The Man of Last Resort; Or, The Clients of Randolph Mason

by Melville Davisson Post

Then he shifted. He bade her remember that she had promised to go through life with him. It was a contract she had no right to break. The position she was taking was a frightful contradiction. She was reprehending the customs of trade, and yet there was not a merchant in the market-place who would repudiate his contract. She was charging the law with failure to appreciate the highest shades of right, and yet she was about to do what the law, even in its grossness, recognized and punished as a wrong. She could not stand upon this ground, and do as she was doing. Even if he had done wrong, was she to punish him by doing wrong also? The vice of her position cried out. Her promise had been given. It was immutable. It was her affair to know her mind, to determine what she wanted to do. She had known him for years. In those years there had been ample time to investigate, to conclude, to decide. No one had abridged the freedom of her agency. She had finally become a party to this contract. Could she repudiate it now, like the common rogue in whom principle was wanting?

He bade her remember the gravity of this contract. It involved her life, his life, mayhap the lives of others. He had been shaping everything to this end. Had she the right to ruthlessly destroy all? What would she think of one who having contracted to accompany another into an unknown land should suddenly abandon him on the purlieus of the country? What would she think of one who had contracted to go with another into an unknown sea, and should, when that other had made his ship ready, abandon him at the water's edge? Was she doing better than these?

The woman had not answered at all; dark circles had gathered around her eyes, and the full muscles of her throat relaxed and sank.

Then Carper remembered how he had knelt down beside her and taken her hand in his own,—-her hand, limp, cold, a dead thing.

Besides, he had gone on, he loved her; she was the only woman in his heart. There could never be another. Day and night, and every day and night, his heart cried for her like a tortured child! There was nothing else in all the wide world to live for, to strive for. He had grown to associate her with every hope, every emotion, every ambition, of his life. How should he live on without her! What should he do with his empty days! Pride might carry him crippled through a few, but, there was a limit to the endurance of a man, and what then—what of his empty days then?

If he had been doing wrong, God could find some way to punish him outside of her love. Besides, if he was doing wrong, he needed her the more. He needed her to round out his life, to add honor and purity and right. God had sent her to do this work of good. Was she going to refuse merely because the world was not the sort of place which she believed it to be? Master of Life! the world would be abominably empty without her. He would go anywhere she wished; do anything, be anything, she wished. It was not the applause of men that he wanted in this life, nor the multitude of things. It was her hand on his own; her voice in his ears; her image in his heart forever. He could never get back again to his view-point.

She had loosed the mouth of something in his bosom that clamored for her. It would be content with no other. It would hush for no other. His heart was aching now with the cry. What a place of torture it would be tomorrow, and the next year, and the next.

The tears had rained down this woman's face, but she had shaken her head.

That day was now seven years gone—seven years! Yesterday was no farther back. Well, well! He had been only partly right. The woman's face in his heart he had walled up. The cry for her he had silenced with the opiates of greed. Still they were both there and alive. To-night the wall had slipped away and the anaesthetics were powerless. It was no matter. After all, had she done well? She had lived on, spotless, pure, alone; and he had lived on—to this. Had she done well? That question it was no right of his to answer.

Carper got up from his chair, took the picture from the mantel, broke it across the face and dropped the pieces into the fire. It was not necessary for the marshal's deputy to speculate about this picture.