XXIX
Gorham received two callers on that Saturday night. Sanford came first, and the heartiness of the welcome extended him thawed out the blustering exterior which made it so difficult for the warm heart underneath to assert itself.
"I never was so proud of any one," cried Gorham, with more enthusiasm than he often manifested. "Now it is the old Stephen I used to know and love, acting his own self once more! But you are going to have your chance to crow over me. Stephen, I've been a more obstinate old fool than you ever thought of being, and I'm going to make you my father-confessor."
Then he told him of Allen's development, from the first day he entered the offices of the Consolidated Companies down to the time when he had himself sent the boy away from him in anger. He even told him of the crisis in the corporation, knowing that their conversation was sacred to his old friend. Then he dwelt on Allen's courage in the face of his own blindness, and his admiration for the boy's attitude throughout.
"He is planning to go back to you, Stephen, but I shan't let him if I can help it. I have made him think that his work has been a failure, when in reality his vision has been clearer than mine. But don't tell him this. Let your talk be of yourselves. Then bring him to me to-morrow for dinner, and let me show him what he really is."
"I told you he'd make a fine business man," Stephen could not resist saying. "You remember that."
"I do," laughed Gorham. "That is why I gave him the chance. You remember asking me to do it, don't you?"
"There's another thing I told you, Robert,—that you never could do business on the basis you planned unless you had angels all the way up from the office boy to the Board of Directors."
"It has been my fault in not being able to distinguish between angels and mortals," Gorham replied seriously, his mind reverting to the great problem which still lay unsolved before him. "I am not willing yet to admit that the basis is wrong,—the error must rest in the building. Good-night, Stephen. Be sure to bring Allen with you to-morrow."
* * * * *
Covington entered the library, walking with short, quick steps quite unlike his usual deliberate gait, and sat down in the chair just vacated by Mr. Sanford. Gorham noted at once the change which had come over his features, even during the few hours which had elapsed since morning. For the first time his eyes showed a nervous unrest, the lines about his mouth had settled into a hard, disagreeable expression, and his whole manner evidenced the strain he was enduring. Gorham noted all this, and in a measure it surprised him. If Covington was so constituted that he could play the hypocrite, he would not have supposed his sensibilities acute enough to overwhelm him in the unmasking.
"You are wondering why I desired this interview," Covington began. "You cannot understand what there is left for me to say to you in view of what has happened. I could have bluffed this out for a time, but it was no use. There are other developments which will follow on the heels of this which make it useless to temporize. I have played the game my way, letting you make the rules, believing that when it came to the showdown my cards would be strong enough to win. They would be under normal circumstances, but you've called my hand too soon. You see before you a desperate man, Mr. Gorham, upon whom you have forced the necessity of taking a gambler's chance. That is why I am here to-night."
"You must be implicated in matters far deeper than I have knowledge to talk like this, Covington. You have been false to me and false to the Companies, but after all there is nothing criminal in what you have done. To me, the greatest crime a man can commit is so to forget the manhood with which his Maker endowed him, as to prostitute it for temporary personal advantage, but the law looks upon other lesser crimes as deserving of greater punishment. I cannot tell how much of a lesson this may be to you. It will, of course, be necessary for you to leave New York, as the committee, however much they may criticise my code, have one of their own which you have transgressed. As far as I am concerned, you may have no anxiety. I have too many important matters in hand to wish to divert myself from them simply to make you pay the penalty you owe me."
"I am implicated deeper than you know, but I am here to make terms rather than accept them," Covington replied. "I do not choose to begin life over again, and I require your definite assurances that whatever you know or may learn against me be kept from the knowledge of the committee. At present I hold their confidence, and I am not willing to relinquish it. What I have done in this stock transaction will not strike them as so serious a matter as you make of it. I venture to say that I am not the only one of them to do it."
Gorham looked at him keenly. "This is the talk of a man bereft of his senses."
"I told you I was desperate, and so I am. I have been working all my life to gain the position of wealth and power which is now within my grasp, and you shall not keep me from it."
"You yourself have made its attainment impossible."
"Next to you, I am the one man most competent to conduct the affairs of the Consolidated Companies. You yourself have trained me to be your successor. The committee know this, and they also know that with me at the head, the Companies will be run as they wish it. They are eager to have the change, and only fear your influence against the corporation if they force you out."
"All that may have been true, Covington, in the past. Not one of them would trust you now."
"They know nothing which reflects upon my character, and they must not know. You and they can never continue together,—it is hopeless to expect a compromise. I am the only man who can hold these forces together, and you must give me this chance."
Gorham could only believe that the excitement which controlled Covington had affected him to the extent of irresponsibility, and his unusual manner heightened the impression.
"I see no reason to continue this interview," he said shortly. "You speak of what must and shall happen when the shaping of events has already passed from your control."
"You think it has, Mr. Gorham; but that is where the gambler's chance comes in. It is a desperate chance, and it is one which I could never have believed myself capable of taking. It simply shows how far a man will go when forced against the wall."
"I am tiring of this play-acting," protested Gorham. "If you have anything to say, say it, or else leave me to devote my time to matters which require it."
Covington hesitated even then. The weapon was an ugly one to handle, and there were elements in him which rebelled. Slowly he drew the bulky paper from his pocket, not meeting Gorham's steady gaze.
"More affidavits?" asked Gorham. "What is the nature of them this time?"
"I am more keenly aware of how despicable this is than you will give me credit," he said. "I have lived among gentlemen long enough to recognize that to those who know of this, my act separates me from the society of which I have been a part. But I have chosen. With the wealth and power which this will bring me, I can buy back what now I seem to forfeit."
He placed the papers in Mr. Gorham's hands, turning his pale face away, and drumming nervously on the arm of his chair with his fingers. The minutes seemed hours, and when he turned, he found Gorham's penetrating eye fixed firmly upon him. He had counted on the strength of the statements contained in the affidavits to protect him from personal violence, yet he half suspected Gorham's purpose when he rose. His host, however, walked quietly to the wall and pressed the button, then noiselessly resumed his seat. The awful silence was in itself a strain on Covington. He wished Gorham would speak, even though he thought he knew the nature of what those first words would be. Presently Riley opened the door.
"Ask Mrs. Gorham and Miss Alice to come here, Riley."
"Not Alice!" Covington cried.
Again silence pervaded the room, Gorham rereading the papers, and Covington still drumming on the arm of his chair. As Eleanor and Alice entered they greeted Covington cordially, but he drew back without accepting the outstretched hands.
"We have a matter to discuss which affects us all," Gorham said, handing Eleanor one of the papers. "Please read this, but make no comment until later."
The first few words conveyed its nature to her, and she swayed for a moment as if she might fall. Alice sprang to her side.
"What is it, Eleanor,—let me read it with you. Shall I, daddy?"
Gorham nodded. When they had finished, Eleanor started to speak, but her husband checked her. The momentary faintness had passed, and she stood erect, eager for the word from Gorham which would permit her to break the silence.
"Where did this come from?" Alice demanded.
"Mr. Covington just brought it to me."
"What did you do to the man who dared to draw it up?" she asked indignantly of Covington.
"Mr. Covington is the man who had it drawn up," her father answered.
"Now we will listen to what he has to say about it."
The man squared himself for the issue.
"You have read it," he said huskily, "and you value your wife's reputation?"
"Yes, beyond anything and everything else."
"Beyond the Consolidated Companies and the gratification of injuring me with the committee?"
"Yes."
Covington gained confidence from the ease with which all was moving. A few minutes more of this as against a lifetime of wealth and power! It was worth the degradation. "It is sometimes necessary to walk through filth and slime to attain high places," he remembered Gorham had once told him.
"Would you agree to stand one side and give me this chance, rather than have a blemish on your wife's name made public?"
"Yes," was the firm reply.
Eleanor had lived a century during the conversation. Sitting now in the shadow of the room, she turned her eyes first toward one speaker and then the other, wondering all the while how it was to end. If only she had told Robert herself before this moment! She could not understand her husband's passive attitude. She knew him to be slow to anger, yet she also knew well the strength of the passion which lay controlled beneath his calm exterior. What Covington had said and the manner in which he had said it would, under ordinary circumstances, have aroused Gorham to stern indignation. She could only attribute his present patience to an uncertainty which lay in his own mind as to the truth of the story which he had read; but when he answered Covington's questions, indicating which choice he would make, she could endure it no longer. Rising quickly, she stood between the two men, her face turned toward Gorham.
"Robert," she said, "what do you mean? This man is asking you to give up the Consolidated Companies."
"I understand it, Eleanor," Gorham replied. "I would prefer to do so rather than have a single breath of scandal or even suspicion attach itself to you."
Eleanor drew herself up very straight, and, paying no attention to
Covington, she addressed herself passionately to her husband.
"Look at me, Robert, look into my eyes, and tell me if you see there anything of which I need to feel ashamed. You have read this story, now you shall hear mine. It is one which you should have heard long ago, Robert, but I hesitated to speak, not because I was ashamed of anything which happened, but because I feared just the interpretation which has now been put upon it. You know all about my marriage to Ralph Buckner; you know all about Carina's death, and you shall know all which I am able to tell any one, or which I myself know, of what happened during the awful days which followed."
Eleanor's voice trembled, but the excitement of the moment kept her from breaking down.
"When I lifted that little form from the trail and pressed it to my heart I knew that she was dead. My one thought in the face of the awful blow which had come to me was to get away from the man who had inflicted it. Somehow, with Carina in my arms, I got upon the mare, and again I strained the little body to my heart and forgot all else except my overpowering grief. The mare walked on unguided, uncontrolled,—I knew not where,—I cared not where. I believe I never should have stopped her myself, but suddenly a man appeared by the side of the trail who saw that something was wrong, and he asked if he could be of help. At these first words of sympathy I lost control of myself, and made some incoherent reply. From that time on I was a child myself, and he a kind, loving, guiding father. Walking beside me and helping to support me, we soon reached the shack in which he lived. He took the dead child from my arms, and carried it tenderly into the house; then he came back and helped me to dismount. He asked no further questions, but led me inside, too, soothing my outburst of grief as the reaction came in full force. Of what happened afterward I have no memory. For the time, I lost my reason, and he, day by day, night by night, watched over me, bathing my hot forehead, moistening my parched lips, trying to give me courage to pass through the awful ordeal.
"It was all of two weeks that I was there, so he told me afterward. As my reason returned, his first thought was to get me back to my father's ranch, having learned who I was and enough of what had happened to understand the situation. Before we left, he took me to the little mound back of the shack, where I said 'good-bye' to the one ray of sunshine which had entered my life during those awful years. Then he helped me on my mare and mounted his own horse. Together we rode silently back over the seven or eight miles, only to learn that my father had suddenly died, partly from the shock and partly from my unexplained absence. The old man's strength could not endure the double blow.
"In dismay I turned to my protector, and he at once answered the query which he read in my eyes. He made arrangements, and accompanied me to Denver, leaving me in a hospital there, where for two months I hovered between life and death, owing to a relapse. I saw him only once again, when he came to the hospital and told me that he had placed my affairs in the hands of a certain lawyer, who would look after what property my father left, and would advise me after I was able to leave the hospital. Then he passed out of my life, though I was told later that he stayed in Denver until I was out of danger, before he returned East. In my condition and because of the excitement, his name was a blank to me from the moment I left the hospital, and I have striven ever since to recall it. The lawyer to whom he referred me professed not to know it, and simply said that the man had described himself as a prospector from the East."
As Eleanor paused from weakness, Covington glanced across to Gorham.
"Her story doesn't differ much from that contained in the affidavit," he remarked.
"No," Gorham answered, shortly; "it is the same story with a different interpretation."
"What do you think of it now?"
"Just as I have from the beginning."
"You don't believe me!" Eleanor cried, half-beseechingly, half-reproachfully. "I don't wonder,—it is past belief."
"You must believe her, daddy," Alice insisted, ready to burst into tears; "she has tried so many times to tell you."
"I do believe you, Eleanor," Gorham replied. "And what is more, I know that you speak the truth."
"The public may not be so generous," suggested Covington.
"You forget that I have great faith in that same public," Gorham answered, strangely calm in the face of such great provocation.
"You know it, Robert?" Eleanor asked, scarcely believing what she heard. "How can you know it? You mean that your faith in me is strong enough to make you believe it."
"You may tell them that story, Covington," Gorham said, rising; "but it will make it even more interesting if you add the finale which you are going to witness now."
Then he turned to his wife and took her hand in his.
"Would you know that prospector if you saw him again?" he asked.
"I am sure I should," she replied, wonderingly.
"Must he still wear his full beard and his old corduroy clothes, with a blue handkerchief knotted around his throat, to recall himself to you? Must I tell you that he called himself 'Roberts'?"
"Roberts!" she gasped, gazing at him spellbound, "—how could you know?"
"Look at me again, Eleanor," he urged with infinite tenderness, but with an eager expectancy manifest in every feature,—"look hard."
She drew back speechless as the truth came to her.
"Oh, my Robert," she cried at last, with a joy in her voice which thrilled her hearers, "you—you were that man!"
It seemed a sacrilege to the two spectators of the unexpected climax of this intimate personal drama to remain, so instinctively they both withdrew silently to the drawing-room, leaving Eleanor closely enfolded in her husband's arms. For the first time since Covington had disclosed himself, Alice was alone with him. Wrought up as the girl had been by the conflicting emotions which had consumed her strength during the past moments, and relieved beyond measure by the final outcome of what had promised only a tragedy, yet her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him.
"Why did you do this?" she asked. "Why did you come into my life to teach me that this beautiful world of ours can contain so much that is bad?—you, whom I respected and admired, and whom I was beginning to believe I loved? How could you do it?"
Covington made no answer to the impelling voice which spoke. The girl, with her varying moods and changing conceits, who had so amused him, had vanished, and in her place he saw the woman, supreme in the strength of asserting that which is ever woman's creed,—justice and right. He could sense, in her attitude, as in her words, that her resentment was not because of the indignity which he had forced upon herself, but rather because of the wrong he had done to those she loved. What a woman to have called his wife,—what a woman to have lived up to as a husband!
"I must see your father again," he said when he spoke at last. "Let us go back to them."
Covington stood in the doorway of the library as Alice slipped quietly into the room and took her place beside Eleanor and her father. As he looked upon the three, forming a group into which he had almost entered, he realized the infinite distance which now separated them. Their total disregard of his presence, Gorham's lack of open resentment, Alice's indifference,—all told him that in their eyes he was only the pariah, beneath their contempt, suffered to remain there until he saw fit to rid them of his presence. Yet he could not leave them thus. Somewhere within him a something, until now quiescent, demanded recognition and insisted upon expression. Why had it waited until now! It was a changed John Covington who spoke from that doorway, when at last silence became unendurable. The hard lines in the face had softened, and the previously insistent voice now betrayed realization of the present, and hopelessness for the future. The fires of truth and love and faith and honor, which burned so brightly before him, at least touched him with their heat. God pity him!
"It is all over, Mr. Gorham," he forced himself to say. "It is not you who have defeated me, it is I who have defeated myself. I offer no defence. I despised myself before I did this, I despise myself still further for having done it. I could not believe you sincere,—I could not believe any man capable of living the creed you preached. I accept the penalty which you or other men may impose upon me."
"You have imposed your own penalty, Covington," Gorham replied. "You, who have destroyed the way-marks to misguide others, now find yourself adrift because of your own act. You are a young man. If you are honest in what you now say, there is still hope for you. Fight those overpowering ambitions which have brought you to the brink until you have them properly controlled, then guide your undoubted abilities along lines which men recognize as true."
Covington bowed his head, and without a word disappeared. As the outer door closed Alice turned to her father, but her thought was not of the man who had passed from their lives.
"You were that prospector, daddy? Why did you never tell Eleanor?"
"I have tried to make her recognize me ever since we were married, dear. I have tried to make her tell me the story, hoping that the repetition might recall in her heart some association which would link me with that past, sad as it was to her. You never knew, Alice, of that experience when I went West in search of health, but now you know why I hurried back to Denver; why I kept myself constantly informed regarding the recovery and later life of this little woman who came into my heart during those days when she was passing through her agony. I loved her then, but she was another man's wife. I knew when the court gave her back her freedom, and I lost no time in winning her at the first opportunity which offered."
"How could I have recognized you, ill as I was then,—and without your old prospector's clothes and your full beard? You should have told me."
"I wanted your love, dear heart, not your gratitude."
She tenderly pushed back the gray hair from the high forehead, and pressed her lips against it reverently.
"You have both, Robert,—you have always had them."