The Auction Block Part 61

"I know! I know!" The words were wrung from him like a groan. "But the thing is bigger and stronger than I am. It takes both of us to fight it. If she should--leave me I'd never pull through and--I wouldn't want to."

Never until she left Lorelei's house and turned toward the white lights of Broadway did Adoree Demorest fully realize whither her theatrical career had carried her. Lorelei, it seemed to her now, had lived to high purpose; she was soon to be a mother. But as for herself--the dancer cringed at the thought. What had her life brought? Notoriety, shame! In the eyes of men she was abominable.

She had sold herself for the satisfaction of seeing a false name blazoned in electric lights, while Lorelei had played the game differently and won. Yes, she would have won even though she died to-night. But how could a woman like Adoree Demorest, "The King's Favorite," "The Woman with the Rubies," hope for wifehood or for motherhood? The bitterness of these reflections lay in the fact that Adoree knew herself to be pure. But the world considered her evil, and evil in its eyes she would remain. How could she hope to bring anything but misery to a husband or bequeath anything but shame to a child? At this moment she would gladly have changed places with that other girl whose life hung in the scales.

John Merkle had never lost interest in Lorelei, nor forgotten her refusal of his well-meant offer of a.s.sistance. From the night of their first meeting she had intrigued his interest, and her marriage to Bob had deepened his friendly feeling. Although he prided himself upon a reputation for harsh cynicism and cherished the conviction that he was wholly without sentiment, he was in reality more emotional than he believed, and Lorelei's courageous efforts to regenerate her husband, her vigorous determination to build respectability and happiness out of the unpromising materials at her hand, had excited his liveliest sympathy. It pleased him to read into her character beauties and n.o.bilities of which she was utterly unconscious if not actually devoid. Now that she had come to a serious crisis Merkle's slowly growing resentment at Bob's parents for refusing to recognize her burst into anger. The result was that soon after his talk with Bob he telephoned Hannibal Wharton, making known the situation in the most disagreeable and biting manner of which he was capable.

Strange to say, Wharton heard him through, then thanked him before ringing off.

When Hannibal had repeated the news to his wife she moved slowly to a window and stood there staring down into the glittering chasm of Fifth Avenue. Bob's mother was a frail, erect, impa.s.sive woman, wearied and saddened with the weight of her husband's millions.

There had been a time when society knew her, but of late years she saw few people, and her name was seldom mentioned except in connection with her benefactions. Even the true satisfaction of giving had been denied her, since real charity means sacrifice.

Wealth had lent her a painful conspicuousness and had made her a target for multifarious demands so insistent, so ill-considered, so unworthy--many of them--that she had been forced into an isolation, more strict even than her husband's.

Great responsibilities had changed Hannibal Wharton into a machine; he had become mechanical even in his daily life, in his pleasures, in his relaxations. His suspicions and his dislikes were also more or less automatic, but in all his married life he had never found cause to complain of anything his wife had done.

He was serenely conscious, moreover, of her complete accord with his every action, and now, therefore, in reporting Merkle's conversation he spoke musingly, as a man speaks to himself.

"John loves to be caustic; he likes to vocalize his dyspepsia,"

the old man muttered. "Well, if it's as serious as he seems to think, we may be spared the disgrace of a grandchild." Mrs.

Wharton did not stir; there was something uncompromising in the rigid lines of her back and in her stiffly poised head. "People of her kind always have children," he continued, "and that's what I told Bob. I told him he was laying up trouble for himself."

"Bob had more to him than we thought," irrelevantly murmured the mother.

"More than we thought?" Hannibal shook his head. "Not more than I thought. I knew he had it in him; you were the one--"

"No, no! We both doubted. Perhaps this girl read him."

"Sure she read him!" snorted the father. "She read his bank-book.

But I fooled her."

"Do you remember when Bob was born?"

"Eh?"

"Do you remember? I had trouble, too."

Into Hannibal's eyes came a slow and painful light of reminiscence.

"The doctors thought--"

"Of course I remember!" her husband broke in. "Those d.a.m.ned doctors said you'd never come through it."

"Yes; I wasn't strong."

"But you did. I was with you. I fought for you. I wouldn't let you die. Remember it?" The speaker moistened his lips. "Why, I never forgot."

"Bob is experiencing something like that to-night."

Hannibal started, then he fumbled uncertainly for a cigar. When he had it lighted he said, gruffly, "Well, it made a man of me; I hope it'll help Bob."

Still staring out across the glowing lights and the mysterious, inky blots that lay below her, Mrs. Wharton went on: "You are thinking only of Bob, but that girl is suffering all I suffered that night, and I'm thinking of her, too. She is offering her life for the life of a little child, just as I offered mine."

There was a silence, then Hannibal looked up to find his wife standing over him with face strangely humble. Her eyes were appealing, her frail figure was shaking wretchedly.

"My dear!" he cried, rising.

"I can't keep it up, Hannibal. I can't pretend any longer. It's Bob's baby and it's ours--" Disregarding his denial, she ran on, swiftly: "I wanted more children, but I couldn't have them, so I've starved myself all these years. You can't understand, but I'm lonely, Hannibal, terribly lonely and sad. Bob grew up and went away, and all we had left was money. The dollars piled up; year by year they grew heavier and heavier until they squeezed our lives dry and crowded out everything. They even crowded out our son and- -spoiled him. They made you into a stone man; they came between me and the people and the things I loved; they walled me off from the world. My life is empty--empty. I want to mother something."

Hannibal inquired, hoa.r.s.ely: "Not this baby, surely? Not that woman's child?"

"It's Bob's baby and ours."

He looked down at her queerly for a moment. "The breed is rotten.

If he had married a decent girl--"

"John Merkle says she is splendid."

"How do you know?"

"I have talked with him. I have learned whatever I could about her, wherever I could, and it's all good. After all, Bob loves her, and isn't that enough?"

"But she doesn't love him," stormed the father. "She said she didn't. She wants his money, and she thinks she'll get it this way."

"Do you think money can pay her for what she is enduring at this minute? She's frightened, just as I was frightened when Bob was born. She's sick and suffering. But do you think all our dollars could buy that child from her? Money has made us hard, Hannibal; let's--be different."

"I'm afraid we have put it off too long," he answered, slowly.

"She won't forgive us, and I'm not sure I want her to."

"Bob's in trouble. Won't you go to him?"

Hannibal Wharton opened his lips, closed them; then, taking his hat and coat, he left the room.

But as the old man went up-town his nerve failed him. He was fixed in his ways, he had a blind faith in his own infallibility. Twice he rode up in the elevator to his son's door, twice he rode down again. The hall-man informed him that the crisis had not pa.s.sed, so, finding the night air not uncomfortable, Hannibal settled himself to wait. After all, he told himself, this was not the moment for a painful reconciliation.

As time dragged on he came to a reckoning with his conscience, and his meditations brought home the realization that despite his success, despite the love and companions.h.i.+p of his wife, he, too, was growing old and lonely.

During the chill, still hours after the city had gone to rest an automobile drew up to the apartment house; when its expected pa.s.senger emerged from the building a grim-faced stranger in a greatcoat accosted him. One glance challenged the physician's attention, and he answered:

"Yes, it's all over. A boy."

"And--Mrs. Wharton, the mother?"

"Youth is a wonderful thing, and she has everything to live for.

She is doing as well as could be expected. You're a relative, I presume?"

The old man hesitated, then his voice came boldly "Yes, I'm her father."

When the doctor had driven away Hannibal strode into the building and telephoned to the Waldorf, but now his words were short and oddly broken. Nevertheless they brought a light of gladness to the eyes of the woman who had waited all these hours.