Mr. Claghorn's Daughter Part 43

"I never thought of buying."

"No, not in plain terms. But at my age, together with the fact that I am a stranger, at least a newcomer, in this State, money would be my only resource--perhaps a hopeless one, in any case. The rich man must learn his lesson, which is, that wealth bars the way to honor."

"Our senior Senator is rich."

"I do not speak of moderately rich men. Suspicion is even directed (unjustly, I believe) against such men. But the whole State knows that, politically, our Senator has risen from the ranks. Perhaps he has been compelled to buy that which is his due--who can tell? But all know that at least he has earned the distinction he has won."

"And could you not earn it?"

"No. I am not merely moderately rich. I should be 'held up' by every rogue that glories in the name of politician. If I refused to buy, and refuse I must, I should have no chance whatever. Gold besmirches many things. A rich man is of necessity defiled, let him keep his hands as clean as he can."

Mrs. Joe sighed.

"You have not been willing to realize the facts which influence my life," he went on. "We must look facts in the face. Political distinction is not for me. For your sake I would try, were I not a.s.sured that your disappointment would be inevitable. He laid his hand upon her shoulder. He spoke very kindly.

"Mark," she said--there were tears in her eyes--"I wish you were happy."

"If I am content----"

"But you are not. Oh, Mark, seek happiness. Marry."

He smiled grimly. "I wish I could," he said.

"Mark, you say my dream is hopeless. I surrender it. Is yours less hopeless? You wear your life away. Is it worthy to wait for a man to die?"

He made no answer.

"Dear," she said, and the word moved him deeply, for though he knew how much he was beloved of his mother, a term of tenderness was rare from her lips--"Dear, you know what she wrote me."

"You showed me the letter. She gave me the same advice long ago."

"It is the right thing to do. Paula loves you. Natalie is lost to you.

You do not know where she is; she does not intend that you shall know.

She will not marry you now, even though death were to free her from the bonds she has a.s.sumed. She is right. Mind, Mark, I say no word of censure. I believe in her purity as I do in Paula's--but the world will talk. That which she has done cannot be kept secret, but her motive must remain a secret. Had the man died----"

"Enough!" he said sternly. "You say you believe in her as you do in Paula. No shadow of suspicion can ever cross my mind or yours. We need not consider the world----"

"But, my son, she will consider it. She does consider it. Her letter to me shows it. That letter was no easy one for a woman to write. Do you think she would even indirectly have disclosed your secret to me, except that she believed it necessary for your good? I do not doubt, Mark, that she has renounced your love even to you. Is it not unworthy to----"

"To love without hope? Perhaps it is. But since the fact is not generally known--here, as in some other things, the sin consists in being found out." He laughed. "You know you didn't find out; you were told."

"Yes; in the hope, I verily believe, that the disclosure would wound you and so kill your love."

"It wounded, certainly," he said bitterly. "Perhaps, if you give it time, the wound may yet be as fatal as you wish--as she wished." He laughed again very grimly. "Strange creatures, women," he said. "Their self-sacrifice includes the sacrifice of every one but self."

"That is cruel! From no possible point of view can her life be a happy one."

"How you quarrel about a man and cling together against a man!" he said, smiling down upon the lady, who had no other answer than the shrug which, when it moves feminine shoulders, implies that masculine density is impenetrable. His smile broke into laughter.

It aroused her secret indignation; but encouraged her, too. If he could laugh, her case was not hopeless.

"Mark, let us be sensible. You should marry and have children. What else is open to you, the rich man? You have no faith in the world, none in friends.h.i.+p, none in love. Consider what your life must be if, at this age, all purer sources of feeling are dried up! In marriage you will find them all reopened. Your family will be your world. You need children. I need them. We are rich; yes, horribly rich. What is all this worth to us? You are the last of a race, honorable since the tenant of yonder grave first set foot upon this soil; honorable before that time.

Shall that race die in you? My son, that old-world notion of Family is estimable. This country needs that it be cherished. The wealth will not be so new in the next generation. Your sons will not be strangers in the land of their fathers. You shall so train them that in them you shall reap the distinction denied to you. You say I am yet young. I am not old, and may still live to see my grandsons honored by their fellow men.

By your own confession nothing remains to you but marriage. Love is offered you daily, by one most sweet and most lovable. Paula----"

He stopped her by a gesture. Her unwonted energy had impressed him. She had spoken well. "You have uttered many truths," he said, "but what you say of Paula is not kind, nor do you know----"

"Mark! on my honor as a woman, I believe that Paula loves you." Then she left him.

He remained long musing. Why should he not make his mother happy? It was true, waiting for a man to die was a pitiful occupation. And even should the man die there would be no hope for him. It was a year since Natalie had hidden herself with her burden and Tabitha Cone. Hidden herself, as he well knew, from him. She had written both him and his mother. She had not feared to again acknowledge her love; but she had prayed him to forget her. And she had told him that Paula loved him; she had shown him that his duty required him to love Paula in return; finally, she had, almost sternly, bade him cease to hope.

Perhaps his mother was right. Perhaps Paula loved him--as much as she could love. He loved her in the same cool fas.h.i.+on. He was used to her.

She was very beautiful, completely amiable, kind and gentle. Not very brilliant, yet if simple-minded, not a fool. Marriage would bring out all there was of Paula, and that might be much more than was generally suspected. And whatever it was it would be lovable. He knew he was living the life of a fool. Why live that life consciously? Why not make his mother completely happy; Paula and himself happier; as happy as they could be?

He turned to his desk and opened a hidden drawer therein. From this he took a small packet of papers. "A man about to die or marry should set his house in order," he muttered, as he spread the papers open. There was the first letter Natalie had ever written him; a reply to his letter of condolence concerning her father's death. He glanced over it and slowly tore it into fragments. He did the same with the few others written by her, all except the last he had received. This was in answer to a letter into which he had thrown all the strength of his soul, lowering, if not completely breaking down, the last barriers of reserve behind which those who feel deeply hide their hearts.

He could not complain that in her answer she had not been equally frank.

"From the innermost depths of my soul I love you, and if more can be, I honor you still more--and because I so love and honor you I must not see you again. I have loved you since the day I first saw you in the Odenwald. I loved you when I became the betrothed of another. I hoped then you would find a way to free me from the promise I had given. I aver before Heaven that I tried with all my strength to be a faithful wife. I loved my husband; alas! not as I know now, with a wife's love, but I believed it. Yet--let me confess it--at the very bottom of my heart slept my love for you, not dead as I had thought it. I have sinned against you, against him who was my husband, against myself. We must all suffer for my sin. You are strong. I must gather all the strength I can for the duty that my guilt has laid upon me--to bear my fate and to make a ruined life as endurable as unremitting care can make it. My sin was great. Consider my expiation! I must always see before my eyes my handiwork.

"You love me. Do you think that ever a doubt of your love crosses my mind? You will always love me. I know it. But, if you see me no more that love will, in time, become a tender reminiscence--not worth a tear, rather a smile--of pity let it be, for the lives that are wrecked. But from this day forth let your own life present a fair ideal to be realized. One has grown up beside you whose fate is in your hands. The fas.h.i.+oning of her destiny lies with you. To be a happy wife and mother, the lot for which nature intended her, or to live the barren life of a religious devotee; and knowing her as I do, I know that for you, embittered and distrustful by reason of your burden of inordinate wealth, she is supremely fitted to make your life serene and cheerful in return for the felicity you will bring to her.

"Adieu, for the last time. I shall not forget you, but shall love you as long as I live, and as warmly as I love you now. But deliberately, and with unalterable resolve, I have chosen my lot. Nothing, not even the hand of death, can render me fit to be more to you than the memory of one who has lived her life."

He slowly tore the letter into fragments as he had torn the others.

Perhaps his mouth twitched as he did so. He looked upon the little heap of paper on his desk. "The Romance of a Rich Young Man," he muttered, and smiled at the conceit. Then he gathered the fragments in his hand and strewed them upon some tinder in the chimney and applied a match.

"Gone up in Smoke," he said aloud.

"Did you speak?" asked his mother, who had entered the room.

"I repeated the t.i.tle of a novel I am going to write," he said. "I wanted to hear how it would sound."

"You must live a romance before you can write one, Mark."

"True," he answered dryly. "I need experience. Where is Paula?"

"Oh, Mark!"

He kissed her. "Yes," he said, "I will do what I can to make you happy, and--gain experience."

Mrs. Joe's eyes beamed through her tears.

"She is in the library."

Leaving the room by the window, which opened upon a veranda, he walked toward the library, the windows of which opened upon the same veranda.

The library windows were divided in the centre, like doors. They were open now, and the thick French plate reflected like a mirror. In the open window pane he saw, as in a mirror, a portion of the interior.

Paula was there, and Paula's head nestled against the breast of Father Cameril, and the good Father's arm encircled her while his lips pressed hers.

Mark stole silently away.