The Merivale banks

by Mary Jane Holmes

She managed to tell him at last, while he listened, surprised and shocked, but with his love in no sense abated for the girl, who, while telling him all was over between them, clung to him as a drowning man clings to a straw. Brant Percy had been his best boy friend. They had been in school together for two years in Germany. They had travelled over Europe, and been together at Yale until Brant, who never cared much for books, left college and gave himself to the life which ended in his tragic death. The last letter he ever wrote was addressed to Fred from Butte.

“The gamest place out,” he said, “and no end of fun with the fellows who think they know something about play. You must not tell Blanche that I have backslidden. I promised her I would not touch a card while I was gone, and I have not till I came here, where there is so much of it that I caught the infection again, and it is a disease which comes upon me with such force that I cannot resist the temptation. I have been pretty lucky, and last night tried my hand with an expert, Tom Crary, who is looked upon as a champion player. Some say that the devil helps him; others, that he is Satan himself, capable of seeing what his opponent holds, and playing accordingly. But if so he is a very fascinating Satan; in short, a perfect gentleman, with a face like a saint and manners as winsome as a woman’s. I challenged him last night, and the look of surprise he gave me was much like the look Goliath must have given David when he saw the stripling coming out to fight with him. He didn’t seem to want to play with me—evidently thought me too small fry for his net. But I insisted, and won, too, much more than I lost. He did not appear to care, and said to me, ‘Well, my boy, we are quits now. I hope you are satisfied. Better let cards alone while you are in luck.’ That just fired my blood. I am not a boy, and I was not satisfied. It was something to beat Tom Crary as I had done, and to-night we try it again. He held off and said he’d had enough, till I hinted that he was afraid because I knew some points of which he was ignorant. Then he consented, and if I am not richer to-morrow by at least a thousand, and maybe more, my name is not Brant Percy.”

Before this letter was received news came to Washington of poor Brant’s death. His boasted skill had not prevailed against his experienced adversary, and he had played the coward’s part by taking his own life. With Miss Percy Fred had felt indignant at the man who had been indirectly the cause of Brant’s death, and although he did not curse him as she had done, he never thought of him without a feeling of horror. And now it was proven that he was the father of the girl he loved more than his life, and with his recollection of Mr. Grey he knew that he was not the unprincipled man he had imagined Brant’s adversary to be. He, like Brant, was infected with a disease he had not the strength to resist, and his life had paid the penalty of his misdeeds. Louie was his daughter, and he felt all his animosity against her father slipping from him, and thought of him only as the courteous, gentlemanly man whom he had known in Merivale.

“Louie,” he said, “you must not think I will give you up for anything your father did. From what Brant wrote I can understand how headstrong he was, and can see that your father tried to dissuade him from his folly. Don’t cry so, you frighten me—and don’t talk of going away. Where can you go. Your place is here with me,” and he folded her more closely in his arms until her sobbing ceased and she lay very quiet, listening to his words of love, with only an occasional long-drawn sigh and great hot tears on her cheek.

She knew he meant all he said, but did not understand how he or anyone could care for her now, and it was days before Miss Percy’s unchanged kindness and Fred’s persistent love-making could win her back to anything like herself.

“If anything more comes to me I shall die; and I should want to die now but for you,” she said to Fred one day; and he knew then that the state of morbid depression into which she had fallen was passing, and he watched over her with all the care of a fond mother for the child which has been hurt and is slowly recovering.

For this recovery Miss Percy did much, while Mrs. Lansing treated her as if she were already her daughter.

In this manner the summer was passed in Switzerland, at different points; and in September Italy was talked of as a place where to spend the winter. Fred was anxious for the marriage to take place at once, but Louie refused.

“So much has happened to me and so fast,” she said, “that I feel as if I were weak in mind as well as body, and I must have time to rally and know what I am doing.

“And then,” she added, with a quaver in her voice, “when I am married, if I ever am, I want to go to Merivale and see the old place once more, and the people, and father’s grave. Then I will go wherever you like, and try to forget the past, which makes me sad.”