She knew, and dreaded, and shrank from what still lay before her; she understood into what ruin treachery to self might precipitate her still at any moment. And yet, somehow, she felt vaguely that something had been gained that day which never before had been gained. And she thought of her lover as she passed through the forest, leaning on Scott and Kathleen, her little feet keeping step with theirs, her eyes steady in the red western glare that flooded the forest to an infernal beauty.
Behind her streamed her gigantic shadow; behind her lay another shadow, cast by her soul and floating wide of it now. And it must never touch her soul again, God helping.
Suddenly her heart almost ceased its beating. Far away within, stirring in unsuspected depths, something moved furtively.
Her face whitened a little; her eyes closed, the lids fluttered, opened; she gazed straight in front of her, walked on, small head erect, lips firm, facing the hell that lay before her — lay surely, surely before her. For the breath of it glowed already in her veins and the voices of it were already busy in her ears, and the unseen stirring of it had begun once more within her body — that tired white, slender body of hers which had endured so bravely and so long.
If sleep would only aid her, come to her in her need, be her ally in the peril of her solitude — if it would only come, and help her to endure!
And wondering if it would, not knowing, hoping, she walked onward through the falling night.
CHAPTER XVII. THE DANGER MARK
Her letters to him still bore the red cross:
“I understand perfectly why you cannot come,” she wrote; “I would do exactly as you are doing if I had a father. It must be a very great happiness to have one. My need of you is not as great as his; I can hold my own alone, I think. You see I am doing it, and you must not worry. Only, dear, when you have the opportunity, come up if only for a day.”
And again, in November:
“You are the sweetest boy, and it is not difficult to understand why your father cannot endure to have you out of his sight. But is this not a very heavy strain on you? Of course your mother and Naïda must not be left alone with him; you are the only son, and your place is there.
“Dear, I know what you are going through is one of the most dreadful things that any man is called upon to bear — your father stricken, your mother and sister prostrate; the newspapers — for I have read them — cruel beyond belief! But whatever they say, whatever is true or untrue, Duane, remember that it cannot affect my regard for you and yours.
“If I had a father, whatever he might have done, or permitted others to do, would not, could not alter my affection for him.
“Men say that women have no sense of honour. I do not know what that sense may be if it falters when loyalty and compassion are needed, too.
“I have read the papers; I know only what I read and what you tell me. The rules that custom has framed to safeguard and govern financial operations, I do not understand; but, as far as I can comprehend, it seems to me that custom has hitherto sanctioned what disaster has now placed under a bann. It seems to me that the very men who now blame your father have all done successfully what he did so disastrously.
“One thing I know: no kinder, dearer man than your father ever lived; and I love him, and I love his family, and I will marry his son when I am fit to do it.”
And again she wrote:
“I saw in the papers that the Algonquin Trust Company had closed its doors; I read the heartbreaking details of the crowds besieging it, the lines of frightened people standing there in the rain all night long. It is dreadful, terrible!
“Who are these Wall Street men who would not help the Algonquin when they could? Why is the Clearing House so bitter? I don’t know what it all means; I read columns about poor Jack Dysart — words and figures and technical phrases and stock quotations — and it means nothing, and I understand nothing of it save that it is all a fierce outcry against him and against the men with whom he was financially involved.
“The papers are so gloomy, so eager in their search for evil, so merciless, so exultant when scandal is unearthed, that I can scarcely bear to read them. Why do they drag in unhappy people who know nothing about these matters? The interview with your mother and Naïda, which you say is false, was most dreadful. How cruel men are!
“Tell them I love them dearly; tell your father, too. And, dear, I don’t know exactly how Scott and I are situated, but if we can be of any financial use to you, please, please let us! Our fortune, when it came to us, was, I believe, all in first mortgages and railroad securities. I believe that Scott made some changes in our investments under advice from your father. I don’t know what they were.
“Don’t bother your father with such details now; he has enough to think of lying there in his grief, bewildered, broken in mind and body. Duane, is it not more merciful that he is unable to understand what the papers are saying?
“Dear, heart and soul I am loyal to you and yours.”
She wrote again:
“Yes, I had a talk with Scott. I did not know he had been receiving all those letters from your attorneys. Magnelius Grandcourt manages the investments. Scott’s brokers are Stainer & Elting; our attorneys are, as you know, Landon, Brooks & Gayfield.
“Duane, I absolutely forbid you to worry. My brother is of age, sound in mind and body, responsible for whatever he does or has done. It is his affair if he solicits advice, his affair if he follows it. Your father has no responsibility whatever in the matter of the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Besides, Scott tells me that what he did was against the advice of Mr. Tappan.
“I remember last winter that he brought a Mr. Skelton to luncheon, and a horrid man named Klawber.
“Poor Scott! He certainly knows nothing about business matters. I know he had no desire to increase his private fortune; he tells me that what interested him in the Cascade Development and Securities Company was the chance that cheap radium might stimulate scientific research the world over. Poor Scott!
“Dear, you are not to think for one instant that any trouble which may involve Scott is due to you or yours. And if it were, Duane, it could make no difference to him or to me. Money and what it buys is such a pitiful detail in what goes to make up happiness. Who but I should understand that!
“Loss of social prestige and position, is a serious matter, I suppose; I may show my ignorance and inexperience when I tell you how much more serious to me are other things — like the loss of faith in one’s self or in others — or the loss of the gentler virtues, which means the loss of what one once was.
“The loss of honour is, as you say, a pitiful thing; yet, I think that when that happens, love and compassion were never more truly needed.
“Honour, as I understand it, is not to take advantage of others or of one’s better self. This is a young girl’s definition. I cannot see — if one has yielded once to temptation, and truly repents — why honour cannot be regained.
“The honour of men and nations that seems to require arrogance, aggression, violence for its defence, I do not understand. How can the misdeeds of others impair one’s true honour? How can punishment for such misdeeds restore it? No; it lies within one, quite intangible save by one’s self.
“Why should I not know, dear? — I who have lost my own and found it, have held it desperately for a while, then lost it, then regained it, holding it again as I do now — alas! — against no other enemy than I who write this record for your eyes!
“Dear, I know of nothing lost which may not be regained, except life. I know of nothing which cannot be rendered tolerable through loyalty.
“That material happiness which means so much to some, means now so very little to me, perhaps because I have never lacked it.
“Yet I know that, once mistress of myself, nothing else could matter unless your love failed.”
Again she wrote him toward the end of November:
“Why will you not let me help you, dear? My fortune is practically intact s
o far, except that, of course, I met those obligations which Scott could not meet. Poor Scott!
“You know it’s rather bewildering to me where millions go to. I don’t quite comprehend how they can so utterly vanish in such a short time, even in such a frightful fiasco as the Cascade Development Company.
“So many people have been here — Mr. Landon and Mr. Gayfield, Mr. Stainer of Elting & Stainer, that dreadful creature Klawber, a very horrid man named Amos Flack — and dear, grim, pig-headed Mr. Tappan — old Remsen Tappan of all men!
“He practically kicked out Mr. Flack and the creature Klawber, who had been trying to frighten Scott and me and even our lawyers.
“And think, Duane! He never uttered one sarcasm, one reproach for Scott’s foolishness; he sat grim and rusty as the iron that he once dealt in, listening to what Scott had to tell him, never opening that cragged jaw, never unclosing that thin line of cleavage which is his mouth.
“We did not know what he had come for; but we know now. He is so good — so good, Duane! And I, who hated him as a child, as a girl — I am almost too ashamed to let him take command and untangle for us, with those knotted, steel-sinewed fingers of his, the wretched, tangled mess that has coiled around Scott and me.
“Surely, this man Klawber is a very great villain; and it seems that Mr. Skelton and the wretched Flack creature are little less. As for Jack Dysart, it is all too sorrowful to think about. How must he feel! Surely, surely he could not have known what he was doing. He must have been desperate to go to Delancy Grandcourt. It was wrong; nothing on earth could have propped up the Algonquin, and why did he let his best friend go down with it?
“But it was fine of Delancy to stand by him — fine, fine! His father is perfectly furious, but, Duane, it was fine!
“And now, dear, about Scott. It will amuse you, and perhaps horrify you, if I tell you that he has not turned a hair.
“Not that he doesn’t care; not that he is not more or less mortified. But he blames nobody except himself; and he’s laying plans quite cheerfully for a career on a small income that really does not require the austerity and frugality he imagines.
“One thing is certain; the town house is to be sold. My income is not sufficient to maintain it and Roya-Neh, and live as we do, and have anything left. I don’t yet know how far my fortune is involved, but I have a very unpleasant premonition that there is going to be much less left than anybody believes, and that ultimately we ought to sell Roya-Neh.
“However, it is far too early to speculate; besides, this family has done enough speculating for one generation.
“Dear, you ask about myself. I am not one bit worried, sad, or apprehensive. I am better, Duane. Do you understand? All this has developed a set of steadier nerves in me than I have had since I was a child.
“A new and curiously keen enjoyment has been slowly growing in me — a happiness in physical and violent effort. I’ve a devilish horse to ride; and I love it! I’ve climbed all over the Gilded Dome and Lynx Peak after the biggest and shaggiest boar you ever saw. Oh, Duane! I came on him just at the edge of evening, and he winded me and went thundering down the Westgate ravine, and I fired too quickly.
“But I’m after him almost every day with old Miller, and my arms and legs are getting so strong, and my flesh so firm, and actually I’m becoming almost plump in the face! Don’t you care for that kind of a girl?
“Dear, do you think I’ve passed the danger mark? Tell me honestly — not what you want to think, but what you do believe. I don’t know whether I have passed it yet. I feel, somehow, whichever side of it I am on, that the danger mark is not very far away from me. I’ve got to get farther away. The house in town is open. Mrs. Farren, Hilda, and Nellie are there if we run into town.
“Kathleen is so happy for me. I’ve told her about the red cross. She is too sweet to Scott; she seems to think he really grieves deeply over the loss of his private fortune. What a dear she is! She is willing to marry him now; but Scott strikes attitudes and declares she shall have a man whose name stands for an achievement — meaning, of course, the Seagrave process for the extermination of the Rose-beetle.
“Duane, I am quite unaccountably happy to-day. Nothing seems to threaten. But don’t stop loving me.”
Followed three letters less confident, and another very pitiful — a frightened letter asking him to come if he could. But his father’s condition forbade it and he dared not.
Then another letter came, desperate, almost incoherent, yet still bearing the red cross faintly traced. And on the heels of it a telegram:
“Could you stand by me until this is over? I am afraid of to-night. Am on my way to town with my maid, very ill. I know you cannot leave your father except at night. I will telephone you from the house.
“G.S.”
On the train a dispatch was handed her:
“I will be at your house as soon as my father is asleep. Don’t worry.
“Duane.”
Hour after hour she sat motionless beside the car-window, quiet, pale, dark eyes remote; trees, houses, trains, telegraph-poles streamed past in one gray, unending blur; rain which at first had only streaked the grimy window-glass with cinders, became sleet, then snow, clotting the dripping panes.
At last, far away under a heavy sky, the vast misshapen landmarks of New York loomed up gray through the falling snow; the train roared over the Harlem, halted at 125th Street, rolled on into the black tunnel, faster, faster, slower, then more slowly, and stopped. All sounds ceased at the same moment; silence surrounded her, dreary as the ominous silence within.
Dunn met her with a brougham; Fifth Avenue was slippery with filthy, melting slush; yet, somehow, into her mind came the memory of her return from her first opera — the white avenue at midnight, the carriage, lamps lighted, speeding through the driving snow. Yesterday, the quiet, untainted whiteness of childhood; to-day, trouble and stress and stained snow melting into mud — so far behind her lay innocence and peace on the long road she had travelled! So far had she already journeyed — toward what?
She pressed her lips more tightly together and buried her chin in her sable muff. Beside her, her maid sat shivering and stifling yawn after yawn and thinking of dinner and creature comforts, and of Dunn, the footman, whom she did ardently admire.
The big red brick house among its naked trees seemed sad and deserted as the brougham flashed into the drive and stopped, the horses stamping and pawing the frozen gravel. Geraldine had never before been away from home so long, and now as she descended from the carriage and looked vaguely about her it seemed as though she had, somehow, become very, very young again — that it was her child-self that entered under the porte-cochère after the prescribed drive that always ended outdoor exercise in the early winter evenings; and she half expected to see old Howker in the hall, and Margaret trotting up to undo her furs and leggings — half expected to hear Kathleen’s gay greeting, to see her on the stairs, so young, so sweetly radiant, her arms outstretched in welcome to her children who had been away scarcely a full hour.
“I’d like to have a fire in my bedroom and in the upper library,” she said to Hilda, who had smilingly opened the door for her. “I’ll dine in the upper library, too. When Mr. Mallett arrives, you need not come up to announce him. Ask him to find me in the library.”
To Mrs. Farren she said: “Nobody need sit up. When Mr. Mallett leaves, I will put the chains on and bolt everything.”
She was destined not to keep this promise.
Bathed, her hair brushed and dressed, she suffered her maid to hook her into a gown which she could put off again unassisted — one of those gowns that excite masculine admiration by reason of its apparent inexpensiveness and extreme simplicity. It was horribly expensive, of course — white, and cut out in a circle around her neck like a young girl’s gown; and it suited Geraldine’s slender, rounded throat and her dainty head with its heavy, loosely drawn masses of brown hair, just shadowing cheeks and brow.
When the last hook wa
s looped she dismissed her maid for the night; Hilda served her at dinner, but she ate little, and the waitress bore away the last of the almost untouched food, leaving her young mistress seated before the fire and looking steadily into it.
The fire was a good one; the fuel oak and ash and beech. The flames made a silky, rustling sound; now and then a coal fell with a softly agreeable crash and a swarm of golden sparks whirled up the chimney, snapping, scintillating, like day fireworks.
Geraldine sat very still, her mouth resting on her white wrist, and when she lifted her head the marks of her teeth showed on the skin. Then the other hand, clutching the arm of her chair, fell to her side cramped and quivering; she stood up, looked at the fire, pressed both palms across her eyes, turned and began to pace the room.
To and fro she moved, slowly, quickly, as the craving for motion ebbed or increased. At times she made unconscious movements with her arms, now flinging them wide, now flexing the muscles, clenching the hands; but always the arms fell helpless, hopeless; the slim, desperate fingers relaxed; and she moved on again, to and fro, up and down, turning her gaze toward the clock each time she passed it.
In her eyes there seemed to be growing a dreadful sort of beauty; there was fire in them, the luminous brightness of the tortured. On both cheeks a splendid colour glowed and waned; the slightly drawn lips were vivid.
But this — all of it changed as the slow minutes dragged their course; into the brown eyes crept the first frosty glimmer of desperation; colour faded from the face, leaving it snowy white; the fulness of the lips vanished, the chin seemed to grow pointed, and under the eyes bluish shadows deepened. It promised to go hard with her that night; it was already going very badly. She knew it, and digging her nails into her delicate palms, set her teeth together and drew a deep, unsteady breath.
She had looked at the clock four times, and the hands seemed to have moved no more than a minute’s space across the dial; and once more she turned to pace the floor.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 453