"Why don't you have a confidential talk with Harvey?" suggested Jessie. "He'd tell you almost anything, I'm sure."
"I've thought of that. But I was going to ask you the very same thing. Why don't you?—you're his sister."
Jessie's lip quivered. "I couldn't," she said hesitatingly; "I couldn't stand it. Besides, you know, I ought to go home to-morrow. Miss Adair's expecting me—and she says the store always prospers better when I'm there myself; she's had charge for ten days now, while I've been visiting here."
Miss Farringall sighed. "I wish I could coax you out of that," she said. "Why will you go away so soon, Jessie? These days you've been here have been such a joy; I'm such a lonely creature," she added glancing out at the silent, dimly-lighted hall. "There's hardly ever anybody around now but Barlow—and he's a ghost. Of course, Dr. Wallis comes when I send for him—but we always quarrel. Then, of course, the rector comes every little while—but he's a kind of a prayer-book with clothes on; he gets solemner every day. What I'm getting to hate about him," she went on, vehemently, "is that he has his mind made up to be solemn, and he's not meant for it—red-headed men with freckles never are," she affirmed decisively. "But you and Harvey, you almost seem, Jessie—you might have been my own children, I think sometimes," a queer little tremor in the voice, the withered cheek flushing suddenly. But Jessie did not remark the strange tenderness of the glance she cast towards the treasure-hiding desk in the corner. "Some day I want to tell you——"
But her voice suddenly died away in silence as both women turned their eyes eagerly towards the door. For they could see the approaching form of the subject of their conversation. And it needed but a glance to confirm the opinion Miss Farringall had already expressed. Harvey was making his way heavily up the stairs, his step slow and uncertain, his whole bearing significant of defeat. As he passed the door a faint plaintive smile played upon the face that was turned a moment on the familiar forms within; the face was haggard and pale, the eyes heavy and slightly bloodshot, the expression sad and despondent. Yet the old chivalrous light was there; clouded it was as if by shame and self-reproach, yet with native pride and honour flashing through it all as though the fires of a stern and unceasing conflict were glowing far within.
Jessie started as if to greet him. But something checked her—she would wait till they were alone.
Entering his room and pausing only to remove his boots, Harvey flung himself with a stifled groan upon the bed. How long he had lain there before interruption came, he neither knew nor cared. For the unclosed eyes were staring out into the darkness, his brain half-maddened with its activity of pain. Nearly everything that concerned his entire life seemed to float before him as his hot eyes ransacked the productive dark. Childhood days, with their deep poverty and their deeper wealth; the light and music of their darkened, sorrow-shaded home; the plaintive enterprise of their little store; the friends and playmates of those early days—and one friend, if playmate never; the broadened life of college, and all his discovery of himself, his powers, his possibilities, his perils; the one epoch-making night of life, its light above the brightness of the sun—his burning face hid itself in the pillow, his hands tight clenched as those half-withered flowers in Madeline's hand rose before him, his hopes more faded now than they. Then came the holy scene that had followed fast, so wonderfully vivid now—for in the dark he could see his mother's dying face with strange distinctness, the dear eyes open wide and filled with tender light as they turned upon her son, the thin hands outstretched as if to call the tired one to the comfort of her love.
The glow of filial passion lingered but a moment on the haggard face. For other memories followed fast. How he had bidden farewell to Jessie, returning to the city with high resolve to snatch nobler gains than the poor laurels her secret heroism had enabled him to win—his hood and medal flitted for a moment through his thought, only to be cast aside as paltry baubles, garish trifles, with their dying sheen; how, later, he had secured a worthy place on the news staff of one of the leading dailies of the city, his heart high with hope for the career that should await him; how his gifts and his opportunity had conspired to confirm the hope.
Clouds and darkness were about the remainder of his reverie. But part of it had to do with his hour of joy and triumph. He felt again the jubilance, the separate sort of thrill, that had possessed him when the great "scoop" had been accomplished—to use the vivid metaphor that journalists employ. And he recalled the annual banquet—he could see many of the faces through the dark—at which his own name had been called aloud, actually requested as he had been to propose the toast to the paper it was his pride to serve. Then came the brief, fatal struggle as the glasses were lifted high. He ground his teeth as he remembered Oliver—once friend and chum, now fiend and enemy; and Harvey's thought of him was lurid with a kind of irrational hate—for Oliver had spurred and stung him to his fall with one or two quick sentences that seemed cogent enough at the time; the appeal had been to shame, and to what was due the concern that had honoured him, and to other things of that kind; in any case, it had all been like lashing a horse that hesitates before a hurdle. And he had leaped it—oh, God, he thought to himself, this cad against his mother! He had leaped it. And then the slumbering passion that had sprung anew to life within him—not passion perhaps, nor yet appetite either—but a kind of personal devil that had tangled its will all up with his own, and had seemed to laugh at his feeble struggling, and to exult like one who had won again an unforgotten victory, running riot in fiendish glee since his prowess had prevailed once more. Harvey held his hands to his burning brow as he recalled the pitiful resistance that had followed; he could feel the ever-tightening grasp again, like the relentless coils of the sea-monsters he had read about so often; he recalled how his soul had fluttered its poor protest, like some helpless bird, against this cruel hand that was bound to have its will with it—and how struggle and promise and pledge and prayer had all seemed to be in vain.
He thought, too, but only for a moment—he could not, would not longer dwell upon it—of the shameful peace he had found at last; the peace of the vanquished; such peace as servile souls enjoy, for it can be purchased cheap—and the evil memory of it all surged over him like hissing waves. Nearly a week had followed, such a week as any mother, bending above the cradle of her child, might pray God to—