Chapter IX: Part 9

Hayward made no allowance for reportorial zeal or mendacity, the first always much, and the last, while unusual, always possible. The young gentlemen furnished him enough to think about, and his imagination began to add enough, and more than enough, to worry about. When imagination sets out to go wrong it invariably goes badly wrong, for the reason that it plays a game without a limit.

However, the footman's imaginings were not entirely without provocation. As the days passed, Helen's letters became mere scraps, generally tender, sometimes quite tender, but hurried, snatchy, with long silences between. To supply the lack of authentic information of her, her husband studied more assiduously the newspaper columns: and the poisoned tooth of jealousy struck deeper into his heart. At last, between Helen's indifference and the nagging news-notes, he could not endure it longer. He wrote her a protest hot with the fever of heart-burning and of outraged love. He re-read that letter a dozen times in indecision--and trembled as he dropped it in the box.... Nervously he waited for an answer,--and yet he waited.... The silence grew ominous.... His fears grew also. But why, thought he, should he fear? She was his wife, and he had the right to protest.... His anger rose at her contemptuous disregard of him: his anger--and his fear. He knew she was bound to him past undoing. Nevertheless, his fears did abide and thicken, while the summer and the silence drew along slowly hand in hand.

* * * * *

September had come, bringing yet no letter from his wife to fetch the confusion of Hayward's fear, his resentment, his love and his jealousy to something of peaceful order. His spirit was already beset with wild imaginings and desire, when one day he opened a _Journal_ to read:

ROMANCE IN HIGH PLACES

_The President's Daughter, Besought
By Eligibles of Many Lands, Will
Wed An American Citizen
Superb American Beauty Follows Her Heart
Engagement of Miss Helen Phillips and Mr. Harry
Lodge_

Hayward sat down on the first thing that offered itself. He felt just a little uncertain about standing up. He read the staring headlines over again, and, hot and cold by turns, plunged into the details of this High Romance.

Unbelievable? Beyond doubt. Unthinkable even--to him who knew. But the fabrication artist hammered his brain and heart with such a mass of detail, with such a crushing tone of assuredness and authority, that the footman's thoughts and beliefs were pounded into stupefaction and he knew neither what to think nor what to believe. His brain jumped to recall the details of their marriage, in fearful search of a possible defect or omission which might vitiate it. It had been very hurriedly done, all superfluities were omitted, but the officer had assured him that they were hard and fast man and wife.

Had Helen discovered a flaw in the contract? And would she evade it thus? ... When that last question struck his brain, a dozen passions swarmed to fight within his heart: love, jealousy, fear, defiance. Shaking with the tumult of them all, he wrote to Helen again.

"It has been six long weeks since you received my last letter. Not a word has come to me in answer till this, to-day:

(Here he pasted in the headlines clipped from the _Journal_.)

"Is this your reply? If it is, I swear to you it shall not be. That insufferable cad cannot live upon the earth to take you from me. I will snuff his contemptible life out rather. You know that you are mine--wife--by every vow and promise which the law prescribes. It is incredible that you should ignore your troth plighted to me. It is impossible for you to break it in this fashion. I would not have believed you could be a fickle and unfaithful Helen. I do not believe it. It is a lie. Write and tell me it is a lie. Write quickly for the love of God. No, no, you need not write. It is false. I know it is false--for you cannot be false.

"But oh my Helen, why did you not listen to me? Why did you, a wedded wife, persist in receiving attentions from men, from this one man in particular, the most contemptibly caddish creature among all your admirers? I have deplored your unrestraint but I resent it that _Lodge_ should have found such special favour at your hands as to give currency to this report. He is unutterably unworthy. I beseech you by the love I shall dare to believe is mine until you tell me I have lost it to conduct yourself so that such lies as this shall not be printed. Think what will be said of your gayeties when it is announced that you have been married a year. I love you, wildly, madly, as this incoherent letter shows. You have told me that your love is mine and I believe it. Forgive me and write to me, queen of my heart. I am starving for lack of the love which is already my own."

Helen's reply to that letter came quickly enough.

"I refer you to yesterday's papers," it said icily, "for my answer to your ravings about that absurd newspaper story. Your jealousy is insulting, and your aspersions of Mr. Lodge are inexplicable. He is everything that is honourable, and it is only your frenzied attack upon him that is 'unutterably unworthy.' I sincerely regret that I was so foolish as to marry you when I did. You are unreasonably exacting and I will not be bound by it. You have no right to make demands of me."

Hayward had the sensation of being struck in the face. If he had been disturbed with vague doubts theretofore, he was now harassed by very certain and lively fear. The "yesterday's papers" to which Helen referred him had had a very explicit denial of the engagement, and Helen's sharp reply admitted her marriage to him; but the last declarations of her letter were ambiguous and defiant, and his heart sank when he remembered that marriages were often annulled, and that, even though the courts might not give freedom, there was no way to compel a wife to live with her husband.

Every manner of possibility and expedient whirled round and round in his brain until his thoughts were an almost insane jumble of fear, indecision and wrath. Finally out of the travail of his hopelessness and confusion of ideas there rose his fighting spirit and was born the mighty oath he swore, that she was his, he must have her, and in spite of the world, flesh and the devil, by God, he would have her!

One never-to-be-forgotten night was the first he spent after receiving Helen's letter: a nightmare from his lying down until the dawn. A tumult of shifting phantasms, disordered, chaotic, terrible, assailed him with incessant horrors the night long, while through it all there ran as a continuing and connecting tragedy his struggle to possess himself of Helen. In his wild dreams she was sometimes his and again escaping him; but always when he held her it was by right of might. A time he was clasping her close and warm in his arms, but fainting and unconscious, as he ran with her down Pennsylvania Avenue, Lodge, Rutledge, Phillips and an angry horde in hot pursuit. Again, he was dragging her through a never-ending swamp, limp and lifeless, one side of her face a-drip with blood. With a blood-stained axe he was fighting a furious, breath-spent way through vines and tangled undergrowth, the while there sounded in his ears the lone-drawn baying of hounds upon his track.

From that bed of horrors he sprang with relief before the first light in the east. He was glad just to be awake and he felt as if he wished never to close his eyes again.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

"You will have Shortman and the landau at the door at ten o'clock," said Mrs. Phillips to Hayward when he appeared for duty that morning. Shortman was the coachman.

When the servants appeared at ten for orders they were told that they should proceed to Cahudaga and bring back with them in the afternoon Miss Helen and two friends.... Shortman, stolid and indifferent as he usually was, was yet interested to note that he could not understand some of the things the footman said and did on that ride to Cahudaga.

Alice Rhinelander's sudden indisposition forbade her to attempt the long drive to Hill-Top, and Lucile Hammersley, of course, could not leave her guest. As Helen was to have but one day at home, however, she decided to go alone, and leave the two others to follow her on the morrow. As it was, she deferred starting till the latest possible moment. A threatening sky, splashed with sunshine but brushed with the fleeting clouds and winds of the close-coming equinox, was Mr. Hammersley's pretext for insisting that she also remain over night; but a childish desire to go home now that she was near it impelled her to tear herself away at the last minute for the solitary drive.

She spoke pleasantly to Shortman and Hayward when she came out to get in the carriage, and Hayward thought that her perfect composure in what seemed to him a tense situation was marvellous to behold. At the first sight of her glorious beauty he had an impulse to prostrate himself in adoration, but that something of the grand lady which she had unconsciously taken on held him stiffly to his character, if nothing else had done so. He held open the door for her, pushed her skirt clear--his pulses gone wild at the touch of it--shut her in securely, climbed to his seat beside Shortman and faced steadily to the front. He was afraid to seek a personal look from Helen's eyes. She, looking upon his broad back, erect and flat, strong in every line, did not guess the storm that was shaking him within. She was no little surprised at the grip he had on himself, and really indulged in some admiration of his indifferent air in what had been to her notion, also, a rather tense situation--for him. Her father's daughter, she had never met or imagined the situation to which she would not be equal...

While Hayward's spirit was being storm-swept, a literal tempest was driving down upon them. They were less than half-way home and on a lonely and unpeopled part of their road when the storm fell. The men and Helen, too, had ascribed the increasing darkness to the fast-coming nightfall, for the air about them was still and warm, and the sun had gone some time before behind a bank of low-lying clouds. A lightning-flash was the first herald of danger; and drive then as Shortman might, it was a losing race.

The storm seemed disposed to play cat-and-mouse with them. Hurrying over them in scurrying clouds darker and blacker growing, it only watched the hard-driven horses, nor so much as blew a breath upon them.... Mocking them now, it blew a puff, puff--and again was silence. As if to incite them to more amusing endeavours, along with another puff it threw at them a capful of giant rain-drops: and again drew off from the game to watch them run with fright.... Next came a brilliant sheet of lightning, revealing the cavernous furrows and writhing convulsions on the storm-god's front--but not the _sound_ of thunder nor the jarring shock of the riving bolt--that would be carrying the joke with these scared and fleeing pigmies too far.... Another awful, mocking grimace of the storm, and then another. After each, the darkness coming like a down-flung blanket closer and closer to envelop the earth. And through it all, that awful silent stillness, broken so far only by the clatter of those sportive raindrops and the rustle of the contemptuous puffs.... But the giant hadn't time to play with children: Crash, ROAR--the hurricane struck the hapless carriage!

Shortman was driving wildly to reach a little farmhouse two miles yet ahead, the first hope of shelter. In the sheets of light his eyes swept the ill-kept road to fix his course, and in the inky blackness following he held to it in desperate and unslacking haste till another flash revealed it further to him.

The thundering wind mauled and pummelled them. It shook and tore them. It shook and tore the very earth as they plunged fearfully forward through the terrible light and the awful darkness. In the deafening, blinding roar and rush, sight and hearing were pounded almost into insensibility and Helen tried to cry out to the swaying figures on the driver's seat--but screamed instead in terror as calamity caught them. Crack! _Crash_! CRUSH!--and woman, men, horses and carriage were buried under a down-coming treetop.

* * * * *

Helen felt she had not lost consciousness, but she did not know. Hayward was struggling to release her from the wrecked landau. He was calling to her, screaming rather,--for the shrieking wind was raging as if with the taste of blood. She could see him plainly as he fought through the threshing branches of the giant oak that had smashed them. The light which revealed him to her was continuous, but flashing and dancing. She looked to see whence it came, and her blood froze as she saw the sputtering end of an electric transmission cable which the falling forest monarch had broken and carried down. At the foot of Niagara were mighty turbines a-whirl which sent the deadly current to threaten and to slay. Men had intended it for works of peace and industry in lake villages, but Nature had stepped in to reclaim it as one of her own cataclysmic forces, and Niagara's rioting waters, unwitting and uncaring, sent it just as merrily and as mightily to works of death.

Hayward well knew that death was in the touch of that whipping wire, tangled in boughs beaten and lashed by the demoniac winds: but Helen was in danger, and he hesitated not to come to her. After a struggle that tested muscle as well as courage, he dragged her free and started to carry her up the roadside bank to a small hut or shack which the light revealed. Helen shook herself from his arms.

"Where is Shortman?" she cried against the tempest.

Hayward pointed to the wrecked carriage. As she looked, one of the horses, uttering a cry and trying to rise, was flicked on the head by the end of the hissing wire, and, in a flash of greenish-blue flame, sank down and was still.

"Help Shortman!" Helen cried again.

At her command Hayward plunged into the tree-top and after a longer struggle than had been necessary in rescuing Helen, he pulled the coachman out and laid him limp at his wife's feet. He understood rather than heard the question she asked. He nodded his head in affirmative answer, and said, as if talking to himself:

"Dead, Miss Helen."

It had not been more than two minutes since the fury of the storm broke upon them. The rain-drops, which had been desultory, now came down in torrents. Hayward turned toward his wife. She was sinking trembling to the road. He caught her up and hurried her to the hut.

Their refuge was quite small, but afforded shelter from the downpour of water. It was a little patched-up affair that had been used by the labourers who constructed the electric transmission line, and was without opening except the door, there being no shutter to that. A rude table of rough planks built against the wall was its only furnishing. What had been a small bench was broken up and useless.

Hayward held Helen in his arms while he inventoried the contents in the uncertain light, but at her first movement to free herself from his embrace he gently seated her on the little table and stood beside her at the end of it. She was faint with horror and fright and, closing her eyes, sank back against the wall for support: while the wind-driven torrent howled and surged past the door and the fierce but unspeaking lightning lit up the awful night.... Helen was getting some sort of grip on her nerves again when, turning toward the door, in the pallid light she had a vision of the ghastly face lying in the road below them. She shuddered--the faintness was overmastering--and toppled unconscious against her husband's arm. He caught her tenderly, not knowing she had lost consciousness, and, putting his arm around her, drew her softly and closely to himself.

For a long time he stood thus in silence, fearing that speech might break the spell. At last he spoke to her, but she did not answer. He ascribed her silence to fright, and with gentle and reassuring words essayed to compose her fears. He took note of her failure to speak to him: but she was submissive to his caresses, and he was well content with that. At her non-resistance he became more affectionate in his tendernesses, and was lost in the ecstasy of holding her to his heart.

Gone--far removed--from him was the thought of the storm-riven night. An end, he exulted, to nightmares in which she was fleeing from him. His wife was in his arms at last! The silent modesty with which she had committed herself to him was eloquent of her heart's love and faithfulness:--and his pulses sang with joy despite the tragedy that had befallen.

The wind and rain were slackening, but the lightning played on. With a sigh and shiver Helen stirred, and pushed feebly away.

"Where am I? Where are we?" she asked confusedly.

"About two miles and a half from the Lake Drive," Hayward answered, "about four miles from home."

"But what are we doing here? How did we get here?"

Hayward started. In heaven's name, her mind was not unsettled!

"The wreck--I carried you in here out of the storm."

"Oh--yes,--now I remember," Helen said, leaning back against the wall and putting her hands before her eyes as if to shut out memory.

In a flash Hayward was in the clutch of the old terror.

"She did not know, then," he thought. "She was unconscious, and did not give herself to me." Again he was on the rack, all his doubts and fears and jealousies a-surge, but maddened and fired by the memory, the lingering perfume, of her smooth cheek and warm lips.

"How long must we stay here?" Helen asked, starting up.

"Until the storm is over, at the least. They may send after us when we do not arrive on time. I cannot leave you here, or I would go after help now."

"No! you must not leave me here! We will wait till help comes or until--I can go with you. Do you think it will be long?"

Hayward went to the little door and surveyed the heavens.

"Another storm seems to be headed this way," he said. "If that strikes us there's no telling when we will get away. We are perfectly safe here, however. This cabin is built back against the hill and there are no trees near enough to fall on us."

"Were you hurt?" asked Helen abruptly, for the first time thinking of the dangers they had gone through as dangers.

"Nothing worth reporting," said Hayward in order to allay her fears. It was a lie well told, for he had a decidedly caved-in feeling about his ribs.

"You saved my life again--this time at risk of your own. When the carriage was crushed I thought that I--oh, it is too horrible!" She trembled violently.

Hayward saw that he must divert her thoughts from this direful night. He was much desirous of discussing other matters anyway. After a silent minute he began.

"Your return was quite unexpected to--us," he said.

"Yes, and a very short visit I'm to make as it is. I leave again day after to-morrow morning."

She stopped and apparently did not care to say more of herself--or of her plans.... Hayward was of a different mind.

"You didn't say anything of this visit in your last letter," he ventured.

"No, I had not decided on it then." ... Silence again.

"Helen, why did you write me that letter?" Hayward squared himself for battle and fired the first shot.

"I only answered yours--your two letters, rather. You insisted on making your--demands, and I simply told you what I thought. You also attacked one of my friends, and I defended him."

Helen was not versed in the art of indirection or evasion. Hayward was very thankful for that. It made the issue clear, and made it quickly.

"As for your friend," said Hayward, "your defence of him is without knowledge--"

"As your attack upon him was without justice," Helen interrupted.

"I said he was a contemptible cad, and I stand ready to prove it. You may be the judge of it. He was my friend at college, and our relations were of such intimacy as I have told you about, and yet, knowing me full well, he refused to know me in Washington, or to shake hands with me, or to speak to me, even."

"Perhaps he did not remember you. Remember it has been five or six--"

"I'm telling you he did know me. He admitted it--in order that his affront might be unequivocal. I tell you he's a cad, a damnable cad, and I want you to cut him off your list. Promise me that you will have nothing more to do with him."

The man in his half-demand, half-plea, put out his arm toward her to reinforce his appeal with a caress, but his wife drew away from him and warded off his hand as she spoke to him.

"No," she cried, "I cannot believe it. There must be some explanation--I cannot do it--I'm to be one of his automobile party next Thursday.... Don't--don't!"

"What! May I not kiss you?"

"No, no. Not--not now."

"But you are my wife--I have the right to kiss you."

"You have no right," said Helen.

Hayward grew suddenly cold with passion.

"I have every right--more right than that contemptible Lodge has to put his arm around you in the dance!"

"He at least has my permission," Helen replied spiritedly. But she would not have provoked him perhaps if she had known of the fever rising in his blood for all these months.

"Your permission, has he! And I am to beg for rights that are mine--and be refused!" His voice rose in anger with the roar and rush of the new-coming storm.

"You are mine!" he screamed. "I forbid you to meet him again! No man shall take you from me! I love you--I love you---and I will kill any man who tries to rob me of you! Helen, Helen, tell me you are mine--mine now! Not that you will be mine when I win my commission, but that you are already mine--_mine now_!"

Helen turned away from him, terrified by his violence of speech. The man's every passion went wild as he read refusal in her movement. Only for a moment does she look away, however. In that instant she sees again the dead coachman, prone and ghastly as before, but with the end of that blazing wire lying against the back of his head, from which rises the vapour of burning flesh. Sickened with horror she turns to Hayward and reaches out her hand for his support. He clutches her passionately. His blood rushes to his heart in a flood--and then stands still.

"This is surrender," he thinks,--and his veins are aflame.

Helen is quiescent in his arms for a short space and suffers his caresses. Suddenly startled, she looks at his face. In a flash of light she sees it--distorted! With a shriek of terror she wildly tries to push him from her: but the demon of the blood of Guinea Gumbo is pitiless, and against the fury of it, as of the storm, she fights and cries--in vain.

*CHAPTER XXIX*

With his editorial duties and with the plans of his campaign for Mr. Killam's seat in the Senate, Evans Rutledge was as busy a man as Washington knew. However, he dropped his work long enough to attend upon Lola DeVale's marriage. He was no little surprised when Oliver Hazard asked him to stand by at his wedding. He was on friendly terms with the bride--and with Hazard, too, for that matter; but he did not know the strength and sincerity of Lola DeVale's friendship for him.

"We must have Mr. Rutledge," she had said to Hazard when they were choosing their attendants; "and he shall be paired with Elise. I have set my heart on that match, for if it fails I have been kissed for nothing."

"Certainly we'll have him if you wish. He's a great fellow, I think, and he'll be a winner all right, don't worry yourself. He'll win out on naked luck, for any man who can just stumble along and kiss you by mistake is evidently a special protege of the gods." ...

The score or more of young people in the bridal party met at Grace Church on the afternoon before the event to get the details of their marching and countermarching in order. Lola was there to overlook putting them through their paces, but she left the details of straightening out the chattering, rollicking bridesmaids and groomsmen to Elise and Hazard. Rutledge soon learned his role and stood to it like a schoolboy when he was ordered, but he spent most of the time in sympathetic talk with the bride-to-be.

That night when the other girls who filled the house were scattered to their rooms and Elise and Lola were snuggled up in bed, Lola put her arm around her friend and began to say what was on her mind.

"I think it's very rude to refuse to answer a civil question, don't you, Elise?"

Elise was thinking of something else, but she heard enough of what Lola said to answer "yes" in an absent-minded way.

"That would be so with any question. But if it was about a matter of importance the refusal to answer would be more than rude, it would be--exasperating, don't you think?"

"What are you talking about?" Elise asked.

"And if it were a matter of the very greatest importance," Lola continued, "and by every right and custom an answer of some sort was due, and one was flatly told there was _no answer_, then such unpardonable rudeness should be resented, and self-respect would _demand_ that the question be not repeated."

"Lola DeVale," said Elise, turning to face her, "in the name of sense, have you gone daffy?"

"I agree with Mr. Rutledge," said Lola in the same monotone, as she in turn faced away from Elise, "self-respect forbids."

"Here," exclaimed Elise, "turn back over here and say all that again."

"Haven't time," said Lola with a yawn. "I must be getting my beauty-sleep. Good night."

Elise was quiet half a minute.

"Of all the silly people!"--she stirred Lola up with a poke in the ribs--"when did he tell you that?"

"I'm not divulging any confidences," said Lola.

"And what, pray, are you divulging?" asked Elise.

"My opinion that a civil question demands an answer of some sort--a good round 'no,' if nothing else--not the dismissal one gives a telegraph messenger."

"There you go again---and I don't understand; but you said something of 'self-respect'?"

"I'm glad he has it. A man's not made for a woman to wipe her feet on, even if he does love her."

"For goodness sake, Lola, quit making riddles. Just what do you think you are talking about?"

"Do you mean to tell me," demanded Lola, turning toward her, "that Mr. Rutledge did not ask you to marry him and that you didn't tell him there was _no answer_,--that you didn't treat him with contempt, with indifference, with just about as much consideration as you would a clerk who gave you a hand-bill of a cut-price sale? There now!"

"So that's the cause of all this--this _self-respect_, the reason for all this religious silence of his lips--while his eyes work overtime? I thought it was becau--that it--that there was really something; and is _that_ all!" Elise laughed merrily.

"I think it's shameful, myself!" said Lola severely. "I glory in his resentment."

"I have never noticed any resentment, and--_I did not treat him so_," replied the quick-witted Elise combatively. Quietly her heart laughed on.

"You deny it?" asked Lola.

"Yes, I deny it. He did not ask me to marry him. He simply told me--quite abruptly--that he loved me, and, after some time, asked me for my answer. What was I to answer? When there is no question there can be no answer. So I told him there was _no answer_. If a man will insist upon an answer he must not be so stupid as to forget to put a question."

Elise chuckled inwardly as she constructed this specious defence. She was in very good humour with herself,--and with Lola.

"But promise me," she hurried on to say, "that you will not intimate to Mr. Rutledge that it is his stupidity that has swelled his bump of self-respect for these last four years."

Lola demurred to this form of statement: bless her, she was a loyal friend. But Elise insisted.

"Not a word to Mr. Rutledge! Let him discover his mistakes unaided. Promise me. _Promise_," she demanded.

Lola promised.

"Cross your heart and hope you may die," Elise added.

Lola laughingly went through these binding formalities.

"Now the goblins will get you if you ever tell him and besides that I would know it at once. If you do I'll send him packing for good and all."

Lola protested that she would leave Mr. Rutledge entirely to his own devices,--and she kept her promise.

Lola had insisted on retiring early for a good night's rest, but it was long after midnight before she and her school-day chum grew sleepy over their confidences. Along at the last Elise pressed her face down in the pillow beside Lola's cheek and whispered:

"Honey, if it wasn't very dark and our last night together I couldn't tell you; but do you know if Mr. Rutledge were to ask me to marry him to-morrow I would have to tell him there was no answer."

Lola lay still till she caught the meaning of this confession. Then she softly kissed Elise good-night.

"Let your heart decide, dearest," she said.

At the wedding breakfast next morning, and at the church at noon, Rutledge was bewildered by the softness, the gentleness of Elise's manner toward him. There was nothing of the cold brilliance, nor of the warm combativeness, nor of the lukewarm indifference of her moods for such a long time past. Like the breath of long forgotten summers, of one particular halcyon summer, was her simple-hearted friendliness on that day. He harked back by a conscious effort to keep in touch with his grievance, but it seemed to be eluding his grasp.

For a great part of five hours on the train returning to Washington he sat beside her and steadily forgot everything that had come to pass since the days when he first knew and loved this adorable girl. His resentment and his resolutions were toppling and falling, despite his efforts at reserve in his few scattering lucid intervals of "self-respect."

Elise, outrageously well-informed of the reasons and resources and weaknesses of his resistance, almost laughed outright at the ease with which she scattered his forces and at his spasmodic attempts to regather them. She recalled the rigour of her treatment of him, the contempt she had had for the quality of his love, the apparent heartless lack of appreciation of his championship of her name in the Smith affair: and she was of a mind to make amends. In making amends she tore Rutledge's resentment and "self-respect" to tatters, and set his love a-fire. She really did not intend to overdo it. She sincerely wished only to make amends.

At last he turned to her with a look which scared her. She saw that the last shred of his "self-respect" was gone, and that only the crowded car prevented a precipitate, outspoken surrender. She felt very generous toward that "self-respect" now that it was defeated. She did not care to humiliate it. She was also in a temper to be mischievous and a mite reckless. And, further, she was not ready to have Rutledge putting any questions. As the train was rolling under the shed at Washington she said to him in the very friendliest and most serious way:

"Mr. Rutledge, it seems that you are under the delusion that once upon a time you asked me a question which has never been answered. In order that I may not appear rude or unappreciative I will say that my answer to that question would have been 'no.'"

And she left him to think over that.

*CHAPTER XXX*

On the day that Congress convened after the Christmas holidays President Phillips sent to the Senate, among other nominations, that of John H. Graham to be a second lieutenant of cavalry.

Hayward had been for a long time unhappy, depressed, apprehensive of failure. That his name had not been among those submitted at the beginning of the session in December had almost assured his defeat.

All his attempts at communication with Helen since the night of the storm had been met with an accusing silence. Her pale face, which had not regained its colour for weeks, was always averted, and by no trick or chance, by no wild torrent of self-denunciation, nor heart-moving prayer for pardon, nor protestations of love, nor dumb humility of sorrow in his eyes or attitude, could she be brought to look upon him. Neither had she written a line in answer to all his letters of pleading and repentance. True, he had his fiery moments of self-assertion and desperate resolves, and they had fought self-revilings for possession of his soul in many an hour since that wild night, but he crushed them under heel within his heart, and ever wrote contritely to his wife.

For several days after his nomination went to the Senate he waited in hope to receive Helen's congratulations. It had meant so much to them. With a last remnant of hope he wrote to her of it. If that would not break the silence he was undone. At the end of the letter he added in most abject contrition:

"I would joyfully die to atone. My life awaits your command."

The silence was not broken.

* * * * *

Miss Lily Porter's eyes had not fallen on Hayward since his return from Hill-Top. When she saw in the papers that his nomination was before the Senate she hesitated not to write to him to come to see her. On his first night off, Hayward went.

If ever a man was pursued by a woman the White House footman was that man. He saw the game ahead of him before he had been five minutes within the door. A proposal was expected of him. Clearly, it was expected that evening. Hayward was in a frame of mind to welcome the diversion. He had no idea of making the proposal, of course, but he was careless enough of what should happen to him to be quite willing to give Miss Porter the worth of her trouble in the way of mild excitement.

Lily opened up the subject with her congratulations: and the game was on. Up and down, back and forth, round and round the field of conversation she chased the quick-tongued, nimble-witted young fellow in her effort to coax, persuade, lead, drive, push him into the net. The young man was entertaining, but elusive. He was gallant, admiring, soft-spoken, confiding--but there was no way of bringing him to book. The girl took another tack. She went to the piano and sang for him. She sang for him at first, many of the ballads and one thing and another that he formerly had delighted in. Then she sang to him. Hayward leaned against the piano and listened with a very lively appreciation. Music had a power for him where many other things would fail, and the music in Lily Porter's throat was enough to enthrall even though he were deaf to the song in her heart.

Henry Porter was caught by the real note in his daughter's voice as he passed the door, and, stopping where he could see as well as hear, he was enlightened by the tale her face was telling. He was mad all over in a minute, and he made short work of it.

"Git out of my house," he blurted out at Hayward as he stalked angrily into the midst of Lily's melodious love-making. "I tol' you once I didn' want any footman callin' on my daughter!"

"Oh, papa! What do you mean?" Lily cried, springing up from the piano.

"I mean git out when I say git out!"

"Wait a moment, Mr. Hayward," Lily called to the footman, who, chin in air, was leaving the room, truth to tell, no little relieved at this complete solution of what was fast becoming an embarrassing situation for him.

"No use to wait. Move on!" the father growled, placing himself across the door to prevent Lily's following her caller. Upon her attempt to push by him he caught her and shoved her into a chair. As the outer door closed with a very modest and well-mannered snap, he released his hold upon her arm. He was yet in a fury.

"So you've lied to me! Thought you could fool your ol' daddy! But I guess not!"

"I haven't lied to you."

"You have! You tol' me you were goin' to marry a military man, and here you are, dead gone on this footman--and no use to deny out of it!"

Lily didn't attempt to deny it.

"Umhuh, I knew it! Already promised him, ain't yuh?"

No denial of that either, to her father's consternation.

"What! And you a-tellin' me all the time you were goin' to marry a military man! You lyin' huzzy!"

"But he's a military man--he's the John H. Graham whose commission is before the Senate--now I hope you are satisfied!"

Henry Porter stopped his stamping about and looked at his daughter several seconds in silence.

"He's--he's who?" he asked in astonishment.

"He's the same John H. Graham you were reading about in the _Post_ this morning--the man the President has appointed a lieutenant in the cavalry."

"But his name's not Graham."

"His name _is_ Graham--John Hayward Graham--Lieutenant John Hayward Graham when the Senate confirms it."

Old Henry looked a little bit nonplussed. His daughter took courage. She jumped up and grabbed him.

"Come on right now and write him an apology, and send it so that it will get to his rooms by the time he does!"

Old Henry demurred. His dignity was a very real thing--as hard and substantial as his dollars.

"Oh, no, no. Wait awhile. Le's think about it. No use to be in a hurry. He'll come back agin. What did he go sneakin' roun' here without his name for if he wanted people to treat him right? A man's got no business monkeyin' with his name."

"But you _must_ write him an apology, papa. You just must!"

"Oh, well, mebbe I will. But I'll wait till to-morrer. Better wait till the Senate confirms him though, and be certain about it."

"Oh, no! That would _never_ do. It would be too plain,"--and Lily went into a long disquisition to fetch her hard-headed old daddy to her way of thinking. He showed some signs of relenting but could not be persuaded that night. When the morning came it took all her powers to push him to the point of sending a suitable note to Hayward: but she accomplished it. Hayward's stinging, sarcastic, withering reply was not written till late in the afternoon, and in the footman's agitation over other concerns was not mailed till his mother found it in his room on the day after that. By the time Mr. Henry Porter received it, other events had come to pass that gave it some emphasis....

When Hayward Graham returned to his room after his dismissal from Porter's house he found a letter addressed to him in his wife's writing. He tore it open hungrily.

"You say you would joyfully die to atone. That would be the very best thing you could do--the only fitting thing you could do.--H."

A grim smile lighted the man's face. At the moment the blood of some long-dead cavalier ancestor splashed through his heart, and he wrote the brief reply.

"Your wish is law, and shall be obeyed. Grant me one day to put my house in order."

* * * * *

Her maid handed the message to Helen before she was out of bed the next morning. The girl read it, caught its meaning, and shook with an ague of fear. Her love for her husband, outraged and stricken, may not have been dead--for who shall speak the last word for a woman's heart?--and her tender soul recoiled at the murder so calmly forespoken: and yet neither of these impulses was elemental in her agony of terror. Her impetuous letter of the day before, breaking a silence she had sworn to keep, was not intended as a reply to anything that Hayward had written. It was but a wild protest against the new-born realization that her situation was tragic, and could not be ignored nor long concealed. She had not meant to suggest or to counsel death, but to rail against life. The possibility of his taking-off had not occurred to her. His letter terrified her! Death!--her husband's death? It was the one thing that must _not_ be! When she had read his words, her blood was ice. "No! No!" her teeth chattered as she dressed, "he must not, he must not!" In the nervousness, the weakness, the faintness, the sickness into which fevered meditations upon the day-old revelation had shaken her, she did not think to question the sincerity of Hayward's purpose at self-destruction. The calamity was imminent--and trebly calamitous. The chill of more than death was upon her. When she had dressed she dashed off a hurried scrawl.

"No, no, no. I did not mean that. It is not my wish that you destroy yourself. You must not. _You must not_! I need you--above everything I _need you_. If you die I am undone! Where is our marriage certificate? Or was there one? And who was that witness? Do not die, do not die. As you love me _do not die_!"

She carefully arranged every detail of her toilet, pinched her pale cheeks into something of pink, put on her morning smile, and, with a very conscious effort at lightness of manner, tripped out into the hall and down the stairs. She knew the very spot on which she would see her husband standing. With a round-about journey she approached it. He was not there. She laughed nervously, and with an aimless air, but a faster thumping heart, sought him at another haunt. Failure. And failure again. She went to breakfast, and displayed a lack of appetite and a tendency to hysterics. After breakfast she lingered down-stairs on every conceivable pretext, and journeyed from one end of the house to the other many times and again. At last when her nerves could not stand the strain a second longer she asked the coachman, who had driven the carriage to the door, where Hayward was. She felt that there was a full confession in the tones of her voice.

"Hayward asked for a day off this mornin', mum. He didn't come. Just telephoned."

Helen felt the tension of her nerves snap. She hurried to her room, suppressing fairly by force an impulse to scream, and locking the door, threw herself across the bed. There for three hours, pleading a headache and denying admittance to all who knocked, she cowered before the thoughts of her seething brain--and suffered torment.

Along about two o'clock she sprang up suddenly and turned out of her trunk all of her husband's letters and began feverishly to search for one she remembered written long ago which by chance contained the street number of his lodgings. She was nearly an hour finding it.

Again she went through the womanly process of making herself presentable, and sauntered freshly forth in quest of the post office and a special delivery stamp. With an added prayer that he relieve her suspense quickly, she dropped her agonized note into the box under the hurry postage. Having thus done all that was possible to save her husband's life--and her own--she went back to her bed in collapse, and waited for the night-fall as one, hoping for a reprieve, who must die at sunset.

*CHAPTER XXXI*

Helen waited in vain for a word from her husband. Her letter did not come to his hand. She tossed in agonized suspense through the long hours--through the snail-paced minutes--through the dragging, tortured moments.

Elise came in to see her. Helen gave the first explanation of her indisposition that came to mind, and declined all ministrations. Her mother came, and she would have dismissed her as briefly had not Mrs. Phillips asserted authority and ordered her into bed and suggested calling the family physician. At this intimation Helen demurred. She felt that she would suffocate if she were to be tucked up and made to lie quiet, with the doctor fingering her pulse and talking of sleeping potions while her soul was throbbing in such a frenzy of horror.

To escape from them and from herself, she suddenly sat up and announced her intention of attending the dancing party which Elise was giving for the evening. There was a vigorous opposition to this procedure by both her mother and Elise, and by her father also, who had come in to have a look at her: but she outwilled them all.

* * * * *

Elise's dancing party was an affair to be remembered--an affair that is remembered. It deserved to be an unusual occasion, for in arranging it Elise was conscious of being in an unusual frame of mind. She was in some way disposed to be so perfectly even-handed in her dispensations. She directed the three invitations to Mr. Evans Rutledge, Captain George St. Lawrence Howard and Senator Joseph Richland with her own hand and with almost one continuous stroke of the pen. She took this batch of three invitations as a separate handful and placed them together in the basket for the mail. She assigned to each of these gentlemen one dance with herself, and one only, in the programme of the formal first half of the evening. She appointed as attendants for the eleven o'clock collation Mr. Rutledge to Mrs. Hazard, Captain Howard to Helen, and Senator Richland to Alice Mackenzie--the fiancee of Donald MacLane. In everything she was judicially impartial. She played no favourites.

Her plans carried through charmingly, and after dancing through the card a delighted lot of guests sat down to the light luncheon, though three men in the party, despite all their gallant attentions to the women beside them, were using half of their brains at least in planning for the catch-as-catch-can hour and a half that was to follow. Elise had smiled upon them equally and tormentingly, and not a man of them but felt that the briefest little five minutes _tete-a-tete_ might do magical things.

"Well," said Lola, after she and Rutledge had effervesced in a few minutes of commonplaces and conventionalities, "is your money still on the Englishman?"

"No," said Rutledge, "I've quit gambling."

"Lost your sporting nerve?"

"No, not that; but a man who bets against himself deserves to lose, and I can't afford to lose."

"But your self-respect?" laughed Lola.

"Now Miss--ah--Mrs. Hazard, don't jump on a fellow when he's down. Self-respect is nothing less than an abomination when it comes between a man and a girl like--that,--and besides, she didn't mean it that way."

"Oh, didn't she?"

"No, she didn't, and she's just the finest, dearest woman in the whole wide--unmarried state!"

"Thank you," said Lola, "but you needn't have minded. And so I'm to congratulate you? I've been so anxious to hear, but our mail has never caught up with us since the day we left New York."

"Oh, bless your heart, there are no congratulations--only good wishes, I hope. Take note of the exact mathematical equality in the distances by which Richland and Sir Monocle and I are removed from the chair of the Lady Beautiful. Could anything be more beautifully impartial?"

"And who is the ancient gentleman with Elise?" Lola asked.

"Some old party from York State. Bachelor uncle or cousin or some such chap--quite a character too, it seems--danced with Dolly Madison or Martha Washington or the Queen of Sheba or somebody like that in his youth. Miss Phillips was telling me of him awhile ago."

"That was a very safe subject of discussion," said Lola.

"Yes," Rutledge replied grimly, "and do you know I tried my very hardest to lose him out of the conversation and he just wouldn't drop. Miss Phillips must be greatly interested in him."

"Anything will do in a pinch, Mr. Rutledge. What were you trying to talk about?"

"Oh, that's it, you think? Well I wish I had ten good minutes with her. I'd make the talk--for half the time--or know the reason why."

"I think I remember that Elise told me once that you could be very abrupt."

"Yes, and I'm going to do a few stunts in abruptness that will surprise her the next time I have a chance. I've tried the easy and graceful approach for the last six weeks, and it's getting on my nerves."

"I tell you what, Mr. Rutledge," Lola laughed, "Elise is to be with me to-morrow evening. You come around after dinner, and I promise you shall have a square deal and ten minutes at least for your very own. Come early and avoid the rush."

"Good. I'll do it. You are a trump!"

"And you may run along now if you wish," she said as they came out of the dining-room, "and take her away from the old party before the others get a chance at her."

"You'll go to heaven when you die," Rutledge whispered as he left her....

Evans met some difficulty in cutting Elise out of the herd. It took time and determination and some strategy to carry the smiling young hostess off down the hall alone; but he brought it to pass, and drew a breath of exultation when he had shaken himself free. However, turn where he would, every nook and corner seemed to be occupied. He was not openly on the hunt for a retired spot, but he was wishing for one with a prayerful heart and wide-open eyes.

Now a man can make love to a girl right out in the open--in full view of the multitude--in fact there is a sort of fascination in it--in telling her what a dear she is with the careless air and gesture which, to the onlookers, suggests a remark anent the blizzard in the west or the hot times in South Carolina; but when it comes to putting the cap-sheaf on the courting and running the game to earth, in pushing the inquiry to ultimate conclusions and demanding the supreme reply,--a man who dares to hope to win and whose blood has not been thinned by promiscuous flirtations ever wants the girl to be in a situation grab-able.

When Evans became convinced that the fates were against him on that evening, he set definite plans in order for the next.

"Mrs. Hazard tells me that you are to be with her to-morrow evening," he said to Elise, with something of that abruptness. "May I not call upon you there? There is something I wish very much to tell you, and the crowd here is always too great."

Elise looked up at him quickly. The something he wished to tell her was to be read in his face, but she could not presume to assume it had been said. The man waited quietly for his answer.

"Why, certainly, yes, I will be very glad to see you," she said in a tone of conventional politeness; but assuredly, Rutledge thought, the light in her gray eyes was not discouraging.

"But I must be going now, if you will take me back," she said; and they turned to go up the hall. A lumbering crash and a stifled little cry changed their purpose.