VIII
Philip was looking from his window out upon the street where the first snows of winter lay slowly melting in the sunshine, when a cab rattled up through the mud and slush. It stopped before the house and his interest became active.
“It's the saintly Anson! This is, indeed, penance for my sins.”
Almost with the thought Anson stepped from the cab and was followed by a gentleman who had no small trouble in wriggling through the narrow door.
Philip, with a groan of disgust, recognized the junior member of the firm employing his brother.
“As if Anson were not affliction enough,” he thought, “he brings Mr. Hale to bore us—especially me, by prosy recitals of his own worth.”
He promptly put himself beyond his brother's range of vision, as he wished to avoid the necessity of going down-stairs until the last moment.
He resumed his work, and for an hour or more wrote steadily on, then he threw down his pen and was resting his eyes, his hands before them, when the door opened and his mother entered the room. He knew who it was without looking up, since she was the only one of all the family who ever invaded his privacy.
“What is it, mother?” he asked.
“May I see you, Philip? Are you very busy?”
There was something in her voice that caused him to glance around quickly. “Why, what is it, mother?”
He left his chair and went to her side. He saw that her face was red and swollen as though from much weeping. “What is it, dear?” He put his arms about her. “Does Anson bring bad news of any sort?”
By a sudden gesture she freed herself from his embrace, covering her face with her apron.
“Oh! Philip, it's awful.” And she began to cry softly.
“But what is it—why don't you tell me?”
He tried to draw the apron away that he might see her face again, but she resisted his gentle force.
“What is it, dear? Is it Anson—is he ill?”
“It's worse than that! Oh! a million times worse!”
At her words the desperate sickening feeling begotten of some great and unknown calamity, the forerunner of actual knowledge, came into his heart.
“You must tell me, mother, or how can I ever help you?”
“I shall, only wait a minute until I am calm, for you must know—and you must save him!”
“I save him! What do you mean? What has happened to him?”
“You won't blame him? Promise me you won't be hard, now before I tell you. That you won't say of think unkind things of him? Promise me, promise me, Philip!” For he had hesitated.
“I promise, mother, for your sake.”
“No! no! for his own.”
“For his sake then. It is all one.”
“It is difficult to tell even you, Philip.”
He put his arms about her once more. “There, you don't mind me, you know,” he said tenderly. “Dear little mother, so brave and good, you really can't mean you mind me?”
It was in a hushed strained voice, as though she feared the shameful secret she had to confide would find a listener in the very air, that she told Philip of his brother's fall from grace.
“He has taken money from the firm. A thousand dollars. It was not stealing.” She was quick to shield him. “He expected—he fully expected to pay it back, down to the last penny, but the amount grew and grew, and soon it was beyond him. He meant to be honest. He has been so good always, no one would dare accuse him of stealing. You know it was not; say it was not! Say you don't think it!”
She had given way utterly to her grief, and to quiet her he said:
“Of course it wasn't stealing.”
“There!” reassured and rendered almost happy. “There, I knew you would understand. Why, even Mr. Hale speaks of it in the kindest way. He knows Anson to be perfectly reliable—he doesn't dare question it. Everybody knows how good he is, he wouldn't think of doing wrong. He has explained it all. At first he took the money as an advance upon his salary and then the indebtedness grew. He was never able to make good what he had borrowed. It was so easy to take what he needed—so easy to think he could repay it. He meant to do what was right: I am sure of this. If I were not it would kill me.” She paused for an instant. “It was unfair to put such a pitfall in any man's path, no matter how honest. It was unjust, and they should suffer, but—but”—looking up appealingly into his face—“we must save Anson, must we not? For if we don't—he will be arrested and then every one will know. The whole town. Think of the disgrace—the awful humiliation! We must save him. He is your brother, and deep in your heart you love him. Say you do!”
Philip, looking at her, bowed, broken, crushed, scarcely daring to raise her eyes to his, answered that he loved his brother, but in his soul he cursed him for the suffering he had caused.
“Mr. Hale assures me that if the money is returned at once, it shall be kept a secret—not even the girls need know. You are the only one who can do this, Philip. It all rests with you. Will you save him?”
“For his own sake and for yours—but, most of all for yours, dear, yes.”
In an instant he remembered what that money was to do for him. More than money ever did before. The thought made him sick with a deadly nausea. He saw his hope sink lower and lower until it entirely ceased to be and despair stood in its place. He had all but won in the struggle, and now to have the fruits snatched from him at the last moment! He had saved for another to scatter.
“What will become of Anson?” he asked. “Where will he go? Of course he can't remain with the firm. It wouldn't be permitted, I suppose, nor pleasant.”
“He has a friend in the West—some place in California—in business there. He has been urging Anson for months to come to him, and now, it is all most fortunate, he has decided to go. He can't very well stay here. If he should there is danger the secret might be discovered: he would have to get a new position and people would wonder, but once he is gone, they will forget all about him and then there will be no talk. No one will ever learn why he left.”
Philip looked at her commiseratingly. With his hand he brushed away the white hair lying in disorder upon her forehead.
“Poor mother, poor mother! and you have been so proud of him!”
“As I shall always be. My poor Anson! As I shall always be—as I am of all of you.” She smiled bravely through her tears.
“I shall go for the money. I'd better go at once or I may find the bank closed.”
He spoke collectedly and his mother did not divine from any words of his that he was preparing to make the greatest sacrifice possible to him. Nor would he have her know. There was misery enough for her as it was. Yet the thought of what he had to do brought him unspeakable agony. It was not the loss of money, for money of itself was nothing to him, but everything in his little world was held in place by what he was giving up.
“I shall get the money,” he repeated quietly. “I shall go for it at once.”
“You are so good!” she cried. “You were always my comfort. I can rely upon you more than on the others.”
She reached up and kissed him again and again. “Though no one ever knows of the sacrifice you make, Anson and I will, and we will honor you for it. Do not think that we undervalue it.” He kissed her softly. No amount of praise could have wrung the money from him, but her tears had been more potent.
“You don't care,” she questioned, “that the girls are not to be told of what you do for Anson?”
“No, dear. Glory of that sort does not in the least appeal to me. I have no objections to being deprived of it. What I do I do quite willingly. I am satisfied with your thanks and the consciousness that I have in a measure eased this burden for you.” He smiled sadly down upon her. “Now I will go,” and unclasping her arms from about his neck, he turned and left the room.
After a few moments' waiting to regain her composure, Mrs. Southard went down to the parlor where Anson and Hale sat, the former crestfallen and not over-confident of Philip's generosity.
To Hale she said: “My son will be back in a few moments with the sum you require. He has just gone for it.”
Anson's face lit up with joy. He was safe! How lucky it was that Philip had kept his money instead of spending it!
They did not have to wait long for Philip's return. His mother, who had been watching from the window, saw him as he came into the yard, and quitting the room, joined him in the hall.
“You have it? You were in time?” she asked anxiously.
“Yes,” he said, placing a bundle of bills in her hand. “It is a thousand dollars you need, is it not?”
“Yes. It is so good of you. How can I ever tell you what it means to me!”
With a heavy step, as if all the vigor had left him, Philip slowly mounted the stairs leading up to the floor above.
“Won't you come in and see Mr. Hale?” his mother called.
“I had rather not, dear,” he answered.
He walked as one in a dream, mechanically closing the door behind him as he entered the room. Then he dropped wearily into his chair beside the table.
He was overwhelmed by the catastrophe. A comprehension of it all, and the probable results, began to come to him. He threw the few hundred dollars remaining of his little fortune on the table. They were worthless, so far as the purpose for which they had been saved was concerned.
Stunned and stupid he gazed at the little heap of paper. Each dollar represented some privation in his daily life.
With savage fervor he brought his clenched hand down on the little heap, while from between his set teeth he ground out curses, for now came a frenzy of disappointment.
It soon subsided, as all violent emotions are bound to do.
Only a dull pain remained. Still he kept his gaze fastened on the money before him. It reminded him of what the sum had once been—and was no longer. He must begin again,—go through the round of petty self-denial, the soul-stunting process of small economy.
“It will be so long—so very long until I get so much again,” he thought. “While I am about it a thousand things may happen to rob me of the inspiration of her love. And all for the theft of a wretched paltry pittance, so small it could have done Anson no good, and yet so large it may be the ruin of my hopes. It is unjust that I should suffer for him! A thousand dollars! Bah! The commonplaceness of it!”
With his fist hard pressed upon the table and his eyes fixed on vacancy, he sat and thought; thought with a brain mad and drunk with grief. He would have liked to turn his face toward the wall and give up. He was worsted. The props with which he had sustained himself were gone.
How he hated Anson! The fool!—who had lived in a false world of pious frauds; whose manhood had failed at the one test to which he had been put; who had succumbed to temptation at the first opportunity.
To cover up this—to put a patch upon the torn garment of his brother's honesty he must suffer. How he hated him!
He heard Hale leave the house, but dared not look to see him go. He took all his hope, all his aspirations with him. And now how would it all end? Could he ask Barbara to wait much longer? How would he meet her father's exactions? What excuse was there to offer for the sudden vanishing of his savings? Mr. Gerard would think he had been lied to from the start.
Down-stairs the girls and Mrs. Southard were making ready for Anson's departure. It had been arranged that he should leave at once. They moved about noiselessly, talking in whispers, the girls wildly curious, yet not venturing to question their mother. The whole atmosphere was as though some one had died. It pervaded the entire house. Where he sat in his room, Philip felt it. In fancy he saw his mother packing Anson's trunk—saw her tears fall silently as she folded away his clothes—and as his fancy saw it, so he knew it must be in reality.
Despite the load that lay upon him crushing him to earth, he was glad she had been spared the greater humiliation and disgrace that but for him would have come to them. The realization of this lessened the extent of his own anguish somewhat, at least it was a consolation to feel that he had shielded her, no matter at what cost.
It was dark when his mother finally knocked at his door and told him that supper was ready.
“I'm not hungry,” he answered.
She opened the door and came in, saying in some surprise as she did so, for his lamp was unlighted:
“Why, Philip, what's wrong?”
“Nothing, dear, nothing. Why do you ask?”
“You don't begrudge the money that kept us all from shame—you don't regret that?” She put her hand upon his shoulder.
“I regret nothing. For you I would have done a hundred times what I did to-day, and counted it a small recompense for what you have given me all these years.”
“You mean it, Philip?”
“Certainly. I was sitting here in the dusk thinking it over—thinking how glad I am that it was in my power to do this for you—and him. No matter what the outcome may be, I shall not regret it for one instant.”
Her hand caressed his cheek softly: “Won't you come down to supper?”
“What's the use? I couldn't eat now.”
“But you will not see Anson again. It may be years before he comes back to us. Do come down.”
“I shall go with him to the train. Won't that do just as well? I wish to think a while longer, here in the dark by myself.”
“I know he will be delighted to have you,” she said. “Poor Anson! It has been a terrible blow to him.”
Philip smiled queerly to himself. He doubted the delight Anson would derive from his company just then, but he made no response.
“It seems unfair to ask any more of you,” his mother said with reluctance, “but Anson is almost penniless. If you could only help just a little it might make it easier for him.”
Philip gathered up the bills that still lay on the table where he had thrown them. “Here are one or two hundred dollars,” he said, “he may as well have them. They are of no use to me, and you will feel so much better to have him go, if you know he has something to fall back on!”
She took the money gratefully. “He has promised to repay all he has had from you, so don't worry about not getting it back.”
“Ah! dear,” and he laughed, “that does not worry me in the least. I don't bother about what he will or will not do.”
She turned to the door: “I shall call you then when he is ready.” And she left him to his solitude.
Philip wondered when he was once more alone what his mother's action would have been had she known what that money was to do for him. On the whole he concluded it was just as well she did not know. He became reflective. With practise it might be possible for him to acquire a habit which would enable him to derive a melancholy pleasure from being miserable. He laughed aloud.
“I never knew that farce and tragedy touched hands,” he thought.
It was quite late when his mother called from the foot of the stairs: “Anson is ready, Philip. If you will come, he will be so pleased to have you go down to the station with him.”
He went down and found her waiting for him in the hall. “You will be kind,” she whispered anxiously. “You won't say anything hard, when you are alone with him? Poor boy! he feels it so keenly. You will be considerate of him?”
“Yes, dear. Don't distress yourself. I shall be as kind as I know how.”
They went into the sitting-room where Anson was bidding good-by to his sisters. Philip had no wish to witness his mother's farewells. He picked up a valise his brother was to carry with him, saying: “I shall start on ahead, Anson.”
“All right. I shall be along presently,” his brother answered.
Philip escaped into the open air. Soon he heard Anson coming, waited until he caught up, and the two brothers, without a word, set off for the station very much as though they were trying to run away from each other, but had foolishly elected to go in the same direction while about it.
Their destination was reached before either had framed a speech diplomatic enough for the occasion.
Anson went to ascertain how much time he had and returned almost immediately to say that he had ten minutes left.
“But,” he added, “you needn't wait on my account.”
“I'll see you off. I told mother I would.”
“Of course—if you like. I thought you might want to go home.”
They fell to pacing back and forth across the platform, still apparently trying to get away from each other. Neither spoke, and it was only when the train rushed in with a trailing echo of sound from out the darkness, that Anson found courage to say hurriedly from the door of his car:
“Mother told you, didn't she, that I would pay up all I have had from you? I intend to and shall, but I can't do it at once.” The whistle of the engine broke in upon him. “I'll do it sure, Philip, I won't forget.”
“There is no haste,” his brother answered. “Don't sacrifice yourself because of me.”
He extended his hand. “Good-by and good luck to you.”
The train began to move.
“It was awfully good of you. You have done a lot for me. I——”
The train bore him swiftly away, but standing as he did on the rear platform of the last car, the door at his back, Philip saw him wave his handkerchief and he responded in a like fashion, wishing he were certain Anson could see him as plainly as he saw Anson.
And so he stood until long after the train had vanished, a miserable lonely feeling within him.
It was all hopeless—the whole affair.
His mother would never be quite the same again, she could never live beyond the memory of that day. At last he muttered:
“Poor devil! I am positive he didn't mean to harm any one, nor did he mean to be bad. He has not the sense in the first place. What he did, was simply the blundering clumsy conduct of a fool.”