CHAPTER IX
"Well, it's a relief to me, Dick, to know that you do know!" Mr. Devant shrugged his shoulders, and laughed lightly. "Katharine and I have had a sneaking desire to ask you if you'd found us out, but we waited for you to make the first move."
"I'm slow to move in any game," Thornly replied. "I rather think it comes from my chess training. When a child begins that pastime, as you might say, in his cradle, with such a teacher as father, it's apt to influence his character."
"Exactly. Have a cigar, Dick; it's beastly lonely to puff alone."
"Thanks, no. I've smoked too much in my hut on the Hills. Being alone always drives me to a cigar."
The two men sat in the library at Bluff Head. A fire of driftwood crackled on the hearth and a stiff wind roared around the house.
"Of course we had no right to enter your studio,"—Mr. Devant spoke slowly between the puffs of smoke,—"except the right that says all is fair in love and war. I admit that I was shaking in my boots that day for fear you might come in upon us. Katharine was braver than I. You must own, Dick, that you hadn't treated the girl quite fair."
"I do not grant that, Mr. Devant. I think Katharine had no cause for complaint. Good Lord! a doctor's wife might quite as well feel herself aggrieved because her husband's dissecting room is closed to her."
"Come, now, Dick!" Devant threw his head back and laughed; "it's carrying the thing too far when you liken the Pimpernel to a disagreeably defunct subject."
"It all goes to the making of one's art; that is what I mean. It belongs to the art and need not be dragged into public to satisfy a woman's morbid curiosity."
"Or a man's?" The laugh was gone from the face of the older man.
"Or a man's, since you insist." Thornly looked into the depths of the rich glow upon the grate and took small heed of his companion's changed expression.
"And your model gave us away?"
"I beg pardon?" Thornly drew himself together; "what did you say?"
"I said, your model, the Pimpernel, told you? It must have given the little thing a bad half hour to be found out."
"It killed her childhood," the young man returned; "it died hard, and it wasn't pleasant for me to witness, but, thank God, the woman in her saved her soul from utter annihilation. Somehow, I have always wanted you and Katharine to know this."
"Thank you. You have told Katharine?"
"No, I'm leaving to-morrow. I'm going to tell Katharine to-morrow night. I waited for her to speak first to me; I hoped she would to the last. All might have been different if she only had."
"Perhaps Katharine is generous enough to forgive you unheard?" ventured Devant.
"No woman has a right to forgive a man in such a case, if she suspects what Katharine did!" The keen eyes drew together darkly.
"How do you know what Katharine thought, Dick?" The older man was growing anxious.
"A woman thinks only one thing, when she strikes that kind of a blow, Mr. Devant. The effect of the blow upon the object was proof enough of its character. I happened to be in at the death, you know."
"Dick, you're a man of the world; this sort of sentiment is not worthy of your intelligence. Katharine is a loving girl and naturally a bit jealous of you and your dissecting room. You must realize she had cause for surprise that day? Why, the little devil looked like a siren and the bare feet in the net were breathtaking. I think, under all the circumstances, for Katharine to overlook it in silence proves her a large-hearted woman."
"Or an indifferent, determined one!"
"Dick!"
"I feel rather more deeply, Mr. Devant, than you have, perhaps, imagined. This means much to me. I have never had but one ideal of womanhood that I have cared to bring into my inner life. My mother set my standard high."
"Your mother was an unusual woman, my boy."
"The unusual is what I have always admired."
"You are too young to be so unelastic."
"I'm too young to forego my ideal, Mr. Devant."
Presently Saxton entered the room with a tray of glasses and a bottle. After he was gone, Mr. Devant took up the subject anxiously.
"I was your father's friend, Dick, your mother's too, for that matter. I do not want you to do a mad thing in the heat of resentment. Katharine Ogden is a rare woman, a woman who will be the one thing needful to make your success in life secure. Her fortune will place you above the necessity of struggling. You can paint as genius moves and give the public only your best. She is beautiful; she loves you, is proud of you, and knows the world, the world that may be yours, in every detail. She is your ideal, my boy, your ideal, lost for a moment in the fog."
Thornly listened, and suddenly Janet's simile recurred to him: "It comes to me just as Davy's Light comes of an early morning when the fog lifts!" The memory brought a tugging of the heartstrings.
"You have scattered the fog, Mr. Devant," he answered. "I own I was in rather a mist, but you bring things out most distinctly!"
"And you will not go to Katharine at once? You see I am presuming upon old friendship and a sincere liking for you."
"I only wish there were a night train!" Thornly gave vent to a long, relieved breath.
"You hold to your purpose, Dick? I feel that but for me this might not have occurred. I should have restrained the child that day."
"I shall tell Katharine all, Mr. Devant. I am sure she will ask me to release her from a tie that can be only galling for us both."
"You will be playing the fool, Dick,"—a note of anger rang in the deep voice,—"a fool, and something worse. Gentlemen do not play fast and loose with a woman like Katharine Ogden!"
"I am sorry you judge me so harshly." Thornly flushed. "I should hardly think myself worthy the name of man, if I followed any other course. To marry Katharine with this between us would be sheer folly. To refer to it must in itself bring about the result I expect. I have no desire to enter Katharine's world and she has no intention of adopting mine. She has always believed I would use my success as a step to mount to her. That her world is less than mine has never occurred to her."
"But if the girl loves you?"
"She does not love me. Had she loved me, she must have spoken since—that day."
Mr. Devant arose uneasily and walked about the room, then he came back and drew his chair close to Thornly's.
"Will you take a glass of my—wine?" he asked huskily.
Thornly was about to decline, but changed his mind.
"Thanks, I will," he said instead. And the two sipped the port together.
"Dick, this has shaken me a bit. I feel that I have an ignoble share in the whole affair. I'm getting to be an old man; I can claim certain privileges on that score, and if life means anything past forty, it means sharing its experiences with a friend. I'm going to speak of something that has never passed my lips for nearly twenty years."
"You are very kind, Mr. Devant." Thornly set his glass down and thrust his hands in his pockets. "I appreciate your friendliness, but please do not give yourself pain. If life means anything under forty, it means getting your knocks at first hand." He tried to smile pleasantly, but his face fell at once into gloomy, set lines.
"I'm afraid," Mr. Devant went on, keeping his eyes upon his companion's face and guiding himself thereby, "I'm afraid some Quixotic idea of defending this little pimpernel of ours moves you to take this step. Believe me, nothing you can do in that direction—unless indeed you have gone too far already—can avail, if you seek the girl's happiness."
A deep flush rose to Thornly's cheeks, but the proud uplift of the head renewed hope in the older man's heart.
"You say," he continued, toying with his glass, "that to drag Katharine from her world would be ruinous to her; to drag this child of the dunes from her world would be—to put it none too harshly—hell! I've looked the girl's antecedents up since that day on the Hills. I've had my bad moments, I can assure you. It's like trying to draw water out of an empty well to get anything against their own from these people down here; but I had hopes of the girl's mother. I pin my faith to ancestry, and I am willing to build on a very small foundation, providing the soil is good. But the mother in no wise accounts for the daughter. She was a simple, uneducated woman, with rather an unpleasant way of shunning her kind. James B. Smith, my gardener, permitted me to wring this from him. He doesn't fancy Captain Billy Morgan, thinks him rather a saphead. He hinted at a necessity for the marriage of this same Billy and the girl's mother. It's about the one sin the Quintonites know as a sin. They come as near going back upon each other for that transgression as they ever come to anything definite. The girl is the offspring of a stupid surf-man and a nondescript sort of woman. She is not the product of any known better stock; she is, well, a freak of nature! You cannot transplant that kind of flower, Dick. The roots are hid in shallow soil of a peculiar kind. If you planted her in, well, in even your artistic world, she would either die, shrivel up, and be finished, or she might spread her roots, and finish you! I've seen more than one such case."
Thornly shook himself, as if doubtful what he should reply to this man who, above all else, in his own fashion, was trying to prove himself a friend.
"Thank you again, Mr. Devant," he said at last haltingly; "I suppose all men as old as you are sincere when they try to help us younger chaps by knocking us senseless in an hour of danger. But it's better to let us see and know the danger; we'll recognize it the next time. All I can say is, that I have formed no plans for after to-morrow night! I've got to get out into the open if I can. I rather imagine my art must satisfy me in the future."
Devant went over to a desk between two bookcases, opened it, and took something from a private drawer.
"What do you think of this?" he asked, handing Thornly an old photograph.
"I should say,"—the younger man looked keenly at the picture,—"I should say that it was an almost ideal face of a certain type."
"Of a certain type, yes." Devant came closer and leaned over his companion's shoulder. "The coloring, of course, is lacking. I never saw such glorious hair and eyes. The eyes gave promise of a nobility the woman-nature utterly lacked. That girl, Dick, has wrecked my life!"
Thornly handed the photograph to Devant. He felt as if he were in some way reading a private letter.
"Your life does not seem a wrecked life," he said confusedly. In a vague way he wished to repress a confidence that he felt, once told, might wield an influence over his own acts, and this his independence resented. "You have always appeared a thoroughly contented, successful man."
Devant laughed bitterly; then he idly placed the photograph in a book and closed the covers upon the exquisite face. Thornly hoped that would end the matter, but his companion was bent upon his course. He stretched his feet toward the fire and looked into the heart of the glow, with sad, brooding eyes.
"Happy!" he ejaculated, "happy! It is only youth that estimates happiness by superficialities. A smile, a laugh, a full pocketbook! You think they mean happiness?"
"They are often the outward expression."
"Or counterfeits. Have you ever read 'Peer Gynt,' Dick?"
"Yes. Ibsen has a gloomy charm for me. I read all he writes in about the same way a child reads goblin tales. I enjoy the shivers."
"You remember the woman who gave Peer permission to marry the one pure love of his life but stipulated that she should forever sit beside them?"
"Yes!" Thornly smiled grimly. "That was a devilishly Ibsen-like idea."
"It was a truer touch than the young can understand. Those ghostly women of an early folly often sit beside a man and the later, purer love of his life. Some men are able to ignore the gray spectres and get a deal of comfort from the saner reality of maturer years; I never could. That girl"—he touched the closed book as if it were the grave that concealed her—"has always come between me and later desires for a home and closer ties. Her wonderful eyes, that looked so much and meant so little, have held me by a power that death and years have never conquered."
"She died then?" Thornly could no longer shield himself from the undesired knowledge; he must hear the end.
"Yes. She came from near here, poor little soul! I can never get rid of the impression that her death was hurried, not only by trouble, but sheer homesickness. You cannot fit these slow, quiet natures into the city's whirlpool. I was a young fellow, down for the summer. I was ensnared by her beauty, and hadn't sense enough to see the danger. She followed me to the city,—took a place in a shop, and was about as wretched as a sea gull in a desert. I was fool enough to think it a noble act to befriend her and so I complicated matters. My father must have found out, though I was never sure of that. Father was a man who kept a calm exterior under any emotion; but he sent me abroad, and I, not knowing that he had discovered anything, dared not confess. I meant to come back at a year's end and set all straight in some way. Good God! set things straight! How we poor devils go through the world knocking down things like so many ten pins and solacing ourselves with the fancy that when we finish the game we'll set the pins in place again! We never get that chance, Dick, take my word for it! Whatever the plan of life is, it isn't for us to set up the game! We may play fair, if it is in us, but once we get through, we need not hope for any going back process. When I returned at the end of two years, I could not find her! It wasn't love that set me upon the search for her, Dick, I always knew that; but I think it was the one decent element that has ever kept me from going to the deepest depths. I got discouraged, finally, and took our old family lawyer into my confidence."
"Did you look down here?" Thornly asked slowly. The tale had clutched him in a nightmarish way that shook his nerves.
"They don't come back here, my boy, once they tread the path of that poor child. They simplify morality in Quinton along with all else, and the one unpardonable sin suffices for them. They grade their society by their attitude toward that. But old Thorndyke took this place into consideration as a beginning, for he aided me in my search when he was convinced of my determination."
"And you never found her?" Thornly was leaning forward with hands close clasped before him, his face showing tense in the red glow of the fire.
"Thorndyke did."
"Ah!"
"Yes, the poor little thing had been rescued after a fashion. Soon after I left her, a fellow who had always had a liking for her, a chap who had worked in the shop with her, was willing to marry her and she consented. You wouldn't think she could, quite, with those eyes, but she did! The man was good to her; but the city, and other things, were too much, and she lived only a short time. There was a child! I wanted to do something for it; I had a passion of remorse then, but Thorndyke told me that the child's best interest lay in my letting her alone. She was respected and comfortable. For me to interfere would be to throw dishonor upon the dead mother and a cloud upon the child. All had been buried and forgotten in the mother's grave. About all I could do to better the business was to keep my hands off; and that I did!"
Devant's head drooped upon his chest, and Thornly felt a kind of pity that stirred a new liking for the man.
"You think the lawyer told you the true facts?" he asked; "true in every particular?"
Devant started up and turned deep eyes upon the questioner.
"Great heavens! yes. You do not know Thorndyke. He was about as cast iron an old Puritan as ever survived the times. He was devoted to our family, and served us to his life's end as counsellor and friend; but not for the hope of heaven would he have lied! No, that's why I confided in Thorndyke, I could not have trusted any one else. I knew he would never respect me afterward; he never did. But he served me as no one else could, and I bore his contempt with positive gratitude."
"But you could never forget?" Thornly spoke almost affectionately. The older man looked up.
"No. And as I grow older I thank God I never could. We ought not forget such things as that. We ought to expiate them as long as we live. I have grown to take a kind of joy in the hurt of the memory, a kind of savage exaltation in the suffering. So, perhaps, can I wipe out the wrong in this life and get strength of a better sort for the next trial on beyond, if there is another trial! I suppose every man wants to show, and live the best that is in him; not many get the chance here, from what I see. I reckon that is why we old fellows have an interest in you younger ones. It goes against the grain, if we have a sneaking regard for you, to see you quench the divine spark with the same galling water we've gone through. Going, Dick?"
For the other had risen and was holding out his hand in a confused but eager fashion.
"Yes, Mr. Devant, and thank you! You're not an old man, I sincerely wish that you might some day, well, you understand—not forget exactly, but get another trial here!"
"Too late for that, Dick. Can't you stay over night?"
"No. I'm going to the Hills. I've some last things to do there."
"And to-morrow, Dick?"
"I'm going to Katharine!" The two men looked keenly into each other's eyes.
"I'll meet you then at the train, my boy, at 7.50. I've business in the city. I always put up at the Holcomb; look me up after you've seen Katharine."
"Good night, Mr. Devant, and again thank you!"
Devant walked with Thornly to the outer door, and then to the windswept piazza. "It's sharp to-night," he said; "I'll soon have to give up Bluff Head. Davy's Light has got it all its own way to-night, not a star or moon to rival its beauty. A time back I fancied one evening that the Light failed me. It was only for a few moments I imagined it, but it gave me quite a jog. I suppose it was the state of my nerves; one can rely upon Davy. He's a great philosopher in his way. His lamp is his duty; his lamp and that poor crippled wife of his who has just died. Davy is one of the few men I've met, Dick, who seems to have played the game fair and has never tried to comfort himself with the hope of going back. 'I'm ready for the next duty,' he said to me the other day with his old rugged face shining; 'there's always another duty ready at hand, when you drop one as finished.'"
The master of Bluff Head watched the straight young figure fade into the night. Then he turned again to Davy's Light.
"The weight of a dead duty," he muttered. "That's what anchors a man! It isn't in the order of things to trust a man with a new duty, when he failed with the last. There isn't any light to guide a man that's anchored by a dead duty."
Then Devant went back into his lonely house and sat down before the dulling fire to think it out about Thornly.
"He'll never go to any one but me, after he's seen Katharine," he thought. "He may not come to me. It all depends upon how deep the thing has gone, but, in case he needs any one, I'd better be on hand. I may serve as a buffer, and that's better than not serving at all."