Old Mrs. Heckl suddenly snatched the children from Ernest’s proximity as from the path of a deadly and ferocious beast. She gathered them almost completely in the folds of her dress and apron, backing away from him, like a hen sheltering chicks from the shadow of the hawk. Over their heads, she glared at Ernest.
But he saw only Amy, whose hand he held, who was following him as he walked backward into the living room. Neither noticed Gregory, near the doorway. Ernest closed the door and drew Amy to the fire. She stood there, obediently, as if drugged. He put his arms about her, slowly, gently, and she let her head fall on his shoulder, as if she had found her true place. He held her so for several moments, not daring to breathe lest he disturb her, and then he bent his head and touched her hair with his lips.
He had experienced in life, and was still to experience, triumph, elation, exultation, passion and satisfaction. But even under the tragic circumstances that had brought him to this house, he experienced what he had never yet experienced: a great flame of joy, of utter surrender to something that was at once too terrible for passion, too gentle for it. It made his blood burn and sting in his veins, made his throat knot painfully. He had never felt such piercing sweetness, such tenderness, such devotion and love. He had always been able to control himself, but now he did not want to control himself. He wanted the tides in him to carry him along wherever they would, to break down his self-discipline, to blind him to everything but the immediate present and its ecstasy. It seemed to him that all his life, all his consciousness and experiences, had been created only to flow into this minute, or like building stones, had been quarried only to be built to this apex. Without this moment and this apex, they were meaningless; because of them, they had acquired pattern and purpose.
Yet his habit of control was such, possessed such automatic power, that when Amy stirred, his arms dropped of themselves from her body and fell to his sides. But his breath was unsteady, his face dusky. He led her to a chair. She began to sob dryly, in short coughs, shrinking in her chair, and shivering. Her body shuddered, her clothes trembled in the feeble light of the fire. Ernest pulled a chair beside hers, and leaned toward her.
“Amy,” he said, and then, “Amy, my love, my poor girl.”
She looked at him, stopping her sobs abruptly; it was as if she really saw him for the first time. She seemed to realize many things, things that would have taken years to remember, and to repeat. She moved away from him a little, remembering these things.
“He was so good, so very, very good!” she wailed, and in that wail was the thin and bitter sound of accusation. He was so good, said that accusation, and you hated him for it, and you drove him out. You blackmailed him and threatened him; you laughed at him, not only to yourself, but to all your friends, so that he became the universal fool in cap and bells, and everyone was against him, ridiculing him, leaving him so lonely and friendless. All his life you were his enemy, said her anguished eyes, beating him down and driving him away, and he had never harmed you, was incapable of harming you.
“Amy!” he exclaimed sharply, involuntarily, “don’t look at me like that! Whatever else passed between my brother and me, I never denied that he was sincere and gentle and kind, that it was impossible for him to be dishonest or vicious. I never denied that he was ‘good.’ Will you believe me when I say that I am sorry, frightfully sorry, that he has gone? I swear to you, Amy, that I would give ten years of my life to bring him back to you!” And in that moment, he believed what he said. His voice was loud and firm with sincerity, and the tense misery and accusation began to die out of Amy’s eyes. They filled with tears; she averted her head, and cried like a child.
“He was too good for me,” she sobbed. “He was too good for any of us. No one understood him, except me. But even I could not feel any real sympathy for what he was trying to do. I was too greedy, too indifferent. I tried to pretend to be what I wasn’t, and I don’t think I really succeeded. Sometimes he would look at me so sadly! But, O God, I really tried! I really tried to be what he wanted me to be! And now, it is too late. It’ll always be too late.”
Ernest was silent, helpless for the first time in his life. He took her hand again, held it gently. He saw the broken nails, the calluses on the small palm; he saw the throbbing of the blue veins in the delicate wrist. He could hardly hold himself back from putting his lips fiercely to those veins, from pressing the little palm to his cheek. He glanced at her; she had stopped her sobbing, and was regarding him with a sort of stark terror that electrified him.
A thrill ran along his nerves, and the blood hummed in his ears. His glance dropped from her face to her slender white throat with its transparent hollow; the wrapper fell away loosely, showing the gentle rise of her breasts. Suddenly he was aware that she was trembling violently, and that her hand, at first tensing and drawing away, had relaxed, and the fingers had closed about his. He looked at them in the swimming, firelit silence, then, very slowly, he lifted them to his lips and kissed them.
For a moment she did not move; he even imagined that her fingers responded, pressed against his mouth as if hungry for his touch. Then she snatched away her hand with a cry, and stood up so abruptly that her chair fell back from her. Ernest stood up, also, shaking, and she turned upon him with a strange excitement, her face wild, her gestures disordered.
“Please go, Ernest! You can’t help me. No one can help me. I don’t know why you came! Why did you come? It isn’t because you are sorry. Did you come here to torment me? Please go! And never come back! Never, never! I never want to see you again!”
“Amy,” he pleaded, “forgive me. I forgot. I promise you I’ll never forget again. Forgive me, Amy. O my God, this is impossible! It should never have happened. Amy, it never happened! Believe me, I came here to help you, to take you and your children home with me, where you belong. You have a duty to them, too. Now that I have seen them I want to help them. I feel that they are my own flesh and blood, nearer to me than my own children. Let me help them. Let me help you. May is waiting for you—the rooms are all ready. She—she sent me here for you, Amy. Come home, with your children.”
She regarded him with an almost idiotic incredulity. “But I can’t live in the same house with you, Ernest! I can’t do that to Martin. Or to my children, or to May. I owe it to Martin to remember the promise I made him. You were his enemy, the only real enemy he ever had in the world, and you, his brother! Do you think I can be friends with his enemy?” It was evident that she was nearing the breaking point, for she had begun to gasp, putting her hands to her breast.
“It isn’t like you to talk that way, Amy,” he answered painfully. “You always saw things straightly, without false sentiment. If I had wanted to be a real enemy to Martin, it would have been easy. I could have forced him to give up his stock at the price I wanted to pay; I could have sent him to prison, with his confederates. But I didn’t. Believe me when I tell you that Martin disliked me more than I disliked him, that, when we were younger, he refused to be friends with me, though I honestly tried, at times. I’m not apologizing for anything, or explaining anything. I feel sure you know these things yourself. But you are trying to hurt me just so you can hurt yourself. Is it conscience, Amy? Are you trying to injure yourself because of something you can’t help, and I can’t help? That is stupid. You owe it to your children to take them from this place.
“Are you afraid of me, Amy? I promise you, my darling, I’ll swear to you—”
“On what?” asked Gregory’s voice, smoothly and coldly. He came out of the shadows.
Amy gave a faint scream of fright, and Ernest fell back.
The two men stared at each other, everything down between them. The hatred of years spurted between them. Across the flow of their mutual detestation, released now, they could see each other’s nakedness, unclothed by hypocrisy and social politenesses. What Ernest saw only increased his contempt, but what Gregory saw appalled him, for he realized he had never fully known what an enemy this was, what an implacib
ility stood there.
Then Ernest lifted a shoulder, turned his back and regarded the fire.
“I suppose,” said Gregory, “that an appeal to honor would have no weight with you?”
“None at all,” agreed Ernest indifferently. “Besides, who are you to talk about honor, anyway?” He glanced over his shoulder at the old man with such infinite disdain and knowledge that Gregory winced even in his anger. “And why this talk about honor? I have done nothing but offer Amy a decent home. She knows in her heart that she has nothing to fear from me.” He took his foot off the fender and began to button up his coat. He could not see Amy’s face, for she was pressing it against her uncle’s chest, her hands clutching his coat.
“But this is ridiculous!” exclaimed Ernest, turning hot and sick. He flushed with mortification.
Gregory ignored him. He was talking to Amy. “My love, I—I sent him here to bring you home. Then I went to May to tell her the sad news, and ask her to prepare for you and the children. Then I followed him here—to help him bring you. But on the way I began to think, and it seemed impossible for me to live under the same roof with him any more. Things—became unbearable. And I thought of having all those children there, and I remembered that I am an old man, now. So I decided this: the Henthorns are leaving to live in Philadelphia, and they are willing to sell their home here. I intend to buy that home, and you shall live with me, keeping my house, and there will be plenty of room for the children.” He held her to him tightly, for her knees were bending weakly under her. “And in the meantime, until the house is ready, I shall stay here with you.”
He moved his head in Ernest’s direction. “Unless, of course, you wish to remove your wife and children, and let Amy and her children and me live in her old home together. It is still my property, and will be, until my death. But May was born there, and her children, and she loves the house. I couldn’t force her out. It must rest with you what to do. Will you leave, or must I?”
Ernest picked up his hat, examined it minutely, then put it on his head. He looked at Gregory, then at Amy, who still would not turn to him. He shook his head in slow negation.
“I’ll stay,” he said briefly. “I’ve given up a lot for that house. I’ll stay.”
CHAPTER LI
The new house in Quaker Terrace was like Paradise to Amy, after a long gray-brown muddy Purgatory. Merely to be near town, to see carriages drawn smartly after spanking horses, to hear voices and see faces of plump and prosperous women, to walk out in neat boots and not sink into mud, to trip out in the widest and most sweeping of hoops and not bedraggle them: all this was heaven enough. But again to have a carriage, as smart as any one’s, to drive into town and see the shops, to finger velvets and laces and silks, to try on the newest bonnets, to sit in friends’ parlors sipping delicate China tea and eat seed-cake and glacé fruits while one shook one’s ringlets dolefully over the war, to know that one’s little children were snug in their nursery in the care of efficient nursemaids, to know that a good cook was presiding over the kettles and pots in one’s kitchen and that eventually a dinner would be served on gold-traced Haviland, and that at one’s place one would find frosted crystal and heavy shining silver and a stiff white napkin: all this was ecstasy upon ecstasy.
Amy had been brought to her new home in a state of grief-stricken apathy that Gregory feared would not pass. Not even he, and perhaps only Ernest, guessed that half her apathy and sorrow was the sick probings of conscience, and that her loss would not have been half so terrible had she not remembered the few days before Martin’s departure. I failed him; I sent him away sad and wretched, feeling that he hadn’t a friend in the world, she thought over and over, staring into her sleepless nights. If for the past year I had only had the courage and the fortitude and loyalty I started out with! O my God, I began bravely enough; I never said a word against what he wanted to do until nearly the end, when I should have gone on as I had begun! But I became small and petty and cruel; I had accepted the sacrifices with promises to uphold them cheerfully, and then when they turned heavy I became bitter and poisoned all his dear life! Oh, if but for one week, one day, I could bring you back, Martin! Even an hour, a minute!
Worst of all was the thought that Martin had sacrificed his whole life, all the joy and ease he might have had, to bring comfort and mercy and justice into the lives of the oppressed, and had failed at the last. For the Government was filling the hospital with the wounded, and there was no place for the shop-workers and laborers. Due to some entanglement of red tape in the matter of the bank funds, the payments had been temporarily stopped. Father Dominick had been removed to another city, and had left the administration of the funds in the hands of his successor, who was to co-operate with Amy in the matter. But Amy was still unable to do her share, and the new priest was a fussy and meticulous individual who declared he must “study” the whole matter thoroughly before carrying out the terms of the will. What Amy did not, know as yet was that Gregory had quietly held up the probating of the will and had stopped the funds; he was looking for a way to restore the; income from the Barbour & Bouchard stock to Amy. He had already taken charge of Amy’s dowry, and the income was again flowing smoothly into her account at the bank.
Since his open rupture with Ernest, a change had come over Gregory. For one thing, he was rapidly aging. He leaned more and more upon John Baldwin and the latter’s assistants; sometimes he would not arrive at his office until noon, and about every two weeks he remained home for a day, playing with Amy’s children, walking, resting, reading, or merely talking with his niece. He had suddenly come to the conclusion that he needed no more money, and that he had lost the taste for it. His greed had become dulled and tired; it was as if he had sat down at a table with a friend and had eaten too much of food that was both indigestible and impure. He had discovered the casual friend to be a most bitter and implacable enemy, and the food had made him violently ill. He knew that he would never again want to gorge, and that his diet must be simple for the rest of his life. Another change took place in him: his cruel irony softened to a gentler and sadder pessimism, and his old malevolent laughter, silent and red-faced, became kinder. He rarely mentioned Ernest to Amy, and when he did so his face became dusky and brooding. But his remarks were always indifferent and casual. Only once did he speak of Ernest with feeling, and then he said: “He did me the greatest service any man has ever done me: he showed me what I was. And it frightened me.” He told himself that he didn’t hate Ernest, but that he abhorred him. And this was very near the truth, except that he did not add that he also lived in terror of him, not for what he might do to him, but for what he might do to Amy. He’s a mad tiger on the scent of his female, and he won’t let up until he gets her, he thought. But worst of all, Amy isn’t really on the run; she’s helpless against him, but though she is hurrying away, she is looking back in spite of herself. All Gregory’s life now seemed to be on guard, sleepless and watchful, about the house he had filled with Amy’s children. He shall not hurt her, he said over and over to himself. He shall not have her and destroy her. He shall not bring misery to his wife and his own children. But as he looked from his watchtower at the “mad tiger” prowling impotently below, he felt an exultation that had nothing whatsoever in common with the paternal emotion of protectiveness.
Amy eventually tried to carry out the terms of Martin’s will, but at every turn she met mysterious obstacles and delay. She was assured by Gregory and the other bank directors that everything was all right, but that there were “little matters” to be adjusted first. This puzzled her, and frustrated her. Gregory told her fondly that such affairs were too much for the female mind, to which she replied with a smiling sidelong look that made him chuckle. When she insisted that she must begin at once, the directors dolefully laid before her masses of books and papers and ominous-looking documents that made her sag with helplessness. She finally agreed to allow Gregory to adjust the affairs, and eventually manage them. With the strangest feeling that s
he was doing wrong, that Martin was at her elbow with a sad face, she gave Gregory power of attorney. She could not explain this feeling even to herself; had the thought of distrusting her uncle, of suspecting him, entered her mind, she would have been outraged.
During her greatest months of grief, she could not rid herself of the thought that Martin’s life and sacrifices, his ideals and hopes, had all been water poured into sand. The thought became a specter, an obsession she could not rid herself of, try as she might by throwing open the clear windows of reason. It was without effect that she told herself sadly that everyone lives in vain, and that there is no real success anywhere. So besieged was she by her sorrowful regret, that when Nicholas returned to Windsor for a visit he was quite startled out of his pomposity by his widowed niece’s mournful face and eyes. Moved for once from his hypocrisy, from his almost automatic phrase-making, he questioned her. When she had finished telling him, with tears, of her sorrow for Martin and his sacrifices, he thought in silence for a long moment. Then he said with sincere gentleness: “My love, you are quite mistaken. A long time ago Martin came to me and told me of the sacrifices he was about to make. He asked me—er—at that time, to suggest some way to him whereby a law could be passed to prevent the bringing into America of alien labor; he asked my help. I wasn’t able to do anything at that time, as I told him. But I told him of the small lobby that had already started in Washington against this very thing. As you probably know, he contributed quite a lot of money to this lobby. It is getting stronger; it is beginning to bring this—this outrage to public attention. There is already considerable agitation among native-born Americans. Amy, it may take ten, twenty, even thirty years, for the movement to become powerful enough to pass a stringent law against alien contract labor. But pass it will. There is no stopping it. When Martin investigated the lobby, it was about to die of anæmia; his efforts, over a period of years, and his money, his constant interviewing of Congressmen and politicians, revived the lobby, strengthened it, brought it to the attention of those who will profit by its activities. So, you see, my love, though Martin has passed away, doing his duty (which ought to be some compensation to you,—h’m) he is the man who started a small snowball at the top of the mountain, and though he has not lived to see it, the snowball has become a glacier too tremendous and gigantic to be stopped.
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