Hard-Pan/Chapter 5
THE season had worn itself away to June. The winds were an established fact, and blew from the ocean down the long clefts of the streets out into the bay beyond. Outside the Golden Gate the fog lay along the horizon like the faint gray shores of a distant country. When the winds dropped at sundown, it came creeping in, drawing its white cloak over the water, across the dunes, and finally down the streets and round the houses. All night it brooded close over the city, sleeping on its crowded hills, and in the morning lay brimming in every hollow till the valleys looked like cups crowned high with a curdling white drink.
When the sun had driven it back to its cloud-country on the horizon, there were wonderful mornings, all blue and gold. The warm rays licked up the night's moisture, and for a few clear, still hours had the world to themselves. They burned the land dry and parched. The hills at the mouth of the bay turned fawn-color, and looked like lean, crouching lions with hides that fell away from their gaunt bones. The sea and sky were a hard-baked blue, with the little sails of boats and the strenuous green leafage of tropical plants seeming as if inlaid in the turquoise background. The gardens about South Park grew dustier and drier. Only the aloes appeared to have sap enough to retain any color, and against the faded monochrome of the surrounding shrubs they shone a strong, cold gray-blue. In the Western Addition the gardens were watered and bloomed extravagantly, till the ivy geraniums hung from the window-boxes like pieces of pink carpet, and the heliotropes dashed themselves in purple spray to the second stories.
Fashionable people were leaving town daily. Some were going to the redwoods, where the forest glades are dim and still and full of a chill solemnity, like the aisles of old cathedrals. Others were en route for one of the twin towns which tip the points of the crescent that holds Monterey Bay between its horns. Many were repairing to the country houses which have sprung up in scattered clusters down the line of the railroad to the Santa Clara valley. Here they found the warmth and idleness which Californians love. All summer the vast expanse of the valley, shut in from wind and fog by a rampart of hills, brooded under perpetual sunshine. In the motionless noons its yellow fields, where the shadows of the live-oaks lie round and black, swam in quivering veils of heat, and the smell of the tar-weed rose heavy and aromatic, like the incense from a hundred altars.
The Mortimer Gaults, being fashionable folk, had broken up their household and gone their several ways—Letitia first, with many trunks, to make visits at hotels and country houses. Mrs. Gault, like other San Francisco matrons, did not close her house, but made quick flights into the country, which she sincerely hated, and then came back thankfully to town, where she dwelt in comfort with two servants, and, when her husband was not with her, ate meals of choice daintiness, which were laid on a square of drawn-work on the end of the dining-room table.
John Gault had not been able to see Letitia before her departure, which was not so strange, as she left shortly after the night at the opera. In the one or two small gatherings which took place at the Mortimer Gaults' before the family exodus, he had been unable to participate—at least, that was what he wrote to Maud. She, it is needless to state, knowing of that evening interview after the opera, had tried to elicit from Letitia an account of what had taken place. In this, however, she was unsuccessful. Letitia was at first stubbornly silent, then cross. But she accepted an invitation to stay with the McCormicks at their country place, the Hacienda del Pinos, in the Napa valley; and Maud felt that her extraordinary and inexplicable sister was, for once in her life, behaving like a rational human being.
Gault's reluctance to see Letitia had been the whim of a nature harassed past bearing. He had gone from her that evening in frenzy with her, himself, and a world where life was so unlivable and being alive so remorseless a tragedy. The man who had never had a serious check in his easy course from birth to middle age had now suddenly found himself the central figure in one of those maddening dilemmas which blight or make the lives of less fortunate individuals.
The time had come when the situation called for a determined step. But what step he could not decide. What particular course of action would end the whole matter most satisfactorily for himself was the question that besieged him. He hardly gave a thought to Viola. He was the victim of either a repulsively sordid plot, or else he was a man cruelly lured by fate into a position from which it seemed impossible to extricate himself without misery of one sort or another. At one moment he saw himself as the gullible victim of a clever pair of adventurers, and laughed fiercely at the scruples which prevented him from holding them at their own valuation. At the next he was sickened at the manner in which he was degrading himself and her by giving way to the meanest and most dastardly suspicions.
He longed to think that he wronged her, and yet, so fearful was he of being hoodwinked, so inclined to distrust himself and the rest of the world, that he could not rise up and believe in her, though his love bade him. Once he thought of going to Tod and asking him to explain his conversation with Letitia, and then revolted at the idea of exposing Viola and his own weakness to the vulgar curiosity of the shallow-brained youth. The only possible ground for believing in Viola's innocence was that her father was deceiving her, and it seemed to Gault that the old man had neither the subtlety nor the desire to deceive anybody.
After suffering these torments for some days he suddenly came to a decision. He resolved that he would have an interview with Viola, in which, if she did not voluntarily tell him the truth, he would demand it from her. He would at first try to beguile her into an explanation, and if she evaded this, he would, directly and without circumlocution, force her to tell him. He knew it was brutal, but he was past consideration for any one. He had thought of this before, but merely from the comfortable distance of casual speculation. His attitude now was one of determination. His self-indulgent, indolent nature had been goaded to a point where it could act more easily than it could endure.
Once having made up his mind, he was more at rest than he had been for weeks. He did not give much thought to the manner of attacking the subject, merely saying to himself that he was sure she could be induced to reveal all she knew by diplomacy. Of only one thing he felt convinced, and he felt this with the conviction that one has of the mandates of destiny—that the next time he saw her alone he would learn from her all there was to learn. Beyond this he shrank from looking.
While he had no desire to put off the interview that two months before would have seemed an impossibility, he was deliberative and unhurried. Thinking that the afternoon was the best time to find her by herself, he went to the house near South Park at four o'clock, a week after he had seen her at the opera. She was out, and on a second visit at a similar hour the result was the same. He had pushed his card under the door, and had hoped that she might have acknowledged the visits by a note; but she made no sign.
At the end of the second week he went again, in the evening, and found her, as usual, sitting with her father. She mentioned her disappointment at missing him, and said that the afternoon was a bad time to find her, as she was almost always either busy or out. This seemed to him to plainly indicate that she did not wish to encourage his afternoon visits. He began to wonder if she was endeavoring to avoid seeing him alone. If she was, she must have had some inkling of what he contemplated. The thought spurred him to a feverish determination to have the explanation with her at the earliest opportunity. Heretofore she had appeared to him a factor which, if he chose to be hard enough, he could always manage. Now, if she were to oppose him with strategy and evasion, the difficulties of solving the problem would be increased a hundredfold.
But if Viola seemed desirous of escaping a tête-à-tête, the colonel was more assiduous than ever in seeking the society and bounty of his obliging friend. The sum to which he now stood indebted to Gault he described as being "quite formidable." He constantly spoke of repaying it, and made many vague allusions to promising enterprises that were destined to enrich his old age.
Two days after the evening visit the colonel appeared as usual, and this time produced a sheet of paper upon which was written a statement of his indebtedness. It was copied out in his clear, fine hand, each sum scrupulously set down with its corresponding date, and at the end of the column of figures the total—$510. Slapping his breast-pocket, he remarked that a duplicate of the memorandum lay there for his benefit and the stimulating of his memory.
"And when the days of the lean kine are over," he said, "we will wipe it all out—clean the slate."
His friend disclaimed any eagerness as to the arrival of these golden days, accommodated the colonel with his customary sum, and saw the old man go striding out in lofty satisfaction. Left by himself, he idly looked over the colonel's memorandum. It was a full statement, the dates preceding each sum, and at the top bearing the legend, "Memorandum of moneys loaned by John Gault to Ramsay Reed."
He threw the paper into a drawer of his desk and thought no more about it, though he could not forbear smiling at the old man's studied preciseness.
After considerable reflection, Gault decided that the best way to bring matters to the crisis he desired was to ask Viola to accord him an interview. He would manage to make the request at some moment when the old man was either not listening—which was unusual—or had preceded him into the hall in the moment of departure. If Viola refused, as he had some reason to think she might, he would have to arrange another plan, but, for the present, this was the most feasible one he could think of.
It was late for a cross-town visit when he started from his club. The evening, too, was one of the most disagreeable of the season. The city lay soaked under a blanket of fog. On the West Side there was so much life and activity on the streets, so much light and sound and pressure of shifting humanity, that, to a certain extent, the dreariness of the weather was overcome; but in the dark desolation of the old quarter the chill weight of the fog lay like a veil of mystery over the silent streets.
Gault passed down narrow alleys where his own footsteps were the only sound, and where the light of the rare lamps seemed smothered by the dense atmosphere. On the broad thoroughfare the old mansions looked like vast, dim ghosts of a lordly past, rising vague and mournful from huddled masses of wet foliage. Underfoot the hollows in the worn asphaltum gleamed with water, and lengths of brick wall, touched by the beam of an adjacent lamp, shone as though rain were falling.
Turning out of this wider way into the cross-streets, he could hear in the silence the fog dripping off angles in slowly detaching drops. The old wooden pavements oozed water beneath the pressure of his foot. Sometimes from a crack in a sagging shutter an inquisitive yellow ray shot into the recesses of a tangled garden, gilding the shining leaves of great thirsty plants that drank in the reluctantly distilled moisture. Now and then a hurrying figure passed him with collar up and hat drawn down, but for the most part the streets were deserted, and even at this comparatively early hour the dwellers in the district seemed to be retiring, as most of the houses showed lights only in the upper stories.
In the Reeds' house there were the usual edges of light shining through the cracks and slits of the old blinds. In answer to his ring there was the usual moving of this light into the hall, where it shone out suddenly through the two narrow panes of glass that flanked the door. When the door opened there was the usual picture of Viola shading the light with one hand, that shone rosily, and looking questioningly out.
She seemed gladly surprised to see him, but the old days of her embarrassment were over. She helped him hang his coat, which was beaded with moisture, over the back of a chair, and then paused to arrange the wick of her lamp as he preceded her into the drawing-room. In the doorway he stopped and looked questioningly about. The colonel was not there.
"Where is your father?" he said, as she followed him, carrying her lamp.
"My father?" She set the lamp on the table, still occupied with the recalcitrant wick. "Oh, he 's out. He hardly ever goes out in the evening, but to-night he wanted to see Mr. Maroney, who is only here from New York for a few days. Such a dreadful night, too! There—I don't think it will smoke any more."
Gault, who had absently taken the colonel's chair, made no response. So the opportunity he had been planning for had come! He felt a sensation of sickening repulsion at the task he had set himself. Already his heart seemed to have begun to beat like a hammer and his mouth felt dry. Without consciousness of what he looked at, his eyes moved about the room and rested on a black coat which was hanging over the back of a chair. On the edge of the table were a pair of scissors, a thimble, and some spools of thread.
Viola took the vacant chair near these and put on the thimble.
"You 'll not mind if I go on sewing?" she said. "I never thought of your coming to-night, and so I was fixing this. It will only take a few moments to finish it."
"What is it?" Gault asked, in order to say something, noticing that the garment seemed heavy and difficult for her to handle.
"My father's coat—the one he wears every day," she answered. "I was mending it while he had his other one on. He gets fond of clothes, and it's next to impossible to get them away from him."
She turned the coat about every now and then, her needle assaulting it, and catching splinters of light as it darted in and out. Gault leaned back, watching her. She bent her face over the work as she sewed, presenting to his gaze the fine white parting down the middle of her head, and the close-growing threads of her hair, here and there transmuted into filaments of gold. There was an air of serenity, of quietness and peace, about her, that seemed to tell of an inner sense of happiness.
As he sat back staring at her, and wondering, with that breathless beating of his heart growing stronger, what he should say, she suddenly raised her head and, looking straight into his eyes, said:
"What are you thinking about?"
Her face, with the lamplight shining full on it, seemed to radiate a soft, pervasive content. She asked the question with the indescribable charm of glance and smile of the woman who knows that her lightest word gives pleasure. The increase in her beauty and attraction which he had felt rose from the consciousness that she was loved.
"I was n't thinking about anything much," he said evasively. "I 'd like to sit on here this way, not thinking or worrying or caring, but just watching you."
"There is no reason why you should n't do it; only it does n't sound very amusing."
"It is n't amusing."
"I know it is n't," she said contritely, "and I 'm so sorry that I have to do this old coat; but it will be done soon, and then we can talk. Just a minute—just a minute!"
She spoke in a busy tone, and went on turning the coat about, jerking at the buttons, and plunging her hands into the pockets.
Gault felt that the pleasure of thus sitting and looking at her was sapping his resolution. He felt himself drifting away, aimless and irresponsible, on the current of the moment. The duties of past and future were lost sight of in the dreamy satisfaction of watching the light on her hair and the movements of her hands.
He rose suddenly and walked to the window, with a remark about seeing if the fog was lifting. As he turned, he saw her take a folded paper from one of the coat-pockets, and, standing looking out of the window, heard the crisp rustling of the paper as she unfolded it. There was a moment of perfect silence, and then he heard again the same light rustling, which sounded curiously loud and intrusive to his irritated nerves.
He turned toward her, wondering why she did not speak. She was sitting with the opened paper in her hands, her eyes riveted on it. As he drew near, he saw that the rustling rose from the fact that her hands were trembling violently, causing the paper to vibrate.
She heard his approaching step and looked up. At the sight of her face he stopped.
"What is it?" she cried, rising suddenly to her feet and holding it out toward him.
He glanced at it. It was the colonel's duplicate memorandum. Without aid or provocation the hour of revelation had come.
His first impulse was to seize it. But she drew it back from him, repeating in a high, strained voice:
"What is it? I don't understand. What is it?"
"It 's nothing—nothing but a business paper. Give it to me."
He did not know what to say or do—the scene had changed so suddenly and horribly. Her face looked at him, pale, bewildered, quivering with a terrified surmise. Without a moment's memory of what he had come for, he felt as if all he wanted was to get the paper and hide it.
"Give it to me!" he demanded authoritatively. "It does n't concern you."
"It does," she cried, "it does! But what is it? What does it mean?"
She looked back at it, and her eyes ran down the list of figures, and then were raised to his, full of a piercingly anguished inquiry.
"It 's nothing but a business matter between your father and me; and you don't understand business."
"I do understand—I understand this!" she answered; and then, with a sudden cry of shame and pain, she threw the crumpled paper on the table and covered her face with her hands. "Oh, how could he!" she whispered. "How could he!"
Gault looked at her, mute and motionless. From the moment he had seen her face as she read the paper, he knew that every suspicion he had had was groundless. He was ashamed to speak, almost to move. The sound of his own voice was hateful to him. He stood helplessly looking at her, shaken with pity, passion, and remorse. Finally he said gently:
"Look at me, Viola."
She obeyed him like a child. Her face was drawn; her eyes, after the moment of meeting his, sank.
"Any man would have done what the colonel did. It 's nothing of the least importance."
"Perhaps not to you," she answered in a hardly audible voice; "but to me!"
He looked away and tried to speak lightly:
"It is of no importance whatever to me, and I don't see why it should be of any to you."
"Oh, Mr. Gault, what do you think I am, that you should say that?"
"A foolish girl who takes a trifling matter too seriously," he answered quickly.
"No—a woman who has been hurt and humiliated. It may have been of no importance to you that you were giving us the clothes we wore and the food we ate—but oh! to me—"
Her voice broke, and she turned her face away.
He made an impatient movement with his head.
"Come, don't let 's talk about that any more. You 're not yourself. Besides, whatever insignificant matter you 're worrying about was not of your doing."
"No," she said, turning on him passionately, "but the responsibility rests on me; for whatever my father may have done that was wrong or foolish was for me. There is an excuse for him. You—other people—outsiders—don't know. He has n't wanted these things for himself. It was all done for me. I was his idol, and it has almost broken his heart that his money and position were gone before I was old enough to profit by them. He always wanted to be rich again, but it was for me. He wanted me to have everything—pretty clothes to wear, and good things to eat, and theaters and amusements, like other girls. He tried to keep up with his old bonanza friends who were tired of him and had no use for him, because he thought their wives might be kind to me and ask me to their houses. He has forgotten himself and what he owed to me, but it was because he loved me so much."
"Viola dear," he said pleadingly, "I understand all this. No one blames the colonel."
She did not seem to hear him. Her mood was past control.
"When we first met you things were at their worst. We were in terrible need. We had had some money—quite a good deal—three years before; it was for a mortgage on the house, or something; but it had all gone, mostly in Pine Street. Yours must have gone there, too. Everything he has had of late years goes there, because he is determined to make a second fortune for me before he dies. And he never will—poor old man! he never will. I did what I could and made a little, but he could n't bear it, because he hated to think I worked at anything. So that was why he went to you. We were in despair when we knew you first—we were starving."
"Dear child, why go over all this? It 's only a pain to us both."
He tried to take her hands, but she drew them back and made a gesture as though pushing him away.
"I did n't know where it came from. I believed him. Oh, Mr. Gault, if he told me what was not true, you can't blame him. You 've never known what it feels like to have some one you love wanting the necessaries of life. You could beg for them—steal for them! And when I told you those things about the mining stock, what did you think I meant? What did you believe?"
She spoke less to him than to her own dazed and miserable consciousness, which moment by moment saw new matter for humiliation in the deception of which she had been the victim.
But Gault, with the guilt of his own hateful suspicions weighing upon him, feared that she had realized his previous state of mistrust, and said fervently:
"If I did believe what was a wrong to you, forgive me, Viola. I was a blind fool."
She raised her head like a stag and transfixed him with a sudden glance. Unprepared for the innocence of her point of view, he met the look shamefacedly, and in an instant she guessed what he had suspected. In one terrible moment, illuminated with a blasting flash of memory, she understood his attitude in the past, and heard again the words that had puzzled and surprised her. Horror and despair seemed to choke her. She drew away from him, her eyes full of tragic accusation, murmuring almost under her breath:
"You—that I believed in, and trusted, and loved!"
"I was a fool—a brute! I know it. All I can say is to ask you to forgive me."
"I can't forgive—or forget. Never—never!"
He tried again to take her hands, but she drew back from him with what seemed a fierce repugnance, and cried wildly:
"Go—you and my father, what have you done to me? I can't forgive him, either! How can I? You 've dragged me down, between you. You 've destroyed me and broken my heart."
"Viola," he cried desperately, "listen to me. You don't know my side. Listen to me while I tell you."
"There 's nothing to say. I don't want to hear. I know enough. Go—go away from me! Oh, my father! My poor father! How could you! How could you!"
She burst into tears—the most terrible tears that he had ever seen. Throwing herself into the colonel's chair, she lay huddled there, her face pressed into the arm, her slender figure shaken by the explosive force of her grief.
To his broken words and appeals she made no answer. He doubted whether she heard him. The storm of feeling, stronger than he had ever supposed her capable of, swayed her as a blast sways a sapling. Finally he bent over her and rested his cheek on her hair, whispering:
"I want to do everything you ask me. But before I go, say you forgive me."
She raised herself and pushed him away. Her face was almost unrecognizable, blurred and swollen with tears.
"Go—go!" she cried. "That is all I want of you. You've done enough harm to me. Do what I ask now."
He attempted to bend over her and say some last words of farewell, but she turned her face away from him and pressed it into the upholstered arm of the chair. He kissed her hair, and stood for a moment looking at her, then turned and crossed the room. At the door he stopped and looked back.
"Good-by," he said hesitatingly.
A smothered good-by came from her. He waited, hoping for some word of forgiveness or recall. Instead, she said once more, this time pleadingly:
"Oh, go! please go—I want to be alone."
He obeyed her—softly opened the door into the hall, put on his coat, and let himself out into the cold and fog-bedewed night. As he fumbled with the gate he heard a quick, swinging step coming from the darkened end of the street. It approached rapidly, and into the dense aureole of light shed by a lamp half-way up the block, a tall, muscular figure emerged from the surrounding blackness. Gault recognized the walk and the square, erect shoulders. With as little noise as possible he opened the gate, and, turning in the opposite direction, passed into the darkness with a stealthy tread.
The colonel let himself in with his latch-key, pulled off his coat in the hall, and entered the drawing-room with the buoyancy that characterized all his movements. As was often the case in these days of prosperity, he carried a paper bag full of fruit and a box of candy for Viola.
To his eye, dulled by the darkness without, the room looked brilliantly illuminated and seemed to welcome him with the warm and cheery note of home. Viola was standing with her back to him, her elbow on the chimney-piece. When she heard his step on the walk she had made a violent effort to control herself, had tried to rub away the stains of her tears, and had turned the paper flower on the lamp-globe so that the light, as it fell upon her, was subdued.
The colonel was in good spirits. He laid his packages on the table and began opening them.
"Was n't that Gault that I saw coming away as I came down the street?" he asked.
Viola said "Yes."
"Why did n't you keep him longer? I 'd like to have seen him. Look at that pear," said the old man, holding up a yellow Bartlett that gleamed like wax in the lamplight. "Did you ever see anything finer than that? And there are people who say they don't like the Californian fruit."
Viola did not look at the pear, but he was too occupied in his purchases to notice her.
"He ought to have stayed till I came in. You ought n't to have let him go. Poor old Gault, coming out in all this wet! It 's a devil of a night. You could cut the fog with a knife. What did he have to say for himself?"
"Nothing much," said Viola.
"I don't think myself he 's much of a talker. Now, see what I 've brought for you." Viola heard the tearing away of the wrappers that were folded around the candy-box. "Look, young woman; is n't that tempting?"
The colonel held out the box. Viola did not turn. He drew it back, a puzzled expression on his face.
"What 's the matter?" he said. "Why don't you look at me? Don't you feel well?"
She turned round slowly and made a feint to take the box. As the colonel's glance fell on her face he gave a sharp exclamation and started to his feet.
"What 's happened?" he said. "What's the matter with you?"
She tried to tell him, but could not. The love and honor of him that had been the faith of her life were still alive. She could not say the words that would bring him to shame. Suddenly she pointed to the crumpled paper on the table. The colonel snatched it and pulled it open while she turned away. He recognized it at the first glance.
"Well," he said, holding his head high and looking at her with a defiant air, "what of it?"
She made no answer, and he went on violently:
"What 's there wrong about this to make you cry as if you 'd lost everything in the world, and Gault to sneak out of the house like a thief?"
"What 's wrong about it?" she burst out. "What 's wrong about you to make you ask such a question?"
"My dear, don't be so violent," said the colonel, trying to assume his old jaunty manner. "It's all a very simple matter, easily explained."
"Then explain it, father—explain it. Oh, if there 's anything to be said, say it!"
"It 's merely a business matter, a financial transaction between myself and Gault—nothing that concerns you."
"Oh, father, it concerns me more than anything that has ever happened to me in my life before."
Her tone wrung the colonel's soul. He tried to silence his pain and fear by a sudden attempt to divert the blame from himself.
"Did that dog—that mean, underhanded sneak—come here to-night, when he knew I was out, to show you that paper?"
His manner and words horrified her, and she shrank from him.
"I found the paper in your coat. He tried to take it from me. He never breathed to me or let me suspect what you were doing. To-night, when I found the paper, he tried to make me think it was all right, quite an ordinary thing—that you had done what every one else would have done."
"Well, then, why do you get so worked up about it? Why should a business transaction between him and me put you into such a state of mind?"
"A business transaction? Oh, father, have you deceived yourself, or are you trying to deceive me? What has been the matter with you? How could you do it! How could you forget yourself that way—yourself and me!"
The colonel's bravado began to give way, but he tried to take a last stand.
"If there was anything wrong, as you seem to think, in what I did, you should n't blame me for it. I did it for you. I was trying to make you comfortable and make things a little easier for you. I was only trying the best way I knew to make you happy."
"Make me happy!" she repeated. "Did you think it would make me happy to have a man think I was being sold to him?"
The words burst from her, vibrating with all the anguish of the last two hours. They struck the colonel like a dagger in his heart.
"Oh, Viola!" he said. "Viola—don't!"
He began to tremble, and sat down, looking at her with an aghast, protesting look. Whatever his idea had been in so openly using Viola's name in his dealings with Gault, he had not meant that. Old age, bitter poverty, trampled pride—all had combined to lower that high standard, that proud self-respect, which his daughter had believed to be his. She would never believe in them again.
"You ought n't to say that, Viola," he said in a low voice; "you ought n't to say that to me."
She did not stir, and he said again, after a moment's pause:
"It 's not right for you to say that. I thought I was doing for the best. I may have done foolishly, but it was because I loved you."
He spoke heavily, sitting inert and sunken, with the lamplight pouring over his wrinkled face and white hair.
Suddenly Viola ran toward him. She put her arms round his neck, close and warm, and her tears fell on his hair, on his face, on his coat. She hugged his head against her breast and kissed it wildly, sobbing over and over:
"Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father!"
The old man patted her head and said gently:
"Don't—don't go on that way. You did n't say anything. I 've forgotten it already."
But she knew he had not, and continued sobbing out passionate, broken sentences:
"I did n't mean it—I spoke without thinking. Oh, please forget it! Don't look like that! I did n't mean it—I did n't mean it for a minute."
He tried to soothe and comfort her, but he himself was very quiet. When she had sobbed herself into a state of apathetic exhaustion, he helped her up-stairs to her room, and prowled up and down in the passageway, every now and then listening at her door till he heard her caught breaths regulate themselves into the long, regular ones of heavy sleep.
Then he went into his own room. He did not go to bed, but sat motionless, shrunk together, staring at the light. His love for his daughter had been dear to him, but a thousand times dearer had been his realization of her love for him. When all the world had turned its back on him, the knowledge that he was still believed in, watched for, cherished by this one young girl had made life as well worth living as it had been in the days of his glory. And now he had lost that—it was gone forever. He was an old man, and to-night he had received his death-blow.
The day after his scene with Viola was the happiest John Gault had known for many months. The memory of her pain, of her tears, of her humiliation, could not outweigh the joy he felt in her exculpation. Even his own shame at the meanness of the part he had played was pushed aside by this pervasive, irradiating, uplifting sense of happiness. No cloud, no shadow of disbelief, could ever come between them now. He could love her without mistrust, without fear, without suspicion. He would absorb her, envelop her, inwrap her in the might of his passion. He had wronged her bitterly, but with what limitless tenderness, what depths of devotion, would he make up for it! He was troubled by no doubts as to her feeling for him. The memory of the light in her eyes as they met his, of the flush on the cheek, were enough. Viola was his when he chose to claim her.
Still, the deliberative habits of his curiously sensitive and conventional nature were stronger than the force of his last and deepest attachment. Three days followed his interview with Viola, and he had not yet gone to see her. He could not bring himself to intrude upon her. Her girl's passion of shame and grief seemed a sanctuary into which no man's coarse eye should look. He thought of her with a deep, almost reverential tenderness, but he did not feel as if he ought to see her till the first anguish of her discovery had spent itself. Then—then—he would take her in his arms, and there would be nothing to say, only to ask her to forgive him, to hear her say it, and then happiness—happiness—happiness—on to the end of time.
On the fourth day he decided to send her some flowers. But after he had bought them it seemed to him so meaningless, so banal, to send such a formal offering, one that he had sent so often to women for whom his sentiments were so widely different, that he suddenly changed his mind, and ordered the flowers to be sent to his sister-in-law, who was just then in town. When he walked away from the florist's he looked rather ashamed of himself and of his burst of sentiment. But what did he want to send her flowers for? He wanted to see her, to take her hands in his and look down deep into those beautiful gray eyes and say—perhaps not say anything. She and he understood.
He made up his mind that he would go on the morrow, and on this decision he went to sleep with a light heart. In the morning he was awakened by a messenger to say that his brother Mortimer had returned from the country seriously ill. He was at the house on Pacific Avenue inside an hour. Mortimer had come home a week before with a bad cold which had developed into a dangerous case of pneumonia. Maud Gault was helpless and distracted. Her brother-in-law spent the day in attending to the numerous duties which crop up with sickness, and in the evening telegraphed for Letitia.
For the four following days Mortimer Gault hung between life and death, brooded over by a frantic wife, three doctors, two nurses, a fond sister-in-law, and an extremely anxious brother. The tie between the two men was very close—John had never realized how close till those four days of desperate anxiety were over. During this time, as he sat either by his brother's bedside or in one of the rooms adjoining, or made hasty visits to his office, he thought of Viola and wondered if she was puzzled by his lengthened absence. He did not think that she would misunderstand it. Like many men, he took it for granted that her knowledge of his character and affairs had been as thorough as the knowledge his superior insight and experience had given him into all that pertained to her.
On the sixth day after his brother's summons Mortimer was pronounced out of danger. This was the first opportunity John had had of seeing Viola.
At four o'clock he alighted from the car that had carried him across town to the old quarter about South Park. As he passed through the dingy side streets holiday reigned in his heart. Life in the past seemed dun and dreary compared to what it had become under the influence of the still, almost rapt joy which now possessed him. An immense, deep tenderness seemed to well from his heart over all his being. His love for Viola seemed to have made him see and feel all that was love-worthy in others—in the children that ran across his path or played in chattering groups in the gutters, the women he met trudging home with baskets on their arms, the lean-shanked boys playing ball in the deserted gardens, the tousled young matrons exchanging gossip from open upper windows. He had never noticed these people before, save with cold repugnance; now he seemed to be able to see into them and note their justifiable ambitions, their unselfish struggles, their smiling, patient courage. The thought passed through his mind that perhaps this exalted, unusual affection was the love of the future state, the happiness that awaits the liberated soul.
He turned the last corner and came in sight of the house. For the first few advancing steps he did not realize what gave it an unfamiliar look. Then, as he approached, he saw that the vines which had hung in bunches about the bay-window were cut away. There were frilled white curtains in the lower windows. He drew near, staring astonished through his glasses, each step revealing some innovation.
They were evidently renovating the whole place. The two thick-set brick posts that supported the gate had been painted. The steps to the porch had been mended with new wood. Then, as he put his hand forward to unlatch the gate, he saw a woman—a broad-backed, red-necked woman in a blue print dress—kneeling on the ground just below the bay-window, evidently gardening. The sight surprised him into immobility, and for a moment he stood motionless, gazing at the back of her head, where her hair was twisted into a tight and uncompromising coil about as big as a silver dollar.
The next moment he pressed the latch, and the gate opened with a click. The woman started and turned round. Evidently greatly surprised at the figure her glance encountered, she straightened herself from her stooping posture, eying him curiously and wiping her earthy hands on her apron.
"Is Miss Reed in?" he said, advancing up the flagged walk.
"Miss Reed?" said the woman "No. She ain't here any more."
Gault stopped.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "Colonel Reed lives here."
"Not now," said the woman, struggling to her feet. "He did until last week. We bought the place off of him just seven days ago, and moved in Tuesday."
"Do you mean that he has sold it and gone away?"
"That 's it. We rushed it through, both of us. He wanted to sell 'bout as much as we wanted to buy, so there was n't much time wasted on either side."
"Had he thought of selling it for any length of time?"
"I can't rightly say as to that. We 've had our eyes on it for the past five years. My husband—he's Robson, the dry-goods dealer, on Third, just below here—was pretty well satisfied that the colonel could n't hang on to it forever. 'Bout three years ago he offered him three thousand. But the old man would n't hear of it. Said he would n't even raise a mortgage on it, as it was all he had to leave to his daughter when he died. But we knew he could n't hold out much longer. He did n't have no work, nor nothing to live on. Miss Reed she made a little, but not enough to run everything, and—"
"Yes—I know all about that. When did you say they left?"
"On Monday, and we moved in Tuesday. Saturday the old man came round to Mr. Robson's place and said he 'd let him have the house for anything he chose to give. There ain't nothing mean about Mr. Robson. He could 'a' beat the colonel down to 'most anything, but he said he 'd give him two thousand cash down, and the old man just jumped at it. Mr. Robson said it would 'a' been business to get the colonel to a lower figure, and he said he supposed he would 'a' done it if it had n't been for the daughter. She was sick, and the old man said he 'd got to have money to take her away."
"Sick?—seriously sick?"
"Well, as to that I can't say. But she was about the peakedest-looking girl I ever seen. I was awful sorry for them."
"Where have they gone?"
"I ain't able to say."
"But you surely have some idea of where they've moved to? Did n't they say something about their intentions? Did n't the colonel tell your husband in reference to the transfer of the money?"
"They did n't neither of 'em say a word. They 're the most close-mouthed pair I ever ran into. My husband paid the money down in cash the day we moved in. They took it, and that 's all I know about them."
"Can't you tell me some one about here who may know more—some of the tradespeople—butchers, grocers, that sort of thing?"
"You might try Coggles, the grocer at the corner. I think they had an account with him. But they did n't deal regular with any one else."
Gault thanked her and turned to go. She followed him down the walk, anxious to be agreeable, for his manner and appearance had impressed her immensely.
"If I hear anything about them I 'll let you know," she said affably.
"Thanks; it's very good of you," he answered, opening the gate. But he had no intention of giving her either his name or address, as he did not for a moment think that this disappearance of the Reeds was other than temporary.
At the corner he stopped and inquired for them at Coggles the grocer's. Coggles himself answered his inquiries. He had even less information to give than Mrs. Robson. A week before the colonel had paid such small amounts as he yet owed, and had casually mentioned the fact that he had sold his house and was about to leave the city. This was all Coggles knew. He showed some desire to talk over the colonel's pecuniary difficulties, but Gault cut him short and left the store.
Gault walked away, feeling dazed and hardly master of himself. It had been so absolutely unexpected that he did not yet send his mind back over their past intercourse to ask what she might have been thinking since he saw her last. As is the case of the man in love, he had seen the situation only from his own side. But he did not for a moment doubt that he would hear from her within the next few days.
He was still with his brother a good deal of the time, and the days that followed passed with the swiftness which characterizes hours filled with various anxieties. Four days after learning of her flight, two weeks from the evening that he had seen her last, the janitor at his office handed him a small but heavy package. It had been left early in the morning by a boy, the janitor said, who had merely asked if this was Mr. John Gault's office, and had then hastened away.
An instinct told him it was from her, and he shut himself into his inner office before he opened it. It was a rough wooden box, and contained the money given by him to the colonel—five hundred and ten dollars in gold coin. Lying on the top was a slip of paper bearing the words: "Good-by. Viola."
Still he could not but believe that she would soon reveal her whereabouts. The move was occupying her, and such an operation would seem a gigantic undertaking to her youthful inexperience. That she should treat him this way was thoughtless, cruel even, but she had been deeply wounded, and her hurt was evidently still sore. He could only wait patiently.
He did so for two weeks, his uncertainties growing into fears, his conviction of her intention to communicate with him gradually weakening. Uneasiness gave place to alarm. For the first time the haunting thought that she had gone from him purposely, fled forever from his love, entered his mind.
Finally, unable to endure the anxiety that now beset him, he commissioned a private detective agency to run to earth the boy who had brought the money. He supposed it had come directly from her, and that, through the boy, without drawing her into the affair, her hiding-place could be discovered.
The finding of the boy was not so simple a matter as might have been supposed. It required a week's search to locate him. He was the only son of a poor widow living near South Park, who had done the Reeds' washing. Before her departure Miss Reed had commissioned him to deliver the package at Mr. Gault's office at a certain date, and at an hour when there would be no chance of his coming into personal contact with Mr. Gault himself.
Gault snatched at this meager information, and lost no time in seeking out the widow in her own home. She was a good-natured and loquacious Irish-American,—Mrs. Cassidy by name,—and was full of terror at the thought that detectives had been occupied in discovering her place of abode. Her fears, however, were soon allayed, and she became exceedingly discursive. But when it came to information of Viola, she could tell no more than the others.
Before Miss Reed had left the city she had given the package to the boy, with the instructions that he should not deliver it till the day set by her, some time after her departure. Of her own volition Mrs. Cassidy stated that she thought Miss Reed did not want any one to know where she went. Mrs. Cassidy had conferred with others of her kind in the locality, and the silent and hasty departure of the Reeds had been matter of comment. The shrewd Irishwoman saw that there was a mysterious romance here, and her glance dwelt with compassionate curiosity upon the gentleman who was sufficiently interested in the pretty girl they had all known by sight to employ detectives to hunt for her.
The finding of the boy and the interview with Mrs. Cassidy broke down the last of Gault's hopes. He now knew that Viola had intentionally fled from him. At first, when no word came from her, and Mrs. Robson's description of her as ill was fresh in his mind, he had a terrible fear that she might have died. But a later judgment convinced him that had this been the case he would have heard from the colonel. Viola was living—hiding somewhere from him, restraining her father from communicating with him, which, Gault knew, would be the old man's wish and intention.
And now, with the blankness of her absence deadening his heart, for the first time he began to understand what she must have thought and felt—began to see the situation with her eyes. He thought of her, loving and believing in him as he knew she had always done, suddenly waking to the knowledge that he had suspected her. He saw her living over again those conversations in which he had half revealed his groundless doubts, had tried to find confirmation of them in the halting admissions of her puzzled ignorance. And with her comprehension of the light in which he had been regarding her came that coup de grâce of all doubts in his favor—the giving of the money.
With a clearness of vision that was like clairvoyance, he seemed to be able to read down into the depths of her consciousness, to see into the hidden places of the nature he had once thought so jealously secretive. In the gnawing bitterness of his remorse he realized that she had believed herself tricked, that the hand she had thought stretched to her in kindly fellowship in reality concealed a trap. Where she had looked for protection, support, and love, she had found what now presented itself to her as a sinister and cruel craftiness. Her best friend had turned out to be her most unrelenting enemy.
In the loneliness of that long summer he came face to face with despair. He had lost her by his own mad folly. Remorse for the wrong he had done her alternated in his thoughts with an unquenchable longing to see her again. His heart craved for her, even if only for a single moment's glimpse. A younger man would have shaken off the gloom of his first great disappointment, have told himself that there were other eyes as sweet and hearts as true. But with him the elasticity of youth was gone. There was no forming of new ties, no delight in fresh faces. Life had offered him supreme happiness, and he had let it pass by him. Like the base Indian, he had "thrown a pearl away richer than all his tribe."
The summer held the city in its spell of wind and fog. Acquaintances who encountered one another on its wide thoroughfares said town was empty—not a soul left in it. The Mortimer Gaults took themselves away for rest and recuperation to balsamic mountain gorges among the redwoods. Letitia returned to the hotels and the Hacienda del Pinos. John Gault was left alone with his empty heart. If she had died it would have been bearable. The inevitableness of death makes us bow to its blows with broken submission. But she was alive—poor, sick, her love disprized, her pride trampled on, driven away from all that was familiar and friendly to her by fear of him.
The winds beat and tore through the city, buffeting the passers-by and sweeping street and alley. Then, as the color deepened toward evening, their stress and clamor suddenly ceased, a burst of radiance ran from the Golden Gate up the sky, glazing the level floor of the bay and flaring on all the western windows. It stayed for a space, seeming to immerse the town in an atmosphere of beaten gold, as if for one brief half-hour it was transformed into the glistening El Dorado of the early settlers' dreams. Then the fog stole noiselessly in, and the houses crowding to the summits of the hills, the rose-red clouds, and the clear purple distances were blotted out.
That went on day by day till the autumn came. The winds dropped and the sun shone all day. In the country the air was clear and heavy with sweet, aromatic scents. All the fields were parched and sun-dried like hemp; only the thick-growing, bushy trees defied the drought, remaining green and hardy. The great hills were scorched to a smooth yellow, with a few green tree-tufts slipped down into their valleys where the watercourses were not quite dry.
In town it was all still and golden and hot. The city, queening it on its hills, rose in an atmosphere of crystal clearness from a girdle of sapphire sea. In the evening the smoke lay lightly over it, and the sun glared through like a great, inquisitive eye. Poor people in the old districts were ill from lack of rain and from unclean sewers. Rich people were coming back, looking sunburnt and healthy from their summer in the open air.
The Gaults came up out of their lounging-place in the redwoods, robust and blooming, Mortimer quite restored to health, and Maud two shades darker with her country tan. Letitia, with three trunks of ruined millinery, appeared from the hotels, and the town house was once more alive.
They had seen little of John since they left for the country, and it was not strange that Maud Gault, after his first visit, should have said to her husband:
"What 's the matter with John? All of a sudden he looks quite old."
"Nothing," said the loyal Mortimer; "only a fellow can't be expected to look young forever. John 's not like a woman: he does n't keep the same age for twenty years."