us all dancing, she didn’t want it known.”

The judge looked thoughtfully out of the window. He was not thinking of
Margaret. “She is better now, they got her home in a little while. I
believe White did his best in spite of that scene,” he said; “she has
heart disease; the doctor intimated to me that she might go just like
that if she keeps this up--but people live a long time with Margaret’s
kind of heart trouble; I knew one man who had it for twenty years and
finally died of stale cucumbers. A beautiful creature, a very beautiful
creature, I’ll admit it!”

Rose made an effort, she must learn to hide her heart, she who had
never hidden anything! “Father, may I go to her dressmaker?” she asked
archly.

“No!” he said sharply, “nor walk in her ways--the most extraordinary
creature! Jane Allestree tells me there’ll be a divorce, and no wonder!”

Rose was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said, “Gerty said so.”

The judge leaned back in his corner and passed his hand over his eyes.
“Ah!” he ejaculated and relapsed into silence.



XIV


ROSE slept but little that night; she tossed instead, trying to still
her heart. She had seen Fox but a moment in the throng, but that
moment had been enough for her to feel the subtle change in their
relations. Her perceptions were delicate, far reaching, exquisitely
sensitive. He was not himself, his troubled eye met hers with a
confession of sorrow which she could not interpret. Standing outside of
his consciousness, unaware of the struggle in his soul, she only saw
estrangement, awkwardness, a mute appeal, which seemed to her incapable
of explanation unless he loved Margaret and had been trifling with her.
The thought made Rose sit up in bed with flaming cheeks.

It is useless to inculcate the spirit of meekness and Christian
submission in a child when you cannot pluck the old Adam out of
the heart. Rose was her father’s daughter; she meant to be a good
Christian, she had little stiff limitations in her life, but she never
thought of breaking her pride; it came to her with her blood, with
her long and respectable descent from a race of God-fearing English
yeomen, transplanted to the soil of a new world and endowed with a new
and fuller stream of blood and physical beauty, but with the same hardy
pluck, the same psalm-singing, fighting spirit which led the van at
Naseby.

If Fox loved Margaret, if he meant to marry White’s wife when she was
free--Rose shuddered, she had learned her father’s views on divorce and
re-marriage by heart. At least, he should not pity her!

After awhile she lay down again and hid her burning face on her
pillows, for it was wet with tears. She would not cry out, she would
not flinch, but it hurt.

In the morning she bathed her eyes again and again in cold water,
dressed and went down to breakfast. The judge was reading his morning
paper and they were both rather taciturn. The old man had troubles
of his own just then which Rose knew nothing about. He had invested
some money unwisely and had heavily endorsed the notes of a friend,
a man he had trusted, but lately a doubt began to thrust itself into
his abstracted mind. Besides his salary as judge he had but a slender
fortune, and if that were really involved and he should die--he looked
up over his paper at Rose with anxious, affectionate eyes. She was
looking down at her cup of coffee and did not perceive his glance,
but he saw again the trouble in her face and thought her eyes looked
as if she had been weeping; there was a droop, too, to her lips which
was unnatural. It set him thinking, and a cloud settled on his usually
serene brow.

After awhile he got up and went into his library to finish his paper
before he went out, and he was still there when Rose came in and
began to tend her plants. He noticed that she was very quiet and that
she took less pains than usual. He laid down his paper. “Rose, has
Allestree finished your picture yet?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so,” she replied, blushing suddenly; “but he keeps on
fussing over it. Perhaps we should send for it.”

“I want to pay for it; I’ll send him a check to-day,” the judge said,
opening a drawer and looking absently for his checkbook; “it may not be
convenient later.”

Rose set down her pitcher and stood twisting a broken leaf in her
fingers. “He’ll never take anything for it, father.”

The judge looked over his spectacles. “We can’t take such a present,”
he remarked dryly; “I’m afraid you’ve let Robert fall in love with
you, Rose.”

She gave him a quick, pained glance. “I--I hope not!” she said softly.

The old man smiled. “He’s a good boy, Rose; I shouldn’t disapprove
except that I can’t spare you--I’m such a selfish old brute.”

“And I can’t leave you!” she retorted with a queer little laugh, tears
in her voice; “but I know Robert won’t take any money for it; I--I
shouldn’t dare offer it.”

“You needn’t, but I shall,” replied her father calmly; “if he tells me
he’s in love with you I shall not be surprised; no one will be any the
worse for it, Rose.”

“I should be very sorry,” she said simply.

The old man gave her a keen glance and pursed his lips as he wrote the
check.

“He’ll never take it,” she repeated, taking up her pitcher again.

“Well, I’m not anxious to give him you instead!” said the judge.

Rose laughed a little in spite of herself. “You need not!” she replied.

Her father signed the check. “Rose,” he said, in an absent voice, “what
did Gerty English say about Margaret’s divorce?”

Rose bent assiduously to her task. “Not much,” she answered quietly;
“just that it was settled, she meant to get one; she’s very unhappy.”

“Of course she means to marry again, that’s what they do these days,”
the judge said, in a tone of fine irony; “one husband isn’t enough or
one wife. Solomon ought to get here! Of course she’ll marry Fox.”

Rose was silent; through the open window she could see the buds on the
Persian lilac, but she shivered.

“What I should like to know,” said the judge shrewdly, “is this--_does
Fox want to marry her_?”

Rose put her hand to her throat with a helplessly futile gesture. “They
say he was in love with her long ago, father.”

The old man smiled. “My dear child,” he remarked, “women always
remember that Jacob served seven years! But Fox is a genius, an unusual
man and probably as fickle as the wind. However, he’ll have to reap
as he has sown; doubtless he has dangled at Margaret’s elbow; it’s
been the fashion. Well, well, it will very likely thwart his career
and, if so, he’ll deserve it, but I hoped great things of him though
I’ve feared him a little too; genius is like fire--it burns where it
touches.”

He rose and put aside his papers. “I’ve written to Robert and enclosed
the check,” he said; “he’ll get it to-morrow.”

“Then I’ll go there to-day,” said Rose; “I shouldn’t dare to-morrow;
he’ll be furious.”

“Not a bit of it, he has too much sense,” retorted the judge; “besides,
he can’t have my girl yet!”

“Nor ever!” said Rose smiling as her father bent suddenly and kissed
her.

“Ever is a long word,” he replied and laughed gently; in his heart he
believed that Allestree would make her happy.

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour later Rose joined Mrs. Allestree on the way to the studio. The
old lady was out walking in the spring sunshine, her fine aged face
mapped close with delicate wrinkles and little puckers and her keen old
eyes bright and alert in spite of the weight of years.

She took Rose’s proffered arm with a smile. “I forgot my cane,” she
said; “I always forget that I’m more than twenty-four until I try to
go up stairs. I tell Robert that I can’t climb up to his studio much
longer, he’ll have to have an elevator. I’m going now to see your
picture, he means to send it to your father to-morrow; it’s been hard
to part with it!”

Rose colored deeply, much to her own chagrin. “Father is anxious to
have it,” she said, “he spoke about it this morning.”

“Wants to pay for it, I presume,” the old woman retorted shrewdly;
“I’ve always said that Stephen Temple would offer to pay for his halo!
Tell him not to try to pay Robert, Rose, it would hurt.”

Rose looked at her helplessly. “He’s written about it,” she said
reluctantly; “I told him, but he would do it.”

Mrs. Allestree’s sensitive face colored almost as vividly as the girl’s
and she stopped, her hand on Rose’s arm, and looked down thoughtfully.
“It’s in your father’s writing, of course?” she said at last.

“Yes, he wrote this morning and posted it himself.”

The old woman drew a long breath. “I’m going to commit a felony, Rose,”
she said, “I’m going to get that letter; Robert’s mail comes to the
house, I see it first. I shall send the check back to your father
myself.”

“I’m afraid he’ll be angry,” said Rose thoughtfully; “I didn’t know
what to do; I was sure Robert didn’t want to--to be paid for it.”

“Paid for it!” Mrs. Allestree shook her head sadly; “my dear child, it
has been a labor of love. You couldn’t ask Robert to take money for it.”

Rose was silent, she felt herself a mere puppet in Mrs. Allestree’s
hands; the old woman was as shrewd and as skilful as the most worldly
matchmaker in her gentle and affectionate way; besides she adored her
son and, like most mothers, she was willing to offer up any sacrifice
which seemed to her sufficiently worthy for immolation. There was a
moment of embarrassment on Rose’s part, and she was glad to see the
Wicklow White motor-car coming swiftly toward them. At the sight of the
liveries Mrs. Allestree turned quickly and caught an indistinct view of
a woman’s figure, a white chiffon hat and a feather boa.

“Why, it’s Margaret!” she exclaimed, half stopping to look back.

“No, it’s Mrs. Osborne,” Rose said quietly; “she’s taken off her half
mourning.”

Mrs. Allestree’s face changed sharply. “In White’s motor-car?” the
old woman glanced after the vanishing juggernaut with an eloquent
expression. “Society is curious now-a-days! White has behaved
outrageously; I suppose you’ve heard of the divorce project?”

Rose nodded. “Gerty told me.”

“So she did me,” said Mrs. Allestree grimly, “in strict confidence, of
course!”

They looked at each other and laughed helplessly.

“Poor Gerty, she tells everything!” said Rose; “but she’s so good
hearted.”

“My dear child,” remarked Mrs. Allestree, “the longer you live the
more convinced you’ll be that good-hearted people and fools are blood
relations. Of course White has behaved dreadfully, we all know it--but
the Lord knows Margaret has provoked him beyond endurance many a time!
I shall speak to her about the children. Robert says I sha’n’t; he’ll
have me locked up first, that it’s none of my business. A pretty way to
speak to his old mother! I can’t help it, I shall ask her to remember
her poor little children.”

“I’m afraid they’re an awful burden to her, anyway,” rejoined Rose
soberly.

“Oh, I’ll admit that it’s an affliction, a downright scourging of the
Almighty’s, to have them look so much like old Mrs. White! But she’s
got to consider them; she brought them into the world, poor, little,
homely souls! Estelle always reminds me of a little pink-eyed rabbit!
As for the divorce, it will be a hideous scandal!” and the old lady’s
bright eyes glanced quickly at Rose. She was wondering if she had heard
that Mrs. Wingfield said that Fox was the cause of it. It was cruel, it
couldn’t possibly be true, but it was sure to gain credence and Mrs.
Wingfield knew it!

William Fox was her own nephew, she was proud of him and she loved him,
but she was torn between her desire to see her son happy and to shield
her nephew. Her thin old lips opened once to speak and closed again
quickly; no, she dared not! What was in the child’s heart? Rose was
such a child and her father had brought her up so unlike other girls,
she was sure to take the man’s view, the hard, flat, ethical view of
Stephen Temple, and Mrs. Allestree felt, with some secret amusement,
that she would as soon try to argue with the devil as with the judge
when once his feet were planted in the straight and narrow path, the
old, blue Presbyterian path, as the old woman called it, with her
whimsical smile.

Ah, if Rose had only loved Robert as any well regulated young woman
would! But Robert’s mother had few self deceptions on that point; she
had eyes and she had used them.

Meanwhile they walked up the hill to the studio. On the right, the
terraced wall of the corner garden was half hidden by the fresh green
sprays on the ivy which mantled it, and a great purple lilac in full
bloom nodded above it, its fragrance filling the air. The row of old
brick houses opposite had assumed a more genial aspect, here and there
a striped awning broke the dull red of their monotonous fronts, and the
white pillars of a rejuvenated portico shone in the sunshine. A little
girl was buckling her roller-skates on the curb just in front of Daddy
Lerwick’s curiosity-shop.

Mrs. Allestree stopped and halted Rose before the glass show-windows,
peering in at the odds and ends with a smiling face. “Rose,” she
said amusedly, “what shall I give you? A camel’s-hair shawl or a six
shooter?”

“I couldn’t buy anything here,” the girl replied quickly; “I suppose
I’m foolish, but the thought--oh, poor things, how it must have hurt to
sell them, one after another, for a trifle, too!”

The old woman laughed softly. “You’re your father’s daughter, Rose,”
she said; “I’m ashamed, but I’m going to buy that old mirror. Go up
stairs and send Robert down with his purse; I don’t want you about, you
make me uncomfortable!”

“I suppose I am very silly,” Rose admitted reluctantly, “but I can’t
help it.”

“My dear, you’re perfectly right, I haven’t a doubt about it,”
laughed Mrs. Allestree gently; “you haven’t a sense of humor, that’s
all, child, and if I were a man I’d just as soon marry an animated
conscience; you’ll either reform your husband or you’ll be the death
of him! Now, go and send Robert, for I’m an old sinner and I want that
mirror!”

Rose went up stairs, laughing in spite of herself. But as she
approached the studio she caught her breath, she heard voices, could
Fox be there? She hesitated and stood still, agitated by the thought,
then, unwilling to listen even to assure herself, she parted the
portières and called to Allestree. As she did so she came face to face
with Mrs. Osborne. This then was her destination when she had passed
in the motor-car, Rose thought swiftly, but it was too late now to
retreat; she gave Robert his mother’s message.

“I’ll go,” he said, “if you’ll excuse me a moment, and bring mother up;
if I don’t, she’ll get the whole shop on credit.”

“Oh, go at once!” exclaimed Mrs. Osborne laughing; “that would be worse
and more expensive than a bridge tournament.”

Rose bit her lip; the reference was pointed and she caught Robert’s
eye full of doubt. “Go,” she said hastily, “and bring your mother up
stairs; she didn’t want me there to see her bargain.”

“I shan’t be a moment,” he exclaimed, and they heard him running down
stairs.

Left alone with Mrs. Osborne, Rose moved to the window and looked out.
The atmosphere was radiant; even the commonplace narrow street below
was touched with the alchemy of spring; sunshine slanted across it, a
flock of pigeons gathered where some grain had fallen, to rise with
the whir of wings at the first alarm. The garden opposite, above the
terrace wall, was coming into bloom, a tall magnolia in a fluttering
mantle of white and pink and the lilacs full out on the southern slope,
while behind it, a long row of young elm trees were still delicate with
new greens, and beyond rose the gray tower of the church across the
square. How sweet it was, how calm, how reassuring!

Rose heard the rustle of the other woman’s silken linings as she moved
restlessly about the studio, and after a moment she came over to the
window, though Rose’s very attitude was repellent.

“How full the lilacs are,” she observed, and the girl noticed the rich
softness of her tone, “I like them; we had lilacs about the old house
at home.”

“They grow wonderfully in New England, I know. I’ve often seen them
like trees,” Rose rejoined a little stiffly.

“But I’m not from New England,” laughed Lily Osborne, “I’ve often
wondered what mother thought of it.”

“She wasn’t a New Englander then?” Rose turned and looked at her, more
interested than usual.

Mrs. Osborne shrugged her shoulders with much expression. “She was from
New Orleans, a French Creole. She married a Frenchman, I was born in
Paris; it was my husband who took me to New Hampshire first; my mother
had lived there five years with some relatives, but she never spoke of
it!” she added laughing.

“You are only half an American then,” Rose remarked, surprised.

Mrs. Osborne looked at her critically through her long eyelashes. “I’m
a woman,” she said; “that’s all we ever are, my dear, and it’s enough.”

“More than enough sometimes,” Rose replied quietly.

Lily Osborne laughed again, stooping a little to lean both hands on the
window-sill as she looked out. At the touch of her flowing draperies
Rose drew back with instinctive repugnance. They were naturally
antagonistic, and the touch of her dress, the sound of her voice, were
distasteful.

The older woman noticed the movement instantly, her perceptions were
of the keenest. She looked upon the girl as rather dull, if beautiful,
and as an unworthy adversary, yet she resented her manner. Her cheek
reddened and she bit her lip as she stared down into the street with
unseeing eyes. The offense lay deeper; she had never forgotten or
forgiven the bridge whist incident, nor the day when Judge Temple, an
important figure in the social world, failed to see her. She turned
and saw Rose looking at a rough sketch of Fox. Allestree had done it
in a few moments when Fox was talking and unconscious that he was a
model. The result was remarkable; the artist had caught his happiest
expression and the fine upward sweep of the brow, the noble pose of
the head. Rose saw it for the first time and she had forgotten Lily
Osborne. She was looking at it with an absorbed eye, her cheek pale.

The other woman read her as easily as an open page; she moved over
to her side and raised her lorgnon. “Excellent,” she commented;
“a splendid head, I always said so! You have heard of the great
divorce--Mrs. White from the secretary?”

Rose did not reply, she glanced anxiously toward the door. They both
heard steps on the stairs and Mrs. Allestree’s voice panting at every
step. “Robert, I don’t care! Of course the man cheats, they all do, but
it’s a beauty and only seventy-five dollars!”

Lily Osborne continued. “Of course Fox will have to marry her, that’s
the code, I believe! Thank heaven, when I got my divorce I didn’t have
to marry to save myself! It’s such a pity on his account, with his
career, but the secretary would be a fool not to divorce her, she--”

Rose turned coldly. “Pardon me,” she said, with white lips, “I don’t
care to listen to scandal,” and she walked away to meet Mrs. Allestree,
her head up but her heart sinking within her. The sheer misery that
swept in upon her being, chilling its natural happy calm, transforming
all the cheerful amenities of life, appalled her.



XV


TWO days later Mrs. Allestree rang the bell at Margaret’s door with a
sudden sensation of panic. She had felt it her duty to go, in spite of
Robert’s protests, for the morning newspaper had printed a scarcely
veiled account of the scandal in the Cabinet. White, it appeared,
had openly quarrelled with his wife and abruptly left her the day
before, publishing his private affairs by going to a large hotel which
was crowded with fashionable guests. Society caught its breath and
waited--with the relish that it usually waits--for a _cause célèbre_.

“It’s a cowardly thing to do, Robert,” Mrs. Allestree declared hotly;
“no man should expose a woman to such a scandal. I shall go to see
Margaret to-day, it’s my duty!”

“Oh, Lord, mother!” groaned Allestree, “can’t you let it alone? What in
the world can you do?”

“Do? Robert!” the old lady’s bright eyes flashed, “I’m ashamed of you!
Do you think I’ll let people imagine that I believe my own nephew is a
scamp? Not a bit of it! And Margaret--the child’s heart-broken, that’s
all; I’ll never believe a word against her! Of course he’ll marry that
Osborne woman.”

“Mother, mother! You know what Gerty told us; Margaret herself is going
to get the divorce, she’s forced the situation.”

“Gerty’s a fool!” said his mother promptly and unreservedly.

Then she put on her bonnet and went, but as she approached the imposing
house with its great porte-cochère and its long row of fluted white
pillars, its upper balcony and its conservatory, its flagrant and
ostentatious wealth, her heart sank drearily. Experience had taught
her that the very wealthy have their own way; moreover, what could
she say? What had she a right to say? But she was a courageous old
woman and strong in her convictions; she rang the bell. A tardy
but irreproachable footman opened the door and regarded her with a
carefully impersonal stare.

“Wonders who the old party is in an 1830 bonnet!” thought Mrs.
Allestree amusedly, but she inquired for Margaret and was admitted
after an instant of hesitation which involved the inspection of her
card.

She waited a long while, it seemed to her, in the dim drawing-room, and
looked about her at its luxuries and the long vista of the ballroom
beyond with a new interest. She had never been a frequent visitor
at the house and its aspect was new and unnatural, its spacious and
imposing vacancy seemed to be accentuated by every touch of the golden
talisman; there was no atmosphere of home. “Splendid misery,” she
thought, and sighed; there was not much to bind the heart of a woman--a
natural woman--here! She listened, hoping to hear a child’s voice,
even the baby’s cry, but the stillness was perfect; it was evidently
a well ordered household even if Margaret held the reins with a lax
hand. Gerty must be a tolerably good manager, Mrs. Allestree thought
with a prick of conscience, remembering that Margaret put everything on
Gerty’s shoulders.

It was all dazzling enough, there were gold nuggets in the very
ceiling, fifteen carat, the old woman recollected with a secret smile,
and even the pictures suggested great wealth; on the wall opposite was
“The Angelus” and beyond a Reynolds which had cost White a fabulous
sum. He knew as little of art as he did of the kingdom of heaven,
but Margaret had married him for money, and she seemed to have been
inspired with a grim contempt for it afterwards and loved to scatter
his wealth to the four winds of heaven.

After awhile a French maid came down and asked Mrs. Allestree to come
up stairs. Margaret, it appeared, was only half recovered from her
attack at Mrs. O’Neal’s.

She was lying on a lounge by the open window of her bedroom when the
old woman entered, and she greeted her with a languid smile. Her white
morning gown made her look paler than usual, but she was the picture of
indifference and she had been viewing a new hat of a very pronounced
size and startling effect.

She held out a hand to Mrs. Allestree with an odd little laugh. “Oh,
how do you do?” she said calmly; “you know Wicklow has gone off and
left me! I’m ordering a new hat to keep up my spirits.”

Mrs. Allestree sat down weakly in the nearest chair. “Margaret!” she
protested faintly.

Margaret looked at her from under her drooping lashes. “Did you expect
to find me in tears?” she asked coolly.

Her visitor colored deeply; after all, Robert had been right, she had
no justification, her well meant sympathy was fruitless, her coming an
intrusion. “I suppose I shouldn’t have come here at all,” she admitted
reluctantly, her fine old hands trembling a little in her lap, “but I
came to tell you that I had always loved you, Margaret.”

The younger woman looked at her strangely, her face changing rapidly
from defiance to a shamed affection, the unlooked for tenderness
touched her sore heart; her stormy nature had been passing through
one of its eclipses, when the light itself seemed to go out and
leave her groping blindly for relief, for hope, for an escape from
the intolerable situation which her own folly and infatuation had
created, and which kept closing in upon her like the narrowing walls
of the inquisition dungeon. “I think it lovely of you to say it,” she
murmured, a little break in her voice, her lip quivering as she averted
her face.

Mrs. Allestree’s eyes softened; she gave a hasty glance about her,
partly to assure herself that they were alone and partly because she
was just realizing the fanciful splendor of Margaret’s surroundings.
The room was white and gold and every article on her toilet-table
was gold mounted, every detail suggesting the height of luxurious
sybaritism. “Margaret,” she began gently, “it is never too late, can’t
I do something to--to bridge it over?”

Margaret’s lips stiffened, her momentary emotion passing at the mere
suggestion of a continuance in the old intolerable relation. She shook
her head impatiently. “I wouldn’t bridge it over if I could!” she
exclaimed with passion.

But the old lady, foreseeing troubles which would involve those near
and dear to her, could not give up so easily. “My dear child, it’s
dreadful! The woman always suffers--and your husband’s high position,
the publicity of it!”

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t help that!” she said
scornfully, “I’ve borne it long enough. Haven’t I a right to be happy?
A nursemaid might expect that, a cook! Why shouldn’t I have a little
happiness in my life?”

“You have so much!” Mrs. Allestree looked about her, “everything wealth
can purchase--and the children! God has been good to you; hasn’t He a
right to chasten you a little?”

Her glance at the material comforts of the room, her evident
consideration of the wealth, the worldly as well as the religious side
of the question, irritated Margaret anew, for she had no tolerance for
compromise, she had bought all these things at too dear a cost, and
knew it in the overwhelming bitterness of her soul.

“What in the world do I care for all this if I haven’t happiness?” she
demanded bitterly, “and I’ve never had it, never for a moment! Besides,
it’s all nonsense to argue about it; it’s over and done with, thank
God! We quarrelled irrevocably; Wicklow wouldn’t forgive me if I’d
forgive him--and I never will!”

“Oh, Margaret, Margaret!” Mrs. Allestree shook her head; “there are
your children, you must think of them, you’re bound to, my heart aches
for them!”

“Well, it needn’t! Mrs. White will bring them up beautifully; she
adores them, I don’t!” Margaret’s thin cheeks were burning and her eyes
glowed dangerously; the children had been held over her head too often,
she was in no mood to hear of them again.

“That’s the most wicked thing you’ve said!” exclaimed her visitor
with indignation; “you’ve lost your mind, Margaret; you can’t expect
happiness feeling as you do! There, I know you’ll despise me, but I’m
an old woman, and I had to speak my mind!”

Margaret raised herself on her elbow and pointed an accusing finger.
“Speak it,” she exclaimed with bitterness, “but--were you ever in my
place? Were you ever married to a man like my husband, a man who was
openly unfaithful to you--who was the talk and the jest of the town
because of another woman? Were you ever made to feel that you were
bought, a mere chattel?”

Mrs. Allestree looked at her in silence, her fine old face grew pale,
her lips trembled. Margaret sank down again, her hand on her heart.

“You never were!” she said scornfully.

Mrs. Allestree wiped away her tears. “I meant well,” she said, “but
despise me, Margaret, I deserve it!”

“I don’t despise you, I think you a dear,” Margaret retorted,
softening; “only you do not in the least understand. It’s all right for
you to be so good and so pious, but I can’t be!”

“You’ve made me a wretched old hypocrite!” said Mrs. Allestree; “oh,
Margaret, you can be just what you want to be, you are so clever, so
beautiful, so charming!”

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “I’m a miserable sinner, dear heart,
it’s no use to try to reform me.”

“You are wilful! Oh, child, it’s for you I speak, you’ll regret it!”
She bent forward and patted the limp white hand that hung over the
side of the lounge. From the bottom of her heart she wished she knew
how to reach her, but she had been curiously defeated. “You’ll regret
it all your life; we women never can break the bonds. Marriage is an
incident in a man’s life; God didn’t mean that women should feel the
same about it.”

“A great many do break the bonds,” said Margaret eagerly, “and begin
all over again; why shouldn’t I?” she spoke with the force of longing;
hour after hour she had argued thus with herself, yet at a word her
soul leaped up unconvinced and the battle began all over again; that
inexorable law which binds a woman’s life and fixes it in the orbit of
eternity had laid hold upon her.

“A great many do?” Mrs. Allestree’s thin lips tightened and she looked
away. Then she rose and gathered up her gloves and her parasol and her
spectacles. “Too many, and what do people say of most of them?” she
added severely, regaining a hold upon her shaken convictions.

Margaret bit her lip, there was a little spot of color in each cheek,
her heavy eyes shone with feverish defiance. “I wish I were like you, I
wish I had lived your life, I should like to be good if I could!” she
said slowly, without mockery.

Mrs. Allestree turned red. “Don’t, Margaret! I’m really not the
Pharisee or the Levite, only I wanted to help you!”

“I meant just what I said,” Margaret retorted quietly; “but I can’t be
religious, I--I must be loved, I must be happy, I should die just being
good!”

The old lady stooped and kissed her impetuously. “You’re ill, child,
and weak; wouldn’t it do any good if I--I should go to see Mr. White?”

“And bring him back here?” Margaret shuddered. “My dear friend, I’m
going to get out of here to-morrow, I shall never come into this house
again!”

Mrs. Allestree stood up shocked, the force of Margaret’s hatred of
White bit through all reserves. The old woman felt her impotence, how
could she fight this will, this unscrupulous will to be happy, happy at
any price? “Where will you go?” she asked helplessly.

“To Omaha. Of course I could get a divorce anywhere, every one knows
that! Oh, you wouldn’t have borne all I’ve borne! But I shall go to
Omaha; I want to have it over soon and I can stay there until I get it.”

“And the children?”

“I sent them over to Wicklow’s mother this morning; she was nearly in
spasms for fear I’d want the custody!”

Mrs. Allestree stood looking at her a moment in speechless amazement;
then she surrendered. “Good-bye, Margaret,” she said quietly; “I’m a
useless old fogy and busybody, I see it, but I couldn’t help coming; I
remember you running about in short skirts with your hair in a pigtail.
Heaven knows I wish you were a child still and as happy as you were
then!”

Margaret sighed. “I wish I were!” she said.

Mrs. Allestree tightened her bonnet ribbons under her chin with shaking
fingers, her heart swelling with anger and disgust. A woman, the mother
of children, to behave like this! It was monstrous! Behave like it
herself? Never! Her stern lips parted once to utter a word of rebuke,
but her courage failed her; she remembered Robert’s remonstrances.
After all, what right had she to speak? “I wish you were, indeed!” she
repeated stiffly.

Her tone, something in her offended gesture, reached Margaret’s heart.
She rose, rose with a visible effort, and went to her with an unsteady
step, throwing her arms around her neck, disarranging the astonished
old woman’s bonnet as she did it. “Love me!” she sobbed, with the
abandon of a child who has been punished, “love me--I’m starving to
be loved, to be taken care of, oh, don’t you understand? I want to be
happy!”

There was a moment of suspended indignation, of doubt, then the old
arms clasped her; if she could but save this brand from the burning!
“Poor child!” she murmured, “you poor, unhappy, misguided child! Let me
be the peace-maker.”

It was a woeful mistake; Margaret raised her head with a wild little
laugh, pushing her away again almost with force. “Oh, you’ll never
understand me!” she cried, with a finality which was a sharp shock to
her listener, “never! You can never change me--I’d sell my soul to be
free!”



XVI


FOX had not seen Rose alone since that night, now some weeks distant,
when, after a bitter struggle with himself, he had definitely accepted
the inexorable fact of Margaret’s demand upon him. To injure a woman,
however unwittingly, seemed to him contemptible, even when he secretly
raged against the injustice of her claims and repudiated them in
his heart with something akin to savage anger. It had been a bitter
experience, a shock to his egotism, to his infatuated belief in
himself, that belief which comes sometimes to genius with the force of
absolute conviction.

The adjournment of Congress had left him more at liberty than usual and
he was anxious to leave the city, yet to do so would be interpreted
as flight. He had purposely absented himself from White’s house, and
Margaret, understanding his mood, had refrained from communicating
with him, but he was instinctively aware that she was unshaken in her
resolution, and the news of the open rupture came to him almost as
a relief; it was over, and it was useless to indulge in vague hopes
and futile thoughts of escape from his responsibility; he must meet
the fate that his folly and selfishness had invited, and with it the
wreck of his own happiness! And he was a strong willed, selfish man;
it was well nigh impossible to yield to such a course, to give up,
to let Rose go just when it seemed most possible to win her. As for
Margaret, the manner in which he thought of her, the wretched obstinacy
with which her fate entangled his, argued ill indeed for her future
hope of happiness if he married her. If he yielded that reluctant
assent to the situation, if he accepted the claim she made upon him,
it might be a bare and cruel fate for both. He was himself unaware of
the impossibility of concealment, that his final indifference would be
more cruel, more deadly than present repudiation. He thought, instead,
of himself, of the wreck of a dream which had filled his soul with the
beautiful and tender amenities of love and loyalty and protection;
he forgot that a man can hide his heart as little as the leopard can
change his spots, and that a woman can suffer more in its revelation
than she would from physical brutality.

All this while the thought of Rose came to him with cruel regret.
There were hours, between daylight and dawn, when he walked the floor
battling with his own soul, battling with the irresistible desire to go
to her, to tell her that he loved her, no matter what happened; let the
universe crumble, let her despise him for his weakness, if she would,
but to tell her the truth! It seemed to him supremely worth the cost.

It was late in the afternoon of one of those perfect spring days when
the cherry trees are white with bloom behind the garden walls and all
the parks are full of robins. Fox had left his work in his vacant
committee-room at the Capitol, and crossing the city was walking
westward with no companion but Sandy. The desire to see Rose had
crystallized in his heart even while he struggled against it, and he
turned almost unconsciously in the direction of her home. He had heard
that very morning of the rumors, now numerous and substantial, of Judge
Temple’s financial losses; one man had told him that the judge was on
the brink of ruin, and the thought of distress and sorrow coming to her
stung Fox with renewed misery. As he came in sight of the modest old
house with its ivy mantled wall and its white door, with the half moon
of triangular panes above it, and its fluted white pilasters on either
side, he looked up over it with the feeling of a man who had shut the
gate of Paradise in his own face. He had intended to pass it, crossing
on the street below, but at the corner Sandy stopped and pricked his
ears and then dashed forward with a joyous bark of greeting, and his
master knew that he was betrayed.

Rose had just mounted her horse at her own door and was dismissing the
negro who had held the reins. The sun shone full in her face and made
a nimbus of her soft bright hair, while her slim figure in the saddle
looked more youthful than ever. She had recognized Sandy and greeted
him with a kindly word as he leaped at her stirrup, and seeing his
master behind him, she held in her restless horse and waited quietly,
only a slight deepening of the color in her cheeks indicating the
tumult in her heart. She had schooled herself for the moment and even
in the shock of unexpected meeting her training held good; she was more
composed than he was, as she answered his greeting. But, at a glance,
he saw the change in her, the reserve in her eyes, the slightness of
her smile, and taking offense at what seemed to him an injustice, he
overlooked the fact that it was the baldest, the most pitiful acting of
one who had never dissembled before in her life.

“It’s too perfect a day to be indoors,” she said, with a lightness of
tone which shocked her own ears; “I am going down by the speedway to
see the river and that soft haze which I know is lying over on the
Virginia shore; in the afternoon sun it looks like a mirage.”

“I don’t think I should enjoy the sight,” Fox said dryly; “life has
been too much of a mirage to me lately.”

She looked down at him, the sun illuminating her beautiful eyes.
“Life?” she repeated, with sudden girlish enthusiasm; “isn’t it what we
make it? We owe it to ourselves--that moral responsibility.”

He laughed with bitterness; her childishness struck him with renewed
force; she could never understand his impossible situation; she would
condemn him, and he deserved it! “Moral responsibility!” he repeated,
with sudden fury, “what cant it is. I’d be willing to cast it all into
Hades for one moment of liberty from these wretched shackles which
‘make cowards of us all!’ No living man can control his life where it
touches another’s.”

She shrank instinctively, with a sharp moral recoil, from his
impassioned words, coloring deeply. Her hands trembled as she held
the bridle, and even that slight motion made her horse swerve, eager
to be off. Intuition, swift and unerring, interpreted his words and
his sudden stress of feeling. “Pardon me,” she said simply, “I did not
mean to set myself up as a judge. I suppose I’m very ignorant of such
matters and--I would rather be so,” she added with gentle dignity.

He looked at her deeply touched. “My God, Rose,” he murmured, “leave
me; if you stay a moment longer I must speak, and you will never
forgive me!”

Her lip trembled like a child’s, but her clear eyes were full of a
grave condemnation; yet she was deeply moved; he had never called her
by her name before, and the sound of it upon his lips, the very way in
which it was uttered voiced his heart; she could not close her ears
to it, no matter how much she struggled with herself, and she did
struggle, determined to hide her own pang of anguished regret. For a
moment neither spoke, then she leaned slightly from her saddle and held
out her hand. “Let us part friends,” she said in a voice of restraint.

He did not take her hand; he groaned. “I cannot!” he exclaimed with
renewed bitterness; “do not offer a sop to a starving man!”

Her horse plunged and she grasped the bridle again with both hands.
Her face changed so completely that it seemed to him a strange face.
He could not read it but he believed that, in her heart, she condemned
him, that he appeared to her in the guise of Mephistopheles himself.
Yet, as she turned and looked back at him, there was an expression in
her eyes at once inscrutable and beautiful; he could never be sure how
far it confessed her heart. Had she loved him? It was impossible to
know, and he stood mute watching her slight figure outlined against
the sun as she galloped down the long quiet street, under an arcade of
new green, wreathed here and there with the bloom of the tulip trees,
narrowing at last to an arched vista of luminous sky above blue distant
hills; its stillness and its new thick foliage shutting from view, at
once of mind and eye, the city life which enfolded it, and was shut
out by its gracious gift of leafage, which hid long rows of houses or
clothed them with imaginary beauty.

Fox stood still, rooted to the spot, his mind darkened by the fierce
tumult of feeling which clamored against fate and against Margaret. She
had broken with him long ago, what right had she to thrust herself into
his life? Then the picture of her in her forlorn grief, in her appeal
to him, came back with an abruptness which wrung a groan from his lips.
What man, so placed as he, could fling her unhappy love in her face?

And Rose? What she believed of him, shaping her thoughts by that stern
old moralist her father, it was not difficult to imagine!

He started to self-consciousness as Sandy, tired of waiting, suddenly
jumped up and pawed his arm. Coming to himself again he flushed hotly
at the discovery that some chance passers-by were staring at him, and
whistling to the dog he walked rapidly away, the battle still raging in
his soul with bitterness.

Meanwhile Rose had turned her horse’s head through less frequented
streets toward the White Lot, and galloping through the bridle paths
around the ellipse, she turned and crossing the street rode down to the
speedway, the sun shining athwart her path and the river lying before
her a sheet of silver.

As she had anticipated, a soft haze floated on the farther shore, the
sun seemed to turn the very mist to gold, and through this glowing,
impalpable atmospheric vapor she saw the beautiful swelling hills, half
fledged in tenderest green, the shadows purple, the distances melting
into the sky itself. Across the river a flock of birds winged their
flight, vanishing at last into the heart of the west.

The long white road stretched smooth and bare to the water’s edge,
she heard the tide lap the sand, and the sharp hoofbeats of her horse
rang clear. It was almost deserted; some social function had drawn the
tide of carriages and motors elsewhere; a few stragglers passed her,
but she galloped on. Behind her the city dropped away into silence,
the foliage in the open spaces of the park and the White House grounds
almost hiding the public buildings and clothing the whole with a sylvan
aspect. Some children paddled at the water’s edge; a boy cast his net;
the prattle of their voices came up through the clear soft air.

Rose checked her horse and sat looking across the river, shading her
eyes with her hand. The sight of Fox, the sound of his voice had
unnerved her. She had thought herself strong enough to dismiss him
from her mind, to live down that dream, that idle futile dream, but
she found that she had not counted the cost, that she had suffered
a serious hurt. Already Rose’s inner mind began to question her own
judgment. She knew nothing of the circumstances; had she a right to
condemn him? Secretly she blamed Margaret; what woman does not blame
the other woman a little? What woman does not know that the other’s
charming ways, her skill, her beauty, may have captured the unwary
male creature almost against his will and certainly against his better
judgment? Eve would never have blamed Adam in her heart if there had
been any one for Adam to flirt with, but therein lay Eve’s profound
superiority over her descendants--she was the only woman!

But Rose knew Margaret, knew her charm, her subtilty, her daring, and
she battled with herself, trying to beat down her secret condemnation
of the woman only. She was a stern little moralist, and she tried to
be just; Fox must be to blame also, for was not Margaret married?
The enormity of his offense could not be excused; besides, as she
reflected, with a gnawing pain at her heart, of what avail to argue?
If the divorce was granted--and it would be, beyond a doubt--Fox would
marry Margaret.

Her lips tightened, her hands grasped the bridle again, and she
galloped on, a wave of misery sweeping over her young soul, blotting
out the bright contentment of her life, her natural cheerfulness.
Suddenly she thought of that day a year ago, how happy she had been!
She remembered it, a bright beautiful day, and she and Mrs. Allestree
and Robert had driven out to Rock Creek Park and she had found some
wood violets. A few months, and her old life had been blotted out,
her happiness clouded; even her affection for her father seemed
overshadowed, her whole being preoccupied and absorbed with this new
misery. Was this then what men called love? Alack, she wished that
she had never met the little blind god, or meeting him, had passed
unscathed!

She turned her horse’s head and rode slowly back; the scent of flowers,
of sweet new grass, of the fresh turned earth came to her, and the
sweet treble note of a song-sparrow, but the world would never be quite
the same again; she had met life face to face and learned one of its
profound lessons. The young purity of her soul refused to accept it
as a common lot, and it was characteristic of the sweetness of her
temperament that, however she suffered, she did not blame Fox for
having deliberately won her love, but she shrank, with almost physical
repugnance, from the thought of him as the lover of a married woman.
The judge’s lessons had gone even deeper than he knew.



XVII


GERTRUDE ENGLISH, with her hands clasped behind her, stood looking over
Allestree’s shoulder and watching him as he worked, in a desultory
way, at some details of Margaret’s now nearly finished portrait. It
was good work, but it lacked the inspiration of his picture of Rose;
it had been, indeed, well nigh impossible to convey the mockery, the
uninterpreted mystery of Margaret’s glance.

“You haven’t made the face half sad enough,” was Gerty’s candid
criticism, “and her eyes--do you suppose any one else ever had quite
such eyes?”

Allestree smiled. “I was going to say that I hoped not, but I suppose
you would construe that as a want of appreciation.”

Miss English opened her own eyes. “Of course I should,” she said
promptly, “and I can’t see what you mean; her eyes are lovely!”

“Admitted!” he said teasingly; “you can’t understand me, Gerty; I have
vagaries.”

“Oh, I suppose that’s genius, isn’t it?”

“Precisely, genius is a form, a mild one, of adolescent insanity.”

“Well, don’t get violent while I’m here, Robert,” she retorted; “I have
enough of whirlwind and tornado just now with Margaret. Heavens, how
glad I’d be if I didn’t have to go to Omaha with her!”

“Poor child, must you?” Allestree stopped painting and looked around
with open sympathy.

“Oh, yes, I must,” Gerty replied with resignation; “I’m homely and
poor, Robert, and they will take me along labelled--‘Propriety, reduced
gentlewoman as secretary and chaperon, age near thirty, conduct
exemplary, travelling expenses paid!’”

“I’d take to the woods, Gerty!” he laughed, not without sympathy; he
dimly imagined the sting under the words.

“Or do something outrageous and get sent home--I wish I could, but I’d
starve,” Gerty said calmly; “nothing else keeps me in the straight and
narrow way but the fact that meat is twenty cents a pound and bread
five. Isn’t it sordid? But I’m really dreadfully sorry for Margaret!”

“I was beginning to lose sight of that fact,” remarked Allestree dryly.

“I’m not sorry for Fox though,” she added, laughing maliciously.

Allestree frowned, concentrating his attention on the picture again.
“It’s a wretched business,” he observed.

Gerty walked to the window and looked out; when she came back her face
was flushed. “Robert, do you know I’m afraid that I did something wrong
the other day,” she broke out; “I’m nearly sure I did!”

He looked at her smiling grimly. “You forgot about the scale of
domestic necessities then, Gerty?” he said.

But she ignored him. “I went to see Rose some time ago, just after
Margaret told me, and I talked--I talked too much.”

“The unruly member, alas!” he mocked, laughing now.

“I did,” she replied. “I told her about Fox and Margaret--and Robert,”
Gerty paused and dropped into a convenient chair, “Robert, she turned
as white as a ghost! Is it possible, do you think it’s possible that
she loves Fox? I never thought of it until Lily Osborne told me so last
week.”

“Mrs. Osborne--why do you listen to Mrs. Osborne?” Allestree broke out,
with a fury which astounded Miss English; “she has no right to speak
of Rose Temple, it’s--it’s an outrage!”

Gerty stared at him a moment in silence, her face reddening still more
with the horrified recognition of another blunder; of course she knew
that he had always loved Rose, in fact she had discounted his devotion
as too stale an affair to be really vital. “I know Lily Osborne is a
cat, _of_ course,” she said slowly, “but then one can’t be rude without
any given reason. She didn’t say a word against Rose, and I suppose
it’s natural enough if Fox has admired her; everybody does.”

But Allestree was not appeased. “Mrs. Osborne!” he broke out again, “of
all women--Mrs. Osborne! Gerty, don’t you let her say a word to you
again.”

“Good heavens, Robert, I shan’t dare squeak after this!” Miss English
retorted plaintively; “and, of course, Mrs. Osborne will marry White
and, they say, he’s going to lose his place in the Cabinet. What on
earth has she been doing about the Russian and German ambassadors?”

“I don’t know,” said Allestree sharply, “and I don’t care!”

Gerty rose abruptly and picked up her parasol. “Robert,” she said with
feeling, “you’re like a bear with a sore head, and I always said you
had such a nice disposition; I should have fallen in love with you
myself if I hadn’t had a snub nose and freckles.”

In spite of himself Robert laughed. “Was that an insurmountable
barrier, Gerty?”

“Certainly; snub nosed girls never fall in love with artists, it isn’t
profitable!” and Gerty moved toward the door.

As she did so she glanced out of the open window. “There’s Rose now,”
she said and beckoned gayly; “she’ll come up and make amends for my
blunders!” she laughed.

Allestree colored hotly, aware that he had betrayed himself; the
amazing indelicacy of Gerty’s raillery was not inconsistent with her
usual careless freedom of speech which gave much unwitting pain and had
cost her correspondingly dear more than once, yet it made him wince
to encounter it, to feel her thoughtless probe sink into the dearest
recesses of his heart and be powerless to resent it. Frankness, after
all, is frequently a doubtful virtue; like a two-edged sword it cleaves
both ways and leaves no healing balsam in its train. It was Margaret
White who always said that an expert and comfortable liar was an
absolute blessing to society.

Meanwhile, Rose had dismounted at the door and come up stairs with
no other motive than a desire to escape her own society. The sight
of Gerty at the window furnished her with an excuse, and she came in
still pale, in spite of her swift gallop by the river, and with a look
in her eyes which shocked Allestree; he had never seen pain in her
look before. Miss English greeted her affectionately; at heart she was
really penitent.

“I came up here to see Lily Osborne’s picture,” she declared, “and
Robert has sent it off already! Isn’t it a shame? I hadn’t seen it.”

“It was excellent,” Rose replied soberly, taking the chair Allestree
pushed forward for her; “she really is a beauty, Gerty; I like to say
that to show myself just and broad-minded!”

“That makes two pictures Robert has finished this winter;--yours and
the serpent’s, as I call Lily Osborne, and now he is nearly done with
Margaret.”

“Not many, if I’m to make a living by it, Gerty,” Allestree retorted
smiling.

“A living? Goodness, if I could only get your prices!” Gerty raised her
eyes and hands to heaven; “I’m a poor thing worth a dollar an hour and
expenses.”

“Raise your rates, Gerty, you’re indispensable,” said Rose.

“Indeed I’m not, there are lots of others waiting for my shoes.
Good-bye, dear children; I’m going now to write two dozen notes, pay
fifty bills and interview a caterer and a florist,” and she kissed her
hand to them as she withdrew, mischievously aware that she had coaxed
Rose into an interview with Allestree; like Judge Temple, Gerty thought
happiness lay in this direction and in no other.

As she disappeared Rose left her chair and went to look at Margaret’s
portrait with dreamy eyes. “I must go, too,” she said, “I only stopped
for a moment on my way. I’ve been riding by the river and through
the White Lot. I kept thinking of those lines, do you remember them,
Robert?--

  “‘Hast thou seen by daisied leas,
  And by rivers flowing
  Lilac-ringlets which the breeze
  Loosens, lightly blowing!’”

“I’ve been longing to be out all day myself,” he said soberly enough,
“to see the ‘lilac-ringlets,’ but I must finish this; in some way
I have grown to believe that Margaret will never again be quite
the Margaret we have known so long. I wanted to be sure of this
expression.”

Rose looked again at the picture, and her lip quivered a little in
spite of herself. “Yes,” she replied simply, “I understand you; I
don’t believe you will see that old look again. I feel--” she paused,
choosing her words, her eyes darkening with an emotion which she was
controlling with an effort--“I feel as if Margaret had died, that some
one else would come back to us, some one we do not know!”

It was a striking fact that at the very moment when Margaret believed
that she was about to achieve happiness, her friends regarded her
as approaching its final eclipse. One moment of detachment, of the
external view-point, would open an appalling vista to many a human
soul, for it is true that those whom the gods desire to destroy they
first make blind.

As Rose voiced this thought Allestree averted his eyes; he felt the
keenest regret for his thoughtless words; Gertrude English’s unmerciful
tongue had torn away the veil from Rose’s emotions. He would have been
more than human had not his heart burned with a sudden fierce anger.
What right had Fox, who had so much, to step in between him and the
girl he loved,--to wound a heart so delicate, so sensitive, so tender
as hers?

“I pity Margaret!” he said sharply, with some bitterness, “but he who
sows the tares--”

“I don’t want to judge,” Rose rejoined quietly; “father is very bitter
against divorce; he thinks it a menace to the national existence, and I
know I think always as he does and--perhaps I’m hard, Robert;” as she
spoke she looked at him appealingly, resting her slender, ungloved hand
on the easel beside Margaret’s portrait; her whole attitude was one of
regret, of reluctance.

“I shouldn’t like to speak of it too often,” he said in a low voice,
“as it stands--in the bare aspect that we see it--Margaret’s plain
justification is lost in what we know to be her wild determination to
be happy at any price.”

Rose sighed. His words revealed her own thought, she knew that Margaret
sought divorce to marry Fox; it was hideous to her, unpardonable, and
Fox? She was silent, looking at the pictured face, seeing its mystical
beauty, that weird suggestion of an unhappy fate which seemed to
shadow its wild loveliness. Allestree had only dimly conveyed it, but
Rose’s memory supplied the details. No wonder that men fell under her
spell; there was a charm as subtle as it was absolute in her whole
personality.

“Ah, well,” Rose said at last, “it is natural--she is wonderful.”

She had almost forgotten Allestree, so absorbed was she in her own
thoughts; and he saw her emotion and raged again at the thought of it.
With a sudden impulse he bent and kissed the hand upon the easel. Rose
started violently and blushed with painful emotion.

“Robert!” she exclaimed reproachfully.

“Can I say nothing?” he replied with passion; “must I stand by like a
mute and let my happiness, my love, my life slip away from me? Rose,
you ask too much!”

“I’m so sorry!” she said simply, “now I must go and--and I hate to seem
unkind, Robert!”

Their eyes met with the shock of natural feeling and his face blanched.
“Of course I know it’s useless, Rose, I’ve always known it, but--well,
I had to speak, and you’ll have to forgive me for it!”

She smiled faintly. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said gently, “and
I must go home to meet father anyway. Won’t you come with me, Robert?”

Without a word he laid down his brushes and the two went down the
old stairs together, each miserable enough in different ways; the
man bitterly rebellious, the girl resolutely enduring with a self
repression that suggested her father in her.



XVIII


THAT very day Judge Temple violated his usual custom and did not come
home promptly after court adjourned. The hour came and passed and he
had not appeared.

Rose was waiting for him in the library and she began to glance
uneasily at the clock. His habits were as fixed as the laws of the
Medes and Persians; any deviation indicated something out of the
common. These spring evenings it was his custom to walk in the garden
before dinner. Rose had accordingly opened the long French window on
the piazza and the tendrils of the jasmine vine, not yet budding, swung
across it; the air was sweet, redolent with the perfume of the wistaria
which hung in festoons on the arbor. The sweet full note of a catbird
broke the stillness.

Rose walked to and fro, trying to distract her mind; if she relaxed
a moment she heard Fox’s voice, saw his strong pale face. It was
pathetically significant that Allestree, and Allestree’s pain at her
finality had dropped from her mind. Love and youth are absolutely
selfish, they ignore the universe.

When she came home that day and was alone in her room, she had shed
some passionate tears; her young strong heart had rebelled utterly;
she wanted happiness too, wanted it as bitterly as Margaret did, but
Margaret had robbed her of it! She gave way then to the passion and the
rage of her grief, she forgot all Christian maxims, and in her heart
stormed against Margaret again, not against Margaret’s lover. But the
fury of her mood passed, leaving her pale and wan, exhausted by it, but
still unsubmissive. It was no longer an unusual thing to wash away the
stains of tears and go down stairs with a smile. It occurred to her as
she smoothed her rumpled hair and made her toilet for the evening that
she had learned the alphabet of deceit too easily, she was a veritable
whited sepulchre. Nevertheless she went down bravely to meet her father
and take up her life just where she had broken off for those few hours
of mad grief and restlessness. But the delay fretted her nerves; it was
one thing to be ready, another to keep that smile, that brave air of
comfort for an hour, two hours, three! She grew uneasy, too, for the
judge,--could he be ill? Could anything have happened? A dim foreboding
crept through the preoccupation of her mood. She ran to the front
window and looked down the long street and saw her father coming slowly
toward the house, his head slightly bowed and his tall thin figure
showing more than usually the student’s stoop of the shoulders. The
last rays of sunlight slanting down the street fell on the whiteness of
his beard and hair.

A swift, pained perception of his age, his feebleness, gave Rose a
sudden sharp pang of grief, of foreshadowed loss; the revelation that
comes suddenly--like the opening of a window in the soul--of the
mortality of those we love, of life’s awful uncertainty.

She opened the door with a pale face. “Father!” she exclaimed, “you’re
so late, I was getting anxious.”

He looked up without a smile, his eyes dull and weary. “I was
delayed--by business matters,” he said simply.

He followed her into the library, and putting down a bundle of papers
he carried sank wearily into his great chair and hid his face in his
hands without another word.

Rose looked at him keenly, her heart throbbing with a new dismay, and
seeing that the fingers which pressed his temples slightly trembled
she went to the dining-room and pouring out a glass of wine brought
it to him. “You are very tired,” she said gently; “try to take this,
father, I think you need it.”

He looked up blankly, took the glass and tasting the wine set it aside.
His face had aged ten years.

In her distress Rose only thought of cheering him. She averted her
eyes; it seemed almost an indelicacy to inquire too closely into such
apparent distress. “The roses I ordered came to-day,” she said, with a
forced lightness of tone which jarred; “I thought, perhaps, we could
decide this evening where to set them out. Do you think they’d do best
by the south wall, father?”

He passed his hand over his eyes like a man whose sight was failing.
“The roses?” he repeated absently; “I do not know. My child,” he added
in a heavy tone, “something has happened to-day; I’m practically a
ruined man.”

She caught her breath, frightened for the moment and taken unawares; in
the assured comfort and peace of her life it seemed impossible. “Oh,
father!” she exclaimed, “not really?”

He nodded, speech was difficult; the full force and horror of the
calamity still hung over him.

A hundred conjectures darted through her mind, but intuitively she
knew the actual fact, his trust had been betrayed. “It’s that man--the
note you endorsed?” she said.

“Yes,” he replied simply, “that and the unfortunate investments I made
in New York. They turned out badly two months ago; I did not tell you,
Rose, but I was swindled. This morning the note came due and Erkhardt
has disappeared.”

“Oh, the villain!” Rose exclaimed hotly, “and you so kind. Father,
can’t it be delayed--warded off? Surely something can be done--must you
lose all that too?”

He roused himself with an effort from the cloud which seemed to be
enfolding him, shutting down on his stupefied senses. “I shall have to
pay the whole obligation; it can’t be honorably delayed,” he said; “it
will sweep away my whole principal, Rose, and leave me nothing but my
salary.”

“But we can live on that,” she exclaimed eagerly, her face brightening,
“we can easily live on that, father; you’ll see how famously I can
manage!”

The judge looked at her with a pitiful tightening of the lines about
his mouth, his eyes filled with unshed tears; her ignorance seemed
to him the sweetest, the most helpless thing in the world. “But when
I die, Rose,” he said hoarsely, “and I may die soon--” he rose and
walked to and fro before the open window where the soft twilight was
falling. He was suddenly bowed with years, shrunken, haggard. “My God,
child, there will be nothing for you!” he broke out at last.

She went to him then, throwing her young arms around his neck and
staying him in his walk. He looked at her, bewildered, and she laid her
soft cheek against his in a mute caress. “It doesn’t matter, father!”
she whispered; “don’t think of me, don’t add that to your burden.”

The old man groaned. “My child,” he exclaimed, his voice quavering with
grief, “my poor child, I can never forgive myself!”

Tears of sympathy filled her eyes, but she smiled bravely. “Why,
father, we have so much--here is the house, the--”

“It’s mortgaged,” he said, and sank heavily into his chair.

For an instant Rose stood appalled. Unconsciously she glanced about
her; in the gathering gloom the dear familiar room, the book-lined
walls, the littered table, the old clock, seemed suddenly changed.
Between yesterday and to-day, between this morning and to-night was
a great gulf fixed. She shivered, a horrible sensation of loss, of
unreality, of despair, swept over her young soul and bared it to
misery, the poignant, unreasoning misery of youth. Then she saw the
bowed white head, the bent shoulders which had borne the heat and
burden of the day, and forgot herself. She knelt by his chair and
slipped her arms around his neck. “Nothing matters, dear daddy, while
we have each other,” she whispered, a little sob in her voice.

He put his shaking hand on her head. “My poor child,” he repeated.

She raised her head, a soft light in her eyes. “Father, you’ll let me
sing now,” she said, “you’ll let me sing--I know I can make a fortune
for us both. Mancini told me that with a year in Paris I could be
ready. He believes in my voice, father, and you know he has trained two
great sopranos.”

The judge shook his head sadly. “Child, child, you know how I feel
about your singing in public!”

“But now, daddy,” she pleaded, “now when it will save me from poverty,
and I love it, oh, I love it! May I go, just for six months?”

Again the judge shook his head, his lips almost formed “no,” but Rose’s
arms tightened around his neck.

“Don’t say it, daddy!” she cried, “don’t say it, for then you will
not unsay it! Truly, truly I must sing, it is my greatest desire, my
happiness, the talent that was given me--surely I mustn’t be the one to
fold it in a napkin! Daddy, daddy, say yes.”

He sat looking out of the window with unseeing eyes, his lips
compressed. The demand struck at his dearest prejudices, his firmest
convictions, yet to leave her helpless and poor!

In the still room the ticking of the clock sounded with monotonous
distinctness; it seemed to jar the silence. Twilight fell fast, the
corners were dark, the two faces in the foreground showed white and
tense.

At last the judge sighed heavily. “I must give in,” he said, with slow
reluctance, “in my folly I have wrecked us both; I’m no longer fit to
command. You may sing, child, but I hope it will only be in concerts.”

Rose’s face fell but hope kindled, one step was gained, and like every
wedge it makes the other easier. “But I must go abroad to be finished
for any really great success,” she said; “father, can’t you go with me?”

The judge looked at her strangely. “Child, I never thought,” he said
harshly; “I haven’t the money to send you yet,--you’ll have to wait
until we can save it; it’s another denial for you, Rose. You know I
sent a large check to Allestree the other day, and there is little left
now.”

A wild hope leaped in her heart, she knew the check would come back,
but dared she tell him? Would he take it if it came? Her lips trembled,
she was glad of the darkness. “Father, I shall sing,” she said bravely,
“perhaps,--who knows,--I shall sing so well that you’ll be proud of me
and sit and applaud and send me bouquets.”

He wiped away the gathering moisture in his eyes. “I’ve always been
proud of you, Rose!” he said sadly, “but that a child of mine should
have to sing for a living! The Lord’s hand is heavy upon me in my old
age,” he added pitifully, completely broken down.

The girl’s arms were closer about his neck; her own sorrow, her
thoughts of Fox were lost in her love for the old man in his distress.
“Who knows?” she cried with new sweet courage, almost gay in her
bravery, “perhaps I shall be as lucky as Patti and we’ll have a great
fortune and a palace to live in! Oh, daddy, I shall be so happy to
sing!”

But he sat motionless, his chin upon his breast and his dull eyes fixed
on the open space beyond the window where the lilac bush stood like a
ghost amidst the gathering night.



XIX


FOX sat at his writing-table turning over and signing some papers left
there in methodical order by his stenographer. He was going out of town
at last, and the thought of escape from the oppression of the last few
weeks was like a breath of sweet fresh air from the hills where he
was born. But even with the prospect of this reprieve he did his work
mechanically, glancing up occasionally at the waving tree-tops which
were on a level with his open windows and limited his view.

Sandy lay at his feet waiting impatiently for his daily run and in
sympathy with his master’s mood. Fox spoke to him once or twice as he
paused in his work, and once he bent down and caressed the faithful
creature’s head; there was comfort in the sense of dumb companionship.
Yet at this very moment of depression he was aware that he had achieved
a signal political triumph. His last speech before the closing of
Congress had resounded from one end of the country to the other, and
been caught up and echoed abroad. He had healed a breach in the party,
plucked victory from defeat, and his name was on every lip.

A few months ago the significance of it would have stirred him deeply,
his keen political foresight would have shown him the greatest
possibilities; now it was dead sea fruit. He knew that in a year,
perhaps in less time, he must take a step which would inflict a sharp
injury to his career, which would, perhaps, lose him his popularity
forever.

And a few weeks ago how differently the world had looked! Then such a
victory as he might now easily win would have meant greater honor to
offer to the girl he loved.

His lips tightened and he bent to his work. He was still reading and
signing letters when there was a knock at his door, and he opened it
to admit Louis Berkman. Berkman had been away and, returning but a few
days before, was not fully aware of the current gossip, but he had just
heard of Fox’s achievement and came in with breezy congratulations.

“My dear fellow, I always said you had it in you! Some day we shall get
you in the White House!”

Fox laughed a little bitterly. “It will be a long day, Berkman,” he
said coolly; “the newspapers make a great deal of fuss over a small
matter.”

“Not at all! I just saw Wingfield, and you know he hasn’t much reason
to love you; he told me that you’d be Secretary of State in three
months.”

Fox bit his lip. “Wingfield’s an old fool!” he retorted sharply.

Berkman laughed. “Oh, I know about White, he’ll have to go; I’m jolly
sorry on account of his wife, she’s no end of fun! What the devil has
he been doing with that Osborne woman’s help? I heard in New York that
she had sold information to Wall Street and something about our Navy to
Japan.”

“I don’t believe that!” said Fox flatly; “White hasn’t done that,
it’s only meant as an attack on him of course. They say everything of
Mrs. Osborne, they always have, and that dirty sheet in New York has
published a lot of lies; it ought to be suppressed.”

“Nevertheless White will go out; I hear that everywhere,” said Berkman
obstinately; “and then you’ll come in.”

Fox smiled with exceeding bitterness. “Then I shall not come in,” he
retorted quietly; “I shan’t go into the Cabinet.”

Something in his tone at last warned Berkman, and he colored deeply
with embarrassment. Certain vague rumors took shape in his mind and he
remembered suddenly Margaret’s mood after they had left Fox and Rose
together in Rock Creek Park. He reached over and took a cigarette from
the box on the table and lighted it to hide his confusion.

“I believe you’re right,” he said, with assumed lightness of tone; “the
Cabinet isn’t as brilliant an opportunity as the House. At any rate I
congratulate you, my dear fellow, and I wish you all success.”

Fox thanked him dryly and asked a few desultory questions about
Berkman’s trip and his new book which was in press.

“It will be out in about ten days,” the author said calmly, “and
then my friends will make a business of sending me all the adverse
criticisms. If I didn’t like to see the favorable ones occasionally
I shouldn’t need to employ clipping bureaus. I’m hanged if I see the
point of view which makes it a duty to be disagreeable!”

Fox laughed. “My dear fellow, our friends never realize us. I remember
the first speech I ever made at the primaries; I was a little flushed
with success; I’d had some applause, but suddenly I heard a voice, the
sharp high voice of my childhood’s neighbor, an old Methodist deacon,
and it said: ‘Well, I’m beat if it ain’t Billy Fox makin’ a speech,
an’ the last time I saw him I was mighty nigh givin’ him a lickin’
for fishin’ on Sunday in my pool!’ By heavens,” Fox added with sudden
bitterness, “I wish I were fishing there now; how cool and deep the
shadows were!”

“Trout, of course?” said Berkman sympathetically.

Fox nodded. “Big ones; there was a willow behind the pool; we cut our
whistles there and hid there when we saw old man Siddons coming. Lord,
Berkman, how the past slips away!”

“You ought to go back there now,” said the author abruptly, as he rose;
“I never saw you so pale; have you been ill?”

“Never better; you know that like Prosper Merimée I am naturally of the
color of the pale horse in the Apocalypse.”

“Ah, well,” said Berkman, knocking the ashes from his cigarette, “I
don’t envy you public life; it’s a harness, Fox, and a pretty tight
harness too, I fancy.”

“I don’t think I shall see a great deal more of it,” Fox answered, with
an enigmatical smile.

Berkman stared. “You!” he exclaimed; “you’re at the threshold, man; in
another year or so the country will be clamoring for you.”

“Or against me,” said Fox scornfully; “wait a moment,” he added, with
a complete change of tone, “I’ll go with you, this room suffocates me
to-day, it’s full of vapors!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile old Mrs. Allestree sat opposite to Judge Temple in his
library; the door was closed and they were alone save for the birds
in the garden, for the windows were wide open, cool striped awnings
shading the room from the warm glow of the afternoon, which steeped
that secluded spot in slumberous calm.

“Stephen, I’m the criminal,” she said firmly, “Robert had nothing
whatever to do with it; there’s your old check and you’ve got to keep
it!”

The judge colored painfully; he had aged twenty years in the last few
weeks and his old friend saw it. Once or twice she had winked back her
tears but her voice was acrid.

“I can’t keep it and keep the picture,” he said firmly; “Robert has
earned the money; I distinctly stipulated that I should pay the regular
price for the portrait.”

“And Robert never meant you should! My dear friend, you and I know
that he loves Rose; why hurt the boy’s feelings?”

“That’s one reason why I can’t accept it, don’t you see--” the judge
stopped abruptly.

The old woman nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I see; I know Rose doesn’t love
him; I wish she did, I hope and pray she may! But that’s neither here
nor there; as for the money, Robert won’t have it.”

“Then I shall return the picture, and I should like to keep it,
especially if Rose goes abroad.”

She looked at him with exasperation. “You know Rose can’t go without
that money; you just admitted that you couldn’t afford it!”

“Which was not an appeal for charity,” flashed the judge hotly.

“Stephen, I’m ashamed of you!” she exclaimed, then her eyes brightened
and she looked at him with new defiance. “You can’t have the picture,
Robert will keep it; he loves it better than anything else; you shan’t
insult him with money for it; I won’t have it, sir! Where are your old
ideas of chivalry? One would suppose that you were one of these new
vulgar people who think that money is the criterion of everything,
that they can buy shares in paradise! You’ve lived too long in the
neighborhood of the new rich; I’m really ashamed of you. I hated to
have Robert part with the picture anyway; he shan’t do it now for he’ll
never take pay for it!”

The judge looked blank, his hands trembled. “But I wanted it!” he said
plaintively, “I can’t stand in the child’s light but--” he passed his
shaking hand over his forehead--“I shall miss her terribly.”

Mrs. Allestree nodded wisely without any sign of relenting. “I know,”
she said, “so shall I! But Robert won’t take pay for the picture; I
fancy _you_ selling a picture of the woman you loved!”

The old man sighed profoundly, staring at the floor, distinctly aware
that she was tapping her foot impatiently and eying him like an angry
sparrow, her head on one side. The silence was painful, they both heard
the bees in the trumpet creeper which hung blooming over the bow-window.

After a while she stole a cautious amused look at him, then she stirred
eagerly in her chair. “Stephen, I’ve just thought of a way! Robert
will, of course, keep the picture, but he’ll lend it to you while Rose
is away.”

Her manner was a trifle too elaborately casual, but the judge did not
observe it; a shamed look of relief stole over his face, he passed his
handkerchief across his brow, pushing back the scant white hair. “And
I can give it back as soon as she comes home,” he said with almost an
eager note in his voice.

“Yes,” Mrs. Allestree replied in a matter-of-fact tone, stern business
in her eye as she added: “you’ll have to give it back at once, Stephen,
and, of course, you’ll be responsible for it while it’s here. Now, you
give that check to Rose, I want to hear the child sing.”

The judge sighed profoundly, his head bowed. “I’d rather be whipped,
Jane,” he said brokenly, “but the child has set her heart on it--and
I’ve shown myself an old fool!”

Mrs. Allestree rose. “You have!” she said uncompromisingly, “but then
we’re both way behind the times. In the first place you’ve only had
one wife and I’ve only had one husband! Margaret White left for Omaha
to-day; of course she’ll be divorced and married to my nephew in half
an hour. I’ve some hope now of being fashionable, if I can get a motor
accident in the family! And you’re broken hearted because your girl
wants to sing in public; tut, Stephen, you’re a hopeless old fogy, go
and marry Martha O’Neal!”



BOOK II



I


IT was early in the following December before Mrs. Allestree again came
face to face with the situation which was so intimately connected,
though in such different ways, with the happiness of two members
of her family, her son and her nephew. The long months that had
intervened, however, had not dulled her remembrance of that vivid
scene in Margaret’s bedroom, or lessened the degree of her secret
sympathy--which was in exact opposition to her judgment.

It was a long time indeed before she could recur to that scene
without a poignant feeling of guilt; her conscience pinched her with
self-righteousness; she had found the mote in her sister’s eye without
seeing the beam in her own, she had judged without experience. However,
after awhile, this sensitiveness was enveloped in a thicker moral
coating, and she began again to view the affair with horror. The two
little White children were constant spectacles in the parks with their
two French nurses and their general air of bewildered desolation; it
was perfectly well known that Estelle had raised a terrible outcry for
her mother and refused to be comforted, in spite of the conscientious
efforts of poor old Mrs. White who, whatever her faults, was sincere in
her devotion to the two poor little waifs of wealth.

Mr. White, meanwhile, had created fresh scandal by his open devotion
to Lily Osborne, and would probably have been still more outrageous
if that astute young woman had not judiciously absented herself from
the city at the very moment when society had reached the limit of its
endurance; but her disappearance from the surface scarcely arrested
White’s downward career; he was plunging deeper and deeper, and there
were many rumors of scandals connected with his administration which
would lead to his dismissal from the Cabinet. Some secret information
from the Navy Department had found its way into the hands of a foreign
government, and the way of its passage through White’s careless hands
to Lily Osborne’s and from hers to the representative of the foreign
power was unfortunately made altogether too plain to be ignored except
on the surface of things, to hush scandal.

December found Washington a little aghast; Congress had just
re-assembled, Wicklow White had somewhat hastily resigned, almost
on the date which, in the previous year, had seen the retirement of
Wingfield, and one of the ambassadors had been as hastily recalled,
clearing the atmosphere of an international situation with the
accustomed scapegoat! That the Cabinet would have to be reorganized was
evident, and Berkman’s prophecy of eight months before was apparently
on the eve of fulfilment. The very atmosphere, surcharged with
excitement, seemed to breathe the name of William Fox; only those who
knew the secret of Margaret’s divorce, which had just been granted in
Omaha, divined the fatal combination of circumstances.

Fox had been absent for months in his own state, taking part in a
campaign of unusual bitterness and importance, and his remarkable
powers of organization, his keen policy, his magnetic eloquence, had
carried all before him. There had been, in fact, a storm of applause;
every newspaper in the country had discussed him as a possible
candidate for the Presidency in the following year, his own party
with triumphant confidence, and the opposing faction with reluctant
admission of his great strength. If anything had delayed his invitation
to take a seat in the Cabinet, it was openly hinted to be the jealousy
of the Administration and an uncertainty whether such a position would
conveniently shelve him or increase his popularity.

To those who knew the whole truth Fox’s position was almost tragic, but
the man had returned more than usually brilliant and untiring.

Rose had sailed for Europe in the previous June in charge of an elderly
cousin and Aunt Hannah, and no one knew the secret of that parting or
the cost of it to Fox; no one indeed even surmised it but old Mrs.
Allestree.

The last six months had been trying ones to her and she was meditating
upon them, sitting before the open fire in her drawing-room, her
tea-table at her elbow, waiting for Robert.

She measured the tea into the old Canton tea-pot, she looked at the
lamp under the kettle, and then she turned back to her knitting,
working fast without looking at it, counting stitches now and then and
making an elaborate pattern with incredible swiftness, her knitting
needles flashing in and out as the work slipped from one to the other
and back again. The glow of the fire played on her face and showed the
soft lines there, the alert bright eyes, the snowy hair on the temples.
The clock struck six and she looked up expecting Robert, but instead
her parlormaid opened the door to admit Mrs. O’Neal.

“Why, Martha, I’m delighted to see you! It’s such a bitter evening I
didn’t expect a call. Sit down and have a cup of my tea.”

“I don’t take much tea now, I hear that it’s bad for the complexion;
but you can give me some hot water and lemon, Jane,” replied her
visitor, seating herself with a rustle of silks and a rattle of chains
which made a distinct sensation in the quiet room.

Mrs. Allestree poured out the hot water and put in the lemon. “I’m
eighty-one,” she remarked, with a queer little smile, “and I’ve rather
forgotten my complexion.”

“A mistake, my dear Jane,” replied Mrs. O’Neal calmly, taking the
steaming cup and slipping back her sables; “I keep young by constant
attention to such details; I have my face massaged every day, and even
study my bonnets and veils with that point in view.”

Mrs. Allestree cast a covert glance at the vibrating head under the
large, flaring bonnet with its cascade of ostrich feathers and said
nothing, instead she knitted violently.

“I suppose you’ve heard the news?” Mrs. O’Neal remarked, after she had
sipped the hot water with a slightly wry face; “Margaret White has
returned.”

Mrs. Allestree dropped a knitting needle. “When?” she exclaimed rather
hastily, while she tried to recover the fugitive.

“Yesterday; she’s taken the apartment that she had last spring.” Mrs.
O’Neal mentioned one of the more expensive but quiet apartment houses;
“have you any idea how much alimony she got?”

“Good heavens, no!” exclaimed Mrs. Allestree; “Gerty wrote me that
White was disposed to be very liberal, and he ought to be!”

Mrs. O’Neal nodded. “He’ll marry Lily Osborne, of course, and I shall
cut them dead.”

“I should hope so!”

“Well, of course Lily’s footing was slippery enough at the best and
this passes endurance. Mrs. Wingfield told me that it is absolutely
certain that she got money from Von Groten for some kind of
information; Lily has no conscience and she’s only half an American,
thank Heaven! Mrs. Wingfield says she saw the check--”

“Martha, that woman will say anything!”

Mrs. O’Neal shrugged her shoulders. “So does everybody! If Margaret had
only let her get into society she wouldn’t have been so bitter now that
she’s got her chance; I often think that it pays to be polite to these
parvenus! I only hope Margaret doesn’t expect me to hold her up until
this blows over.”

Mrs. Allestree smiled involuntarily. “I can’t imagine Margaret in the
light of a suppliant,” she said quietly.

“A mere _façon de parler_, of course, on my part,” Mrs. O’Neal
retorted; “but, Jane, this is all a bad business, it will have to be
patched up, but--” she set down her cup and looked earnestly at Mrs.
Allestree--“Jane, does she mean to marry your nephew?”

Mrs. Allestree dropped her knitting and held up both hands. “Heaven
knows, not I!” she replied; “of course she can’t be in the fashion
unless she marries again.”

“But to marry Fox! That will create a perfect _furore_. Did you know
he’s been offered the portfolio of State?”

A quiver of excitement passed over Mrs. Allestree’s pale face.
“Actually--or only metaphorically, Martha?”

“Actually, to-day--I had it from two Cabinet officers.”

Mrs. Allestree’s hands fell on her knitting, and she sat looking into
the fire. What a nightmare of a complication! To marry Margaret would
ruin him, yet not to marry her--

“It isn’t generally known yet that he may marry Margaret; if he does--”
Mrs. O’Neal held up her hands this time, and her plumes trembled.

“I don’t know anything about it, Martha,” Mrs. Allestree said
judiciously.

Martha O’Neal looked at her shrewdly and smiled, but she changed the
subject as she gathered up her furs again preparatory to departure.
“Lily Osborne is reported to have made twenty thousand at bridge at
the Hot Springs,” she observed casually; “I wish I didn’t entertain an
awful doubt of her integrity.”

Mrs. Allestree looked up weakly. “You can’t mean she cheats at cards?”

Mrs. O’Neal laughed. “She’d be caught at that, my dear, and ostracized.
She only happens to know who to fleece, you can see how rich she grows.”

“I heard; Gerty told me that Senator Turkman had advised her
judiciously in placing some money in mining shares and there has been a
rise; Lily told her.”

“Humph!” ejaculated Mrs. O’Neal, finally catching the other end of her
sable boa; “it’s rather odd, isn’t it, that Senator Turkman didn’t make
any money for himself at the same time? He’s terribly embarrassed.”

Mrs. Allestree leaned back in her chair and laughed silently. “Martha,”
she said finally, “you’re a sinner and a publican, let me alone! I
haven’t heard so much gossip in a year.”

“My dear Jane,” retorted the other woman dryly, “you live under a
hill.”



II


IN the midst of these eddying swirls of gossip, little muddy pools in
the thin ice on which he trod, William Fox made his way with singular
self-absorption. Even the vortex of the political campaign had not
succeeded in decentralizing his thoughts, and he could not now lose
sight of the impending climax.

The clamor of applause, the proffered Cabinet portfolio, which was not
without significance as an effort on the part of the Administration to
bind him to its interests and avert his candidacy in the ensuing year,
all fell short of their effect. Such brilliant prospects were indeed
stultified to his mental vision by the chilling knowledge that he must
soon outrage the feelings of his friends and reanimate his enemies.
There were moments when the future which lay before him loomed so black
and unfriendly that he could not endure the thought, and he found it
well nigh impossible to picture himself playing the rôle of lover and
husband to the woman who had twice thwarted his life; first by her
careless rejection of his love and then by her determined demand upon
his honor. He should marry her, but beyond that bald fact his mind
refused to go. He had erred and he would resolutely pay the cost and
it would be heavy. He realized that, realized the probable collapse
of his career, the long years of building up which must follow, the
impossibility of living down the scandal of such a marriage under such
circumstances.

He knew that Margaret was in town, but he had not yet gone to see her;
it seemed impossible that he should go. Yet the plain actualities of
the case could not be denied. He was aware, however, of a feeling
of keen thankfulness that the House, under pressure of some special
business, was sitting late, and that the organization of committees and
the hundred other calls involved him in such a round of duty that he
could well excuse delay.

Yet when the House rose one day at five o’clock, and he had time to go
to see Margaret, he went instead on foot to Allestree’s studio. He had
seen but little of his cousin in the past few months; perhaps because
he was haunted with a secret dread that Rose would finally marry
Allestree, and he hated the thought, with all a lover’s selfishness.

The snow was falling fast and the streets were sheeted in white when
he and Sandy approached the old house on the corner, and he noticed
that the windows of Lerwick’s curiosity-shop were coated thick with
frost. A bright light in the upper window assured him that the painter
was still at work, and stamping the snow from his feet he ascended the
narrow stair to the studio.

Allestree, in his shirt sleeves, was engaged in putting away some old
canvases and cleaning up his workshop, and was somewhat startled by the
unexpected entrance of Sandy and his master.

“I hardly thought to find you here so late,” Fox remarked as he greeted
him, “but I saw the light and came up.”

“I was house cleaning,” Allestree explained; “I can’t trust the janitor
in here until I put things in shape. Besides, mother is away and
there’s no hurry about going home.”

Fox expressed surprise at his aunt’s absence at this season, and
Allestree explained further that she had gone to Orange to visit a
younger sister who was ill there; a fact which the nephew of both had
forgotten.

“I’ve intended to go to see Aunt Jane every day,” Fox remarked, seating
himself on the end of Allestree’s brass wood-box and looking at the
general disorder with an absent eye, “but I’ve been busy and--” he
laughed bitterly--“she has let me know pretty plainly that she doesn’t
approve of me.”

“A sure sign of her devotion,” retorted Allestree dryly; “she is always
taking sides when her affections are involved. I’ve often thought you
were more after her own heart than I, William.”

“God help her, I hope not!” Fox exclaimed with such abrupt passion that
his cousin stared.

“I heard this morning that you had been offered the State Department,”
he said quietly; “are congratulations in order?”

The other man laughed with great bitterness. “My dear Robert,” he
replied, “I’ve been offered the moon, but being merely mundane I can’t
pull it down.”

“Well, I’m not sure that the Cabinet is even desirable for you! I’ve
known it to quietly swallow up more than one bit of Presidential
timber,” Allestree observed, turning his attention to the canvases he
was tying together with unsteady fingers.

“Desirable or not, I have refused it,” Fox said curtly.

There was a pause; Allestree put away some boxes and collected his
scattered brushes. Fox, looking about the studio with a moody glance,
observed that a curtain was drawn before the little tea-table where
Rose had made tea, and the chair in which she had posed was gone. He
was not at a loss to understand these signs, and he recalled the whole
little scene, with its air of domesticity, their gayety, the tender
beauty of her drooping profile as she bent over her tea-cups, he even
remembered how the light from the alcohol lamp glowed softly on her
face and caught the golden tints in her hair. He stifled a groan. The
whole covetous passion of his soul had surged up at the thought, and
he was to see her married at last to this good, harmless, slow cousin
who was so worthy of her because of his clean unspotted life and his
honest love! He glanced keenly at Allestree and saw the haggard trouble
of his face, the lines on his brow and about his mouth, with almost a
pang of joy. There was no assurance of happiness here, only a kindred
trouble. The hard element of his personal feeling melted a little, and
he turned to the painter with renewed friendliness. “You have heard of
the Temples?” he said guardedly; “is the old man out of his troubles,
and has Rose returned?”

Allestree shook his head, avoiding his eye. “The judge is still in the
quagmire; he was miserably imposed upon and I fancy there is nothing
left but his salary. He has been making gigantic efforts to save that
old house; you know it’s mortgaged, and he seems ill and worn, though
he goes regularly to court.”

“Who holds the mortgage?” Fox asked absently.

Allestree named a large trust company, and began an eager search behind
his easels, apparently excluding Rose from his reply. But Fox was not
done. “And his daughter?” he said, in a low voice, caressing Sandy who
had laid his head upon his knee as a gentle reminder that it was time
to go.

“She is still in Paris; she wrote my mother that she was succeeding
very well with her lessons and hoped for the best.” Allestree’s voice
betrayed his extreme reluctance to produce even these hard facts.

Fox rose abruptly and going to the window thrust aside the curtain and
looked out. The storm had increased and the street light opposite shone
behind a dazzling whirl of snow-flakes which were swept before the wind
and hurled themselves against the pane in a wild rush of blinding white.

Fox turned away and began to walk to and fro, his hands plunged into
his pockets and his head sunk on his breast. Allestree glancing at
him once or twice was shocked by the drawn grayness of his face, the
absolute despair in his dark, deep-set eyes. At last he looked up with
a bitter smile. “Good God!” he exclaimed abruptly, “if I were only
coward enough to shoot myself!”

“A very unprofitable move,” remarked his cousin coldly, “and it leaves
the blame to others.”

Fox nodded. “Precisely,” he said, “and to a woman. But, my dear
Allestree, if you want to create a hell for a man, find one who loves
a young lovely untried girl with all his soul, and then force him to
marry another woman!”

His cousin bit his lip, the color rushing over his face. “No easy
matter, I fancy,” he said; “you couldn’t make the man do it; he’d back
out at last!”

Fox gave him a strange look; he had never intended to make such an
admission to Allestree, it had been wrung from him by the stress of his
own feeling and now he would not recall it. “You think so? You think
it cannot be done? The shooting would be preferable,” he added grimly,
“but, unhappily, a man’s honor lives after him.”

His cousin turned sharply and held out his hand; the gesture was
involuntary. “Upon my soul, William, I’m sorry for you!” he exclaimed,
with much feeling.

Fox took his hand and wrung it. “You’ll make her happy, Allestree!” he
exclaimed with profound emotion; “she’ll marry you.”

Allestree smiled sadly. “She’s refused me,” he said, with a tone of
finality which carried conviction if not relief.

Fox turned away with a smothered groan, and groping for his hat and
coat went out without another word.

At that moment the tumult of his heart repudiated every other claim
and demanded happiness with an unscrupulous passion which excelled
Margaret’s own.



III


IT was the following evening that Margaret rose restlessly and looked
out of the window of her little hotel drawing-room. She knew that the
House had risen at five, she had telephoned twice to ascertain that
fact, and her note of the morning should have brought Fox straight from
the Capitol.

It was now almost six o’clock, the streets were lighted and thronged
with people, some hurrying home from office or shopping, others still
on those endless social rounds which had once been the orbit of
Margaret’s life. She thought of that existence now, its brilliance,
its flattery, its hollowness, with a shudder. Between the two periods
of her life there was a chasm. It had been only a few months, but
those months had been years in her emotional existence, and her stormy
soul struggling through the depths of it had worn away the body which
with her seemed but the beautiful ephemeral garment of a wild spirit.
When it was over, the divorce with its hideous publicity, its sordid
details, its piercing accusations, and freedom had come to her with
almost blinding reality, she had declared that she should rebuild her
life, forget all, be happy--happy!

She had expected at once some message from Fox, some sign of sympathy,
but when none came she interpreted his silence by her own heart; he was
loth, she thought, to show too much joy at once. They could wait! How
sweet it was to think that once again they had their lives before them;
they were still young, the world had potent possibilities of happiness
for them. The sheer joy of the thought drove the blood to her heart;
she could not breathe sometimes but lay panting, her head thrown back
on her pillows and her arms flung wide and helpless, until Gerty came
and with trembling hand administered restoratives and threw up the
windows. They called them heart attacks but it did not matter, nothing
mattered now; she would begin all over again. Her old life had slipped
from her, as though its shackles, having been stricken off, had left no
scar. She had been in Washington a week, but she had not asked to see
her children; she could not, the thought of them sent a shiver through
her; they were the visible and actual links which bound her to the
past, the past which her soul loathed.

She had waited eagerly for Fox, aware that he was in the city before
her arrival, and when he did not come she still attributed his absence
to a reluctance to be too soon to claim her. That he loved her she
never doubted, and her heart trembled at the thought of that meeting
which must come at last, with all its sweetness, its fulfilment, after
her long waiting. That morning she had written him and now she watched
the clock, carelessly aware that Gerty English was also watching it,
and that the girl seemed disconcerted and awkward with her work over
Margaret’s letters and books.

But to Margaret everything outside of that one absorbing fact was of
little moment; what Gerty thought of no consequence at all, for while
she had made only half a confidante of the girl, turning to her in
uncontrollable moments and then relapsing again into reserve, she was
actually indifferent to the nature and extent of Gerty’s knowledge; the
little secretary seemed to her as unimportant as any other parasite
upon the lives of the more fortunate.

Margaret went openly to the window therefore, and drew aside the
curtains to watch the long brilliantly lighted street, where the
snow lay yet in white drifts between the muddy slush of traffic,
and she returned openly to the fire to look at the clock on the
mantel. At first the delay had been almost sweet, she liked to dwell
upon the thought of seeing him, of being happy again, but at last it
grew irksome and she paced nervously to and fro, her hands clasped
behind her head, scarcely vouchsafing an answer to Gerty’s occasional
questions.

Time passed; it was nearly half past six before her maid came in to
announce a visitor and Margaret turned, hiding herself a little in the
shadow of the curtain that she might see him first when he entered.

As the door finally opened to admit Fox, Gerty English rose rather
hastily and retreated to one of the other rooms, with her arms full
of books and papers, and he found himself face to face at last with
Margaret.

There was an eloquent silence; he was painfully aware of the change in
her, that the delicate hollows in her cheeks were sharpened while her
eyes seemed larger and more brilliant, and there was a wistfulness,
a soft tremulous happiness and expectation in her expression which
touched him to the heart. She had never looked so young, so fragile and
so gentle since those old days when as half child, half woman, he had
loved her. That dead love lying between them now made an impassable
barrier, she could as little rekindle it as she could reclaim a fallen
star. Some dim, half interpreted perception of this chilled her heart
and stayed the passionate greeting on her lips; she stood a moment
looking at him, terribly aware of the calmness of his bearing, his
pallor, his dark troubled eye which neither kindled nor blenched at the
sight of her, but met hers with a studied gentleness which expressed
neither joy nor reluctance. A keen pang of dread tore her heart, but
the next instant joy, wild, almost childish joy at the sight of him,
welled up and swept away her doubts.

“Oh, William!” she exclaimed with trembling lips, holding out both
hands, “at last, at last! It has been eons since we met!”

“And you look ill,” he replied kindly, “Margaret, I hoped to see you
well again. How is this?”

Her eyes sought his face, eager, feverish, questioning; her heart
trembled, was this all?--this stilted, quiet, commonplace greeting? She
checked the cry of reproach which rose to her white lips, and smiled--a
wan and pallid smile. “I’m quite well,” she replied with sudden calm;
“you forget the months have been long and troubled ones; I suppose I
grow old!”

“I never saw you look younger, more as you used to look ten years
ago,” he exclaimed involuntarily.

“Do I?” there was a tremulous note of eagerness in her voice, and a
faint blush passed over her face, but she evaded his hand, which he had
stretched out again to clasp hers, and went quietly to a shaded corner
where neither lamplight nor firelight fell too sharply on her. “Sit
down, William, and tell me about yourself.”

He obeyed her mechanically, unconscious that his manner had betrayed
anything, but aware of a sudden indefinable change in her, a restraint
and repression. “There is nothing to tell,” he said, with some
impatience; “the old story--primaries, conventions, a stormy campaign
and finally, as you know, my re-election is assured, if I care for it!”
he added, a hard new note of indifference in his voice.

She heard it and leaned forward a little on her cushions, trying to
read his face, studying every fine and classic outline of the strong
head, the brow, the deep-set brilliant eye, the thin-lipped sensitive
mouth, the clean shaven, strong jaw and chin. It was his face; how
often she had dreamed about it and dreamed of it as turned to her with
the glow of love and joy on it, but how pale it was, how hard, how
resolute!

“I knew the campaign was hotly contested, but I never doubted your
success,” she said simply; “you know I always believed in you.”

He turned sharply and looked at her. “What is the matter, Margaret? You
are not yourself.”

She smiled. “No,” she admitted, looking at him with an enigmatical
expression, “no, I am not myself; the old Margaret is dead--and buried!
Not even Mrs. Wingfield would know me; I burnt up my last red hat
yesterday, William.”

He answered her smile involuntarily, but his eyes remained grave,
almost stern. He turned abruptly, holding out his hand. “Margaret,” he
said, “I came--of course you know it--to ask you to be my wife.”

She drew a long breath and was silent, her eyes on his face; she was
wonderfully calm.

“It seems to me that the sooner it is over the better for both of us,”
he went on hurriedly; “there will, of course, be some talk; we must
face it together.”

Without answering him she bent over and picked up a half sheet of the
morning newspaper from the floor, and after glancing at it, held it out
to him. “There is an article there about you,” she said in a low voice;
“it says you have refused the State Department; is that true?”

He put the paper aside with a little impatience. “Of course it’s true,”
he said; “I refused it three days ago.”

She was again silent for an instant while she folded the paper into
plaits. “Why did you refuse it?” she asked.

Fox moved sharply and turned his face away, looking at the fire. “That
does not concern us, Margaret,” he said gravely; “our marriage is the
only question now; I--”

She interrupted him. “Tell me,” she insisted, “it’s my right to know;
this had something to do with me, with the prospect of--of your
marrying Wicklow’s divorced wife, I know it! Tell me the truth.”

“Of what avail?” he retorted with evident reluctance, his cheek red.

“I have a right to know,” she reiterated.

He smiled bitterly. “The situation is quite clear, isn’t it? I can’t
take White’s place in the Cabinet and White’s wife; it would be
monstrous.”

She leaned back in her chair, shading her face with her thin hand
which trembled slightly, she tried to speak, but her dry lips refused
to move. His manner, no less than his words, had ruthlessly torn away
the last shreds of her self-deception, and her poor shivering soul
shuddered at this revelation of the hardness in him, the eternal note
of egoism. How plain it was, how simple, how inexorable! The man’s love
had died, and hers had fed itself upon a chimera, a phantasm of her
imagination, a dream of the past! Her hand trembled so that she let it
fall in her lap and averted her face.

Something of the anguish she felt reached him; he perceived her thought
without knowing that he had laid bare his heart to her, and he felt a
pang of remorse for his words, though she had wrung them from him with
a woman’s besotted madness, a woman’s wild determination to probe her
own agony to the core.

“It is of no consequence to me, Margaret,” he said kindly; “I shall
give it all up and go away with you; we must build it up from the
beginning again. Only it is best to have it over.”

She smiled faintly, looking into the fire which had fallen from the
andirons and lay in red coals on the broad hearth. “Tell me,” she said
abruptly, turning her full gaze on him, “I have been away and I do not
know--where is Rose Temple? Is she still in Paris?”

There was a striking change in his face as though his features, made
of potter’s clay, had suddenly fixed themselves into the shape of a
mask, stern and unchanging in its finality. “Yes, she’s in Paris,” he
replied, with strong reluctance to speak of her; “I know nothing else.
You can ask Allestree.”

“Ah, then I suppose it will end happily at last,” Margaret said softly;
“she will marry Allestree; I always thought so.”

Fox rose abruptly and walked to the fire, standing a moment looking
down at its fallen embers, his back toward her. She could not see his
face, but in the covetous agony of her soul she needed no sight, she
knew! A gray shadow passed over her own features, her eyes closed, she
shivered from head to foot.

After a moment of terrible silence he turned. “When can we be married,
Margaret?” he demanded, with passionate haste; “it must be soon, it
cannot be too soon!”

She rose, looking slighter and more frail than ever. “No, it cannot be
too soon; I will decide, I have no preparations to make,” she added,
with a little, mocking smile; “I’m sorry, William, I’ll be but a sober
bride; you should have married a young girl and had a grand wedding
with a flourish of trumpets.”

“Which I hate,” he said bluntly, “as you know.”

“As I know?” she laughed a little wildly; “I have known very little!
You must go now; I--I’m not very strong yet, and the excitement--”

“Has been too much,” he said kindly, “I’ll come again to-morrow--you
can tell me then; it can’t be too soon.”

“What an ardent lover!” she said, her lips trembling, “I’m proud of
you, William, you do famously, I--I--” she broke off and suddenly
laying her thin white hands lightly on his shoulders she kissed his
cheek, turned, evaded his touch, and bursting into uncontrollable
weeping ran from the room.



IV


MARGARET, leaning a little on Gertrude English, stopped her with
a slight pressure on her arm, and shading her eyes with her free
hand stood gazing down the long vista of the sunlit avenue. A final
recognition of the contrast between realities and the dreams which
had changed and warped her life came upon her with a shock which made
familiar objects seem strange and distorted. A shudder of anguish shook
her slight frame and stole the blood from her lip; stripped at last of
all illusions, facing the immutable laws of life, she felt as though
she had been thrust out into the streets homeless, and naked, and
ashamed; a wrecked soul to wander henceforth up and down on the face of
the earth and find no place. How strange, how different from yesterday!
The tremulous love, the hope half justified, the unscrupulous,
unflinching desire for happiness--where were they? Gone, shrivelled,
dead! And she was not dreaming, she was wide awake, this was life, life
with its inexorable bonds, its laws, its justice, its cruel requitals,
all else had been a dream! Happiness--what was it? A phantom of some
man’s imagination, the flaming sword of the angel at the Garden of Eden.

Before her lay the busy, beautiful thoroughfare, alive with carriages
and motor-cars, with gay people, children, old women and perambulators.
The sun had already swept away all but a few vestiges of snow; it was
one of those spring days which come to us in December. At her very
feet were some pansies blooming hardily. Away at the north, between
long rows of houses, across the intervening circle, she saw the street
ascending the hill, caught the white outlines of the high buildings on
the heights, the deep blue of the sky.

Yesterday and to-day, oh, God!

She walked on, unconscious of the curious glances which followed her
slight, elegant figure, her small pinched face under the great hat with
its toppling plumes; unaware, too, that women leaned forward in passing
carriages, looked eagerly and sank back into the friendly shelter, glad
to escape the necessity of recognition until some one should decide
upon the proper course,--rehabilitation or oblivion.

Gerty, shrewd and watchful, saw and made mental notes. She decided
swiftly who should be struck off the list when Margaret’s star rose
again; no court chamberlain ever drew lines tighter than she at that
moment because, in her pity and her affection, she resented every
slight with bitter zeal.

Margaret, meanwhile, walked on, regaining her self control with an
effort, her large, melancholy eyes gazing dreamily ahead of her.
“Gerty,” she said at last, “do you suppose any one is ever really
happy?”

“Oh, mercy, yes!” retorted that matter-of-fact young woman, in great
astonishment, “I am often! There are so many nice things in the world,
Margaret, and when one has money--” Miss English drew a long breath; it
expressed her thought.

Margaret smiled bitterly. “Is that the sum total, Gerty? Is there
nothing else?”

“Oh, yes, of course, but not to have to pinch and work and reason, just
to be vulgarly downright rich once! I shouldn’t ask much else,” said
Gerty ecstatically.

“You have no imagination, Gerty,” Margaret replied, “that’s been my
curse, I’ve imagined myself into a fool’s paradise! As for money--I’ve
had it all my life, it never gave me anything I wanted.”

“Oh, Margaret!” Miss English almost sobbed, “think of all you’ve had,
of all you’ve got, of all you’re going to have!” she added incoherently.

“Of all I’m going to have?” Margaret repeated, with a strange smile;
“my dear Gerty, the prospect is certainly blinding. Thank you!”

Gerty stared. She did not understand, and she dared not press the
question; she could not but perceive the cold agony in Margaret’s eye.

Their walk had brought them to a little triangle between the streets,
and as they crossed above it, a child’s voice cried out after them with
a shrill little note of joy. “Oh, mamma, there’s mamma!”

Gerty felt the hand on her arm tighten, and the shiver which ran
through the figure at her side was almost as perceptible. They both
turned and looking across the grass-plot saw two French nurses, a
child in a carriage and Estelle running toward them, her small face
flushing with eagerness, her pale hair streaming in the breeze. She
came swiftly, reached them and, with the first unchecked impulse of
her life, flung her arms around her mother. “Mamma, mamma!” she cried,
“I’ve wanted you so much!”

Margaret looked at her strangely for a moment, then her lips twitched
and tears came into her eyes, as she stooped down and clasped the child
close. For the first time the instinct of maternity spoke; she had
seen, too, a strange vague likeness to herself in the small, upturned
face, one of those fleeting glimpses that come in a look. “Did you
really want me, Estelle?” she asked gently, submitting to the child’s
wild joy with a new surprised tenderness.

“Oh, mamma, you’re coming home?” Estelle sobbed, clinging to her;
“you’re coming back to us? Oh, where have you been, mamma?”

Margaret kissed her and rose, putting her off a little; she saw
that people were looking at them, and a slow dull flush rose to her
forehead. “Yes, I’m coming,” she said with an effort; “I’ll--I’ll come
to-morrow, Estelle, and ask Grandmother White to let me take you for a
while. You must be good, child; don’t cry, mamma can’t bear it!”

“Come now, mamma!” Estelle wailed, holding her dress with desperate
fingers and calling to her little brother who still clung to his nurse,
staring as if he saw a stranger.

The two French women were huddled together, not sure of their
instructions and obviously alarmed. Margaret looked over at them and
gently detached Estelle’s fingers from her draperies. “I’ll come
to-morrow,” she said more firmly; “now run and play.”

But the child caught at her skirts again, still sobbing; she had
felt her mother’s arms about her, and half the dread and fear of
desertion which had hung over her, half the talk of the nurses which
had frightened her, was swept away; she had a mother. “Oh, mamma,” she
sobbed, “take me with you--I won’t make any noise!”

Margaret bent and kissed her again, her strange, wild look almost
frightening poor Gerty who stood completely discomfited and at a
loss, her honest blue eyes full of tears. “There, there!” the mother
whispered, “I’m glad you love me, Estelle, I’m coming, coming soon.
Oh, Gerty, go home with her!” she added suddenly, “take her away--I--I
can’t bear it!”

Gerty obeyed with a pale face. She bent down and whispered to Estelle,
kissed and cajoled and threatened until the child let go her mother’s
skirt and began to cling to the girl whom she really knew far more
intimately, for the good-hearted little secretary had spent many an
hour in that gloomy, magnificent nursery. Gerty’s hands shook but she
held the child, told her about some lovely things she was going to
bring her, a doll, a fairy-book, a toy which ran about the floor of its
own accord.

In the midst of it Margaret turned and fled; she had not dared to go
to the little boy, although, quite unacquainted with his mother, he
was merely staring in a dull, infantile way, his finger in his mouth,
ready, no doubt, to raise a sympathetic wail if his sister’s grief
warranted a chorus.

The mother, whose rights in the children had been settled by the courts
at six months in the year if she desired it, went on blindly along
the sunny avenue which seemed now to mock her with its gayety. She
turned sharply away from a crowded circle into another street, hardly
conscious where she went, but bent upon escape, oblivion, silence.

The child’s cry had touched her chilled and starving heart; she saw her
life revealed; she had thrust away the ties of nature, the demands of
natural love and duty in her mad pursuit of happiness; she had lost all
and gained nothing.

She put up a shaking hand and drew down her veil; her lips were dry
and parched, it was difficult to breathe, she had to relax her pace.
Another corner brought her to an abrupt and horrified pause. She came
face to face with Mrs. O’Neal at a moment when she felt that she could
least abide the sight of any one. But with the shock of recognition her
scattered senses recovered themselves, her nerves vibrated again, she
summoned back her will.

“Margaret!” exclaimed the old lady, pausing, with her skirts gathered
up and her foot on her carriage-step, just the shadow of surprised
restraint in her manner, the indefinable change that greets the altered
social scale; “I’m--I’m delighted to see you! And how are you, my dear?”

“Well,” Margaret replied, with an odd little laugh, for her quick ear
had caught the note; “don’t I look so?”

The bird of paradise on Mrs. O’Neal’s hat trembled. “No,” she said
flatly, “you don’t; you need building up, you should go to the country
for awhile. I’m due at bridge now or I should make you get in and drive
with me.”

“Thank you, I couldn’t,” Margaret replied, with forced calm; “I wish
you luck at cards instead.”

Mrs. O’Neal glanced at her coachman, stiff and expressionless upon the
box, then she leaned over and put a gentle hand on the younger woman’s
arm. “My dear, I congratulate you,” she murmured, “you’re lucky to be
free; I was so shocked to read this morning that Mr. White had married
Lily Osborne yesterday.”

Margaret suppressed her start of surprise. “Has he?” she said, “I
forgot to read the paper, and Gerty misses everything except the
ninety-eight cent bargains.”

“Yesterday--in New York!” said Mrs. O’Neal tragically; “I hope you’ve
got the children.”

Margaret quietly withdrew her arm. “Thanks, yes,” she said; “I’m afraid
you’ll be late for your bridge.”

       *       *       *       *       *

As she walked on, her heart sank. Lily Osborne--of course she had
known it would be so! But if anything happened to her and Mrs. White
died--poor Estelle!

The cry of the child pursued her. Until now she had thought only of
herself, of her own misery, but the touch, the voice of the little girl
had reached her very soul; after lying dormant and unknown all those
years it was awakening, awakening to a reality so dreadful that it was
appalled, without hope, desolate. And shame, the shame of a woman’s
heart swept over her and shook her being to its depths. The humiliation
which comes upon a woman when she knows, by some overwhelming
perception, that her love is not fully returned; she felt as if she had
stripped her soul naked and left it lying in the dust at Fox’s feet.

She walked on; agony winged her feet and she could not be still; she
avoided the places which she knew, and turned down strange streets and
byways. She had no thought of time. It grew late, the short winter day
drew to its close; still she walked on. While her strength endured
she went on,--it seemed as if pursuing fate drove her. She was not
physically strong, yet she was walking beyond the endurance of most
women.

As the twilight gathered and the lights began to start up here
and there, she turned, with a dim realization of her unfamiliar
surroundings and her sudden complete exhaustion. It was St. Thomas’
Day, four days to Christmas; she had no recognition of it, but, looking
up, her eye caught the lighted vestibule of a church, and she saw some
women going in to vespers; an impulse made her follow them. The heavy
doors swung easily inward, and conscious only of the shelter, the
chance for rest, a moment to collect her thoughts, she passed in.

The service was nearly concluded, but she paid no heed to that; moving
quietly across the aisle and finding a dark corner, she sat down
wearily, and crossing her arms upon the back of the pew in front of
her hid her face upon them. Mere physical weariness had brought a
dull relief to the gnawing pain at her heart; it clouded her brain
too, as weariness sometimes does, and she found the horrible vivid
thoughts which had tormented her slipping softly away into a haze of
forgetfulness; her mind seemed a mere blur.

The soft organ tones swelling through the dim church harmonized with
her mood; she lost herself, lost the agony of those past hours, and
rested there, inert, helpless, without power to think. She was scarcely
conscious of what passed around her, her throbbing head felt heavy on
her slender arms, and she listened, in a vague way, to the music, aware
at last of a stillness, then the rustle and stir of people settling
themselves back in the long pews. She stirred herself, turning her face
upon her arms.

A voice penetrated the stillness, a voice with that vibrant quality of
youth and passionate self-confidence.

“‘_The wages of sin is death!_’”

Margaret started and raised her head. Her eyes, blinded by the sudden
light in the chancel, flickered a moment and she passed her hand across
them; at last she saw quite plainly a young strong face, with a tense
eager look, white against the dark finishings of the pulpit; she caught
the dazzling white of his surplice, the vivid scarlet of the hood which
showed on his shoulders.

“‘_The wages of sin is death!_’” He repeated it, giving out his text in
a voice which was resonant with feeling.

Margaret sat back in her corner, gazing at him with fixed, helpless
eyes, her very soul dazed under the force of revelation which was
coming to her swiftly, overwhelmingly. The revelation of her own life,
not of God. As yet she framed no thought of that awful Presence, found
no interpretation of the tumult in her own soul, but she knew, at last,
that she had sinned. Sinned against herself, her womanhood, her honor,
her self-respect, sinned against the man she had married, against the
children she had borne, and, at last--oh, God!--against the man she
loved.

_The wages of sin is death._

She rose, rose with an effort of will for her knees shook under her,
and drawing herself together, summoning all her strength and her pride
to hide the agony which was devouring her heart, she drew down her veil
and slipped out unnoticed, silent, like a shadow. Once at the door,
beyond the ring of that terrible young voice, she paused and steadied
herself by laying her hand on a pillar of the portico.

It was now very dark; the electric lights at the corner only made the
space where she stood more shadowy and secure; the air was chill,
damp, penetrating, and she shivered. A horrible sense of homelessness
and misery swept over her; she had cast herself out of a home, she had
deserted her children for the love of a man who--oh, God!--who loved
her not. She who had dreamed of happiness, lived for it, fought for
it, sinned for it, who would have purchased it at the cost of heaven
itself, had found at last, not happiness but her own soul.

_The wages of sin is death!_

She wrung her hands in silent agony; was there no escape? She had
no belief but, at last, she felt that the very devils believed and
trembled. Was not God pursuing her with vengeance? Who else?



V


AT last the tumult of passion subsided and Margaret, still leaning on
the pillar of the church portico, looked out with bewildered eyes.
Again an overwhelming weakness swept over her and wiped out some of the
vivid misery.

She must go home--home! The word brought a dull pang of anguish, she
had no right to a home, for she had broken up her own and orphaned her
children. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the thoughts which
stormed back, at a word, to assault her poor fagged brain again. Then
the soft sweet notes of the recessional came out to her and she knew
that in a few moments the dispersing congregation would find her there;
summoning all her flagging energies she stepped down into the street
and turning westward was suddenly apprised of the fact that she had
been in the old church so often visible from the windows of Allestree’s
studio. The discovery brought her a feeling of relief; she was near
the studio and she could go there and telephone for a cab to take her
back to the hotel. Losing herself in the shadows of the darkest side
of the poorly lighted street, she hurried toward the old building on
the corner and saw, with relief, the light still shining in Allestree’s
window as well as in the curiosity-shop below.

She crossed the street and trying the side door found the latch down.
In another moment she was toiling wearily up the old stairs, clinging
to the balustrade with an absolute need of its support.

To her surprise the studio was empty; she called to Allestree,
supposing him to be, perhaps, in his storeroom above, but there was no
answer and she sank down in the nearest chair, too weary and helpless
to frame her thoughts. An open fire was burning low on the hearth, and
a half smoked cigarette lay on the mantel edge. He had evidently gone
out for a moment and would soon return. Margaret roused herself and
looked about her with a wretched feeling of strangeness and separation
from her own life. She seemed suddenly detached, a mere onlooker where
once she had been the centre of the stage. There had stood the portrait
of her, and there the picture of Rose; both were gone! She even noticed
that the little tea-table was pushed away, and divined Allestree’s
secret feeling. She knew every detail of the room, the tapestries, the
worn Turkey rug, Robert’s old cigarette-case. It was intolerable;
she rose, and going to the table, where the telephone stood, saw
Allestree’s portfolio and the pen and ink. She would leave a line to
explain her visit before she called a cab, and she opened the portfolio
to look for a scrap of paper; as she did so her eye fell on the page of
a letter written in old Mrs. Allestree’s clear hand; unconsciously she
read the lines before her:

“Margaret has broken up Fox’s happiness twice, once when she broke her
own engagement to him, and now in separating him from Rose--”

She closed the book sharply, suddenly aware of what she did and deeply
shamed by it, but the thought of the personal dishonesty of her
heedless act was lost in the sharper pang of realization; she saw at
last the light in which her actions had appeared to others. She stood
still, her face frozen, and a cry sprang to her lips from the depths
of hidden passion, the cry of some mortally wounded wild creature who
faces death alone. She knew it, she did not need to be told it, but
others knew it too! It was the bitter drop in her cup of gall; the wild
anguish which swept away all other realities, even the desire for life,
amazed her. For one moment she hated Rose with all the strength of her
undisciplined soul, the next a great wave of humiliation submerged her
being. She turned, forgetting the telephone, forgetting everything
but a desire to escape the meeting with Allestree, groped her way to
the door like a blind woman and went down stairs. At the foot she
hesitated; a step in the street made her fear to meet Robert at the
door, and she turned and plunged into the curiosity-shop. She found
herself behind the chintz curtain, in the place which evidently served
as a living-room for Daddy Lerwick, and she saw a table spread for
supper, while the scent of garlic streamed from a pot on the stove.
Hurrying across the room she lifted the curtain and entered the shop.

Daddy Lerwick was leaning on the counter talking to a young girl and
passing a necklace back and forth in his fat hands. At the sound of
Margaret’s step they both turned and looked at her in surprise, a
surprise which gave place on his part to servile courtesy. But Margaret
scarcely noticed him; instead she saw the pale, worn face of the
girl, the pinched misery of her look as she glanced at the stones in
Lerwick’s coarse fingers. Margaret’s eyes following hers, lighted, too,
on the jewels; it was a topaz necklace, the mate to the bracelet which
she had prized so long ago. The intuition of misery, the sixth sense
of the soul which--no longer atrophied with selfishness--had suddenly
awakened within her, divined the secret. She read the suspended bargain
in Lerwick’s eye, the hopeless anguish in the girl’s. It was only an
instant; the thought came to her like the opening of a dungeon door
on the glare of midday. Then she drew back to avoid an encounter with
two more customers who had entered the shop and who began at once to
ask the prices of the objects in the windows. Lerwick went forward to
answer them; the girl leaned on the counter, hiding her face in her
hands; a shiver of misery passed over her and Margaret saw it. Moved by
an impulse, as inexplicable as it was unnatural, she touched the shabby
sleeve. “What is the matter?” she asked softly.

The young woman looked up startled, but only for an instant, the next
the dull misery of her look closed over her face like a mask, though
her lip trembled. “He’s offered me fifteen dollars,” she faltered;
“I--I suppose I’ll have to take it.”

Margaret quietly put out her hand. “Will you sell it to me?” she said;
“I will give more and you will not have to give your name.”

The girl’s cheek crimsoned; she hesitated and gathered the necklace
into her hands; the gesture was pathetic, it bespoke the actual pang of
parting with an old keepsake.

Margaret saw it. “Come, come with me,” she said and led her back
through the door to the studio entrance; she no longer feared to meet
Allestree; a new impulse stirred her heart.

Under the light there she opened her purse and hastily counted her
money, she had a little over a hundred dollars in small bills.
Hurriedly thrusting a dollar or two back into her pocketbook, she
pressed the remainder into her companion’s hands, saying at the same
time: “Keep your necklace, I do not want it; I only wished to help you
save it.”

The young stranger looked at her in dull amazement, stunned by the
incomprehensible sympathy and generosity when she had long since ceased
to look for either. She drew a long shuddering breath. “Oh, I can’t
take so much!” she gasped out, “you--you must keep the necklace!”

Margaret regarded her sadly. “Child,” she replied, “I’m more unhappy
than you are; I do not want either the money or the necklace; keep them
both!”

“Do you really mean it?” the girl whispered, her eyes fastened on the
face opposite in absolute wonder and doubt; “you really mean to give me
all this--and you want nothing?”

Margaret smiled with stiff lips. “Nothing!”

The pinched, childlike features of the stranger quivered; it seemed as
if the frozen sensibilities were melting under this touch of common
humanity. Suddenly she burst into an agony of tears, slipping down upon
the stairs, her slender shabby figure racked with sobs. “He heard me!”
she cried, “there is a God!”

Margaret looked at her strangely. “Do you think so?” she asked vaguely,
with parched lips, “do you believe in God?”

“Yes,” the girl cried, clasping her hands, “I prayed--oh, God, how I
prayed! It seemed as if He didn’t hear me, no help came and I couldn’t
pay; I couldn’t pay, and they didn’t believe me any more because I’d
failed--you don’t know, you’ve never failed like that! I thought God
didn’t care, that He had forgotten--but now--” she rose from her knees,
her face still wet with tears but singularly changed, “I shan’t have
to do it!” she cried, “here’s enough to begin all over again, I can go
on, I’m saved! He heard! Don’t you believe it? Don’t you see it must be
so?” she persisted, unconsciously catching at Margaret’s draperies and
her thin toil-worn hand closing on their richness.

“For you, yes,” the older woman replied slowly; “good heavens, I never
knew how much money meant before!” she murmured, passing her hand over
her eyes again, “and you think--God heard you--_God?_”

“He sent you!” the girl cried, exultantly, wildly happy; “oh, yes, I’m
sure of it--oh, God bless you!”

A strange expression passed over Margaret’s face. She leaned back
against the wall, pressing her hand to her heart. Then, as the girl
still sobbed softly, she touched her shoulder. “Open the door,” she
said quietly, “I--I must go, can you help me? I’m a little dizzy.”

The young woman sprang to her and put out her arm eagerly. “Let me help
you; oh, I’d do anything for you!”

Margaret smiled, a wan little smile that made her haggard brilliant
face weirdly sad. “It is nothing. There, the air from the outside makes
me well again, this place is choking!”

The stranger walked with her to the corner, eager to help her, to call
a cab, to put her on the cars, but as Margaret’s faintness passed she
refused, putting aside her protests with firm dismissal. “No, no, I can
go home,” she said bravely; “good-bye, I’m glad I could help you.”

“Oh, let me go with you, let me do something!” the girl appealed to her
eagerly.

But Margaret dismissed her and they parted, the young stranger hurrying
away down a narrow by-street while her benefactress walked slowly
toward the nearest avenue. But she had gone only a few steps when she
turned and looked after the shabby figure, which was only a short
distance from her. A vivid recollection of that cry that God had heard
her prayer, the absolute conviction of it, swept over the stricken
woman, and moved by an impulse which she did not pause to question,
Margaret ran after the girl through the gathering mist and overtook
her, breathless. She turned with a frightened look, full of dread, no
doubt, that she must yet give up the miraculously acquired wealth, and
she started when Margaret laid a thin, ungloved hand on her arm.

“I wanted to ask you,” she began,--and then changed the sentence
swiftly into a command,--“pray for me to-night! You believe there is a
God--perhaps He’ll hear you again!”

“Indeed I will!” the girl cried, bewildered; “oh, I wish--”

But the unfinished speech was lost; Margaret had turned and swiftly
disappeared again into the folds of the mist; like a shadow the girl
saw her vanishing into deeper shadows; something uncanny and marvellous
seemed to lurk in the very thought of her beautiful haggard face, the
wildness of her smile, and the young woman hurried away, hugging her
treasure close, almost persuaded that she had talked face to face with
a being from another world.



VI


AVOIDING the crowded thoroughfares, and no longer remembering her
physical weariness or that she had walked for hours without food or
drink, Margaret hurried on.

She had thought of death, and the means to attain it most swiftly and
easily, but as she passed the brilliantly lighted chemist’s window,
with its arch hung with bright red Christmas bells, she put away the
thought; it was too cheap and sensational and, after all, if there
really were a God could she take that swift, shuddering plunge through
the blackness of death to meet Him? _The wages of sin is death!_
It thundered in her ears, making God the avenging Deity of the Old
Testament, for how little do those who preach sometimes divine the
pictures which they frame of Him who was lifted up, as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness, that all men might be saved!

A strange new light began to come into Margaret’s soul, and against it
her thoughts took on dark and sharply outlined forms like the shadows
thrown on a white screen by the stereopticon; she began to understand.
Happiness, after all, was a dream, an imagination, a word; it came
not from any visible cause, but lay hidden in every man’s heart like
hope imprisoned in Pandora’s box. The secret of it came to her at
last,--life moved in an orbit; the past held the future, the future
the past, the present was but the connecting link in the inexorable
circle, it could not be broken while memory existed, while a reckoning
was required. She could no more break the links with her past than she
could destroy her immortal soul.

In her heart a new, secret thought, born of the strange girl’s
gratitude, moved her out of herself. She remembered Mrs. Allestree’s
words, and her love for Fox suddenly purged itself of its passionate
agony, its jealousy, its pain. Like a woman in a dream she found her
way at last to the hotel and climbed the stairs. Her face bore too
terrible signs of anguish, and she shrank from the elevator and the
curious stare of the servants. It was the dinner hour and the corridors
were deserted. She went quietly to her own room and did not ring for
her maid. She noticed that her evening gown had been put out and the
fire tended. Gerty was not there, she would scarcely be there before
nine o’clock, and Margaret went to her desk and sat down and began
to write in feverish haste; if she delayed, if she stopped to think
she might never do it and she was determined. She bent to her task,
white lipped and haggard, writing page after page to Rose Temple. She
poured out her heart; in righting Fox she scarcely thought of herself,
except that she should never see him again, that Rose must and should
marry him! For abruptly the divine impulse of self-immolation had been
born in the midst of the tumult of her soul; a woman’s heart, like
a eucalyptus tree, trembles with the remembrance of anguish and the
eternal sacrifice of love.

As she finished it the clock struck and she looked up startled; it was
eight o’clock; she had been out more than four hours. She sealed her
letter, stamped it and rose. For a moment her strength failed her and
she stood irresolute, but she was unwilling to trust another hand, and
she opened the door and took Rose’s letter down to the post herself,
avoiding the elevator again. After she had dropped it in the letter-box
in the lower hall, she climbed the long flight wearily to her room. The
fearful energy of the last few hours dropped from her like a cloak,
the effort was too much and she felt an overpowering weakness, a
sinking sensation; she had had such moments before and the doctor had
furnished her with some restoratives with a grim injunction to avoid
tiring herself. A vision of his grave face flashed across her now and
warned her. With the sudden ineffable sinking and yielding, which came
over her like a cloud and seemed to drop her slowly, softly into space,
was born a keen desire to live; Estelle’s voice pierced her memory like
a knife; she seemed to hear that plaintive cry--“Mamma, mamma, come
home!”

She made one more supreme effort to reach the medicines and was,
indeed, but a few yards from the cabinet which held them when her
strength yielded to that awful dark cloud which seemed to be pressing
down upon her, pushing her lower and lower into the depths of silence.
She slipped like water to the floor, her head upon her outstretched
arms, a faint shudder ran through her; she was dimly conscious of
sinking down, down into a black, fathomless abyss. Again Estelle’s
voice quivered through the clouds and mists and reached her heart; she
tried to struggle back, up through vague distances, to answer it, but
the mists grew thicker; she heard it once again, no more! The soft,
ineffable clouds pressed closer, enfolded her; she sank lower, floated
off over the edge of space and lost even thought itself.



VII


FOR three days Fox had been under an almost unbearable strain. Before
and after speaking to Margaret of their marriage he had plunged in the
same agonizing struggle with himself. What diabolical power had been at
work to ruin his life, to frustrate his ambitions? The strong egotism
of his nature was aroused in all its absorbing passion. On every hand
he saw disaster; he had builded well in all respects but one; in
that he had miserably failed, and behold the inevitable result! Like
Margaret herself, he saw clearly at last; if he had kept away from her,
if he had broken from the spell of her fascination and remained out of
reach, this would never have been; he had no one to thank but himself.
It is usually so; when we get down to the fundamental principles we
have ourselves to blame for the fall of the Tower of Siloam.

As he faced the immediate prospect of marriage with another woman, he
realized the strength and hopelessness of his love for Rose. To think
of her even in the same moment with Margaret was abhorrent to him; he
did poor Margaret scant justice at such times, and the vivid realities
of her newspaper celebrity was a scourge to his sensitive pride. For
these things he must give up all, he must pay the price. He who crossed
his path when this mood was on him was unfortunate,--Fox was not a man
to spare. His cruel irony, his poignant wit had never been more feared
on the floor of the House than they were in those few days before
Christmas.

The day after his decisive interview with Margaret he was late at the
Capitol, lingering in his committee-room after the others had left.
On his way home he dined at the club and was detained there by some
out-of-town friends until nearly eleven o’clock. When he finally left
the building he started home on foot, and even stopped at a news-stand
to buy some papers and magazines. It was twelve o’clock when he went up
to his rooms, and he was startled as he walked down the corridor to see
his door open and the vestibule lighted. Sandy came to meet him with
the air a dog wears who knows that a friend is waiting for his master.

Allestree was sitting by the table in the study, and as Fox entered he
rose with a sober face, “I’ve been waiting for you for an hour,” he
said; “I have bad news.”

Fox stopped abruptly, his thoughts leaping instantly to Rose. “Bad
news?” he repeated in a strange voice.

Allestree met his eye, perhaps read his thoughts. “Yes, the worst,” he
replied; “Margaret is dead.”

“Margaret?” Fox dropped the papers he held, on the table, and looked at
him, bewildered; “impossible!”

“I wish it were so,” Allestree said quietly, hurrying on with his
disagreeable task; “it seems that she was out to-day for a long time
alone; no one apparently knows much about it except the elevator boy
and he says she was away from the hotel four hours or more. As nearly
as we know she was on foot and in the streets most of that time. I know
she was in my studio while I was out;” he colored as he spoke; he had
found his mother’s letter on the floor and piecing the facts together
had divined much. “She came home alone, went to her rooms and was found
there later, unconscious, on the floor.”

“Good God, where was Gerty?” Fox exclaimed, with a gesture of horror.

“Margaret had sent her to Mrs. White with Estelle; there was some
painful scene in the street with the child--” Allestree stopped an
instant and then meeting his cousin’s eye he hurried on--“when Gerty
finally got to the hotel and found her it was too late; the doctors say
that if help had been at hand she might have been saved. As it was she
never regained consciousness. Gerty telephoned to my mother, but she
will not be back until to-morrow morning; when I got there Margaret was
gone.”

Fox sank into a chair by the table, and propping his head on his hands
stared blankly at a sheet of paper before him. “Why was I not told?” he
demanded hoarsely.

“Gerty tried to get you, both at the Capitol and here, but we could not
find you.”

“I was at the club,” Fox exclaimed and then: “Merciful heaven,
Allestree, how terrible, how harrowing! How impossible to realize!”

Allestree looked at him thoughtfully. “Do you think so?” he said, “it
has seemed to me for more than a year that I saw death in her face; she
had, poor girl, a face of tragedy.”

Fox groaned, covering his own face with his hands. His anger against
her of a moment before smote him with horrible reproach. Living, he
had ceased to love her, dead, she seemed suddenly to fill his life
to the exclusion of all else; she came to him again in the guise of
her thoughtless, happy, inconsequent youth which had forged the links
between them. He rose and began to walk the floor, his pale face
distorted with passion. “My God!” he cried suddenly; “I--Allestree, is
it possible that she divined the truth? That she knew me for what I
was, a sham, a mockery, a whited sepulchre?”

Knowing him and the unhappy woman, whose love for him had wrecked her
life, Allestree knew too much to speak; he was silent.

The storm of his cousin’s passion rose and beat itself against the
inevitable refusal of death. Poor Margaret! a few hours ago she had
held the power to ruin his career, now she had slipped quietly away
from him into the great Silence; the mute appeal of her unhappy
love touched his very soul as it had never touched it in life; the
impossibility of laying the blame for life’s miseries on the dead came
to him with overwhelming force, and she, who a moment before had been
guilty, in his thoughts, of embarrassing his future and blighting his
life, became suddenly the victim of his vanity, his idle pleasure
seeking which she had mistaken for love. He remembered, with sudden
horror and self loathing, his coldness, his bitterness toward her, and
the manner in which she had received his proposal of marriage. A swift
electrifying realization of the scene tore away his selfish absorption;
his manner of asking her had been almost an insult to her high spirited
pride, to her love, which had humiliated itself by the first confession
on that night in the deserted ballroom where she had poured out the
wretchedness of her soul. She had come to him wounded, homeless, and he
had all but cast her off in his passionate selfishness, his hatred of
the loveless marriage which his honor had bound him to make.

If he had only loved her, if he had but dissembled and seemed to love
her! Overwhelmed with grief he searched his mind for one reassuring
recollection, for one instance which should acquit him of complicity
in the tragic agony of her death, but he found none. He had neglected
her, denied her, tried to evade that final moment when he must ask her
to be his wife, and through all she had borne with him with a sweetness
unusual in her stormy nature; she had loved him well enough to make
allowances, to forgive, to overlook! And now passing away from him
without a word, she had left only her final kiss of forgiveness on his
cheek, the wild rush of her tears at their last parting. Henceforth
he should never speak to her again, never hear her voice, never know
how deeply she had suffered, never ask her forgiveness. The fact that
the sequence of events was inevitable, that a woman no sooner seeks a
man’s love than she loses it, gave him no relief. In his own eyes he
had been little short of a monster of cruelty to a dying woman because,
forsooth, he loved another--younger and more beautiful!

Memory, too, tormented him with the thought of Margaret, young, sweet,
confiding as she had been when he had first known her and loved her;
he thought less of the moment when she broke faith and married White;
her fault was less now than his; the error of a beautiful, wilful girl
seemed but a little thing before the awful fact of her wrecked life,
her tragic death. Through all she had really loved him, that one thing
seemed certain; her spirit in all its wild sweet waywardness had held
to this one tie, her love for him, and when she had turned to him at
last in her wretchedness seeking happiness, asking it, pleading for it
like a child, she had received not bread but a stone! He knew now that
no living woman could have misunderstood his coldness, his tardiness,
his indifference, and in his cousin’s pale and averted face he read an
accusing understanding.

He threw himself into a chair again and sat staring gloomily at the
floor. “What madness!” he exclaimed at last, with sudden fury; “how
dared Gerty neglect her so? She was ill, weak, unprotected!”

“Gerty was no more to blame than others,” Allestree observed quietly.

Fox threw back his head haughtily, and their eyes met. “I was willing
to give her my life,” he said bitterly, “I had no more to give!”

Allestree rose. “It is over,” he replied gravely; “we cannot bring her
back; come, you will go there, she would wish it, I know,” he added,
“and there is no one else!”

The awful finality of those words and the reproach they carried was
indisputable. Fox rose with a deep groan and went out with him, without
a word, to face the greatest trial of all.



VIII


IN a little _pension_ on the rue Neuve des Petits Champs, Rose Temple
had been working patiently at her music for six months and more,
studying under one of the great Italian teachers, a man who had
trained more than one prima donna and was, therefore, chary of his
encouragement. The enthusiasm which she had brought to her task having
been gradually dispelled by sharp disappointments, she had struggled
on, determined to succeed at last.

The first test of her voice before the maestro and his French critics
had been a failure, a failure so complete that she came home to weep
her heart out on the faithful shoulder of the elderly cousin who was
her chaperon and comforter. The weakness of a voice, beautiful but not
yet fully trained, her trepidation at singing before the maestro and
his assembled judges, together with the long strain of preparation, had
united in her undoing. She came back to the _pension_ without a word of
encouragement, feeling at heart that she would never sing a note again.

She sat down, laying her head on the little writing-table, amid a wild
confusion of Miss Emily Carter’s pens and papers, and gave way to her
despair. “I shall never sing again!” she said, “never--I’m a miserable
failure; I haven’t any more voice than a sparrow, and there’s all that
money wasted, thrown away!”

Miss Emily eyed her quietly. She had the intense family pride which
is nurtured in the State of Virginia; she did not need to be told,
she knew that Rose had the loveliest voice in the world. As for
these nasty, little, fat, insinuating Frenchmen! She took off her
spectacles and smoothed her hair back from her temples; it was done
as they did hair forty years ago; it matched her immaculate turn-over
lace collar and hair brooch. “You’ll blot my letter, Rose,” she said
calmly, with a little drawl that was inimitable; “I don’t see what
you’re crying about, it will make your nose red; as for these horrid
little Parisians, they know about as much about you as they do about
heaven--which isn’t enough to get there!”

In spite of herself Rose laughed feebly. “You’re the most prejudiced
person I know, Cousin Emily!”

“Prejudiced?” Miss Carter’s nostrils quivered scornfully, “I wasn’t
raised within forty miles of Richmond for nothing, Rose Temple! Don’t
you suppose I know a gentleman when I see one? What in the world can
you expect from that person if he is a singing master? He wears a
solitaire ring on his little finger and a red necktie. I reckon I’ve
got eyes if I do wear spectacles.”

“But he’s trained half the great singers of the world, Cousin Emily,
and at first he was so kind about my voice--to-day--” Rose winked back
the hot tears--“to-day he never said a word!”

“Pig!” ejaculated Miss Carter unmoved.

Rose laughed hysterically. “I shall never sing; I’d better take to
washing and ironing for a living!”

“You’d make a fortune,” retorted Miss Carter ironically; “while you
were mooning you’d scorch all the shirt bosoms and smash the collars.”

“You’re not a bit encouraging; no one is!” Rose said helplessly,
leaning back in her chair; “it makes my heart ache to think of wasting
poor father’s money so!”

“And I reckon he’d give the whole of it to keep your little finger
from hurting; he thinks you’re a chip of the moon. And how in the
world do you know you’ve wasted it yet?” continued her cousin, calmly
indignant; “perhaps you didn’t sing well to-day; is that any reason you
won’t to-morrow?”

Rose looked at the angular figure opposite, and the color came again
slowly to her cheeks and the light to her eyes. “I’m so glad you came,
Cousin Emily!” she exclaimed; “without you I should have just given up,
they looked so--so indifferent, those men with their eye-glasses and
their notebooks and their stare.”

“Stare? I should think so!” replied Miss Carter severely; “I’ll put a
Frenchman against anything for staring. I believe myself that Paris is
a Sodom and Gomorrah boiled into one, let me tell you! How any nice
sweet girl can marry one of them-- Rose, if anything should ever induce
me at any time to think of marrying one, clap me into an insane asylum,
you hear?”

And Rose, burying her face in her hands, laughed until she cried.

But without Miss Carter and Aunt Hannah her courage would have failed
her often in the months which followed. She was put back at the
alphabet of music and worked with the beginners. More than one night
she secretly cried herself to sleep without daring to tell Cousin Emily
of her weakness. Homesickness, too, pinched her and took the color
from her cheeks, but she worked bravely on. She had reached Paris in
June and she had failed at her trial in September. The months which
followed were crowded to the brim, and she tried to shut her heart and
her ears to news from home, except that which concerned her father.
The judge’s letters were purposely cheerful and optimistic, he said
so little about financial difficulties that it seemed like a troubled
dream to Rose; she never quite realized all it meant to her future.

At last, after many months, her instructor told her one morning that
he should bring some competent judges to hear her again and, if she
succeeded at this second test, he should try to give her a great
opportunity to win her place in the world as a singer. Rose’s heart
thrilled. The great man said little, but at last she perceived that he
believed in her in spite of her failure, that her voice had finally won
his confidence. A word from him was more than a volume from another; it
meant success or failure. The girl, full of her dreams of singing and
redeeming all with her voice, trembled all over and turned pale. There
was a great excitement at the little _pension_ that night; confident
though she was, Miss Carter secretly wiped away a tear, and they both
worked late to give some fresh touches to the girl’s white gown which
brought it up to date; it was a year old, and not made in Paris! They
began to see such differences, to recognize the enchanting creations
in the show-windows and out walking on the fashionable women on the
boulevards.

However, Cousin Emily had her opinion about its owner’s appearance in
that same old white frock, and she stole out and bought a single rose
for the young singer to wear the next afternoon. Aunt Hannah helped
dress her; it was a great occasion; the little flat looked as though
a whirlwind had struck it, and at last the two went out in great
trepidation to keep the appointment. Secretly Miss Emily longed to
give those Frenchmen a piece of her mind about criticizing the voice
of a sweet young girl, but she only retired discreetly to a corner and
looked on with a peculiar moisture on her spectacles which required the
constant use of her handkerchief.

       *       *       *       *       *

As Rose ceased singing and the last clear notes of her voice floated
into the distances of the great empty concert-hall, the thrill of its
sweetness, its purity, its young confident power, seemed to fill the
very atmosphere of the place with exquisite music; it could not quite
pass away into silence, it remained at last, if not in the ears, in
the souls of the listeners, a little group to the right of the stage
who had gathered there to hear the wonderful pupil, his youthful prima
donna, the great gift which, he believed, the new world had for the old.

In the midst of her song she had forgotten herself, her audience,
her first failure, even the world itself, while her young ardent
soul poured out its joy and its grief in those splendid notes. Love,
that great interpreter of the heart, had unlocked hers to sorrow,
she sang with the heart of the sorrowful; she was, first of all, as
Allestree felt, an impersonation of youth, and she sang with the soul
of youth which hopes forever; she loved, purely, unselfishly, gently,
and she sang with the love of the world on her lips, and singing
thus was supremely lovely; what matter if the old white dress was a
little out of fashion? She was a figure as symbolic of youth with its
splendid hopes, its faith, its untried strength, as she was the very
personification of beautiful womanhood.

No one spoke, no one applauded, but not an eye was dry.

But to Rose, whose ears were not filled with her own music, the silence
which followed it came with a shock of terrible revulsion. She waited
a moment in keen suspense, but no one spoke, no one moved; the wave
of silence that followed the wave of sound engulfed her hopes, she
remembered that first disappointment. Bitter dismay swept over her, she
turned away to hide her emotion, but the maestro crossed the stage at
that instant and held out his hand; he could not praise her but there
was actually a tear in his eye.

Rose looked up, and reading his face burst into tears of joy, her hopes
suddenly fulfilled.

Then the party of judges broke out with a round of applause and one
little Frenchman, with a polished pink bald head and mustaches,
shouted: “Brava!”

In the end they crowded around her and overwhelmed her with
compliments; they were eager to invite her to a supper and drink
her health in champagne, but the staid Virginia cousin, in the
old-fashioned black bonnet and the old black alpaca gown, which
outraged Paris without hiding the good heart beneath it, frowned on
this hilarity; her deep-seated suspicion of the Parisian in general had
not been dissipated by this burst of applause. She insisted that Rose,
who was trembling with excitement and the strain of the long hours of
training, should go straight back to their little apartment to rest. A
decision too full of wisdom for even Rose, eager though she was for
the sweet meed of praise, to resist it.

They drove back in a fiacre, a wild extravagance which they ventured in
view of the great success and the immediate prospects of a fortune; the
cousin felt that they were immediate.

“You all were always talented,” she said to Rose, as they drove down
the rue de Rivoli; “your mother could do anything; we always said so.
Cousin Sally Carter, too, is going to be an artist, and no one ever
made preserves like Cousin Anna’s! I reckon it’s in the family, Rose.”

“Oh, Cousin Emily!” Rose sighed, and hid her face on the alpaca
shoulder, “oh, if I can only, only sing so well that there shall be no
more terrible trouble for father!”

“Now, don’t you worry about the judge, child,” Cousin Emily replied
soothingly; “it will all come out right and, anyway, the best families
haven’t money now-a-days!” she added with ineffable disdain, “it’s very
vulgar.”

“I think I’d risk having it, though!” Rose said, with a sigh.

She was really in a dream. The softness of spring was in the atmosphere
as they drove through the gay streets, and all the trees in the
garden of the Tuileries were delicately fringed with green; the voices
of children, the sounds of laughter, now and then a snatch of song,
reminded them that it was a holiday. Rose thought of home; the Persian
lilac must be budding, the tulip trees, of course, were in flower;
a pang of homesickness seized her, a longing to see the old house
again--ah, there was the sorrow of it, could they keep the old house
much longer? With these thoughts came others, deeply perturbed, which
she tried to thrust away. She knew of Margaret’s sudden death, but
she had heard but little of it, of Fox nothing. Her father’s letters
excluded the whole matter; Mrs. Allestree’s were chary in mention of
it, and from Robert there was no word on the subject. Gerty English,
strangely enough, had not written since Margaret’s death, and Rose
could only piece together the dim outlines of a tragedy which touched
her to the soul. There had been moments when she had been bitter
against poor Margaret, had held her responsible, now she thought of her
with pity.

As these things floated before her, in a confused dream of sorrow and
regret, she was scarcely conscious of Cousin Emily’s chatter, or of
the streets through which they passed, but presently they were set
down at their own door and she paid the cabman; Cousin Emily’s French
was excellent but it belonged exclusively to the classroom and the
phrase-book, and no one in Paris understood it, a fact which bewildered
her more than any of her other experiences.

They found the _pension_ disturbed by a fire in an adjoining house,
and Aunt Hannah was sitting on top of Rose’s trunk with her bonnet on,
waiting to be assured that the flames could not reach her.

“It’s all out, Aunt Hannah,” Rose assured her, laughing; “the concierge
says it was out half an hour ago.”

“He don’ know nuthin’ about it, Miss Rose; he ain’t sure dat he’s a
liar, an’ I knows he is, bekase I’se caught him at it,” the old woman
replied firmly; “de place might be afire sure nuff. It was one ob dem
’lection wires dat set de odder house off, an’ dis place is full ob
dem; I don’ tole him ter cut ’em loose, an’ he keep on jabberin’ like a
monkey; I ain’t got no manner ob use fo’ dese French people no-ways!”

“Nor has Cousin Emily!” laughed Rose, taking off her hat and tossing
it to Aunt Hannah, while she passed her hand over her bright hair with
a light, deft touch which seemed to bring every ripple into a lovelier
disorder; “the poor concierge is a good soul, and he does make us
comfortable here.”

“Mebbe he is, an’ mebbe he ain’t!” said Aunt Hannah grudgingly; “dese
men folks allus waits on a pretty girl, honey, but I ’lows he’d cheat
yo’ jest de same; I’se got my eye on him sure!”

“I wish you’d take off your bonnet and get my trunk open,” retorted
Rose good naturedly; “then we’ll see if we can put the concierge in
it--if he misbehaves!”

“My sakes, honey, I done clean forgot ter gib yo’ dis letter; it’s a
telegram, I reckon; it come jest befo’ de fire broke out, an’ I’se been
settin’ on it ter keep it safe.”

It was a cablegram, and Rose stretched out an eager hand for it, with
a thrill of anticipation; it seemed as if her father must be reaching
out to her across the seas, that he already knew and rejoiced with her
for, surely, all his prejudices would dissolve at the assurance of her
success.

She opened it with trembling fingers, a smile on her lips. It fluttered
and fell to the floor; it was a cablegram to summon her home, the judge
was very ill.



IX


AFTERWARDS Rose never quite knew how she endured the voyage home. Her
love for her father was so deep, so tender, they were so bound together
by a hundred ties not only of affection but of sympathy and tastes and
interests, that the very thought of losing him almost broke her down.
It took both Cousin Emily Carter and old black Aunt Hannah to comfort
and sustain her during those ten days.

But when she reached Washington Allestree met her at the station with
good tidings; the judge was out of danger. He had been very near
death and came back slowly from the Valley of the Shadow. However, he
had come back and Rose knelt beside his bed and cried her heart out
with joy to feel his arm around her. How pale and thin and wasted he
looked. He had aged so much; poor Rose, she saw it and forced a smile
to disguise it even to herself. But he was unaware of the shock which
the sight of him gave her, and he forgot his illness in his eager
interest in her account of Paris and her final success. She told him
very little of those long months of struggle and depression, of the
thousand little pinches and trials that they had been through to keep
from asking an extra penny from him.

After Rose came the judge began to mend more rapidly; old Mrs.
Allestree said he had only been pining away for the child, but she
knew better, being a wise old woman. She knew that the judge had been
struggling all the year to stave off the foreclosure of the mortgage
on the old house which he and Rose loved so well. She knew, too, that
he had almost failed when that mysterious arrangement was made for him
by an unknown party; the message came that the mortgage had been taken
up, and he could have all the time he wanted and at a lower rate of
interest.

This news, so amazing and so unprecedented, had been synchronous with
the judge’s breakdown and had, Mrs. Allestree believed, contributed
to it. The sudden relief had snapped the strain on his nerves, and
he slipped down into a state of coma. However, she did not tell Rose
this, nor her suspicions, which were fast becoming certainties, about
the mortgage; she only kissed her affectionately and made her sing to
her the song which had won such an ovation from the French critics,
and which Cousin Emily Carter had described with enthusiasm before
she departed to the Tidewater region, where she hoped to cut her own
asparagus bed and set out her flowers undisturbed by Parisian manners
and customs.

Allestree welcomed Rose with even greater relief than his mother and
the judge, but wisdom had taught him to rejoice in silence, and he did
so, being careful, however, to send promptly for her portrait which,
according to the agreement between Mrs. Allestree and the judge, could
not be loaned during Rose’s presence in the house, but only as a
consolation in her absence. But the judge sighed deeply when they told
him it had been returned to the studio again.

It was during the first days of her father’s convalescence that Rose
found Margaret’s letter to her among his papers; not knowing Rose’s
address in Paris, Margaret had sent it in the judge’s care and he had
overlooked it when he forwarded the letters, as he did, once a week.
By a strange accident it had slipped under some pamphlets in the
basket on his library table and lay there until Rose, rearranging his
papers one morning, came upon it and recognizing the writing broke the
seal with some trepidation, for Margaret had never been an intimate
correspondent, and Rose divined some serious reason for this long
closely written letter. She was alone when she found it, and she went
to the open window and stood there reading it.

Margaret, moved by the deep sorrow and passion which had swept over her
poor troubled soul in those last days of her life, had poured out her
heart. She told Rose all; that she had come between her and Fox; in
her wild and covetous jealousy she had thought to wrest happiness from
despair; to keep his love she had been willing to lose all, and she had
lost! She concealed nothing, the last pitiful words of the letter, a
remarkable letter of passion and grief and self-sacrifice, told Rose
that she was going to give up her life to her children and try to live
down her desertion of them.

Rose read it through to the end, and then covered her face with
her hands, trying to shut out the terrifying picture that it had
unconsciously drawn of a woman, desolate, shipwrecked, without hope in
earth or heaven. The terrors which had possessed Margaret’s soul swept
over hers. All that Mrs. Allestree had told her, and that Gerty, poor,
voluble, good-hearted Gerty, had enlarged upon, filled out the scene.
The lonely walk, the visit to the studio, the unfriended and miserable
death; she did not know of those other scenes in the church and the
curiosity-shop where Margaret had found her heart, but she did know of
a strange girl who had brought a single white lily to lay in Margaret’s
dead hand and gone away weeping bitterly.

She had blamed poor Margaret, judged her; Rose felt it at that moment
and accused herself of heartlessness; of Fox she dared not think. In
the new light which this letter shed on the situation, she began to
understand how cruelly he had been placed, and there, too, she had
judged!

Poor Rose,--her father had inculcated stern and simple lessons and she
had tried, before all things, to be just; but to be judicious and calm
and in love at the same time was an impossible combination. She dashed
the tears from her eyes, and thrust Margaret’s letter into her pocket
and went about her duties with the air of a soldier on guard, but her
lip would quiver at intervals and she could not sing a note when the
judge asked for one of the old ballads that he had loved as a boy, and
Rose had learned, to please him.

It was about this time that she began to wonder if the old house must
go, or if her father had been able to meet all the payments due upon
it. She dared not ask him, and he said nothing, but she noticed that
now that he was able to be moved into the library every day and
sometimes into the garden in the warm spring sunshine, that he sat for
hours at a time in a brown study with a deep furrow between his brows,
and constantly pushing back his hair from his forehead, as he did in
moments of perplexity. She was afraid to speak, lest any mention of
the trouble which had so beset him would bring back the fever and a
relapse, so she had to content herself with hope and waited for some
sign on his part.

The old house had never seemed so dear; the mantling vines were full
out in new foliage, birds were nested on the southern wall toward the
garden, and the old garden-plot itself, so sheltered and secluded by
the house and the high brick wall which shut out the street, was just
coming into bloom. The roses she had set out the spring before were in
bud, and the peonies were blooming. Rose looked about her with a sigh
and forgot that she would, perhaps, be one day a great prima donna with
the world at her feet. Such things do not always fill a woman’s heart.

Meanwhile the judge had written and despatched a letter with great
secrecy, and one morning, after he was wheeled into his library,
he told Rose that she might take her sewing into the garden for he
expected a gentleman on business and he might be there half an hour.
She obeyed him with a stifling sensation of anxiety; she knew it was
that mortgage, that terrible mortgage, and his reticence convinced her
that he was concealing bad news from her. She took her sewing out to
the little arbor in the corner, where the library windows were out of
sight, and she tried to sew, but her fingers trembled so that she lost
her needle and, having neglected to provide herself with another, she
sat and watched the robin on the lawn and wished money grew up like
grass out of the well tilled earth and was of as little consequence.
Yet, all the while, it was not of herself she thought but of her
father, broken in health, old and careworn, facing those inexorable
obligations without even her help.

The judge alone in the library watched the clock with an anxious eye,
and thought of Rose and all it would mean to her if he could save the
property. When he lay near death the one overwhelming horror of his
heart had been to leave her at the mercy of the world. The old man
glanced about him with the same fond recognition of familiar objects;
it is strange how dear these inanimate things, which were here before
we came and will be here when we are gone, become so valuable to us.
To the judge they had associations. The picture over the mantel had
been bought by his grandfather, those books dated still farther back in
the family; the clock had belonged to his mother’s great grandfather,
the old secretary of polished mahogany, with secret drawers and brass
mountings, was an heirloom,--it had held a will which had nearly
disrupted the family two generations back. Small matters, but to an old
man inexpressibly interesting and sacred. Of the house he did not like
to think; that was full of memories of his wife, and he could not now
explain the madness which had led him to mortgage it to pay off more
pressing claims which had followed his first heavy losses.



X


ROSE had been ten minutes in the garden, and the judge was beginning to
fidget in his chair when he heard the front door open and shut and at
last steps came toward the library. A moment later William Fox entered
the room. As he came into the mellow light from the open window the
judge was struck by the change in his strong pale face. The old smile
which had come so easily to his lips, and which, at times, had almost
the sweetness of a woman’s, was gone; the brow and chin had a new
resolution. The man was changed. Judge Temple saw it and held out his
hand with a sudden impulse of warmer sympathy than he had felt before.
After all, Fox had met it like a man and paid the cost.

On his side, Fox was as strongly affected by the broken appearance of
the old man in his invalid chair with his white head and his sunken
eyes. “My dear judge,” he said, “I hope you’re feeling better? I was
glad to obey your summons, though I’m not sure that I understand the
reference in your note.”

The judge looked at him a moment in silence, then drawing a letter from
his pocket, opened it and handed it to him. Fox took it with evident
reluctance; as he read it he colored a little and folding it hastily,
handed it back without a word.

“I did not know until yesterday, sir, to whom I was indebted,” Judge
Temple said slowly, his lip trembling slightly from weakness and
profound emotion.

Fox stirred uneasily in his chair, his color deepening. “I didn’t
intend you to know it at all, judge,” he said, almost with an air of
diffidence; “I presume I owe my betrayal to Berkman. However, I want
to assure you--since it is known--that you can have all the time you
desire; I consider it a good investment!”

The judge’s spectacles grew misty and he took them off hurriedly and
wiped them, his thin hands shaking as he did it. “I thank you for
your confidence,” he said quietly, when he could speak; “you’ll get
it--every cent.”

“I know it. I tell you I consider it a good investment, the best I
ever made,” Fox retorted smiling; “I’m not usually so judicious in my
ventures.”

The old man tried to force an answering smile but he failed, his head
sank on his breast and his hands, lying on the carved arms of his
great chair, still trembled. Fox looked at him in some anxiety, half
afraid that the excitement and relief had been too much, and bitterly
indignant that his secret had been betrayed. It had been a difficult
matter for him to take up the mortgage, for he was by no means a rich
man, but he had vowed in his heart to save Rose her home, the home that
he knew she loved so well, and half the joy of doing it had been to do
it without her knowledge; but it seemed impossible to keep a secret
which, from its very nature, must be shared with others.

The change in the old face opposite was alarmingly sharp.

“My dear judge, you are too indisposed for business; let me ring for
assistance,” Fox exclaimed, with real concern.

But the judge protested. “Sir, I’m better to-day than I have been for
a year,” he said, a slight break in his voice; “I see my way clear,
I’ll be able to save this property, I--” he broke off and passed his
handkerchief over his eyes; there was a moment’s painful silence, then
he held out his hand. “God bless you, Fox!” he broke out suddenly, “it
was killing me to lose it--”

They shook hands. Fox had risen and his face was colorless. “Don’t tell
her, judge,” he said abruptly.

The old man started and was about to speak but, meeting the other’s
eye, refrained. Many things came into his mind, among them a memory of
Rose’s face at Mrs. O’Neal’s ball. It was a bitter moment; no man was
good enough for her, and this man had been too much talked about! Yet
the child’s happiness was near his heart.

With a certain reluctance Fox turned at last to go, and as he did so
his glance passed through the open window into the garden. “I can reach
the gate by this path, can I not?” he asked, moving toward it.

The judge started uneasily, with an involuntary gesture as if to detain
him, to keep him back at any cost, but Fox did not see it and the
old man sank back in his chair quiescent. His lips moved but he said
nothing; after all, had he a right to interfere? Unconsciously the
younger man went out of the window and down the two short steps to the
gravel path.

The judge watched him disappear behind the Persian lilac with a
fascinated eye. Then he took out his handkerchief again, and passing
it swiftly across his brow pushed back his scant white hair until it
seemed to rise up in active protest. The glare of the May sunshine
suddenly hurt his gaze and he shook out his handkerchief and threw it
over his head, closing his eyes.

Aunt Hannah, opening the door a moment later, with a pleasant jingle of
ice in the mint-julep glass on her tray, peeped in, thought him asleep
and cautiously and discreetly closed the door again. “Fo’ de Lord,” she
murmured, “ef it ain’t de fust time dat he didn’t kinder sense dat de
julep was comin’; I reckon he’s right po’ly!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Fox turned the corner by the lilac, walking slowly, holding his hat
behind his back, his bare head bowed. His face was gloomy with thought,
and he almost passed the arbor. At the turn a glint of white caught his
eye and he looked up quickly and saw Rose industriously sewing without
a needle, her head down over her work and the sunshine filtering
through a trellis of vines on her soft bright hair and her white gown.

He came toward her with an exclamation of unrestrained joy, but as
their eyes met a wave of mutual feeling swept over their souls and left
them mute. Between them seemed to lie the sorrow and the love of that
beautiful and unfortunate woman who had separated them. The language
of conventionality was no longer possible; Rose tried to speak, but
her words died in an inarticulate murmur. The anguish of Margaret’s
letter came back to her; it had saved Fox in her eyes; she no longer
condemned him, she no longer felt it a duty to avoid him, but she found
it impossible to tell him of the change in her heart by any commonplace
word of friendship. Her hand had slipped from his eager grasp and lay
trembling on her work. It was terrible to betray herself so; her cheek
reddened and tears of mortification came into her eyes. But to speak
to him of common things at such a moment--how could she? And he made
no effort to help her, but only watched her, his soul in his eyes.
The marks of suffering on his face touched her, too; the lines had
sharpened, the gaze deepened and become more introspective, the shock
of primitive passions had really decentralized his life. He smiled at
the sight of her, almost the old eager smile, but even that light had
died out of his face now, and in the pause she seemed to hear her own
heart beating against her breast.

He stood looking at her. “How long must I be silent?” he asked at last.

Rose busied herself in a fruitless attempt to thread an imaginary
needle, and her slender fingers shook. It had been in her mind to
tell him that Margaret had written her, but as he spoke a sudden
intuition of the truth arrested her impulse, a flood of light poured
in upon her, illuminating the twilight of her thought. She felt that
he must not only never know of Margaret’s confession--she had not
meant to tell him that--but not even of her letter. It was impossible
to answer him; her lips were tremulous as she looked up and met his
grave, compelling gaze. In her look, so full of buoyant and beautiful
youth, there was not even the shadow of reproach. Her simplicity, her
renewal of confidence in him, were profoundly touching; the bitterness
and humiliation of the past months seemed at last sanctified by her
forbearance. The secret agony which had torn his heart during the
long winter fell away from the present; it belonged at once to the
past, sinking into that long vista which leads to oblivion. To-day was
beautiful and strong with hope.

Before her youth and purity William Fox experienced a feeling of sudden
and complete humility. “Can you forgive me?” he asked, in a low voice.

Margaret’s letter seemed to breathe its message in her ears. “There’s
nothing to forgive,” Rose said simply.

“You understand?” there was passionate eagerness in his glance; his
love for her was sweeping away the obstacles from his mind, leaping up
again to demand its right to exist.

“Yes,” Rose said, with white lips, “I understand, not fully--but--”

“And now?” he was strongly moved; not knowing whose hand had lifted the
veil of her misunderstanding and far from divining the truth.

“And now?” the tears gathered in her eyes and fell unheeded; “I cannot
but think of her love--her unhappiness!”

“And you still blame me?” Fox stood motionless, his face resuming its
stern reserve.

Rose shook her head. “I--I cannot!” she murmured, remembering that
confession, and the thought of it sealing her lips.

He started, the color rushing to his temples, the kindling passion of
his glance transforming him. “Rose!”

She looked up through her tears, and as suddenly hid her face in her
hands. “I am afraid!” she murmured brokenly, “out of--of all this
sorrow can there be happiness?”

Fox sat down beside her and gently took her hand. “You mean you cannot
trust me?” he asked soberly.

For a moment she did not answer. He looked down at her drooping
profile, the lovely arch of her brow, the soft cheek and chin; her eyes
no longer met his. “Or is it that you do not love me?” he said quietly.

She raised her head at that, and the dawning sweetness of her glance
illumined his soul. “It is because I love you--that I can no longer
judge!” she faltered, with trembling lips.

He met her look without a word; language, for the moment, had not
significance for them.

Silence, filled with the sweet murmur of summer life, the fragrance of
flowers, the audible rustling of the magnolia leaves, seemed to enfold
them in a new and beautiful world.


THE END.



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.




*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The reaping" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.