The Whirligig of Time Part 59

"I don't know whether it was pure accident or whether he somehow guessed part of the truth. At any rate it roused me. I was very sure that what he said was not true, or at least I was very anxious that it should not be true, which often comes to the same thing. I argued with him for some time, and when words failed there were other things. But he did not seem entirely convinced.

"After a while, as we sat there, Hilary appeared with a telegram that had just arrived for me. I saw that it was a cable message and thought it was probably from Milton Leffert, as he had said that he might possibly come abroad on business during the summer and would look me up if he did. And somehow the thought of Milton Leffert at that moment filled me with the most intense disgust....

"'Now,' I said when Hilary had gone, 'I'm tired of arguing; here may be a chance to prove myself by actions. Open this telegram, and tell me if it's from Milton Leffert!'

"He looked at me in a dazed sort of way. 'Open it!' I repeated, stamping my foot. I was drunk with love and moonlight and I imagine I must have acted like a fury. I know I felt like one.

"He opened the telegram and read it, gravely and silently.

"'Is it or is it not from Milton Leffert?'

"'Yes. He--'

"'That's all I want to know--don't say another word! Do you hear? Never tell me another word about that telegram as long as you live! And now destroy it--here--before my eyes! I'm going to put Milton Leffert out of my life forever, here and now! Go on, destroy it!'

"Adrian hesitated. He seemed almost frightened. 'But--' he began.

"'Adrian!' I turned toward him with the moonlight beating full down on me. I was not so bad-looking in those days; I daresay I was not bad-looking at all as I stood there in the moonlight. At least I know that woman never used her beauty more consciously than I did in that moment.

"'Adrian, look at me! Do you love me?'

"He allowed that he did.

"'Then do what I say. Destroy that telegram and never mention it or that man's name to me again!'

"A change came over him. He hesitated no longer; he became forceful and determined.

"'Very well,' he cried, 'if you're not mine now you will be! Here's good-by to Milton Leffert!'

"He took some matches from his pocket and lit the end of the paper. When it was burning brightly he dropped it over the edge of the terrace and it floated out into the s.p.a.ce beneath. We stood together and watched it as it fell, burning red in the moonlight....

"Then for some weeks we were happy. Adrian seemed particularly so; he had had his gloomy moods before that but now they pa.s.sed away entirely.

And if there was a cloud of suspicion that I had done wrong in my own mind I was so happy in seeing Adrian's joy that I paid no attention to it.

"Only one thing struck me as odd; he would not let me tell my stepmother. He gave a number of reasons for it; it would make his position with us uncomfortable; he could not be a tutor and a lover at the same time; he was writing to his relatives and wanted to wait till they knew; we must wait till we were absolutely sure of ourselves, and so forth. One of these reasons might have convinced me, but his giving so many of them made me suspect, even as I obeyed him, that none of them was the real one. I wondered what it could be. I found out, soon enough.

"We left Italy and worked slowly northward. Several weeks after the scene on the terrace we reached Paris. There we met a number of our American friends, some of whom had just arrived from home. One day my stepmother and I were sitting talking with one of these--Elizabeth Haldane it was--and in the course of the conversation she happened to say: 'Very sad, isn't it, about poor Milton Leffert?'

"'What is sad?' asked my stepmother.

"'Why, haven't you heard?' said Elizabeth. 'He died a short time before we left. Brain fever or something of the sort--from overwork, they said.

He was planning to run for the State Legislature this fall.' I saw her glancing round; she couldn't keep her eyes off me. But I sat still as a stone....

"As soon as I could I took Adrian off alone.

"'Adrian,' I said, 'the time has come when you've got to tell me what was in that telegram.'

"'Never,' said he, smiling. 'I promised, you know,'

"'I release you from your promise.'

"'Even so, I can't tell you.'

"'Adrian,' said I, looking him full in the face, 'Milton Leffert is dead.'

"'I'm sorry to hear it,' said he.

"I blazed up at that. 'Stop lying to me,' I cried, 'and tell me what was in that telegram!'

"He confessed at last that it was from Jane Leffert saying that her brother was dangerously ill and asking me to come to him if possible or at least send some message. I knew well enough what it must have been, but I wanted to wring it from his lips....

"'Well, have you nothing to say to me?' he asked.

"I didn't answer for some time--I couldn't. To tell the truth I hadn't been thinking of him. At last I turned on him. 'You contemptible creature,' I managed to say.

"'Why?' he whined. 'You've no right to call me names. You made me do it.

If you're sorry now it's your own fault.'

"'I was to blame,' I answered. 'Heaven forbid that I should try to excuse my own fault. But do you think that lets you out? Suppose the positions had been reversed; suppose you had been ill and Milton with me. Do you imagine he would have let me remain in ignorance while you lay dying and in need of me, no matter what I told him to do or not to do? Are you so weak and mean that you can't conceive of any one being strong and good?'

"'It was because I loved you so much that I did it,' he said.

"'Oh, Adrian,' I told him, 'if you really loved me, why did you let me do a thing you knew I'd live to regret? If you really loved me, what had you to fear but that?'

"'You might have saved his life,' he answered.

"Oh, James, the anguish of hearing those words from his lips! The man I did not love telling me I might have saved the life of the man I did!

For now that it was too late I knew well enough who it was that I loved.

In one flash I saw the two men as they were, one strong, quiet, unselfish, the other selfish, cowardly, mean-spirited. Now I saw why he had not wanted me to tell my stepmother of our engagement. He wanted to cover up his own part in the affair in case anything unpleasant happened when I heard of Milton's death.

"I told my stepmother everything as soon as I could and she behaved splendidly. She sent Adrian away and I never saw him again. And as I announced my intention of going home on the next steamer she decided it was best to give up the rest of her trip and take the boys along back with me. So we all went, that same week.

"People wondered, when we arrived so long ahead of time, and came pretty near to guessing the whole truth. But I didn't care. The one thing I wanted in the world was to see Milton's sister, his one surviving relative.

"'Jane Leffert,' I wrote her, 'if you can bear to look on the woman who killed your brother, let her come and tell you she's sorry.' She was a good woman and understood. The next day I went to her house. She took me upstairs and showed me his room, the bed where he had died. I never said a word all the time. Then, as she was really a very remarkable woman, she handed me an old brooch of her mother's containing a miniature of him painted when he was four years old, and told me it was mine to keep.

Then for the first time I broke down and cried....

"If it hadn't been for Jane Leffert I think I should have gone mad. She never tried to hide the truth from me. She admitted, when I asked her, that Milton had, to all intents and purposes, worked himself to death for me, and that the doctor had said the one hope for him lay in his seeing me or hearing I was coming to him. But never a word of blame or reproach did she give me, never a hint of a feeling of it. She knew how easy it is to make mistakes in life, she knew how hard it is to atone for them. She it was who gave me the blessed thought that it was worth while to go on living as part of my atonement, and that if I put into my life the things I had learned from him I might even, to a certain extent, make Milton live on in me.

"So instead of taking poison or becoming a Carmelite nun I went on living at home as before, stimulated and inspired by that idea. It was hard at first, but somehow the harder things were the greater the satisfaction I took in life. By the time I had lightened the remaining years of my stepmother's life and nursed Jane Leffert through her last illness I became content with my lot and, in a way, happy. I never asked for happiness nor wanted it again on earth, but it came, at last. There is something purifying about loving a dead person very much. The chief danger is in its making one morbid, but as I was always a thoroughly practical person with a strong natural taste for life it did me nothing but good. But I don't prescribe it for any one who can get anything better....

"One thing in particular helped me to keep my mind on earth and remind me of the far-reaching effects of wrong-doing. I have said that Hilary, your father, was extremely fond of Adrian. Well, somehow he got the idea into his head that I had thrown him over because of his poverty, and he never forgave me for it. Till his dying day he believed that I really loved Adrian most but was afraid to marry him. Over and over again I told him the truth, taking a sort of fierce pleasure in being able to tell any one that I had never loved any one but Milton Leffert.

"'Then why did you let Adrian make love to you?' Hilary would answer, 'and why did you make him burn that telegram? I know, I heard you as I walked down the path.' Nothing I could say ever made him understand. And the hardest part of it was that I couldn't exactly blame him for not being convinced.

"Taking him at that impressionable time of life the thing had a tremendous effect on him. The idea grew into him that no human feeling could stand the test of hard facts; that that was the way love worked out in real life. From that time on his mind steadily developed and his soul steadily dwindled. He became practical, brilliant, worldly wise, heartless. We grew gradually more and more estranged; you seldom heard him mention my name, I suppose? That's why you never heard before what I've been telling you, or at least the whole truth of it.... And so, as he consciously modeled certain of his mannerisms after those of Adrian he unconsciously grew more and more like him in character; and I had the satisfaction of watching the change and realizing that it was due, in part at least, to me. And the thought of how I unwillingly hurt him has made me all the more anxious to make reparation by being of service to his two boys. Perhaps you can imagine some of the things I've feared for them...."