Her attraction for him was sudden and compelling. He often wondered why he liked her so much. He had known hundreds of women who were prettier and quite as clever. About Viola there was a curious, distinguishing touch of refinement that he did not find in many of the beauties and belles who were so ready to smile on him at the fortnightly cotillions and subscription germans. The delicate modesty of her beauty satisfied his exacting eye. There was something subtle and rare about her, a suggestion of romance in her wide, pondering eyes, a charm of mystery behind the face that looked so youthful and yet was so femininely secretive. She always seemed to say the right thing, and that and the soft tones of her voice were keenly pleasing to his fastidious taste.
At first he had merely sought her society for the passing pleasure he had derived from it. He was reaching that stage of life when he found it difficult to be interested in new people, and where the long tedium of a dinner next a handsome and pretentious partner was beginning to assume the aspect of a martyrdom. There was nothing irksome or commonplace or tedious in the evenings spent in the house near South Park; even the colonel ceased to be a bore when his daughter sat by listening. Gault began to like going there better than going anywhere else. On the days when he decided that he would spend the evening at the Reeds’, he found himself looking forward to the visit all the afternoon. The anticipation of it lay like a glad thought at the bottom of his heart. On the night that Letitia had asked him about Colonel Reed’s daughter, he had nearly arrived at a conclusion—that Viola Reed was the one woman in the world for him.
Nearly, but not quite. The next day Colonel Reed had come and borrowed the first fifty dollars.
This simple action had disturbed John Gault’s serenity. The second and third visits tore the fabric of his dream to pieces. If the old man had only made his request once, he would have thought no more of it than of the numberless other loans which he had contributed to the human wreckage left by the receding tides of San Francisco’s several booms. But the colonel’s subsequent appearances, so closely following on Gault’s visits, awoke a sudden swarm of suspicions that began buzzing their importunate warnings into his ears. Why had the old man been so effusive in the beginning? Why had he invited him, insisted even, upon his calling? Was he so determinedly hospitable merely to secure a listener to his reminiscences? And if he had acted upon his own impulses at first,—which certainly seemed the case,—Viola could have stopped him later on. Gault had noticed that her word seemed law to her father.
In the pain of his doubts he surreptitiously made inquiries, and discovered that Colonel Reed’s penury was of the past five years’ duration. Up to that time he had still held small properties and realized on them at intervals. People who knew said that since then his circumstances had been desperate, and yet it was known of all men that he was engaged in no paid employment. It was the one point upon which the pride of the erstwhile millionaire was firm. Viola did no work, either. In the West, the woman laboring to help sustain the ruined fortunes of her family is so common a spectacle that the strong man, secure in his riches and his health, felt a species of fierce indignation against the girl for her seeming idleness.
Yet it must take so little to keep them. They owned the house they lived in, and employed no servant, Viola doing all the work of the small menage. He had tried to persuade himself that the colonel was using him for his banker without the girl’s knowledge, and then Letitia, with her heavy feminine common sense, had laid her finger on the weak spot in that argument. How could a sudden influx of money enter into so small a household without the cognizance of the person who managed it all? It was nonsensical to think of. She knew—and if she knew, was she not party to the whole sordid, ugly plot?
But here he always stopped. It was impossible. It could not be. The image of her face rose before him, as it often did now, making him feel disgusted and ashamed that even in thought he should have done her an injury. There was a mistake somewhere. It would explain itself. But he knew that until it did explain itself he would know no peace; for he could not live without seeing her, and at every visit he felt her charm penetrate deeper into his heart, despite his lurking doubts.
He spent hours in pondering as to the best way to silence these doubts without letting her suspect their existence. Even if she were cognizant of it, he could hardly speak to her of her father’s borrowing. Yet in his thought she always seemed so simple, so girlish, so young, that he was sure if he could see her alone, and perhaps turn the conversation upon some analogous subject, her ignorance would speak from every feature. He had grown to know all the varying expressions of her face, and he felt that he could detect the slightest change of color or tremor of consciousness on its pale innocence.
He did not, however, know at what hour he was likely to find her by herself. He had always gone in the evening, as it was the colonel who asked him, and who invariably designated that time. Gault fancied that his visits were the old man’s chief amusement and recreation, and that he so particularly insisted upon the evening in the desire not to miss them. Upon this hypothesis he concluded that he ran a better chance of finding Viola alone in the second half of the day, and on his first disengaged afternoon he left his office early, with the intention of walking across town to South Park.
It was not late enough in the season for the summer winds to have begun, and the straw, dust, paper, and general refuse that they sweep away with their steady, cold breath lay thick on the pavements. In the hard light of afternoon the dreary quarter looked even meaner and more squalid than it did by night. The wayfarer could see the dirt on the little shop-windows, the dinginess of the wares displayed. The small, open stands, where shell-fish and oyster cocktails were sold, were thick with flies. Behind the grimed glass of the pawnbroker’s windows lay the relics of vanished days of splendor and extravagance. Old-fashioned pieces of jewelry, broken ornaments, rusted pistols, gold-mounted spectacles, mother-of-pearl opera-glasses, were heaped together in neglected disorder. Now and then the entrance of a second-hand clothes store gave a glimpse of a dark interior hung with clothes, between which the sharp Jewish faces of the patron and his wife peered out eagerly.