by Leroy Scott
CHAPTER VII
AS LOVE APPORTIONS
After David had gone Helen sat gazing into the rich romance of theglowing logs, reproached by the remembrance of her treatment of David,awed by his long sacrifice, thrilled with love and the knowledge of hisinnocence. Her imagination showed her scenes of David's trial, of hisprison life, of his struggles to regain place in the world, and shecried softly as she looked upon him amid these travails. That she hadnot believed in him despite appearance and his own declaration, sheregarded as evidence of her weakness, and she told herself that her fiveyears of suffering were too light a punishment for her lack of faith.She should have learned his innocence--and lost him!
Presently her mind, rehearsing the evening, came to David's statementthat, for St. Christopher's sake, he must always remain a guilty man.She paused before the declaration. Yes, he was right. As she admittedthis a calm fell upon her, and she saw, as she had not seen before, thedistance that lay between them. He could not come to her; he was boundwhere he was. If they came together, she must go to him.
Could she go? She loved the ease and beauty which surrounded her; andthis love now pointed out that going to him meant resigning all thecomforts of her father's house, all things that thus far had comprisedher life. And not alone resigning them, but substituting for them thecramped, mean surroundings of a poor man. Was the love of a poor mansufficient to balance, and balance for the rest of life, the good thingsthat would be given up?
She had said to David with ringing joy, "I shall marry you anyhow!"--andnow, with the same glow of the soul, she swept her present life out ofconsideration. Yes, she could give it up! But following immediately uponthe impulse of renunciation came the realisation that David was not onlya poor man--he was, and must be always, to the rest of the world acriminal. Was her love strong enough, and was she strong enough, toshare a criminal's dishonour and struggles--even though she knew him tobe guiltless?
While this question was asking itself her father entered, and with himher Aunt Caroline--in an ermine-lined opera cloak and a rustlingcream-lace gown, about her plump throat a collar of pearls and in hergray hair a constellation of diamonds.
"Why, Helen, sitting here all alone, and at one o'clock!" her auntcried. "Well, at any rate it means you're feeling better." Helen had hadher dinner brought to her sitting-room, and had excused herself from theopera on the plea of indisposition.
Helen returned the kiss with which her aunt, bending over, lightlytouched her cheek. She would have preferred to say nothing of David'svisit, but she knew her aunt, who had charge of the servants, woulddoubtless learn of it on the morrow from the housekeeper.
"But I haven't been alone the whole evening," she returned quietly. "Mr.Aldrich called."
Mrs. Bosworth hopelessly lifted her shoulders, whose fulness herfifty-odd years had not impaired. "What'll your help-the-poor ideas makeyou do next!" she cried. "Think of giving up Melba to be bored a wholeevening by an East Side protege! And such a lot of your friends came toour box, too. Mr. Allen was very disappointed."
"It seems to me, too, Helen," said her father who stood with his back tothe fire, "that you're carrying your philanthropy a little too far inhaving your brands-snatched-from-the-burning so much at the house."
Helen did not answer.
"Well, I suppose you must find some satisfaction in it or you wouldn'tdo it," Mrs. Bosworth sighed. "Good night, dear."
They kissed again, perfunctorily. Helen liked her aunt in that moderateway in which we all like good-natured, fate-made intimates whoseinterests touch our own at few points. And Mrs. Bosworth's complacentgood-nature there was no denying--even if her interest did pause,way-worn, after it had journeyed out as far as those remote people whohad only twenty-five thousand a year.
"Don't sit too long," said her father, bending down. During the lastfour weeks she had tried to wear before her father an unchanged manner.So she now met his lips with her own. "Only a few minutes longer; goodnight," she said.
When they had gone her gaze returned to the fire, and her mind gatheredabout her father. Since she had learned he was a great highwayman whoseplunderings were so large as to be respectable, her days and nights hadbeen filled with thoughts of him, and of her relation to him and hisfortune. She realised that if he were seen by the world as he actuallywas, and if the world had the same courage to condemn large thefts thatit had to condemn small thefts, he would be dishonoured far below David.She realised that his great fortune was founded on theft, that the foodshe ate, the dresses she wore, the house she lived in, were paid forwith money that was rightly others!
What should she do?--for almost a month that question had hardly lefther: Should she beg her father to change his business ways, and torestore his money to whom he had defrauded? She knew the power was notin her, nor any other, to change him. Since he was going to continuegathering in other people's money with his own, should she keep silentand remain by him, and see that the money was spent in service of thepeople? Or should she, refusing to live on dishonest income, withdrawfrom his house and shape her own life?
She came out of her thoughts with a start to find herself shivering, thebronze clock on the mantel pointing at two, and the glowing romance inthe fire-place cooled to gray ashes. When she reached her sitting-roomshe remembered a yellow photograph of David that on the day he hadconfessed his guilt she had tried to burn, and which she had sincetried to forget, but which she had often taken from its hiding-place andgazed at in pained wonderment. She took this out of the drawer of herwriting desk, went into her bedroom and set it upon the reading-tablebeside her bed. After preparing herself for sleep she lit the candles onthe table, turned out the gas, and lying with her head high up on thepillows she looked with glowing eyes on the open boyish face. After atime she reached a white arm for the picture, pressed a kiss upon itsyellowed lips, then snuffed the candle and held the picture against herheart; and, lying so, she presently drifted softly away into sleep.
Paradise walked home with David that night. He did not think of thebarrier that stood between Helen and him--that must always keep themapart despite her declaration that she would marry him. He thought onlyof her love. This fact was so supremely large that it had filled hispresent. At times he thrilled with awe, as though God had descended andwere walking at his side. Again he could barely hold down the eruptivecries of his exultation; he clenched his hands, and tensed his arms, andflung his face up at the far, white stars.
He strode through the night, too excited to think of anything but Helenand himself. He and she--they were the world. But presently, after hoursof walking, his thoughts went to people without the walls of hisparadise. He thought of Rogers--and the misery of Rogers was anaccusation against his joy. He had gained everything--Rogers had losteverything. He was ashamed of himself, and he tried to subdue hishappiness by thinking of Rogers's failure and hopelessness.
And the thought of Kate shot through him a great jagged pain. Herealised how fierce must have been the struggle that had preceded hercall on Helen; he realised that he owed his paradise to the apotheosisof her love; and he realised, too, how utterly beyond his power it wasto make her any repayment.
When, toward three o'clock, he reached his house, he was surprised tosee that a light burned in Roger's office. The office door was unlocked,and he entered. Beside her desk stood Kate, suddenly risen, and on thedesk's arm lay a few note-books, a dictionary and a pair of sateensleeve-protectors.
"I've come for my things--I've got a new job," she said after a moment,in a dry unnatural voice.
David saw instantly through her pitiful craft--knew instantly how longshe had been waiting there. He filled tinglingly with a quick rush ofpity and pain and tenderness. He wanted to thank her, but he felt theemptiness of words, and dared not. So, confusedly, awkwardly, he stoodlooking at the white face.
Her eyes holding to his like a magnetic needle, she moved across theroom, paused a pace away, and stared, hardly breathing, up at him. Herburning, questioning eyes, ringed with their
purple misery, forced fromhim a low cry of pain.
"Oh, Kate!--Kate!"
She trembled slightly at his voice. "You've seen her!" she whispered.
"Yes."
He felt tears scalding his eyes. Suddenly he caught her hands and brokenwords leaped from his lips.
"What a wonderful soul you are!--I can't speak my thanks, but in myheart--"
She jerked her hands away and drew back. "Don't!" she gasped. "Don't!"
He hated himself for the suffering he was causing her--for hishelplessness to thank her, to say the thing in his heart.
She continued to stare up at him with the same quivering tensity. Aftera moment she asked in a dry whisper:
"And she loves you?"
"Yes."
A sharp moan escaped her. She put an unsteady hand out and caught herdesk, and the edge of David's vision saw how the fingers clenched thewood.
"I knew it--from the way she acted," she said mechanically.
For several moments more she looked up at him, her face as pale asdeath. Then she turned and, thoughtless of her belongings, walked towardthe door, a thin, unsteady figure. As she reached for the knob he sprangacross the room with a cry and caught her outstretched hand.
"Oh, Kate--forgive me!--I hate myself!--Forgive me!"
Her hand tightened spasmodically on his, her body swayed, her eyesflamed up into his. "Oh, David!" burst from her in a low moan ofinfinite pain and loss. For a moment she was all a-tremble. Then sheclenched herself in an effort at self-control, answered him with a slownod, and dropping her head turned and went through the door.
