The Best Short Stories of 1915 Part 23

"Yes. I don't forget I've one foreign ancestor to boast of, and bless Heaven for it! How my great-grandmother ever happened to marry--see this!" Hastings went on, incoherently catching her arm and waving his other over the exquisite array of her "colonial" chamber. "Now, this, to you, is--well--it's as 'amusing' as if you'd tried to furnish a room to imitate one in Cinderella's palace, as 'interesting' as if you'd done it Louis Sixteenth, or--or--its meaning is hardly more personal to you than the room you furnished in Munich that winter."--She blushed admiringly at memory of their first meeting.--"The problem appealed to you, and you made it charming. But to me--"

"You really hate it," said Julia, determined to face the facts.

"I really love it," he retorted sadly, "the way you couldn't help loving a parent, even though you mightn't believe in him."

"Jack," she characteristically cried out to him again, "there is one thing more that I hardly dare show you then. You'll think me such a fool. I--"

A servant appeared to announce that luncheon was ready.

"Don't say anything to _them_ against it," she told him on the way down.

That wasn't, however, what made him silent during the meal. He took little part in the conversation except when Mr. and Mrs. Elliott plied him with questions, which he then found himself answering with only unsatisfactory vagueness--answers that he could do nothing, not even when Julia flew tenderly to his rescue, to make any better. Yes, he liked the house, he said gravely. It was a nice old house. And he thought how murky, despite its new coats of cleaning, was that far corner up near the ceiling. No, he wasn't sorry, he responded, that he had left the ecole des Beaux Arts to devote all his time to painting; it was the one thing he was suited for. Yes, his foreign great-grandfather had been a portrait-painter. He couldn't remember what his name was.

Tremaine? Henry Tremaine. That was it. Julia was looking hard at him.

She was gazing down at her plate. He knew he had eaten nothing. He could not eat. No, he wasn't at all hungry. Why was it so chilly? he thought. Doubtless he had picked up a germ. The house, he muttered to himself, was on his nerves. It was so everlastingly gloomy! Julia had reinhabited it too authentically. "Eberdeen Manor"--"Mr. Eberdeen's House." What names!

An hour afterward he told Julia he was dead sleepy and that, contrary to all his habits, he was going up-stairs to take a nap. Dinner was at seven? All right, he would be in better shape by then. He felt wretchedly, but he didn't say so.

Out in the hall he paused a moment at the foot of the wide lower staircase. The ticking of a good many clocks came to him from different parts of the house; they seemed to focus their monotonous activity especially on his hearing. Extraordinary recollections swept him. He remembered having heard an old nurse, Sarah Teale, describe how her aunt once rushed out the back door right in the midst of frying doughnuts, and was instantly stricken with paralysis on account of it. There was a low groaning; a moan floated to him from somewhere above. Bravely he forced himself to climb the stairs toward it. He turned the k.n.o.b. The door stuck. He shook it again, and it yielded.

II

It was nearly dark when he awoke. A late, a very late, an unnaturally late, afternoon dusk shadowed in streaks across the floor. He could hardly breathe. The windows were close shut. The striped shades were drawn down to the sills. But he could see the yellowed print of Da Vinci's "Last Supper"--the one he had bought at Milan--hanging on the panel above the empty hearth. There was the sand-shaker on his maple desk. That old lithograph of the two kittens over beside the bureau was crooked. He must remember to straighten it. The wall-paper was getting dingy.

He stretched himself. A sharp pain was going through his head. But it was late; he must get up and dress, or he wouldn't be ready in time.

The clothes he had just taken off lay across an arm of the painted chair by his bed. He lifted the coat, and let it fall from his grasp.

He moved over to the wash-stand. The Chinese pitcher was as light as if filled with air when he turned its nose to the basin. The hat-tub stood on end between the wash-stand and the closet door. He reached for the battered old red ta.s.sel of the bell-rope and pulled it. It was so late,--it was getting later,--he must hurry, whether Simpkins came or not. He could manage. And he opened the closet door, sighing at the bothersome prospect of getting into his togs. He ran his hand over his hair. Where was the mirror? And, damme! he had no light!

The shoes were a trifle hard to draw on, too small for him; the breeches were badly in need of pressing; the coat was stiff. He began opening drawers in the bureau, delving through piles of neatly folded linen and silk. At last he chose a s.h.i.+rt and put it on over his head.

He laid aside the purple satin waistcoat until he should have arranged his stock, which he found tight, and difficult to make meet in the back.

But he finally got it adjusted; he brought the thick, wide ends around in front, tied them in a huge bow while he walked over to the window and gazed out. Fine night. The mist had gone, the stars were dimly appearing. He turned back for his waistcoat and jacket. By mistake he opened the closet door again instead of the one which led into the hall.

"I knew you would come!" she said, approaching so near to him from out the somber blackness of the garments which draped the walls that he could see her quite plainly by the light of the candle in her hand.

She wasn't a day over twenty. If she was pale, it was more the pallor of fright than of ill health, or perhaps only because her skin showed so white, lighted by the faint glare, in contrast to her deep eyes and to the thick, glossy braids bound round and round above her forehead.

"John, John, won't you speak to me?"

He took a step forward, faltering. At that moment there was a brusque movement beside him, and he turned to behold there a young man, dressed in knee-breeches, wearing a purple waistcoat and velvet coat, as like unto himself as his own image.

"Duty bade me come," the stranger answered stiffly, as if it was for his ears that her words had been intended.

Hastings' gaze flew to meet hers, which he was astonished to find still directed on him instead of on the speaker. He felt himself melted to pity by her frailness and beauty and charm, so that he turned almost angrily toward the intruder, who, at that moment, however, began to address her in tones Hastings could but admire:

"To you!" cried out the young stranger--"you, for whom duty knows no promptings!"

At that, Hastings turned to her again, his heart rent by the plea she uttered.

"But you love me? You love me? Oh, say it to me!" And she was looking not at his counterpart; she was imploring _him_, she was stretching her arms out to _him_, she was veritably making her plea to _him_, as if he were the one who had elicited it.

"I will do anything for you--anything!" he would have promised her had not the threat of the stranger so like unto himself interrupted.

"Don't mock my patience, Lydia," Hastings heard as once more he s.h.i.+fted his eyes to the speaker.

It was maddening how from one to the other of them his sympathies veered. The sepulchral voice of the man seemed to express Hastings'

own thoughts; yet her sweet appeal awoke resentful fury for what words he dared say to her. If only Hastings might explain, when she stared so reproachfully, that it was only he who had spoken!

Momentarily at a loss, she put the candle down on a little shelf. She rubbed her hands one about the other as if her doing so might lessen the affront which she had now somehow to meet. When at last she spoke, her calm, even tones were like the loveliness of primroses; her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with simple trustfulness.

"You own me, O my husband," she said, "heart--heart, body, and soul. Do with me what you will."

Why should she be so abject? But when Hastings heard the voice of that other, he was again awed by it.

"Think not that I haven't avenged myself!" the voice sneeringly proclaimed.

Hastings looked. For the first time he noticed that the stranger's arm was in a sling; there was a mole on the cheek near the corner of those tightly compressed lips.

She shook like a leaf in a gale. For dread minutes she faced Hastings tremblingly. Coming nearer to him she murmured:

"Are you badly hurt, my--my husband?"

Hastings glanced down at his own arm, on which her eyes seemed to rest; then he suddenly beheld, almost as one beholds one's self in a mirror, his counterpart recoil from her reach while he exclaimed scornfully:

"Don't--don't touch me! Nor pray think that your wiles will ever win from me any forgiveness."

She stopped stock-still.

"Is he dead?" she demanded.

"Ah, then, you do admit, do you, that you love him?" the other flung at her. "Say it to me! say it to me!" he charged, and he half closed his eyes; "or--by Heaven! I will--"

Hastings felt the justice of this accusation, and turned doubtingly back to the girl for her answer. She stared at him, waiting.

"What is the use?" she asked in despair. "Would you believe me?"

"If you _confess_ I will believe you," stated the stranger.

It seemed to Hastings that she grew visibly taller; her face underwent a spasm of pain; and apparently unable longer to remain silent, she cried out to him:

"Can it be that for you a confession is more to be believed than aught which has not to be confessed?" And Hastings could feel the touch of her hand cold on his wrist.

But the other insisted so convincingly that Hastings looked at him once more with confidence.

"The truth," she said sadly, "is only for those who have faith; you--you prefer the sinner, whom you may crush into a penitent. Your egotism demands the power to forgive; you have not the courage to love."

The stranger took a step nearer her, but she was looking at Hastings.

"He is the only one who is worthy to believe me--he, whom you blame me for loving. I do love him, then, but with a love no codes of yours can understand. For I am innocent, to use the word by which you forgivingly call the unjustly accused."

Hastings quailed beneath the bitterness of her irony; he saw, too, how the man who so resembled him fell back against an old calico bag, stuffed with remnants probably, that hung on a hook right behind where he had been standing; but when he faced her once more, he marveled at the change in her appearance.