CHAPTER VI. WHITE ROSES.
Robert Milburn, bent at his desk, his fair head in his hands, was bewildered, angry, in despair.
“Can this be true?” he asked himself. “Is there a possibility of truth in it?”
The air of the gray room grew close, oppressive to the spirit, and at the darkening window he arose from the desk. He put on his long rain-coat, and with a hollow, ominous sound, the door closed behind him and he left the house.
As along he went, Robert caught sight of the bony face of an American millionaire and a beautiful woman in furs, behind the rain-streaked panes of a flashing carriage. On the other side he observed a gigantic iron building from which streams of shop-people poured down every street homeward; these ghastly weary human machines made a pale concourse through the sleet.
Further on his way a girl stood waiting for some one on the curb. He looked at her, dark hair curled on her white neck, her attire poor and common; but she was pretty, with her dark eyes. A reckless, plebeian little piece of earth, shivering, her hands bare and rough, the sleet whipping her face, on the side of which was a discoloration—the result of a blow, perchance. Then he turned his eyes from her who had drawn them.
The arc light above him hung like a dreadful white-bellied insect hovering on two long black wings, and he saw a woman in sleet-soaked rags, bent almost double under a load of sticks collected for firewood. Her hair hung thin and gray in elf-locks, her red eyelids had lost their lashes so that the eyes appeared as those of a bird of prey. The wizened hands clutching the cord which bound the sticks seemed like talons. She importuned a passer-by for help, and, being denied, she cursed him; and Robert watched the wretched creature crawl away homeward—back to the slums.
These were manifestations of the life of thousands in metropolitan history. Robert shook himself, shuddering, as though aroused from a trance.
He had started out to go anywhere or nowhere, but the next hour found him in the presence of Cherokee, and she was saying:
“How awfully fond you are of giving pleasant surprises.”
“I am amazed at myself for coming such a night, and that too without your permission.”
“We are always glad to see you, but Fred and I had contemplated braving the weather to go to hear Paderewski,” she said, sweetly.
“Then don’t let me detain you, I beg of you,” he answered, with profound regret.
“Oh, that’s all right, we have an hour or more, I am all ready, so you stay and go in as we do.”
“No, I will not go with you, but will stay awhile, since you are kind enough to permit me.” And he laughed, a little mournfully.
“Cherokee, I have come for two reasons—to tell you that I am going home to Maryland to see a sick mother, and to tell you——” He paused, hesitating, a great bitterness welled up in his breast; a firmness came about his mouth and he went on:
“It is folly for you to persuade yourself that you could accommodate your future life to sacrifice, poverty—this is all wrong. When we look it coldly in the face it is a fact, and we may dispute facts but it is difficult to alter them.”
There was no response from her except the clasping of the hand he held over his fingers for a moment.
“I had no right that you should wait for me through years, for your young life is filled with possibilities. I, alone, make them impossible, and I must remove that factor.”
“Robert! Robert! What does all this mean?” Her breathless soul hung trembling on his answer.
“It means that I am going to give you back your liberty.”
“And you?” she gasped.
“I will do the best I can with my life. Please God, you shall never be ashamed to remember that you once fancied that you could have cared for me.”
And then he could trust himself no further; the trembling fingers, the soft perfume he knew so well in the air, and the surging realization that the end was at hand, made him weak with longing.
Cherokee was at first shocked and stunned at what he was saying? For a moment the womanly conclusion that he no longer cared for her seemed the only impression, but she put it from her as being unworthy of them both.
Her manner was dignified, yet tender, as she began:
“Robert, I suppose you have not spoken without consideration, and if you think I would be a burden to you, it is best to go on without me.” She ended with a deep-drawn breath.
“That sound was not a sob,” she said bravely, “I only lost my breath and caught it hard again.”
“Yes, Cherokee, I am going without you, going out of your life. Good bye.”
“You cannot go out of it,” she answered, “but good bye.”
“Good bye,” he repeated, which should only mean, “God bless you.”
There was a flutter of pulses, and Robert walked away with head upheld, dry-eyed, to face the world. Unfaltering, she let him go, the while she had more than a suspicion of the lips whose false speaking had wrought her such woe.
When he reached his room he unlocked the drawer, produced from it a card, and looked long and tenderly upon the face he saw. He bent over and kissed the unresponsive lips. This was his requiem in memory of a worthier life. Then lighting a match he set it afire, and watched it burn to a shadowy cinder, which mounted feebly in the air for a moment, making a gray background against whose dullness stood out, in its round finished beauty, the life he had lost—echoing with a true woman’s beautiful soul.
As the ashes whitened at his feet, he thought, “Thus the old life is effaced, I will go into the new.”
The midnight train took him out of town, and Cherokee was weeping over a basket of white roses which had come just at evening.