The Hills of Refuge: A Novel

by Will N. Harben

They took seats. The business talk continued. The bank was to become the greatest in the state—every indication was in its favor. Celeste failed to hear Ruth's pretty prattle at her side. As she looked at the two men her determination, which had been held so firmly all day, grew weak and vacillating. How could she carry out her plan before them? She sank more deeply into the mire of misery than ever. The whole world seemed black and mad under the contending forces of right and wrong. How frail was the spirit flag she was striving to hold aloft in all that clash and rush of evil!

No, the right thing could not be done—by her, at any rate. Charles would have to remain the self-elected lifelong victim that he was. After all, he would be saving her; he would be saving Ruth; he would be saving his brother whom he had always loved. Saving his brother! But was he? Could it be done so vicariously? And as this question pounded upon her brain she looked for the first time with scaleless eyes at her husband. Why had she not noticed it before? William was the mere withering husk of the man he had once been. His deep-sunken, shadowy eyes told his story; his parchment-like skin, his furtive, haunted look, repeated it; his constantly enforced attention to what was being said by others, his Judas-like manner, the quivering of his mentally handcuffed hands, confirmed it again and again. Why, William was dying—dying from the sheer poison of his putrefying soul. Only his great, staring eyes seemed alive, and they lived only in their dumb quest of mercy. Poor William! No one could save him but himself. Charles's nobility, Charles's sacrifice, would not do it. He must do it himself. Ah yes, that was the key, and it had dropped down from heaven! The thing was settled now. She would see him before the dawn of another day. She would suffer. Ruth would suffer, but William would be saved. Ah, that was the point too long overlooked! His only child would be paying the price, but in the far-off future Ruth herself, with the spiritual wisdom of age, might thank the memory of her mother for the opportunity given her.

The family retired before ten o'clock that night. Celeste sat by her daughter's bed, and with a soft, soothing song lulled her child to sleep. Gradually she felt the tiny fingers losing their grasp upon her own. Shortly afterward Celeste heard William ascending the stairs to his room adjoining hers. She heard him close his door. He always closed his door. At night or in the day he closed his door. Even at the bank he closed the door of his private office, perhaps in order that he might release the drawn cords to those perpetual curtains of his secret self.

There was another door between her room and his. Even that was shut. If she wished to see him before he retired she must hasten. She went into her own room, but did not turn on the electric light. She stood in the center of the room, shivering from head to foot as from cold. Presently she knocked on his door. Then there was a moment of tense silence. The sound must have startled her husband; and when at last he did fumblingly turn the bolt and open the door he stood there in the dark, facing her wonderingly, speechlessly.

"I—I didn't know who it was—at first!" he stammered. "I thought—thought—"

"Excuse me," she said, stroking the death-damp sweat from her brow and sliding past him into his room, "but I wanted to see you. I wanted to talk to you. It is something important, it seems to me. I couldn't do it before uncle, and you were with him all day. May we have a—a light?"

"Need we?" fell from his lips impulsively, then: "Yes, dear, of course. I quite forgot. I—I sometimes undress in the—the dark in the summer-time." He groped for the button on the wall. "Yes, I was right," he thought. "She has had something on her mind all day and last night, and she says it is important. My God! important! Only one thing is important—can it have come up again?"

His fingers touched the button. He pushed it in and the white glare filled the room like a photographer's flash-light, revealing their set visages to each other. William certainly looked old now, for a storm of terror was laying waste his whole suppressed being. She turned from him in sheer pity of his swaying frailty. She sat down in a chair, and, like the ill man that he was, he sank into another. He had unfastened his scarf and collar and the ends of both hung in disorder on his breast.

"You say it is something important?" he muttered, and with his hand he made a pretext of shading his eyes.

"Yes, William, it is important, as I see it," she answered, her stare on the floor, her bloodless hands in her lap, tightly clasped. "It is about—about a subject we have not mentioned between us lately."