“But why didn’t you tell Paul all this before now?”
Jules looked at his cousin, who was showing signs of awakening hope and pleased hatred. He turned back to his uncle.
“But,” he protested, as though in bewilderment, “Paul already knew! I surely did not have to tell him matters concerning the business of which he is president!”
Ernest’s sunken face took on an expression of pleased malice. Touché, he thought, regarding Jules with benign respect and amusement. He glanced at Paul, whose renewed color had already faded again, and in whose eyes stood confusion.
“Did you know all this, Paul?” he asked lightly.
Paul moistened his lips, which were the color of lead. “Yes. Certainly! Of course!” he replied hoarsely. “I think it is very impudent of Jules to make himself spokesman for me, but he is so damned glib, as you know, and likes to push himself.” He shot his cousin an evil glance.
Jules smiled apologetically. “Forgive me, Paul. It is true that I am always too willing to review matters, and speak of them. I hope you will both realize that it is only excess of zeal.”
Ernest permitted himself several moments of pure pleasure in watching Paul and Jules. Then he said to Jules: “But what have you done about our new submarine plans?”
May, who had still remained silent, now said coldly and firmly: “Ernest, you look exhausted! I must ask you to send Paul and Jules away, so you can rest. It is nearly ten o’clock.” She regarded her nephews with dislike and bitterness.
Jules immediately rose with an expression of contrition. “Certainly! How thoughtless of us, Aunt May. Paul, may I offer you a lift?”
“No, thank you,” replied Paul, with visible loathing. “I have my own carriage here.”
Ernest, smiling faintly, looked from Paul to Jules. “Besides,” he said, “I want to talk to Paul a minute or two longer. Alone. You’ll excuse us, Jules?”
“Of course!” Jules’ voice was all concern and graciousness. But a slight dark line appeared between his brilliant eyes, a line which Ernest regarded with an inward smile. Jules, after many expressions of hope for his uncle’s improvement, and a gallant remark to May, and a bow to Paul, took his leave. The line between his eyes seemed permanently fixed.
Alone with Paul, Ernest did not speak for some moments. As for Paul, he was full of fear and sickness. He lit a cigarette with hands that visibly trembled. But when he looked furtively up at Ernest, he was agreeably surprised to see that the older man was regarding him with apparent kindness.
“Jules,” said Ernest, “is a scraping French scoundrel. I detest the French. Always did.” Paul listened with amazement, his heart beginning to throb.
“Tomorrow,” continued Ernest placidly, “I’m going to make a new will. Alice will remain my heir, of course, but only if she does not marry, or has not already married, François Bouchard. I don’t care who else she marries: the child must be happy, though I can’t believe that dry-mouthed brown monkey could ever make her happy. But if she marries him, or has married him, you are to be my heir, Paul.”
Paul’s first expression was one of great joy, stupefaction and incredulity. He tried to speak, but his trembling lips could only move. He made a dumb and helpless gesture. Then all at once, the joy faded, was succeeded by expressions of absolute terror, realization, fear, despair and confusion. They raced over his face like wild and trampling horses, visibly grinding it, disintegrating it. He regarded Ernest with fiery eyes under a forehead that wrinkled convulsively. You fiend! he said inwardly. But aloud he said nothing.
After a few minutes, he left. His last words had been incoherent. He seemed to be under a terrible strain and distress.
Ernest, settling down comfortably under May’s scolding ministrations, thought with amused pleasure: I’ve set him a pretty problem! It’ll be interesting which he will sacrifice: his ambition to be my heir or his daughter’s happiness. Greed or father-love. Which will win? Will he be soft enough to prevent Alice’s marriage to a man who will destroy her life, or will he offer her up as a burnt offering to his ambitions?
But this was never to be known: what Paul would have done. For before he could change his will, before the next morning, in fact, Ernest Barbour suffered a stroke which totally paralyzed him.
CHAPTER CX
Alice, in tears, slipped her three fine cambric petticoats, bordered with thick hand-made embroidery, over her head. Over these she fastened and belted her gray woollen skirt. She looked at herself dismally in the mirror, a slender, slight young thing in a shirtwaist so white and starched that it glittered. She adjusted the velvet ribbon at the neck, patted her pompadour, glanced at her watch. Her cheeks were pale and wet. At ten o’clock she and her Aunt Elsa were leaving for New York.
That loathesome Thomas! she thought wretchedly. But they can’t make me have him! Papa can’t force me. I’m eighteen, going on nineteen. I love François, and I’m going to tell Papa, and it doesn’t matter a snap whether they make me go to New York or not.
But in spite of her courageous thoughts, she went downstairs slowly and heavily, one step at a time. She passed the long pier mirror in its mahogany frame on the landing, and was interested by her reflection. There was no doubt of the fact that she looked tragic. Considerably cheered and consoled by this, she went down the remaining stairs at a brisker pace, in order to focus it on her father’s attention before the smell of an exceedingly good breakfast could mar it. She decided, on reaching the folding mahogany doors of the dining room, that if anything she resembled the young Juliet very closely.
But to her surprise, the dining room table, though set in perfect order and glistening with stiff white linen and bright silver, was empty. She glanced at her watch again; it was just eight o’clock. At that moment the grandfather clock in the hall chimed eight deep notes. Breakfast was invariably served at seven forty-five, and she was fifteen minutes late. For a second she thought that perhaps Paul and Elsa had eaten earlier, due to the journey to be taken, but a glance at the table plainly showed three places set.
The pantry door swung open and a maid entered with a plate of hoc rolls under a napkin. She deftly removed two of the places set, leaving only one. Alice stared, her mouth dropping open.
“What’s the matter with everybody, Louise?”
Louise appeared surprised. “Why, didn’t you know, Miss Alice? Cook just told me. Seems like Mr. Ernest was taken bad in the night. The news came about six o’clock, and Mr. Paul and Miss Elsa went over to Mr. Ernest’s at seven. Before breakfast. They haven’t come back.”
The misery was wiped off Alice’s face completely, and her eyes sparkled. “Then I needn’t go to New York!” she exclaimed, delighted. She suddenly remembered herself, and pulled down her mouth, though her eyes remained excited and anticipatory. “Is Grandpa dead yet?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Miss Alice.” Louise’s expression showed her disapproval of this shallow callousness. “But I reckon not. We’d’ve heard.”
Alice sat down, more and more excited, and, the pressure on herself removed, ate a tremendous breakfast, an unusual event in itself. Her color was very high. Heavens, what an uproar there will be in the family, when Grandpa dies! What excitements, and solemnity and comings and goings and rustlings and carriages and flowers and tears and white linen handkerchiefs! She remembered herself again, and thought: Poor Grandpa.
When she had eaten, she became very restless. She wondered if she ought to dress and go over to her grandfather’s house. Of course, there’d be no journey, or she would have had word. But perhaps he was just a little sick, and Aunt Elsa would soon be bustling in, demanding that the bags and trunks be brought down immediately, and calling for the carriage. If she, Alice, went to her grandfather’s, Elsa might have a sudden rush of memory, and sweep Alice home. Whereas, if she kept still, and out of the way, there was a good chance of Elsa overlooking the matter of New York, especially if Grandpa stayed ill. Alice was fond of Ernest, but she sincerely hoped that he would remain ill
enough for a week or two to delay this unpleasant journey.
She was about to slip upstairs to her room again, very softly, when the doorbell rang with what, to her strained ears, was a terrible row. She peered over the stairs as the butler went to answer it, hurrying from his pantry and buttoning his coat. When the opened door revealed François, she could hardly believe her eyes. Then, with a subdued cry of joy, she raced down the stairs and flung herself into his arms.
“Is Grandpa dead?” she screamed, pulling him by his coat into the hallway. The butler, severe and prim, retreated to his pantry, the door of which he left ajar, in order that he might listen.
François took the eager little hands off his coat and held them tightly. She saw at once that he was unusually grave, and a little pale.
“No, darling,” he said, with a gentleness alien to him. “I’ve just heard. He’s had a stroke. He’ll probably recover, they say, if he doesn’t have another.”
Alice’s facile features expressed her sudden dismay. “Then Aunt Elsa’ll be home any moment and carry me off to New York!” she wailed.
François averted his head. “I suppose so,” he said gloomily. All at once, he looked secretive and frightened, and pressed her hands so hard in his that she winced. Tears were already on her lashes.
“You know why they’re taking you away, Alice?” He had dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Yes,” she replied, also whispering, and glancing over her shoulder. She began to whimper, her mouth curving downwards, childishly. “But I won’t marry him, François! I love you, and I’m going to tell Papa, just as soon as he gets back.” The thought of her father’s return made her shiver lightly. François put his arm about her and held her with a tense and trembling grip.
“You’re such a little thing, Alice, and they’ll make you do what they want. You’re such a child. They’ll take you away from me, and I’ll never see you again, except as Tom Van Eyck’s wife. They’ll do to you what they did to your poor mother, poor Trudie.”
Alice was instantly diverted. “What did they do, François?” She gazed at him with her big wet blue eyes, completely intrigued.
François hesitated. His mouth worked miserably. “She wanted to marry my brother, Philippe. You’ve heard of Philippe, Alice? Well, Uncle Ernest, curse him, wanted her to marry your father. He—he managed in some way to separate them, and Philippe became a priest and died on a leper island. And your mother married Paul. And then she heard that Philippe was dead, and she died, too, right away, after you were born.” He clutched her desperately. “Alice, I can’t let that happen to you, darling, not even if I have to carry you off, first.”
“Oh—” breathed Alice, all exquisite excitement. “But how horribly cruel, how—how positively inhuman, François.”
But the terror which François had been able to keep down for the last few minutes began to assail him again, and he glanced affrightedly at the street door behind him. He clutched her slight soft arm, and she winced again, absently.
“Alice, they’ll do that to you, too. Alice, will you trust me, will you come with me?”
She stared, blinking. He pulled a paper from his pocket with hands that visibly shook. He thrust it under her nose, and she saw, to her stupefaction, that it was a marriage license. “Alice,” he whispered hoarsely, “your father’ll be back in a few minutes. They’ll take you away. Trust me, darling. Come with me, now, and we’ll be married at once.”
She shrank, turning white. “But, François, I can’t do that! Why, Papa’d never forgive me! He—he’d be so angry that he’d really whip me. I’d be so scared—I couldn’t do that, François.”
Desperate, he rattled the paper at her. “Alice, you must, or I’ll go away, as Philippe did, and I—I’ll die somewhere, all alone!” Terror had him now, like a wolf, and he forgot to whisper, speaking through trembling lips in a high shrill voice. “You said you loved me, but you’ll let them send you away and marry you off to a young dolt! You said you loved me, but I can see now that you lied to me—”
Alice had recovered herself quickly. She was still pale, but she said with spirit and indignation: “I don’t lie, François. At least, not about such things.” She twisted her handkerchief in her hands, and was again frightened. “But what will Papa say?”
“Nothing. What can he say? You’ll be my wife. Darling,” and he pulled her despairingly to him, “come with me. I’ll never ask you again, if you refuse. Don’t let them kill me, and you.”
Alice, after a moment’s hesitation and miserable struggle, lifted up her face to his and kissed him. “I’ll come, François dear, I’ll come.”
She slipped like a small shadow up to her room, put on her coat with cold numb fingers, pinned on her hat, caught up her gloves and bag, and ran downstairs again. François already had the door open. He literally swept her outside, down the stone stairs, down the brick walk, into his waiting buggy. “Hurry, hurry!” he panted, glaring in his fear up and down the silent wintry road. The great scattered estates lay under a misty gray fog laced by bare branches. The sound of the racing buggy wheels was loud in the wet, blanketing stillness. Alice had begun to cry, first clinging to François, then shrinking away from him, her small face red and wet.
One hour later Jules arrived from Ernest’s house at his office, in a great hurry. Ernest was “resting easily,” and no change was expected for at least twenty-four hours. Jules had left him lying partly conscious on heaped pillows, breathing with a sound like rusty bellows.
Jules, with immense solicitude, had asked May exactly when the stroke had taken place, and when she informed him it had happened at three o’clock that morning, after Ernest had fallen asleep immediately on Paul’s departure, he felt a great relaxing in him, so intense that a light sweat broke out over his forehead. No, May assured him, a slight frown of impatience on her haggard and ashen face, Ernest had seen no one at all after he and Paul had left. She began to weep, and Jules, still damp as to forehead, comforted her with such tenderness and sympathy that she was touched, even through her grief and terrible anxiety.
Jules, sitting at his desk, and smoothing his pale lip with his forefinger, thought exultantly: Then there has been no changing of the will. And if he lives twenty-four hours more, I certainly don’t recognize the face of death!
The telephone rang. When he answered it, the receiver almost slipped in his damp hand. It was François, his voice as shrill and high and tight as a hysterical woman’s. “I’ve had a hell of a time finding a telephone, Jules! But we’re married! Alice and I were married half an hour ago! Married! We’re going home now, to wait until the row blows over! Married, Jules! To my darling!” He coughed excitedly, while Jules wet lips suddenly dry. “We owe it all to you, Jules, God bless you!”
Exactly one hour later, Paul arrived, thrusting open doors, leaving a wind of chaos behind him, thrusting Jules’ impeccable and protesting Mr. Dickinson aside with fury. He clutched his cane tightly, used it as a weapon to slam the door after him, in the face of the secretary. His own face was frightful. He stood before Jules, breathing with a horrible sound, gasping.
“Where is my daughter?” he demanded in a strangely quiet voice.
Jules raised his brows deprecatingly. “Your daughter, Paul? But how extraordinary of you to ask me! How should I know? I hope nothing has happened to the child.”
Paul’s mouth writhed, and he gasped for breath. “My daughter!” he cried hoarsely. “Where is my daughter?”
Jules stood up, and Paul looked on a face he had never seen before.
“Your daughter,” said Jules softly, “is now—Alice Bouchard.”
Paul’s cane switched through the air like a blurred flash, and a welt, red and savage, sprang across Jules’ cheek.
CHAPTER CXI
But the “change” in Ernest Barbour’s condition came before twenty-four hours. Except for the nurses and servants, May was alone in the Sessions house when Ernest died.
To the last, even to the final moment, she had n
ot really believed he would die. Could die. A world without Ernest Barbour was a world become two-dimensioned, life undermined, a cliff blown up and reduced to powder. It was reality become an empty nightmare. In all the years she had known him it had seemed incredible to her that he could ever die. His power had seemed less personal and circumscribed in himself, than universal. His ideas, his ambitions, his driving force, seemed to her, as they seemed to hundreds of others, things immortal, not to be destroyed by time or death. And yet, when he died, and lay there, with open eyes and slack mouth and hands that would never move again, he was, if at one with Cæsar, also one with the dead teamster who lay only four streets away from him and who had died at the same moment. Gregory Sessions had once said that democracy was the common denominator of the barnyard; but death was the ultimate cipher to which all life added up.
The night nurse had persuaded May to rest, repeating to her what the doctor had said. May had gone to her room, and had sat numbly by the low fire. She shivered at intervals, and there was a taste of lead in her mouth. She looked at the furniture in her room, and it all seemed strange and unreal to her. Even the deaths of her children had not given her this deadly agony.
She did not go to bed, though for a few moments she lay across the counterpane, her eyes fixed upon the wall pattern that appeared and disappeared in the lamplight and firelight. Then the mere supineness of her body made her mind more active, more twisted by fear and anguish, and she got up again.
At two o’clock there was a low tap on her door and the nurse thrust her head inside the room. “We’ve sent for the doctor again, Mrs. Barbour. Would you like to see Mr. Barbour, now?” Her face was grave.
May ran into her husband’s room like a young girl. Before she reached the door she could hear his frightful breathing, which echoed through all the house. When she stood by his bedside, and looked at him by the light of the shaded lamp, she knew he was dying. Her first sensation was a stunned incredulity, leaving her so numb that she could feel nothing else for a little while.
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