The Hills of Refuge Part 42

At this point Michael told of the timely aid which had been given to Keith, the motive behind it, and the successful outcome of the operation. As he told it, it was a dramatic story which held Celeste spellbound.

"And he gave even _that_ money away!" Celeste cried. "I know he loves her, Michael, but, as you say, he is only a farm-hand and the other thing hangs over him. I know him well enough to understand that he'd never think of marriage in his condition. Oh, he must be unhappy, Michael! As you say, she may be the one woman in all the world for him, and yet he has to give her up. Poor, dear Charlie!"

"Yes, he is unfortunate, madam. He no longer drinks. All that is over.

He is a man among men, madam. His simple life and regular habits have improved him wonderfully. He is a young giant of a man. His skin is clear, and his eye bright, but he is sad--yes, he is sad and thoughtful, especially when he speaks of home and the little girl. He cautioned me not to mention him to her. He wants her to think of him as dead, because the young soon forget those who die."

Celeste rose suddenly. "I'll see you again," she said, clearing her husky throat. "I must go now. I thank you, Michael. No one else could have done what you have done." At the door she suddenly wheeled on him.

"Michael, wait, please!" she said. Her lips were twitching, her brows were contracted as if in deep, disturbed thought. She rested her thin white hands on the back of a chair and grasped it as for support.

"Michael," she continued, "did it ever occur to you that Charles may have been drawn into that trouble by others and may not have been _wholly_ to blame?"

"I can't say that I thought that, madam," said Michael, swinging awkwardly from one foot to the other and blinking. "I did always think, and believe, too, that he wasn't at himself when it happened. I told him I thought that once, and he did not deny it. That is why I've been so sorry for him, for a man ought not to be punished all his life for a thing that was done when he was--well, like Mr. Charles used to get."

"I see; I see what you think," and Celeste nodded as if in affirmation of some thought of her own. "And you say you think the two are in love with each other?"

"Oh yes, madam, and that is the sad part of it."

"And that but for Charles's secret trouble they would be married?"

"Yes, madam. I have no doubt of it."

"Thank you, Michael. You may have done him a great service by--by going to see him when you did. I mean," she added, starting as from some inner fear, "that reaching him just when you did with that money--"

"Oh yes, madam, Mr. Charles spoke of that a dozen times. You see, as I have tried to explain, it lifted a load from the young lady."

"I understand that," Celeste said, musingly. "And she is very pretty and sweet and gentle, you say?"

"She is everything a lady ought to be, madam, and, oh, I must say my heart ached for her, too, for I could see how she felt about him. She is full of spirit. She is the kind that would fight for a man to the last ditch and drop of blood. But, oh, madam, it seemed so sad! There he was in a farmer's clothes, his hands as hard as stone, and she--why, madam, he treated her like she was a princess of royal rank, and all the time with that old, sad look he used to have when he was scolding himself to me after one of his little sprees around town. Almost the last thing he said to me, madam, was that when he had helped her all he could he intended to slip away, for her own good, and take up his life somewhere else among strangers. It was then, madam, I a.s.sure you, that I almost lost my religion. I've been taught, madam, from my mother's knee--and she is a saint, if one ever lived--I say I've been taught that our Saviour died to help men who repent, and there was Mr. Charles bowed down like that without a hand held out to him. He gave up all he loved here--you, the little girl--his 'Sunbeam,' as he called her down there--and his brother, and now, when he has found some one that he loves, he must give her up also and start to roving again. I shed tears.

I couldn't help it, and it moved him. I could see that. We were in my room at the hotel. His face turned dark as he sat there on my bed trying to be calm. He stood up and shook himself and smiled. 'Mike,' he said, 'nothing counts that we do for ourselves. It is only by forgetting ourselves and helping others that we accomplish anything worth while.'"

"Thank you, Michael, I'll see you again soon," Celeste said, moving toward the door.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

"'Nothing counts that we do for ourselves,'" Celeste repeated, as she was ascending the stairs to her daughter's room. At the door she paused and listened for a moment, then, softly turning the bolt, she entered the room. The blinds were down to exclude the sunlight which was growing warm. On the great white bed Ruth lay asleep. One plump bare arm, shapely wrist, and hand lay against the ma.s.s of golden hair. Celeste stood at the foot of the bed, and with a mother's parched thirst drank from the picture before her eyes. How beautiful the child was! How exquisite the patrician brow, the neck, the contour of nose, mouth, and chin! How temperamentally sensitive, imaginative, and high-strung! How proud of her father, of his social and financial standing and his old name of Puritan respectability! How affectionate she was with her mother, how adored by the servants and by her absent uncle!

"She is all I have now!" thought Celeste, as she choked down a sob, "Can I do it--am I able to do it?"

She sat in a rocking-chair near the bed, her gaze still on the child's face. A sudden breeze fanned the shades of the windows inward. She locked her hands in her lap, her thin, blue-veined, irresolute hands in a lap of stone. "'Nothing counts that we do for ourselves,'" she quoted, uncompromisingly. "If I refuse I'll not be acting for myself, but for her--my baby--my darling baby! Charlie loved her enough to undertake her rescue, and I must help him carry it through. Yes, I can do that conscientiously. It would kill her to learn that her father was a convict. She couldn't grow up under it. It would blight her whole existence. At school she would hear it. In society it would be whispered behind her back and thrown in her face. Oh, it can't be! G.o.d would not allow it to be. He would not allow the sins of a father to fall on shoulders so frail and helpless. Some coa.r.s.e children would think nothing of it; it would kill my baby. She would brood over it--oh, I know my child! She would hold it in her mind night and day. From what she now is she would become an embittered cynic, soured against life and her Creator. She would never marry. She would not want to bring children into a world so full of pain. And yet, and yet--" Celeste rose and went to a window and stood looking out, peering through the small panes as a hopeless prisoner might.

"And yet--justice must be done." Her white lips framed the words which shrank from utterance. "Charlie has _his_ rights, and so has the girl he loves. He undertook our rescue without knowing the cost. He was full of repentance at the time over his trivial mistakes, but now he must see it differently. Shall we drive him to roving again? Would G.o.d give my child a happy life at such a cost? Would He blight the lives of two of His children for one--and those two wholly innocent? No, justice must be done. It must! It must! It must! But I can't be her executioner. Why, I'm her mother! She is all I have in the world!"

Celeste crept back to the bed and bent over the sleeping child. Her hand went out as if to caress the white brow, but her fingers lifted only a fragrant lock of hair, and this she bent and kissed as soundlessly as the sunlight's vibration on the rug-strewn floor.

The next day was Sunday. Leaving her husband and his uncle smoking over their papers in the dining-room, her child in the care of a maid, Celeste slipped away unnoticed. She did not often attend church, but she was going to-day. Why, she could not have explained. It was as if a building with a spire and chimes, altar and surpliced clergyman, white-robed choristers and bowed suppliants, would help her make the decision that a long, sleepless night had withheld. She felt faint as she entered the family pew and bowed her head, for she had taken little nourishment since her travail began. Somehow her own death seemed a near thing, but she did not care. There were other things so much worse than mere death.

She failed to comprehend any part of the sermon which the gray-haired minister was delivering in that far-off, detached tone. She noticed some rings on his stout fingers and wondered how such mere trinkets could be worn by an ordained helper of the despairing and the G.o.d-forsaken. As soon as the service was over she hastened homeward. She told herself that she would act at once and face her husband with a demand that either he or she should perform the bounden duty. But as she entered the door and heard the voices of the two men in the dining-room, and smelled the smoke of their cigars, her courage oozed from her. She could not tell them both. Her talk must be for William alone; it would be for him to inform his uncle, and he would do it. William, once shown the right road, would take it. She knew him well enough for that. His wavering for the past year had been like hers, but when he knew all and was faced with the call of justice, as she was facing it, he would obey.

At the foot of the stairs in the hall she paused. Should she go back to the two men, or--It was the rippling laugh of her child up-stairs, who was being amused by a maid, the joyous clapping of a small pair of hands, that drew Celeste up the carpeted steps and into the child's presence.

"Oh, mother, see what she has put on me!" Ruth cried, gleefully, as she sprang into the middle of the room robed in a filmy pink gown which had been made for her use in a cla.s.s in interpretative dancing, and held out the skirt, forming wings like those of a fairy floating over beds of roses. A circle of artificial flowers rested on the golden tresses.

Ruth's eyes were sparkling with delight as she bowed low in one of the postures she had been taught, and then glided gracefully into her mother's arms.

"Oh, we've had so much fun! Haven't we, Annette?"

"Madame will pardon me," the French maid said. "I know it is Sunday, but she was so full of joy when she waked that--"

"It doesn't matter," Celeste said. "You may go. I'll dress her for dinner myself."

And as she did it, that morning of all mornings to be remembered, Celeste was the most pitiable of all pitiable creatures. Her coming sacrifice was not like that of Abraham in his offering of Isaac to his G.o.d, for, while he was a child of G.o.d, Abraham was not a mother.

"Justice must be done!" she kept saying. "The happiness of two against the misery of one--two against _two_, in reality; but I don't count, I mustn't count. Charlie said to Michael that nothing counts that we do for ourselves, and this protesting ache within me is self, for my baby is myself. Sweet, sweet little daughter! Mother has the blade ready and must thrust it deep into your joyous heart. Oh, if my cup would only pa.s.s, and my will might be done instead of G.o.d's!" She held her child on her knees as she took off the pink symbol of dawn and robed her anew.

She was laying her child on an altar before G.o.d and no sacrificial ram was in sight.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

All the rest of the day Celeste was with Ruth. She walked with her in the Public Gardens. She stayed away from home, fearing that some one might call, and she felt unequal to the mocking convention. Surely this was no time for smirking formalities. When, as the sun was going down, she and the child returned home she found no one there except the servants. She felt relieved, for she was not prepared yet to meet her husband's eye, for surely he would know that something unusual had happened to her. She was glad that he did not return till just before the supper was served. She took Ruth down-stairs and into the dining-room as soon as the meal was announced. William and his uncle had met again in the parlor and were talking there in low tones. She and Ruth were in their places at the table when they came in.

"Yes, we certainly put it over on them," the old man said, with a chuckling laugh. "I felt sure the market was firm and sent my wire at once."

"I was confident, too," William answered, "but I never knew you to take a risk, and it may have been due to that fact that I was so undisturbed."

"Well, I think I can say as much for you, William," the old man answered. "Since I have been with you at the bank you have been the most conservative business man I ever knew. I have sometimes thought you were too careful, but caution can never be a fault."

They took seats. The business talk continued. The bank was to become the greatest in the state--every indication was in its favor. Celeste failed to hear Ruth's pretty prattle at her side. As she looked at the two men her determination, which had been held so firmly all day, grew weak and vacillating. How could she carry out her plan before them? She sank more deeply into the mire of misery than ever. The whole world seemed black and mad under the contending forces of right and wrong. How frail was the spirit flag she was striving to hold aloft in all that clash and rush of evil!

No, the right thing could not be done--by her, at any rate. Charles would have to remain the self-elected lifelong victim that he was. After all, he would be saving her; he would be saving Ruth; he would be saving his brother whom he had always loved. _Saving_ his brother! But was he?

Could it be done so vicariously? And as this question pounded upon her brain she looked for the first time with scaleless eyes at her husband.

Why had she not noticed it before? William was the mere withering husk of the man he had once been. His deep-sunken, shadowy eyes told his story; his parchment-like skin, his furtive, haunted look, repeated it; his constantly enforced attention to what was being said by others, his Judas-like manner, the quivering of his mentally handcuffed hands, confirmed it again and again. Why, William was dying--dying from the sheer poison of his putrefying soul. Only his great, staring eyes seemed alive, and they lived only in their dumb quest of mercy. Poor William!

No one could save him but himself. Charles's n.o.bility, Charles's sacrifice, would not do it. He must do it himself. Ah yes, that was the key, and it had dropped down from heaven! The thing was settled now. She would see him before the dawn of another day. She would suffer. Ruth would suffer, but William would be saved. Ah, that was the point too long overlooked! His only child would be paying the price, but in the far-off future Ruth herself, with the spiritual wisdom of age, might thank the memory of her mother for the opportunity given her.

The family retired before ten o'clock that night. Celeste sat by her daughter's bed, and with a soft, soothing song lulled her child to sleep. Gradually she felt the tiny fingers losing their grasp upon her own. Shortly afterward Celeste heard William ascending the stairs to his room adjoining hers. She heard him close his door. He always closed his door. At night or in the day he closed his door. Even at the bank he closed the door of his private office, perhaps in order that he might release the drawn cords to those perpetual curtains of his secret self.

There was another door between her room and his. Even that was shut. If she wished to see him before he retired she must hasten. She went into her own room, but did not turn on the electric light. She stood in the center of the room, s.h.i.+vering from head to foot as from cold. Presently she knocked on his door. Then there was a moment of tense silence. The sound must have startled her husband; and when at last he did fumblingly turn the bolt and open the door he stood there in the dark, facing her wonderingly, speechlessly.

"I--I didn't know who it was--at first!" he stammered. "I thought--thought--"

"Excuse me," she said, stroking the death-damp sweat from her brow and sliding past him into his room, "but I wanted to see you. I wanted to talk to you. It is something important, it seems to me. I couldn't do it before uncle, and you were with him all day. May we have a--a light?"

"Need we?" fell from his lips impulsively, then: "Yes, dear, of course.

I quite forgot. I--I sometimes undress in the--the dark in the summer-time." He groped for the b.u.t.ton on the wall. "Yes, I was right,"

he thought. "She has had something on her mind all day and last night, and she says it is important. My G.o.d! important! Only one thing is important--can it have come up again?"