A Spectre of Folly

by Octave Thanet

A SPECTRE OF FOLLY.

By Octave Thanet.

THE head waiter of the Algonquin placed half a dozen telegrams and a note before him, while he sat at breakfast.

"They have just come, Sir Cedric," said the waiter. There was a suppressed, respectful smile of congratulation on his face. He had read the addresses and knew that he would be the first to address the Canadian dignitary by his title.

To his amazement, Sir Cedric did not even notice his words.

Out of the heap of envelopes he selected, not any telegram (they were all congratulations), but the note.

It was a note written on immaculately correct paper, and addressed (in the fashionable English hand) to The Hon. Cedric F. L. Hamilton, The Algonquin, St. Andrews, N. B.

The whole contents lay plain to view, on the first half-sheet:

"I shall be at church to-morrow, I happen to know that your son will be there also. If I do not walk back to the hotel with you, I shall go with him.

"Anne."

Sir Cedric read the note over twice. From where he sat at table he could look out on the piazza, and beyond on the swelling green fields, the fir-tree hedges, the steep roofs and spires of the village, a glittering bay, and the undulating blue line that is Nova Scotia.

Of all this Sir Cedric saw only a tall young man who paced up and down by the side of a slim, gentle-faced girl.

The sumptuous landscape was a blank to him when these figures vanished on the further side of the veranda; it became only a blurred background to them when they reappeared.

Young Cedric looked, to his father, at this moment, the ideal of an English gentleman. About him was that radiant atmosphere of health and high spirits and vigorous cleanliness that belongs to certain young Englishmen as much as a halo does to a saint.

"He is a fine fellow," thought the father, "and if he marries Mabel, I shall feel safe about his future."

But why should a cheerful reflection like that make Sir Cedric catch up his napkin to brush it over a grimace of pain?

"I was hoping we were beginning to understand each other better"—in these very words his thoughts ran—"I took no end of comfort talking over the rebellion with him. He was really losing his constraint with me. Now——"

It was insupportable to sit chained to that table; but he did not move, he compelled himself to swallow his coffee.

If the blow had fallen any other day! He felt a childish, weak longing that this one day, when the crowning honor of his long parliamentary career had come to him, might have been untarnished.

The day of his exaltation was his son's birthday, also, and had he known of it before his fancy would have dwelt on it with pleasure. He had prepared a gift for his boy—a magnificent gift, even for a man of his wealth. The young man would be virtually independent, able to marry at once. Well, early marriages were safest. His own marriage had been his salvation; nor could he have chosen a wife for his son more to his own liking than the girl of his son 's choice.

He wished now that he had followed his first impulse, when he awoke that morning, to go to his son's room and give him the deed.

Instead, he planned to go to church with the boy and tell him on the way. He had never really told Rick how proud he felt of his conduct during the last campaign. He would talk seriously to him, let him know that he trusted him, that his former anxieties—Rick had given him anxiety enough during his first years in the army—were quite past.

He longed so for a nearer friendship with the boy.

Now, how would Rick take it? What kind of a figure would he cut in his son's fancy? How does it affect a son to be able to despise his father? One ignominious vision after another surged over his mind like waves of acid that corrode as they pass.

Nevertheless, so accustomed was the politician to carry on his mental processes under cover, that all this while he was opening his telegrams with the same placid mask of a face that Sir Cedric's world knew. There he sat, to all appearance, a handsome, scrupulously dressed, elderly man, the least bit in the world stern of aspect; but undeniably a man of the world and of distinction.

Many were the interested and amiable glances focused on that symmetrical iron-gray head that still owned enough hair to allow a close crop.

At another time, for he was not devoid of vanity, he might have thought to himself, with complacency, how large a figure he made in their thoughts, and might even have been an imaginary auditor to their talk:

"Yes, a very distinguished man; he has been in the thick of it for twenty-five years."

"No, not so popular as respected and admired. Rather a cold man, I judge. But beyond reproach every way. He is above all petty chicanery, even that esteemed lawful by most politicians. Really a remarkable man, a fine mind."

"He is a widower, you say? been a widower for twenty years. That is a long time."

"He was very devoted to his wife; she was a beautiful woman. He has one child, that young Captain Hamilton."

But to-day his vanity indulged in no such gambols; he was only conscious that people stared at him, and that he had a part to play.

Still playing it conscientiously, his pretence of breakfast over, he gathered up his telegrams with firm hands, and stopped in the hall long enough to receive the congratulations in waiting, before he went to his room. It was now time for service. He brushed his coat and fitted on his gloves carefully; he did not forget, either, to flick a speck off the gleaming polish of his hat.

"I wonder," said he, "am I going to give in to her? What a cowardly cur I am!"

Yet he was not used to consider himself a coward. He had not winced at tremendous responsibilities; once, for months, he had felt the black wings of that vulture, Assassination, flapping before his eyes, and the keenest observers could detect no change in his demeanor.

As he walked down the hall, a woman opened a door on one side and went on to the staircase, just ahead of him. She was in black silk, with a flutter of soft black draperies and a flicker of jet that rattled and sparkled with her movements.

From her garb one might infer that she was a widow just emerging out of the blackest period of woe—in clothes.

She knew how to walk, and her figure was superb. Looking at her shoulders, you would call her a woman of thirty; but when she turned a fine Roman profile to the light, there was visible that deepening of the facial lines, that sagging of the cheek curves, not to be hidden by the most brilliant of complexions. If it was a youthful figure, it was a middle-aged face.

But certainly, she did not look what she was, an elderly woman, five years older than Sir Cedric.

He scowled at the graceful shape, breaking some ugly words between his teeth.

Yet never was there a demurer creature than the sombre but modish gentlewoman, prayer-book in hand, who walked down the staircase.

"Thorold says that her last scheme was a bank"—thus the man watching and hating her, imagined the situation—"the others were caught, but she slipped away. With a good portion of her gains, too. That was quite in character, oh, quite!" A sudden, poignant remembrance twisted his nerves like a galvanic shock, so that he ground his teeth and clenched his hands—alone there, in the empty hall.

"And now she is proposing to be respectable, is she? I dare say she thinks St. Andrews a very promising place for her début as a middle-aged widow of wealth and position. And when she found out that the Honorable Cedric Long Hamilton was the same Rick Long she stripped clean in San Francisco, she thought she had the game in her hands. Curse her!"

Even while he raged, however, he was smoothing his pale and shaken countenance; for the church bells were ringing.

A brother member of Parliament joined him at the hotel door, and discussed the McKinley bill all the way to church.

And all the way, before him, paced the slender, black-robed shape that had arisen like a spectre of folly from the ashes of his youth.

It is a pleasant path, the road from the hotel to the church; descending the hillside, past rolling fields and hills that are all shades of green, with oat-fields and turnip-leaves and dark woods of fir; until the hills climb into mountains and fade into blue with distance; thence, down through the wide streets, always bordered with a grassy strip, on either side, that the highway spares. The old houses have a gentle and self-respecting air of decay, scorning new paint, and, therefore, mellowed by summers and winters into grays soft as the hidden side of a dove's wing. Their clapboard lines and roof-trees waver with age, but not ungracefully; and their boarded windows have the touch of pathos belonging to all blinded creatures.

The town being a long peninsula, its ruined wharves and abandoned vessels are in view from any part of the hills. Those crooked masts with their ragged cordage, never to know danger again—they, too, have a pathetic side, mute reminders of the vanished glory of the port.

For all the decrepit warehouses and rotting wharves, the town is thrifty. It is marvellously neat; and not only are the gardens a jostle of hollyhocks and sweet peas and dahlias and splendid poppies, like an old-fashioned nosegay, the window-ledges also, and the tiny porches, are ablaze with geraniums.

It is a quaint, different, un-American town. Even the signs of the shops and the names at the windows are unlike their kind farther south.

Yet not once did the veiled head before Sir Cedric turn to right or left.

When she reached the little brown wooden church, she seated herself in a dark pew near the door, modestly repelling the courtesies of the usher, who would have seated so much apparent importance close to the chancel.

There she knelt.

He passed her, in this meek posture, quite aware, in spite of his squared shoulders and fixed gaze on the brass eagle of the lectern, that she was looking at him obliquely under her drooping lids; and that she smiled.

How he hated her! None the less he realized that she would take his presence at church for a flag of truce; an intimation that he was ready to treat with her.

In fact, it was as if a cyclone had struck his moral nature; all his principles were creaking and toppling. Compromise with this noisome wrecker who had despoiled his youth, offer her a safe-conduct into society as the price of her silence—was he ready to pay that kind of blackmail, he, the austere moralist, the inflexible citizen?

The hour was early, yet; the towns people and the Canadian gentry who have summer cottages in St. Andrews, came singly, or in families, down the aisle, to settle themselves in their pews. Scattered among them were the summer visitors from the States, easily distinguishable by their sallower faces and more vivid toilets.

The Governor of the Province and his wife walked down the middle aisle, up to the official pew in front; both (for they were old friends of his) giving Sir Cedric little friendly half-glances of congratulation.

"She will expect me to introduce her to them," he thought, and he had a grim hankering to smile, in his dismay; for he was remembering their first meeting, when she danced a frantic Mexican dance on the table of a mining-camp saloon, and made an impromptu pair of castanets out of two beer bottles.

Back went his thoughts through all the crazy folly of his youth; from its first reckless, half-generous passion, to the squalid tragedy at the end.

What a ghastly face the fellow had!—and the blood puddling in the sawdust. Tush! didn't the beast get well and die of a drunken fever years afterward! No need to pity him, in any case; for it was hard telling which was the more fathomless villain, he or his pseudo-wife.

The man whom they had duped and plundered felt his cheek burning as he remembered just through what mire they had dragged him. That drunken brawl and pistol-shot were not the worst, there was one night over the gaming table, when the poor fool, his own purse drained dry, had staked Thorold's money.

Yes, he had stolen Thorold's money. The spectre out of the past, in her shape, sneered at him; "Thief yourself! It wasn't your money, it was your friend's. I have your letters to him where you own it, and go blubbering on about your penitence. I don't mind owning it, I stole the letters. When I steal, I call it stealing. And your son will, too! "

So real was the torment of this imaginary thrust, that he needed to set the muscles of his face to keep them steady. Why, great heavens! he had paid Thorold back ages and ages ago; and put his foot on the ladder, besides. Thorold was his confidential friend, his warmest admirer and follower. Thorold would have him the next prime minister. He swore by his judgment; while, on the other side, Thorold was infinitely useful, of course, but with all that you please of affection and trust, he certainly didn't look up to his friend.

Yet in the letters how he grovelled! and very rightful grovelling it was, too. How nobly Thorold had rescued him out of those atrocities! He felt a rush of gratitude and shame. He to be taking on masterful airs with that noble, patient soul! He loathed his secret condescension. How base his Philistine glory of success looked to him now, how hypocritical the pride he had caressed in his political ideals, and the purity of his private life; how futile and contemptible the triumphs over temptations! He had presumed to judge other men because he had forgotten.

"And your son will, too!"

Ah, it was too vile, thus to make a son behold his father's shame!

Those very vices had been the theme of some scathing lectures to young Cedric. God knows he had not meant to be harsh to the lad; but there were scandals afloat about him, and he was scared, that was the real truth.

Oh, if his mother had only lived, he used to think; boys confided in their mothers.

But when his wife died Cedric was a mere child, and he himself had found his only distraction from grief in an absorbing public life. Thus, inevitably, it appeared to him (but did it appear so inevitable now?) the child had grown up at arm's length from his father.

A beautiful, frank, impetuous boy, with extraordinary talent in some directions, the masters told the boy's father, but of a temperament so keenly susceptible to the physical joys of life, as well as to the moral and intellectual side, that there were grave dangers for him.

So the poor father, bitterly conscious of his own aberrations, had done his blundering best. He had sternly repressed every hint of folly. He had been angry over Rick's extravagances. Ah, that piteous anger of fathers with their sons, when the heart flames and yearns at the same instant.

Boy, can't you see that the rage you are so frightened and so sullen over is but the flimsiest covering to anxiety and heart-breaking hopes? The man is furious because his heart is torn: if he loved the worthless youngster less he could be more forbearing. No one on earth, young sir, except the woman who bore you in torment and joy, will work for you and yearn over you and forgive you like that frowning man, who sends the chills down your spine when he opens the door on you, slinking down a dim hall at midnight, on your stocking soles!

Sir Cedric wished that he had been gentler with Rick. All those anxieties were over now. Rick was steadying himself, getting down to his work in the world. There were certain letters written during the Kiel campaign, by the boy's superior officers, that the father could never read without a mist of joy and pride blurring his eyes. Bravery was well enough, but bravery was not to be compared to devotion to duty, fortitude under enormous odds, clear insight, prompt action, magnanimity to the conquered. Rick had the true English virtues, thought his father, fondly.

Why hadn't he let the boy see how moved he was? They might have drawn near enough together for Rick to understand. Now—he simply could not jeopard his son's affection.

Well, should he pay her her price?

His son sat a few seats in front of him, behind the young girl with whom he had walked that morning. Sir Cedric remembered how he used to sit in church—after he went to his uncle in Montreal; the past behind him, his very name changed by the new one that he had inherited, and he leading the simplest, purest, most laborious of lives as a young lawyer; and how the girl who was afterward his cherished and honored wife used to sit in front of him. Well, to be honest, he chose the seat that he had himself, simply in order to be able decorously to look at her during the service. He was no less a worshipper.

"Rick is safe, now," he breathed to himself, with an immense throb of emotion; "I may lose him, but he won't lose himself."

The service went on; Sir Cedric (whom half the congregation was watching and picturing as mentally patting himself on the back) rose and sat and knelt with the others.

The clergyman gave out the text. He was a tall man, a few years older than Sir Cedric, who knew him well. His hair was gray and his face strong but benignant.

Sir Cedric heard the words of the text with an acrid sense of their fitness to his mood.

"Take no heed, therefore, to your lives."

The preacher spoke plainly, with no smallest effort at oratory; yet with an unstudied felicity of diction and imagery, acquired, maybe, from his loving study of forgotten masters of the pulpit; and he spoke out of a long and close experience of mankind, and a gentle heart.

Of all the congregation no one heard less than Sir Cedric, and, nevertheless, no one was affected so tremendously as he.

Every simple, truthful phrase of the preacher repeated what he had once believed, and now would betray.

In front of him hung the faded blazonry that the staunch old Tory parson had brought with him when he forsook home and country and possessions for conscience sake.

"Mistaken or not, he was a man, and I am a cur," thought the most envied, most unhappy man in the congregation. Once he had fancied himself able to despise men who yielded their public ideals to any stress of self-interest. Here, to save his own affections, he was meditating how to introduce this social scourge into pure, honest homes. He made short work of her plea to him that she meant to live a decent life; he knew the woman was callous as an alligator.

"It is not our business," said the preacher's mild, solemn tones, "to foresee consequences. They rest with God. Our business is to do His will."

Sir Cedric bowed his head. In that instant a vision of life as much wider than his old aspirations as it was more merciful hushed his soul into awe. And it may be at that instant, he was nearer than ever before to the mysterious following that in the prayer-book we remember as the fellowship of saints.

He would not lie; he would not help hurt other souls by his consenting silence. No, though he should be bereaved of the son who was the light of his eyes, he would not do this thing.

"And now——" the preacher lifted his arms; the service was ended.

The woman whom Sir Cedric dreaded waited at the door. He knew that she would be there. He saw the ready smile of recognition as she half advanced one hand, pushing her skirt aside with the other.

Somehow, so solemn had been his mental exercises during the last half-hour, that his violent emotions were all stilled; he looked at her with eyes that were strange to her; filled with calm and sadness, inexpressive, undemanding, like eyes of the dying.

Then he passed by, on the other side.

He would have joined his son; but an acquaintance and then another stopped him in the vestibule. He was obliged to stand bartering amenities while he saw his son walk away with his enemy.

When he was free to follow they were no longer in sight. He walked for a long time about the village and the fields by himself. It might have been two hours, it might have been three (for he did not mark the time) when he took the road up the hill. Half-way a gigantic willow-tree throws its ponderous shadows across the road. He sat down in the shade, exhausted and dizzy. A reaction of intense depression had succeeded his spiritual exaltation. Sitting thus, he saw his son approach.

The young man saw him, in turn, and hurried to him. Sir Cedric felt his boy's arm about him, and heard his voice:

"Father, what's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing," said the elder man, with the primitive Anglo-Saxon instinct.

"Lean on me, sir."

He could not be mistaken; there was novel tenderness in the young fellow's tones; and the assistance that he offered was a half embrace. Sir Cedric glanced up at the face bending over him; it was pale and twitching, and the eyelids were red, as if Rick had been crying.

"Rick—did you see her?" said Sir Cedric.

"Yes, father," the young man answered, turning his head a little, and flushing; "she won't bother us again, I fancy. I gave her a dose." He added more, of a vehement and tropical nature, which, let us hope the recording angel treated as kindly as he did Uncle Toby's oath.

"She showed you my letters, I presume," said Sir Cedric.

Rick felt him tremble—his father, before him; it gave him the weirdest sensation. All at once his heart broke loose from the diffidence and constraint of years.

"Yes, sir, I did read them. I ought not to, you know; but I didn't know just what I was doing when I began, and afterward I was so—so awfully interested I couldn't stop. But I didn't read them all. And, father, I never had known you before. The way you felt, I used to feel that way. I felt so sorry for you. And you were such a tremendously good fellow in spite of it all! Of course I always was proud of you, but you seemed on a kind of a pedestal, and I couldn't climb up and get near enough—to—to love you, you know."

Rick choked. He could not describe, there were no words ready for him to tell how, during that hour over the letters, he had gone down into his father's heart, seen the youth so like his own, the temptations that were a mirror to his own struggles, beheld the very death-agony of turbulent passions and the birth of resolve; and found a lovableness in the human quality of his father's errors that he had missed in the unapproachable righteous man.

But what was out of reach of his speech the man who had sinned and suffered divined.

Father and son climbed the hillside together, along a road bathed in tranquil light.