Chapter V: Book I: The Reaping (5)

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

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

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

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

“More than enough sometimes,” Rose replied quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

XV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You never were!” she said scornfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And the children?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XVI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XVII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d take to the woods, Gerty!” he laughed, not without sympathy; he dimly imagined the sting under the words.

“Or do something outrageous and get sent home--I wish I could, but I’d starve,” Gerty said calmly; “nothing else keeps me in the straight and narrow way but the fact that meat is twenty cents a pound and bread five. Isn’t it sordid? But I’m really dreadfully sorry for Margaret!”

“I was beginning to lose sight of that fact,” remarked Allestree dryly.

“I’m not sorry for Fox though,” she added, laughing maliciously.

Allestree frowned, concentrating his attention on the picture again. “It’s a wretched business,” he observed.

Gerty walked to the window and looked out; when she came back her face was flushed. “Robert, do you know I’m afraid that I did something wrong the other day,” she broke out; “I’m nearly sure I did!”

He looked at her smiling grimly. “You forgot about the scale of domestic necessities then, Gerty?” he said.

But she ignored him. “I went to see Rose some time ago, just after Margaret told me, and I talked--I talked too much.”

“The unruly member, alas!” he mocked, laughing now.

“I did,” she replied. “I told her about Fox and Margaret--and Robert,” Gerty paused and dropped into a convenient chair, “Robert, she turned as white as a ghost! Is it possible, do you think it’s possible that she loves Fox? I never thought of it until Lily Osborne told me so last week.”

“Mrs. Osborne--why do you listen to Mrs. Osborne?” Allestree broke out, with a fury which astounded Miss English; “she has no right to speak of Rose Temple, it’s--it’s an outrage!”

Gerty stared at him a moment in silence, her face reddening still more with the horrified recognition of another blunder; of course she knew that he had always loved Rose, in fact she had discounted his devotion as too stale an affair to be really vital. “I know Lily Osborne is a cat, _of_ course,” she said slowly, “but then one can’t be rude without any given reason. She didn’t say a word against Rose, and I suppose it’s natural enough if Fox has admired her; everybody does.”

But Allestree was not appeased. “Mrs. Osborne!” he broke out again, “of all women--Mrs. Osborne! Gerty, don’t you let her say a word to you again.”

“Good heavens, Robert, I shan’t dare squeak after this!” Miss English retorted plaintively; “and, of course, Mrs. Osborne will marry White and, they say, he’s going to lose his place in the Cabinet. What on earth has she been doing about the Russian and German ambassadors?”

“I don’t know,” said Allestree sharply, “and I don’t care!”

Gerty rose abruptly and picked up her parasol. “Robert,” she said with feeling, “you’re like a bear with a sore head, and I always said you had such a nice disposition; I should have fallen in love with you myself if I hadn’t had a snub nose and freckles.”

In spite of himself Robert laughed. “Was that an insurmountable barrier, Gerty?”

“Certainly; snub nosed girls never fall in love with artists, it isn’t profitable!” and Gerty moved toward the door.

As she did so she glanced out of the open window. “There’s Rose now,” she said and beckoned gayly; “she’ll come up and make amends for my blunders!” she laughed.

Allestree colored hotly, aware that he had betrayed himself; the amazing indelicacy of Gerty’s raillery was not inconsistent with her usual careless freedom of speech which gave much unwitting pain and had cost her correspondingly dear more than once, yet it made him wince to encounter it, to feel her thoughtless probe sink into the dearest recesses of his heart and be powerless to resent it. Frankness, after all, is frequently a doubtful virtue; like a two-edged sword it cleaves both ways and leaves no healing balsam in its train. It was Margaret White who always said that an expert and comfortable liar was an absolute blessing to society.

Meanwhile, Rose had dismounted at the door and come up stairs with no other motive than a desire to escape her own society. The sight of Gerty at the window furnished her with an excuse, and she came in still pale, in spite of her swift gallop by the river, and with a look in her eyes which shocked Allestree; he had never seen pain in her look before. Miss English greeted her affectionately; at heart she was really penitent.

“I came up here to see Lily Osborne’s picture,” she declared, “and Robert has sent it off already! Isn’t it a shame? I hadn’t seen it.”

“It was excellent,” Rose replied soberly, taking the chair Allestree pushed forward for her; “she really is a beauty, Gerty; I like to say that to show myself just and broad-minded!”

“That makes two pictures Robert has finished this winter;--yours and the serpent’s, as I call Lily Osborne, and now he is nearly done with Margaret.”

“Not many, if I’m to make a living by it, Gerty,” Allestree retorted smiling.

“A living? Goodness, if I could only get your prices!” Gerty raised her eyes and hands to heaven; “I’m a poor thing worth a dollar an hour and expenses.”

“Raise your rates, Gerty, you’re indispensable,” said Rose.

“Indeed I’m not, there are lots of others waiting for my shoes. Good-bye, dear children; I’m going now to write two dozen notes, pay fifty bills and interview a caterer and a florist,” and she kissed her hand to them as she withdrew, mischievously aware that she had coaxed Rose into an interview with Allestree; like Judge Temple, Gerty thought happiness lay in this direction and in no other.

As she disappeared Rose left her chair and went to look at Margaret’s portrait with dreamy eyes. “I must go, too,” she said, “I only stopped for a moment on my way. I’ve been riding by the river and through the White Lot. I kept thinking of those lines, do you remember them, Robert?--

“‘Hast thou seen by daisied leas,
And by rivers flowing
Lilac-ringlets which the breeze
Loosens, lightly blowing!’”

“I’ve been longing to be out all day myself,” he said soberly enough, “to see the ‘lilac-ringlets,’ but I must finish this; in some way I have grown to believe that Margaret will never again be quite the Margaret we have known so long. I wanted to be sure of this expression.”

Rose looked again at the picture, and her lip quivered a little in spite of herself. “Yes,” she replied simply, “I understand you; I don’t believe you will see that old look again. I feel--” she paused, choosing her words, her eyes darkening with an emotion which she was controlling with an effort--“I feel as if Margaret had died, that some one else would come back to us, some one we do not know!”

It was a striking fact that at the very moment when Margaret believed that she was about to achieve happiness, her friends regarded her as approaching its final eclipse. One moment of detachment, of the external view-point, would open an appalling vista to many a human soul, for it is true that those whom the gods desire to destroy they first make blind.

As Rose voiced this thought Allestree averted his eyes; he felt the keenest regret for his thoughtless words; Gertrude English’s unmerciful tongue had torn away the veil from Rose’s emotions. He would have been more than human had not his heart burned with a sudden fierce anger. What right had Fox, who had so much, to step in between him and the girl he loved,--to wound a heart so delicate, so sensitive, so tender as hers?

“I pity Margaret!” he said sharply, with some bitterness, “but he who sows the tares--”

“I don’t want to judge,” Rose rejoined quietly; “father is very bitter against divorce; he thinks it a menace to the national existence, and I know I think always as he does and--perhaps I’m hard, Robert;” as she spoke she looked at him appealingly, resting her slender, ungloved hand on the easel beside Margaret’s portrait; her whole attitude was one of regret, of reluctance.

“I shouldn’t like to speak of it too often,” he said in a low voice, “as it stands--in the bare aspect that we see it--Margaret’s plain justification is lost in what we know to be her wild determination to be happy at any price.”

Rose sighed. His words revealed her own thought, she knew that Margaret sought divorce to marry Fox; it was hideous to her, unpardonable, and Fox? She was silent, looking at the pictured face, seeing its mystical beauty, that weird suggestion of an unhappy fate which seemed to shadow its wild loveliness. Allestree had only dimly conveyed it, but Rose’s memory supplied the details. No wonder that men fell under her spell; there was a charm as subtle as it was absolute in her whole personality.

“Ah, well,” Rose said at last, “it is natural--she is wonderful.”

She had almost forgotten Allestree, so absorbed was she in her own thoughts; and he saw her emotion and raged again at the thought of it. With a sudden impulse he bent and kissed the hand upon the easel. Rose started violently and blushed with painful emotion.

“Robert!” she exclaimed reproachfully.

“Can I say nothing?” he replied with passion; “must I stand by like a mute and let my happiness, my love, my life slip away from me? Rose, you ask too much!”

“I’m so sorry!” she said simply, “now I must go and--and I hate to seem unkind, Robert!”

Their eyes met with the shock of natural feeling and his face blanched. “Of course I know it’s useless, Rose, I’ve always known it, but--well, I had to speak, and you’ll have to forgive me for it!”

She smiled faintly. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said gently, “and I must go home to meet father anyway. Won’t you come with me, Robert?”

Without a word he laid down his brushes and the two went down the old stairs together, each miserable enough in different ways; the man bitterly rebellious, the girl resolutely enduring with a self repression that suggested her father in her.

XVIII

THAT very day Judge Temple violated his usual custom and did not come home promptly after court adjourned. The hour came and passed and he had not appeared.

Rose was waiting for him in the library and she began to glance uneasily at the clock. His habits were as fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians; any deviation indicated something out of the common. These spring evenings it was his custom to walk in the garden before dinner. Rose had accordingly opened the long French window on the piazza and the tendrils of the jasmine vine, not yet budding, swung across it; the air was sweet, redolent with the perfume of the wistaria which hung in festoons on the arbor. The sweet full note of a catbird broke the stillness.

Rose walked to and fro, trying to distract her mind; if she relaxed a moment she heard Fox’s voice, saw his strong pale face. It was pathetically significant that Allestree, and Allestree’s pain at her finality had dropped from her mind. Love and youth are absolutely selfish, they ignore the universe.

When she came home that day and was alone in her room, she had shed some passionate tears; her young strong heart had rebelled utterly; she wanted happiness too, wanted it as bitterly as Margaret did, but Margaret had robbed her of it! She gave way then to the passion and the rage of her grief, she forgot all Christian maxims, and in her heart stormed against Margaret again, not against Margaret’s lover. But the fury of her mood passed, leaving her pale and wan, exhausted by it, but still unsubmissive. It was no longer an unusual thing to wash away the stains of tears and go down stairs with a smile. It occurred to her as she smoothed her rumpled hair and made her toilet for the evening that she had learned the alphabet of deceit too easily, she was a veritable whited sepulchre. Nevertheless she went down bravely to meet her father and take up her life just where she had broken off for those few hours of mad grief and restlessness. But the delay fretted her nerves; it was one thing to be ready, another to keep that smile, that brave air of comfort for an hour, two hours, three! She grew uneasy, too, for the judge,--could he be ill? Could anything have happened? A dim foreboding crept through the preoccupation of her mood. She ran to the front window and looked down the long street and saw her father coming slowly toward the house, his head slightly bowed and his tall thin figure showing more than usually the student’s stoop of the shoulders. The last rays of sunlight slanting down the street fell on the whiteness of his beard and hair.

A swift, pained perception of his age, his feebleness, gave Rose a sudden sharp pang of grief, of foreshadowed loss; the revelation that comes suddenly--like the opening of a window in the soul--of the mortality of those we love, of life’s awful uncertainty.

She opened the door with a pale face. “Father!” she exclaimed, “you’re so late, I was getting anxious.”

He looked up without a smile, his eyes dull and weary. “I was delayed--by business matters,” he said simply.

He followed her into the library, and putting down a bundle of papers he carried sank wearily into his great chair and hid his face in his hands without another word.

Rose looked at him keenly, her heart throbbing with a new dismay, and seeing that the fingers which pressed his temples slightly trembled she went to the dining-room and pouring out a glass of wine brought it to him. “You are very tired,” she said gently; “try to take this, father, I think you need it.”

He looked up blankly, took the glass and tasting the wine set it aside. His face had aged ten years.

In her distress Rose only thought of cheering him. She averted her eyes; it seemed almost an indelicacy to inquire too closely into such apparent distress. “The roses I ordered came to-day,” she said, with a forced lightness of tone which jarred; “I thought, perhaps, we could decide this evening where to set them out. Do you think they’d do best by the south wall, father?”

He passed his hand over his eyes like a man whose sight was failing. “The roses?” he repeated absently; “I do not know. My child,” he added in a heavy tone, “something has happened to-day; I’m practically a ruined man.”

She caught her breath, frightened for the moment and taken unawares; in the assured comfort and peace of her life it seemed impossible. “Oh, father!” she exclaimed, “not really?”

He nodded, speech was difficult; the full force and horror of the calamity still hung over him.

A hundred conjectures darted through her mind, but intuitively she knew the actual fact, his trust had been betrayed. “It’s that man--the note you endorsed?” she said.

“Yes,” he replied simply, “that and the unfortunate investments I made in New York. They turned out badly two months ago; I did not tell you, Rose, but I was swindled. This morning the note came due and Erkhardt has disappeared.”

“Oh, the villain!” Rose exclaimed hotly, “and you so kind. Father, can’t it be delayed--warded off? Surely something can be done--must you lose all that too?”

He roused himself with an effort from the cloud which seemed to be enfolding him, shutting down on his stupefied senses. “I shall have to pay the whole obligation; it can’t be honorably delayed,” he said; “it will sweep away my whole principal, Rose, and leave me nothing but my salary.”

“But we can live on that,” she exclaimed eagerly, her face brightening, “we can easily live on that, father; you’ll see how famously I can manage!”

The judge looked at her with a pitiful tightening of the lines about his mouth, his eyes filled with unshed tears; her ignorance seemed to him the sweetest, the most helpless thing in the world. “But when I die, Rose,” he said hoarsely, “and I may die soon--” he rose and walked to and fro before the open window where the soft twilight was falling. He was suddenly bowed with years, shrunken, haggard. “My God, child, there will be nothing for you!” he broke out at last.

She went to him then, throwing her young arms around his neck and staying him in his walk. He looked at her, bewildered, and she laid her soft cheek against his in a mute caress. “It doesn’t matter, father!” she whispered; “don’t think of me, don’t add that to your burden.”

The old man groaned. “My child,” he exclaimed, his voice quavering with grief, “my poor child, I can never forgive myself!”

Tears of sympathy filled her eyes, but she smiled bravely. “Why, father, we have so much--here is the house, the--”

“It’s mortgaged,” he said, and sank heavily into his chair.

For an instant Rose stood appalled. Unconsciously she glanced about her; in the gathering gloom the dear familiar room, the book-lined walls, the littered table, the old clock, seemed suddenly changed. Between yesterday and to-day, between this morning and to-night was a great gulf fixed. She shivered, a horrible sensation of loss, of unreality, of despair, swept over her young soul and bared it to misery, the poignant, unreasoning misery of youth. Then she saw the bowed white head, the bent shoulders which had borne the heat and burden of the day, and forgot herself. She knelt by his chair and slipped her arms around his neck. “Nothing matters, dear daddy, while we have each other,” she whispered, a little sob in her voice.

He put his shaking hand on her head. “My poor child,” he repeated.

She raised her head, a soft light in her eyes. “Father, you’ll let me sing now,” she said, “you’ll let me sing--I know I can make a fortune for us both. Mancini told me that with a year in Paris I could be ready. He believes in my voice, father, and you know he has trained two great sopranos.”

The judge shook his head sadly. “Child, child, you know how I feel about your singing in public!”

“But now, daddy,” she pleaded, “now when it will save me from poverty, and I love it, oh, I love it! May I go, just for six months?”

Again the judge shook his head, his lips almost formed “no,” but Rose’s arms tightened around his neck.

“Don’t say it, daddy!” she cried, “don’t say it, for then you will not unsay it! Truly, truly I must sing, it is my greatest desire, my happiness, the talent that was given me--surely I mustn’t be the one to fold it in a napkin! Daddy, daddy, say yes.”

He sat looking out of the window with unseeing eyes, his lips compressed. The demand struck at his dearest prejudices, his firmest convictions, yet to leave her helpless and poor!

In the still room the ticking of the clock sounded with monotonous distinctness; it seemed to jar the silence. Twilight fell fast, the corners were dark, the two faces in the foreground showed white and tense.

At last the judge sighed heavily. “I must give in,” he said, with slow reluctance, “in my folly I have wrecked us both; I’m no longer fit to command. You may sing, child, but I hope it will only be in concerts.”

Rose’s face fell but hope kindled, one step was gained, and like every wedge it makes the other easier. “But I must go abroad to be finished for any really great success,” she said; “father, can’t you go with me?”

The judge looked at her strangely. “Child, I never thought,” he said harshly; “I haven’t the money to send you yet,--you’ll have to wait until we can save it; it’s another denial for you, Rose. You know I sent a large check to Allestree the other day, and there is little left now.”

A wild hope leaped in her heart, she knew the check would come back, but dared she tell him? Would he take it if it came? Her lips trembled, she was glad of the darkness. “Father, I shall sing,” she said bravely, “perhaps,--who knows,--I shall sing so well that you’ll be proud of me and sit and applaud and send me bouquets.”

He wiped away the gathering moisture in his eyes. “I’ve always been proud of you, Rose!” he said sadly, “but that a child of mine should have to sing for a living! The Lord’s hand is heavy upon me in my old age,” he added pitifully, completely broken down.