Chapter X: Part 10

Three minutes before, they had seen Helen and Harry Lodge turn a corner in the hall and pass round behind some of the overflowing greenery which almost shut off a side entrance. Lodge was as intent upon the pursuit of Helen as Rutledge of Elise, and was making more of his opportunities. Helen was welcoming any excitement that carried her out of herself. With Lodge's pushfulness and her indifference to consequences, it did not take long to bring the issue to a point. From her manner Harry did not gather the faintest idea of losing. She listened to his speeches with a smile which was not in the least false but none the less deceiving. She did not offer the slightest objection to his wooing nor put the smallest obstruction in the way of it. In his enthusiasm he developed an eloquence, and, taking her unresisting hand, he rushed along to the climax of a rapturous declaration.

"--And will you be my wife?" he asked, with his arm already half about her.

"No," Helen answered dispassionately, drawing herself back from him as if his meaning were but just now made clear to her: but that "no" came too late.

A pair of eyes in which the lightnings had gathered and gone wild had looked upon the whole of this tender scene except the last moments of it. Hayward Graham felt the devils in the blood of all his ancestors white and black cry to be uncaged as he looked upon Lodge in his ecstasy of love-making, and when Lodge took Helen's hand and it was not withdrawn, the devils broke the bars.

"So," cried Hayward in his soul, "it's for you--to resign her to your arms--that I am asked to die! No! If I may not possess her, not you, you hound!"

A door was wrenched open and Lodge had only time to straighten himself before he was knocked senseless by the infuriated husband.

Hayward drew himself up, terrible, before his wife, and Helen in the moment of recognition threw herself into his arms with a glad cry.

"Oh, you have come at last!" she moaned. "You got my letter at last and have come to me!"

"No. What letter?" asked Hayward--but as he asked it Helen was pushing herself from him as savagely as she freely had thrown herself to him. Her ear had caught the sound of people approaching. Hayward was too confused to notice that. He was in consternation at the lightning change from love to aversion, and clung to her desperately.

A second later he was lying prone upon the floor with Evans Rutledge standing above him, murder in his eyes. He made a wild attempt to rise, when another terrific blow from Rutledge's arm sent him again to the floor. The hall was in an uproar, and a couple of palms were knocked aside as President Phillips burst into the midst of the melee in time to restrain another smash from Rutledge's clenched fist.

"In the name of God, what's the row?" he asked.

"This nigger has assaulted Miss Helen," said Rutledge, gasping and choking with fury.

Mr. Phillips trembled with a fearful passion, but, seeing Helen apparently unhurt, pulled himself down to a terrible quiet.

"Get up," he growled to Hayward. "Now"--when the footman was on his feet--"what have you to say for yourself?"

Hayward looked for the hundredth part of a second in Helen's eyes.

"I have no excuse," he answered simply.

Only silence could greet such an admission. For five seconds the silence and the stillness were torturing.

As Mr. Phillips moved to speak, Helen took two quick steps to the negro's side. His renunciation, his silent, unhesitating committal of the issue--of his life--to her decision, had touched her heart.

"I am his wife," she said, as she took his hand and turned to face the circle of her friends.

*CHAPTER XXXII*

Helen's announcement was made quietly, without any melodramatic display.

In the circle immediately surrounding her and her husband were her father and mother, Elise and Evans Rutledge, and Hal Lodge but just now coming to his senses and his feet. Behind these were Mrs. Hazard, Captain Howard, Senator Richland, and a gathering of other excited guests. For a space after Helen's speech the scene was steady and fixed as for a flashlight picture, and was photographed on Elise's brain: the incredulity on her father's face--the horror on that of Evans Rutledge--the perfectly restrained features of Howard--the quickly suppressed smile of Richland as he glanced at Evans in lightning comprehension of all the situation meant--the ghastly pallor of Mrs. Phillips as she sank voiceless in a dead faint--

"No--o!"

The harshly aspirated protest of Mr. Phillips was propelled from his lungs with a burst of indignant anger, but drawn out at the end into a pathetic quaver--and the scene dissolved.

Rutledge caught and lifted Mrs. Phillips whose collapse was unnoticed by her husband in his transfixed stare at Helen, and pushing back through the crowd was about to place her upon a settle in the hall; but at Elise's bidding he carried her up the broad stairs and left her in the care of her daughter and Lola Hazard. There could be no good-bye said--no time for it; but at the glance of dismissal Elise gave him from her mother's bedside--at the look of suffering in her eyes--his heart was like to burst.

Down-stairs the confusion was painful. The guests were hesitating between being accounted so ill-bred as to stare at a family scene, and running away from it as from a scourge.

To her father's unsteady denial Helen repeated her simple statement: "I am his wife."

"Since when?" Mr. Phillips demanded.

"A year ago last October."

The father looked about him as for help.

"Come along with me," he said. "Both of you. Good night, ladies and gentlemen," he added to the hesitating guests--and there was a breath of relief and a scattering for home.

* * * * *

With his hand upon Helen's arm, and Hayward following, President Phillips led the way to his offices.

"I am not to be disturbed," he told a servant after he had stopped at the door and waved Helen and Hayward into the room. "Ask Mrs. Phillips if she will please come here."

Entering, he motioned Hayward to a chair, and, taking Helen with him, went into the inner office and closed the door behind him.

"Now, my child," he said, with a break in his voice despite every effort to keep it steady, "tell me all about this, and we--we'll find a way out."

He patted her hand reassuringly.

"There's no way out, papa. I loved Hayward, and I married him."

"No, no, child, not love. You were infatuated--he was a footman and you are--"

"He was a gentleman," interrupted Helen.

"In a way, perhaps, but uncultured and common--how could--"

"He is a Harvard man," Helen cut in again, "a man of intelligence and education. He is--"

"But a weakling--no genuine Harvard man could be a menial--a flunkey--"

"He's not a weakling, papa. He stooped to the service for love of me. He loved me long before we came here--when he was a student at Harvard. It was so romantic, papa--he saw me first at a football game and he has loved me from that day. He was the hero of the game and he has yet the Harvard pennant I gave him--and, oh, he's a greater hero than that, papa--he was a soldier and he was the trooper that--wait a moment." Helen ran to the door.

"Here, Hayward, give me the knife," she called; and she came running back, holding it out to her father.

"The knife that the trooper stole!" she said, with a pitiful little attempt at gayety in her voice and face.

"What's that?" her father asked harshly.

"Why, papa, you surely don't forget the knife I gave you on your birthday? The one that was taken by the trooper who rescued you at Valencia?"

The light of understanding came to her father's eyes.

"Well, Hayward was the man, papa! He it was who saved your life to us--oh, how I have loved him for that! Just think, daddy dear, how often you have told me what a heroic thing it was--and for such a long time I have known it was Hayward and wanted so to tell you, but I couldn't."

"Why couldn't you?" demanded her father.

"Well, I found it out by accident when he caught me off my falling horse--there it is again, papa--he saved my life as well as yours--it was just the grandest thing the way he did it!--no wonder I have loved and married him--he's the sort that can take care of a woman--enough different from Bobby Scott, who couldn't stay in his own saddle!"

"But Mr. Scott is of an excellent family--distinguished for generations--while Hayward is a nobody--a--a nothing--no family and no recognized personal distinction or merit of his own--the commonest circus clown can ride a horse, my child."

"But he is personally distinguished, papa; and you have approved his merit by making him a lieutenant of cavalry."

"When? How?" the father asked.

"He is John H. Graham, papa--John Hayward Graham; and there can be no denying his fitness or ability, for you have certified to both."

Mr. Phillips saw he was estopped on that line; but it only made him angry and stirred his fighting blood.

"That's the reason," Helen continued, "that Hayward wouldn't let me tell you who he was or thing about his service to you. He wanted to obtain his commission absolutely on his merit and without appealing to your gratitude--wasn't it noble of him?"

A grunt was all the answer Helen got to her question.

"But his people, who are they? What sort of a family have you married into? Do you know?" Mr. Phillips demanded sharply.

"He lives with his mother--his father is dead--oh, I wish you could hear him tell about his father and mother, and his grandfather--it's just beautiful. I don't know whether he has any other relatives,--but that doesn't make any difference. I am not married to them, papa, and he's not responsible for his people but must be judged by his own personal character and excellence!"

In this last speech of Helen, Mr. Phillips thought he caught an echo of something he had heard himself say, and he winced a little: but it only added a spark more to his anger.

"But he's so far below you socially, Helen. You cannot be happy with him! You must remember that you are the President's daughter and--"

"And my husband," interrupted Helen, "is of the one order of American nobility--_a man_! I've thought about all that--the man's the thing, you said, papa--and besides, an army officer has no social superiors."

There was no mere echo in Helen's defence now. It was plain fighting her father with his own words: and it irritated him beyond endurance. His wrath burst through and threw off the shell of theories and sentiment which he had built up around himself and the man's real self spoke.

"But he's a negro, Helen! _A negro_! How could you!"

"A _negro_, papa?" Helen questioned in unmixed surprise. "What has that to do with it? He's the finest looking man in Washington if he is--and didn't you tell Elise that that was nothing more than a colour of skin?--that the man was the thing?--that a--that a--negro must stand or fall upon his own merit and not upon his colour or caste?--and did you not say to Mr. Mackenzie that colour has nothing to do with a man's acceptability in your house?--and that--"

"Oh, my God! yes, my child, but I did not mea--you are too young, too young to be married, my child,--too young and too--yes, too young, and we must annul this marriage--yes, we must annul it, we must annul it--we can annul it without trouble, don't worry about it, child, don't worry--we can annul it, and--for you are too young, my little girl, my little girl, my little girl!"

At sight of her father's tears, and the trembling that shook him as he sank down in a chair, Helen's combative attitude began to melt and her eyes to fill.

"Yes, little girl, don't worry," he said, drawing her tenderly down within his arms, "don't worry, and we will have it annulled in short order."

"It's too late, papa," she spoke against his shoulder.

"No, no, precious heart, it's not too late--we can have it annulled--don't cry, and don't worry, we can have it annulled."

"But, papa," she said again as she pushed herself back so that he looked her full in the face, "it's too late, I tell you! It's--too--late!"--and with outburst of weeping she curled herself up against him.

With a dry sob of comprehension her father gathered her close to his heart.

* * * * *

For a long time after he heard the voices cease Hayward Graham waited in Mr. Phillips' outer office to learn his fate. He had caught some of the excited discussion--enough to be convinced of his father-in-law's opposition; but he could not be sure of the details. A servant had come in to say that Mrs. Phillips could not come to the office, and had knocked softly on the inner door several times while the discussion was at its warmest. Failing to get an answer, he had left his message with Hayward and retired. When the voices were quiet and the inner room became silent Hayward was on the _qui vive_ for developments; and stood facing the door in a fever of expectation.... His fever, however, had time to burn itself out.... In that long silence President Phillips fought his greatest battle.... The issue was predestined, of course. In his heart there was no passion at all comparable to his love for Helen, and that love won over all obstacles.... He saw clearly in what measure he was responsible for her undoing; and he came squarely to the mark with a courage that would face _all_ odds for his little girl--that would face a frowning world, a laughing, a mocking world--that would face his own soul even to the death--that her gentle heart might not be troubled.... He held her while her sobs shook themselves out, and then on and on he held her, close and warm, as if he would never again let her out of his sheltering arms,--while he gazed over her bowed head into the dying fire, and fixed and fortified his resolution.

At last Graham summoned courage to knock upon the door. President Phillips started as from a reverie.

"Come in," he said, rising unsteadily and placing Helen gently on her feet, his arm still about her.

"Why, certainly, Hayward, come in,"--and then he added after a short pause: "Helen has told me all about it, and, while I can't approve of the clandestine marriage, I shall do what I can to make my little girl happy--yes, I'll do what I can to make her happy.... And since this has been such an--unusual--evening I'll ask you to go now and come back to-morrow morning."

Hayward delivered the belated message from Mrs. Phillips, stood for a moment uncertain whether Helen would speak to him, and then turned to go.

"And do not wear your livery in the morning, Hayward," said Mr. Phillips.

"Very well, sir," said Hayward, as he withdrew.

*CHAPTER XXXIII*

When President Phillips came out of his office after dismissing Hayward, he found a score of reporters and newspaper correspondents fighting for places at the great front door. They were awaiting with what patience they could Mr. Phillips' pleasure in giving to the public an authoritative statement of his daughter's marriage.

The President, after he had obtained from Helen the details of time and place, and other items of interest, gave the press men the story. He customarily had his secretary to make statements to the newspaper people, but he chose to do this for himself: in his infinite loyalty to his little girl he was taking the situation by the horns. There was no elation in his manner, but there certainly was nothing to indicate his slightest objection to Helen's marriage, nor to Hayward Graham as his son-in-law. He gave a short sketch of that young man's life and excellences. He stated that he had not known Graham was either his footman or his daughter's husband when he had nominated him for a lieutenancy in the cavalry. He did not state that Graham had carried him off the battlefield at Valencia.

When he had finished with the men of the pencil Mr. Phillips went back to his office for Helen, and they sought the mother's room together. With another flood of tears Helen dropped on her knees by her mother's bed.

This scene was hardly less a trial for the father than had been the travail of his own soul. Here also must he win if he would save his child's happiness: and so, amid the tears and the sobs of the mother and daughters, and with misgivings and dread in his own heart, at first unflinchingly, then more zealously, and at last of necessity reserving nothing, he excused, and upheld, and vindicated, Helen.

Mrs. Phillips was too heart-broken to utter a word in opposition or condemnation, and Elise did not open her lips to speak. It was against accusing silence, therefore, and upbraiding tears, that the father made his desperate defence.... Such a debate can never be brought to any real finish; and it was at last only in exhaustion, Helen of nerves, her father of words, and Elise and her mother of lamentation, that the distressed family found peace--enough at least to permit of dispersal to their rooms for the night.

Elise was bowed down in grief for Helen, and for Helen she wept upon her pillow till the fountain of tears was dry: but even then there was no sleep for her. Her mind was painfully alive to her own personal problems, and her brain was awake the night long although weariness held her scalded eyelids down. The incident of the evening, like an electric storm, had clarified the haze of uncertainty for her heart--but only to plunge it into a more intense perplexity.

No longer unchoosing, her heart had spoken its choice. It were better had it never spoken at all; but there could be no mistaking its decree--she loved Evans Rutledge. As she had looked upon the three men who loved her in that brief time when Helen proclaimed her husband, _she had known_: and she had known that not for her was the man who in the fleetest moment could smile while her heart was breaking; nor for her that other, who, with his alien point of view, was untouched with her distress, and who with his perfect breeding--she resented it--could be so contained, so unmoved, in a situation which brought anguish to her. In the throes of that anguish her soul had turned, unerring, to its affinity in suffering, to _the heart that understood_ and wept, not in a ready sympathy for her pain, but in the pains of a common grief.

In such manner Elise accounted for the reading of her heart's message. She believed that it had been undecipherable, confused, until that evening. Yet in all her distress then, and in the heartaches afterward resulting from its choosing, she was strangely happy because her heart had been true to the fancy of its earlier years, had been faithful to its first girlish inclination to love, had not misled her, had not been fickle in any degree, or false. She told herself with a tremor of rapturous, prideful humility that one man had been the master of her love from the beginning.

Thinking on it as she lay unsleeping through the night, she more than once forgot her tears and was lost in the transport of loving. She petted and caressed her heart for its constancy. She made excuses for its indecision in that long time when the man's love had seemed unworthy. She murmured tender things to it because it had prevailed, even though with a hesitating loyalty, against her head's capricious disapproval.

In her wanderings back and forth through the desert of her miseries on that night, she straggled back many times to this oasis of her love and stopped to soothe her troubled heart with its upspringing freshnesses.... And yet a wildness of perplexity was set about her, and she could not find a way out. She knew that Rutledge loved her--had loved her from the time he declared it on the flood-beaten rock in the St. Lawrence till the moment of his tender unspoken good-night three hours ago. That his love could not be shaken by any act not her own, she verily believed. But would he have loved her?--would he have dared to love her?--could he, with his blood-deep, immutable ideas, _could_ he have loved her?--if he had known that his love would bring him to this unspeakable extremity, to this heart-breaking dilemma, where he must be traitor to himself and to her--or become brother-in-law to a negro?

Yes, he would have _loved_ her--her of all women--despite the slings and arrows of the most outrageous fortune, her heart told her: but, with prescience of such calamity, would he have _spoken_ his love?--would he have asked for that interview for to-morrow evening that he might tell it to her again? Was he not even now regretting that appointment? Was he not even now _pitying_ his love for her? She must know. But how could she know? By what means could she learn _the truth_? ... Way there was none: and yet she _must know_. Doubt, uncertainty, here would be unendurable--and implacable for she could no longer find peace in indifference. She loved Evans Rutledge, and her love would fight, was fighting, desperately for its own.... But again, her own must be worthy, without compulsion, or she would repudiate it. Her heart's tenderness, virgin, single, measureless, she held too precious to barter for a love, withal sincere and beautiful, which were weighted with a minim of regret or limitation. Rather would she crush back its fragrance eternally in her own bosom, than dishonour it by exchange for less than the highest.... Yes, she must know.... And she could _not_ know.... And the morning came, bringing no relief for heart or brain....

Mr. Phillips was at some pains to intimate to his wife and Elise what he thought a proper pride demanded in the way of the "front" they should show to the public. Queer that he should have thought it necessary: but, unhappy man, he spoke out of his fears for his own steadiness. Elise, at least, had no need for his admonitions. Her pride was the pride of youth: the pride which finds all sufficiency in itself, and needs not the prop of outward circumstance which age requires to hold its chin in air.

It was this pride which gave Elise some hesitation in deciding what she should do with her promise to see Rutledge that evening. Pride said: "Meet him as if nothing has happened to disturb the serenity of your life. Do not show--to him, of all men--chagrin at this episode _en famille_." But pride said: "No! Recall that engagement. Do not appear to hold him by so much as a hair. His love must be undistrained!"

She wavered between these conflicting demands of a consistent self-respect until the middle afternoon. Then the pride of her love overmastered the pride in her pride: and she wrote Rutledge a short note.

"MY DEAR MR. RUTLEDGE:--I find it necessary to change my plans for this evening. This will prevent my seeing you at Mrs. Hazard's as I promised. I am very sorry.

"Sincerely,
"ELISE PHILLIPS."

This was her afternoon at home; and after having dispatched the message to Rutledge Elise gave her mind over as far as might be to receiving her callers. They were more numerous than usual, despite many notable absences, and before they fairly well had begun to crowd in she realized that she was on parade. Oh, the duplicity of women! How they chirruped and chattered about every imaginable thing under heaven, while they listened and looked for only one thing: to find out what Helen's family really thought of her marriage.

This was not Mrs. Phillips' afternoon, nor Helen's and they did not appear--to have done so would have been to overdo composure: and so it was that Elise alone fenced with the dear, dear procession of sensation hunters who passed in and out of her doors. The women came in such flocks that she really did not have time to be embarrassed, for the sympathetic creatures who showed a disposition to sidle up close to her and begin with low-voiced confidences covert attacks upon her reserve were quite regularly bowled over by their oncoming followers before they could get their sly little schemes of investigation well going. It became fascinating to her to watch them defeat each other's plans, and she was somewhat regretful when they stopped coming. They stopped quite suddenly, for the reason that, in eagerness to see for herself, every daughter of Eve among them had made the White House the first stopping-place in her round of visits for the afternoon.

When the women were all come and gone, save two who evidently were trying to sit each other out, Captain Howard was announced. Elise was unfeignedly glad to see him and in a few minutes the two contesting ladies departed and left the Englishman and the girl together.

Captain Howard's coming was very refreshing, and Elise was grateful. He was the only person she had seen that day who did not seem to be conscious of the electric condition of the atmosphere, and she sat down to talk to him with a feeling of genuine relief and pleasure. His conversation began easily and unconstrainedly and ran along the usual lines with all freedom. As chance demanded he spoke of Helen several times in connection with one small matter, and another, and his manner of doing it was positively restful.

Elise felt so comfortable sitting there talking to him that for the first time she was impressed to think that it might be a nice thing to have him always to come and sit beside her and make her forget that things went wrong. The unfluttered ease and peacefulness of his manner and his words appealed very strongly to her distressed heart, and it warmed toward him in simple gratefulness.

Captain Howard was not without knowledge of the tense situation created by the announcement of Helen Phillips' marriage. He read the newspapers and could not but know that a tremendous sensation was a-blow. He was himself excited by the affair--in a steady-going fashion. It was as if a princess of the blood had eloped and married a--say a tradesman--or, maybe, a gentleman--of course it was sensational.

In his amorous state of mind, however, the captain thought kindly of the wealth of love which had inspired the young woman with such a sublime contempt for rank--for that very real and very puissant divinity, Rank. He also had shaken himself sufficiently free from the shackles of provincialism to be able to recognize the effect of democratic ideas in making possible and permissible such an event. Affairs of this sort could not be entirely unlooked for in a genuinely democratic society; and, since the President acquiesced in his daughter's choice and had no regrets, there was no more to be said. Altogether Captain Howard viewed the matter very calmly and philosophically.

Having this attitude, he had no hesitation after a time in speaking directly of Helen's marriage and its dramatic announcement. He was a gentleman in every instinct, was Captain Howard; and there could not be the slightest offence taken by Elise at his natural and sympathetic interest in what he considered a most romantic episode. But while one may not be offended or resentful, one may become nauseated. Captain Howard did not know of the chill of disgust and horror that was creeping over the girl's heart, nor notice the silence to which she was come. Her friendliness had been so graciously simple and so promising that his purpose had been formed and he was moving straight toward it, not noticing her silence further than to be glad she was saying nothing to create a diversion.... Elise felt that if she spoke she would be very, very rude.

* * * * *

"--And your America, Miss Phillips, is assuredly the natural home of Romance. Here every man is a peer in posse, and every woman a princess incognita--and possibility keeps pace with imagination. In England a footman is a footman to the end of his life. Here the footman of yesterday is the President's son-in-law to-day, and may himself be the ruler of his people to-morrow! Can life hold more for a man? The right to aspire and the luck to win!--and to win not only the recognition which his personal merits deserve, but that supreme gift which no man could deserve: your beautiful sister's love! It is almost unthinkable to an outsider like me, but it is glorious! Yes, your America is the Land of Romance!"

This all sounded very well, but Elise's nerves were on the ragged edge. She knew if she spoke it would be to cry out: "Yes, a rank outsider! Oh, why can't you drop that subject before I scream!"

But Captain Howard had only finished the preliminaries. He continued:

"And in this land, Miss Phillips, where a man may hope for anything, I, too, have taken courage to aspire to the highest, and--"

"A note for you, Miss Elise; the messenger is waiting," a servant said.

Excusing herself to Howard, Elise read.

"MY DEAR MISS PHILLIPS:--If I may not see you to-night, may I not see you to-morrow afternoon--or evening? Or day after to-morrow? When?

"Sincerely yours,
"EVANS RUTLEDGE."

Elise read this over several times, and gazed idly at the paper for some time longer. She quite forgot the waiting messenger and Captain Howard. At last she thought, "On his own head be the result!" and sat down at a daintily carved desk to write.

"MY DEAR MR. RUTLEDGE:--The disturbance of my programme for the evening seems to have been largely imaginary. I will be very glad to see you at Mrs. Hazard's as at first agreed.

"Sincerely,
"ELISE PHILLIPS."

When she had given her answer to the servant Elise came back to Captain Howard with a commonplace question which made for naught all his words up to that point. He realized he must make a new beginning if he would tell her what he wished. Her face and mood had changed and he saw that her thoughts were elsewhere. After several attempts to pull the conversation back into the old channel he gave it up and retired, mentally cursing his luck and hoping for a more auspicious occasion.

* * * * *

Elise awaited Rutledge's coming at Lola Hazard's with some trepidation. She was uncertain of herself. She did not know what she would do. Being assured of what Rutledge would say to her, under ordinary conditions she would have been elusive for a season, and finally have surrendered when overtaken. But with outside circumstance warring against her love, she felt wildly impelled to let herself go, to fling restraint to the winds and give her heart's impulse free rein. Delicious were the tremors of anticipation with which she waited to hear again words of tenderness from him. Overflowing was her heart with tender response. His insistence on the meeting when she had given him an opportunity to avoid it, proved his faith was fast. He had met the supreme test for a Southern white man: he loved her more than his caste. In her own spirit she knew the agony of his trial. How sweet to surrender to such a love! How tenderly she could reward it! She longed to meet it with a frank and blissful confession. So, she was in some trepidation: she was afraid she might not be properly reserved.

Lola Hazard came into the sitting-room and found Elise sitting before the open grate.

"Honey," she said, slipping an arm about the girl's waist, "you look positively glorious to-night. I never saw you half so pretty. What have you done to yourself? Your eyes are brilliants, and your colour is--delicious!"

"I have been looking at the fire," said Elise in explanation.

"The pictures you saw must be very pleasing," Lola answered. "I hope they'll all come true. But before we begin to discuss that, let me tell you that Mr. Rutledge asked to call this evening, and he may be here any moment."

"Yes," said Elise, "I know. He told me last night."

"Oh, he did, did he? Well, I promised him if he came early he might have ten minutes for his very own to talk to you to-night. I hope you--"

"He may have ten minutes--and as many--more--as--he--wants," said Elise brazenly.

"Oh, you darling!" Lola gave her a squeeze. "No wonder you are beautiful. It will make any woman heavenly, and you are _such a help_ to it!"

"What is _it_?" asked Elise.

"Love," replied Mrs. Hazard.

*CHAPTER XXXIV*

"Come along back to my own little parlour, Mr. Rutledge. Elise has been singing for me, and we'll not let her stop for awhile yet."

Elise was not expecting Rutledge to be brought in there, and was still sitting at the piano idly weaving the chords into soft and improvised harmonies when he spoke. She slipped from the stool quickly, shook hands with him in an embarrassed way, and crossed the room to sit down.

"Oh, no, please do not leave the piano," Rutledge pleaded, "now that I have just discovered you are a musician."

"I am not a musician, Mr. Rutledge; certainly not for the public."

Rutledge drew himself up as if offended.

"I have been called names variously in my time, Miss Phillips, but never till this moment 'the public.' I resent it as an aspersion--I am not 'the public'--and demand an abject apology. Think of all the horrible things 'the public' is--and are!"

"And you a politician!" exclaimed Elise. "You would be lost for ever if those words were quoted against you. Senator Killam would give a thousand dollars for them. See--I hold your fate in my hands--"

Rutledge's eyes leaped to hers with a quick look that confused her, and she hurried to cut off his words.

"--But--oh, mercy, I'm--I'm sorry, and I retract if it was really as bad as that. The public is really awful, I suppose. I humbly apologize for the aspersion."

"Then bring forth fruits meet for repentance by returning at once to that piano stool."

"But I'm such a very amateurish singer, Mr. Rutledge. I fear you will--"

"And I am an amateur listener, the most humbly appreciative, uncritical soul on earth. Please sing. Mrs. Hazard, if you have any influence with this administration will you not use it here?"

"Authority is better than influence," said Lola. "Elise, march to that piano."

Elise complied with an exaggerated air of obedience.

"Since I am singing under orders, I will sing only according to orders. What shall it be?"

"Sing _My Rosary_," said Lola. "That's an old one--and the dearest."

"I commend to you Mrs. Hazard for sentiment, Mr. Rutledge. Her honeymoon is not yet on the wane." Having thus made Lola responsible for the song, Elise sang it without further delay or hesitation.

When she had well begun to sing Rutledge recalled having heard that song a long time before. It had not impressed him.

Elise sang simply. The fullness of her low voice and the clearness of her words, together with the unaffected "heart" in her singing, left her nothing to be desired as a singer of ballads. As Evans listened to the song of sentiment of Mrs. Hazard's choosing he reformed his opinion of it. Always hitherto he had deemed sentiment an effervescence--refreshing at times as apollinaris, but none the less an effervescence--and the words of _My Rosary_ a fair type of it:

"The hours I spent with thee, dear Heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me.
I count them over, every one apart,
My rosary, my rosary.

"Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer
To still a heart in absence wrung--
I tell each bead unto the end
And there a cross is hung.

"Oh memories that bless and burn,
Oh barren gain, and bitter loss.
I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn
To kiss the cross, Sweetheart,
To kiss the cross."

But with Elise sitting there before him, a vision of loveliness and grace entirely, appealingly feminine, "the lady" all gone, and the girl--the woman--unaffected, natural, singing of love with such an air of truth and faith: sentiment became a very real thing to Rutledge.... When she finished he was silent. To comment would have been to comment on Elise, and for her every drop of his blood was singing, "I love you, I love you." He felt that if he spoke to her he must crush her in his arms and tell her so.

"That is a song according to my notion," said Lola. "No _mesalliance_ of sentiment and melody there, such as you often see. The words and the music made a love-match--they were born for each other. Who wrote it, Elise?"

"I forget--if I ever knew," said Elise.

"Woman, of course," Lola continued; and Rutledge interpolated "Why?"

"Because a woman always mixes her religion with her love--if she has any religion. A man may have one or the other, or both, but he never confuses them."

"Pardon me for taking issue with you, Mrs. Hazard; but with many a man his love for a woman is his only religion."

"Which means, Mr. Rutledge, that he has love--not religion."

As Rutledge turned to Mrs. Hazard Elise had the first opportunity to look at him unobserved. She saw that his face had less colour than usual, that his manner seemed to lack its accustomed spontaneity, that there was a tired look about his eyes--which provoked in her heart a fleeting maternal impulse to lay her hand upon them. She watched him furtively and became convinced that he was in some measure distressed. At first it rather amused her and flattered her vanity to think that he was approaching her with a becoming self-distrust. As she studied him longer, however, she began to doubt the reason for his constraint.

Lola Hazard turned from her discussion with Rutledge to give Elise another song, and the young woman at the piano sang three or four while Rutledge listened in appreciative silence. Before the last was finished Mrs. Hazard was gone to receive other guests.

"Now will you not sing one of your own choosing?" asked Rutledge.

"I have no choice;" said Elise, "but this occurs to me." She sang him Tosti's _Good-bye_.

If she put more of the spirit in that song than into the others it was not because she felt its pertinence to the present status of her love. But through the wakeful night, and all the day long till Rutledge's note had come, the words of that _Good-bye_ had come and gone through her brain with passionate realism:

"Falling leaf and fading tree,
Lines of white on a sullen sea,
Shadows rising on you and me--"

her heart had sung its "good-bye for ever" with all the smothered passion of renunciation. So, in the very moment of blissful waiting for the telling of his love, she could sing to Rutledge with all the wildness of farewell which so short a time since had wrung her spirit.

She struck the last chord softly, and, after holding down the keys till the strings were dumb, dropped her hands in her lap. She did not look up, but she knew that Rutledge's gaze was upon her. She waited for a space unspeaking, without lifting her eyes--and realized that she had waited too long.... The silence was eloquent; and with every moment became more significant. She tried to look up, but could not. She knew that the situation had gotten beyond her in that careless ten seconds, and that if she looked up now she was lost.... She sat as if under a spell--and waited for Rutledge to move or to speak.... After an age he was coming toward her.... And he was so very slow in coming. Her heart was thumping suffocatingly, her breathing in suspense.... He did not speak as he came to her.... She felt he was very near.... Still unspeaking--was he going to take her in his arms? ... Her head drooped lower over the keyboard....

Oh, why did he not take her in his arms.

"Elise, I love you. I've always loved you."

Elise's eyes were upon the idle hands in her lap; and her heart had stopped to listen. Rutledge's sentences were broken and jerky. She had never heard him speak in that fashion.

"I've loved you always, Elise, and once I was rash enough to think--you loved me. My presumption was fitly punished.... Now I have only--hope. In the last few months you--have been so--gracious that--I have been led to think you--wait, wait till I have done--so gracious that I have been led to think--not that you love me, but at least that I--do not excite your antipathy--as for a long time it seemed.... So now I have only hope--but such a hope, Elise--a hope that is--beyond words, for my love is such. My love is--I love you, Elise--I love you as--as my father loved my mother."

Elise slowly raised her eyes to his. There was no smile upon her face, but as she turned it to him it was ineffably sweet, and a smile was in her heart. But she was startled by his look. His was not the face of a lover, whether triumphant, despondent, hopeful or militant. She did not know that he had not been able to banish his mother from his thought for a waking moment since he parted with her at her mother's bed-side the night before.

"Will you--be my wife, Elise?"

Never before in all the world was that question asked in such a voice. Its tone like a dagger of ice touched the girl's heart with a deadly chill. She looked steadily and long into his eyes. At last with a little shiver she murmured inaudibly "_noblesse oblige_"--and answered his question:

"No, Mr. Rutledge, I will not be your wife."

Her words were as cold as her heart, and her self-possession as cold as either. She was surprised that her answer did not bring the faintest shadow of relief to Rutledge's drawn face--rather a greater distress. A tingle of fire shot through her bosom. (It was not too late--oh why did he not take her in his arms.)

"No, I will not be your wife," she repeated slowly. (It was not yet too late--oh why--) "I am deeply sensible of the honour you--"

"Stop! Don't say that! In God's name don't say that! Don't add mockery to--"

"Mr. Rutledge!"

For the moment Rutledge forgot that there was any person in the world other than Elise and himself.

"You _have_ mocked me--you have _played_ with me! And--"

"Will you please go, Mr. Rutledge!"

"Played with me--yes--as if I were the simplest--oh well, I have been--and you--you have been--you are--an artist. Tell me that you do not love me, that you have only laughed at me. Tell me!" he sneered.

"Go, I say! Oh, _can't_ you _go_!"

"Yes, I'll go--when you say it. Tell me! Do you love me--have you ever loved me?--the veriest little bit?"

"Never. Not the veriest little bit," she said, looking straight at him.

"That's it!--the truth at last--spoken like a m--like a lady!"--he bowed mockingly at her--"and it proves you are false--false, do you understand?--unspeakably false! And I have loved you like m--but very well, it's better so--perhaps."

He turned to go; but turned quickly about.

"I'll kiss you once if I swing for it!--for what I thought you were"--and, for a moment robbed by anger of his sense of proprieties, with unpardonable roughness he crushed and kissed her, flung her violently from him, and went, without looking back at her.

* * * * *

Mrs. Hazard, looking across the shoulders of a knot of her guests, caught a glimpse of Rutledge as he passed down the hall toward the outer door. She waited a minute or more for him to reappear, and when he had not done so she lost interest in the people and things about her. At the first possible moment she sought Elise, and found her again sitting before the grate. Lola came into the room so quickly and quietly that Elise had not time to dissemble, if she had wished to do so. Her head was thrown back against the chair and both hands covered her face. Lola took her wrists and against some little resistance pulled her hands away.

"Elise?" she said.

"He does not love me," Elise replied, defensively, without opening her eyes.

"Didn't he tell you?"

"Oh, yes," the answer came wearily; "he told me; but he told me because he thought he had given me to expect it. It was _noblesse oblige_--not love."

"Noblesse fiddlesticks! I don't believe a word of it."

"Oh well," said Elise, looking up, "he said it was just as well that I refused him, there's no mistaking that."

"Oh, certainly, _after_ you refused him. What did you expect?"

"I expected him to--no, I didn't. I didn't expect anything. Southern men are so--" Elise stopped. She was about to be unjust to Rutledge.

"But come, let's go," she said, rising from her chair. "Are all the people here?"

"All except Senator Richland, and he never fails _me_," Lola answered.

"I don't want to see that man to-night," said Elise; and yet she joined the other guests appearing nothing other than her usual self save for the added brightness of her eyes, and when Senator Richland managed finally to isolate her she gave him quite the most interesting twenty minutes of his life.

When the company was broken up, Elise, who was stopping over night with Lola, avoided the customary heart to heart talk by asking for a pen and paper with which to write a letter. Mrs. Hazard was consumed with desire to hear all about it, but she deferred her inquiries with good grace as she argued that a note written by Elise at such an unearthly hour could be only to Rutledge, and must, therefore, be important.

Elise shut herself in her room and, pitching the paper on the dressing-table, sat down to think. For nearly an hour she sat without turning a hand to undress, trying to unravel the tangled skein of her heart's affairs and see a way out; but she could not get her thoughts to the main issue. Like a fiery barrier to her thinking was the man's burning denunciation: "You are false--unspeakably false!" It had rung in her ears all the evening, and however she tried she could not get away from it. At last she began hurriedly to undress, but before that process was half finished she brushed the toilet articles from a corner of the dressing-table, drew up a chair, and began to write.

"Unspeakably false? No, no, Evans, I am not false. I have not been false: for I love you. Such a long time I have loved you. Sometimes I have believed you loved me, and sometimes I have doubted; but I do not doubt since you told me to-night I was unspeakably false. Shame on you to swear at your sweetheart so!--and bless you for saying it, for now I know. O why did you not say it earlier so that I might not have misread you? I thought you felt yourself committed, and must go on: that your love was dead, but honour held you. You looked so distressed, dear heart, that I was misled. Forgive me. And do not think I do not know your distress. I, too--but no, I must not. I love you, I cannot do more. In your rage were you conscious that your kiss fell upon _my lips_, dearest? Blind you were when you said I was unspeakably false.--"

She had written rapidly and almost breathlessly while the impulse was warm within her heart. She paused for a moment--held the pen poised as if uncertain what to say next--hesitated as to how to say it--next, as to whether to say it--laid the pen down and picked up the sheet to read what she had written. A blush came to her cheeks as she read, and at the end she dropped her face upon her arm on the table and suffered a revulsion of shame for her unmaidenliness. She tried hard to justify her writing and had all but succeeded when Rutledge's words, "It is better so," put all her love's excuses to final rout. She took the written sheet and went across to drop it on the smoldering fire. But her resolution failed her: she felt that it would be to burn her very heartbeats if she gave these words to the flames.

Going again to the dressing-table she laid the letter upon the scattered sheets of paper to await a more mature decision, and, hurriedly disrobing, went to bed.

She found it very hard to go to sleep. Even in the dark she could feel the continuing blushes in her cheeks as she thought of what she had written. Finally in desperation she tumbled up and in the dim glow of the coals in the grate crossed the room to the dressing-table, snatched up and crumpled in her hand the disturbing letter, hurriedly gathered up the remaining sheets of paper and chucked them in the table drawer, walked quickly over and dropped the offending tender missive upon the coals and went to bed again in the light of its destruction. A very long time after its last gleam was dark and dead she found the sleep she sought.

*CHAPTER XXXV*

It is not within the province of this chronicle to recall the sensational excitement that swept the nation in those days further than as it affected the persons mentioned in this narrative. The details of that sensation, the screams, the howls, the jeers, the predictions, the warnings, the laments, the philosophizings, a newspaper-reading people but too well remember. They have no proper place of rehearsal in this history; and if they had, a comprehensive statement which would present the matter fairly to those who come after would be too voluminous for the plan upon which this book is projected.

In that time of tumult and of trial Mr. Phillips stood indeed alone. If he had braced himself firmly in his determination to save Helen's happiness at all cost, it was well: for his trial was to the uttermost. Although it would have crushed any other than his adamantine will, the storm-beaten father withstood, as one accustomed to do battle, the pressure from without: but the rebellion of his own soul was an unrelieved tragedy that shook him day and night with its terror. If his love for Helen had not approached the infinite, surely in the shrieking revulsion of his spirit he would have cast her off. There was a demand from loud-mouthed people the nation over that he should disown her and drive her into the outer darkness. Some relief there was in that demand, for it only stirred the combative in his nature. The yells and hoots aroused his fighting blood. But the silence, the unspeaking horror--as if in the presence of death--in which sober-minded friend and foe stood aghast and looked upon Helen's plight, made his courage faint and tremulous. It was so awfully akin to the sickening horror and silence in his own heart.

He was indeed alone; and in that loneliness it was given to him to teach to himself the far bounds of a father's love. If he only could have fought something!--or somebody! If he only openly could have snapped his fingers in the face of public opinion, in the teeth of his own mutinous soul--openly--and told them he cared more for Helen's untroubled laugh than for them all, and be damned to 'em! If he only could have died! But no: he must stand and be still to the most thankless task that ever called for a hidden loyalty. Helen must not know of the travail of his love, lest that defeat love's purpose. It was too late, too late, for knowledge to do other than tear her heart-strings out, blight her young soul, and write _Remorse_ eternally upon her life. She must _never_ know how much he loved her!

There was no lack of personal--and professing---friends to stand more or less loyally beside the father in that time, but their support was wormwood to him. From the very few who were altogether sincere he turned in aversion even as he suffered their commendations, while for the insincere and sycophantic he had a doubly unspeakable contempt; and that disgust and scorn was agony, for that he must swallow it and belie his own spirit as he listened to these friends.