Part 24

He knew Mrs. Dudley well and disliked her. Something in her face and manner, and what she had mentioned, made him uncomfortable. He said good-by and went on to his office. He unlocked it and went in. His clerk had left a number of letters on his table. None of them were very reassuring. The people from whom he had bought the river-frontage, in his hope of adding the strip Mrs. Trescot had taken from him, were urgent for payment of interest upon a mortgage left on the property. There were other claims as pressing: notice of a note gone to protest, two unpaid bills for the schooling of his daughter. He tossed the papers aside, and, turning over his other letters in eager haste, fell upon one in a hand he knew and loved. He tore it open and read:

“DEAR SIR:

“After seeing you I spent some of the most miserable hours a not too happy life has brought me. I was wretched because I felt that you might not have been able to be entirely truthful. I had to learn more than I could expect you to tell. My whole life was at stake. Where I love I must also respect, and I was in an agony of doubt. I could not stand it. I went to St. Ann, and there gathered from various sources all that men knew of that one sad matter of which you talked to me. I heard too much for my own happiness. I thought it all over with such grief as it pains me to remember; and, with every desire to be just, I have prayed to be rightly guided, and now I must tell you that I can never marry you.

“I shall give no further explanations. The letter I inclose, hard and cruel as it is, would have been enough. I will never see you again, and this is final. What this decision costs me you can never know. May God guide and guard you! Forgive me the pain this letter will inflict on you. It cannot be greater than what it costs me.

“Yours truly, “JEANETTE WILSON.

“JOHN GREYHURST, Esq.”

He turned with sudden anger to the inclosed letter from Mrs. Trescot. He read that also. He let it fall and lay back in his chair. As he read, the remembrance of the young man walking toward him, with the smile of what he had taken to be triumph, came back to him. He looked up and saw once more the silvery phantom, for some weeks absent at times or indistinct. It, too, was smiling. He took up Jeanette Wilson’s letter and read it and re-read it. When at last he laid it down the paper was wet from his sweating hands. He knew her too well to have the slightest hope. She herself could never have had any conception of the passion with which he loved her, nor could she have fully appreciated what to him would be this ending of his hopes for a life that would atone for the past and satisfy her ideals. And this was that woman’s work! He cursed her with oaths too dreadful to repeat. She had brought him to the verge of ruin, had tortured him into impossibility of forgetfulness, and now she had taken away from him the one real love of his unhappy life.

He rose, seeing the face as before. “My God!” he cried, staring at the phantom, “George Trescot, you ought to thank me!” As he stood up he staggered with a return of the old vertigo, and seized a chair back until it passed away. It did not now alarm him. He caught up his traveling-cap, and as he passed out left the door open. In the street he was recognized by two or three men. One said, “He has been drinking.” He went on his way, turning down West Street toward his house, which, in his absence, had been closed. Walking rapidly, he went past the church at the corner, and crossed to the south side of the street. Kent had just come out of his study and stood still, enjoying the splendor of scarlet above the setting sun, and the strange colors cast on the yellow waters of the mighty river below. It was unusual, and, becoming more and more intense, was changing from moment to moment.

Kent wondered if Susan Hood were feeling the mysterious awe which for him vast masses of red created. No other color so affected him. He wished her to share with him the solemn beauty of the fading day, and while hastening to find her at her home, he saw Greyhurst in front of him.

Glad of an early chance to free his mind, he quickened his pace and overtook him. He said, as he joined him:

“Good evening, Mr. Greyhurst.”

Without turning his head, the man beside him said, “Good evening,” and leaving him, abruptly crossed the street.

Kent was surprised, and said to himself, “He must have heard, but how could he have heard?”

With increase of interest he saw Greyhurst stop, look over at Mrs. Trescot’s, and pass on. Still more amazed, he, too, went by the house and, pausing, observed Greyhurst go up his own steps and, as it seemed, try the door. Apparently finding himself unable to enter, he went around the house, through the garden, and was lost to view. Kent thought it all rather odd; but, like the man on the main street, concluded that Greyhurst must have been drinking, and turned back to seek Susan Hood.

The March day in this warm clime was already rich with the young buds of spring. He picked an opening rose, and, ringing the bell, stood at the door, left open for the cooler air of evening to sweep through the hall. He saw how the vast flood of scarlet to westward was slowly darkening to orange.

The maid said Miss Susan had just come in and was up-stairs. Mrs. Trescot was in the parlor. He hesitated a moment and then went in.

Mrs. Trescot was seated at the western window in a listless attitude, her hands in her lap. She turned as he entered saying, “What a glory of color!”

“Yes,” she said; “but I do not like it. I dislike red. I always did, even when a child.”

“Well,” he said, smiling, “Nature is generously respectful; she is shifting her scenery.”

“And then,” she said, “it will be night, and I do not love darkness. I should like to live in endless daylight.”

He thought singular both her moody manner and the feeling she expressed.

“The Northland would suit you for half the year, but not me. I hope Miss Hood did not miss the sunset.”

“I do not know.”

For a moment there was silence,—the woman gazing at the slowly darkening pall above the dying day, the man resolute to fulfil a long-held purpose.

“I do not know whether you can understand the great pleasure you gave me the other day when you said I have some likeness to my cousin. It has been noticed by others, but for you to see it meant much to me. If in all ways I could be like him I should be well satisfied with myself.”

“You are like him,” she said, turning toward him. “It pleased me, and I wondered that I had not seen it before. It is in manner more than in face.”

He returned earnestly: “May not that give me the privilege of taking with you a liberty greater than our brief acquaintance justifies?”

“Oh, yes, if you want to.” She would have said no in some form if there had not been something sadly familiar in the grave gentleness of Kent’s approach; something which forbade her to deny him. She was deeply moved as, in the lessening light, she heard him say:

“I want to speak to you as a man, not as a clergyman.”

“Go on,” she returned faintly.

“Thank you. You cannot know—you cannot have known—the pain you have given to Miss Susan and to the many whom you have helped in St. Ann. May I not ask you to think how it will end. I should feel glad, for you and others, that it should end.”

“Yes, it must end. I fear that now it is at an end.”

Her voice lost its languor. She ceased to regard either the sunset or the man, and sat up, a little excited, looking straight in front of her.

“If,” she continued, “it had not been at an end, I do not think I should have been willing to listen to you. I have allowed no one to interfere with my actions—not even my sister; but now I do not care. I have made that man suffer. I have taken from him the power to forget. I have ruined him financially, and I believe—yes, I am sure—that I have taken from him the love of a woman; and now you ask me how it will end! If you had talked to me about my soul, and of the sin of punishing a murderer, I should have laughed at you. You did not. You have done what you think a duty. You have talked as George would have done, and so I answer that I know nothing more I can do. If there were anything I could do to injure or to punish, I should do it eagerly. There is nothing.”

“And,” he said, “are you satisfied?”

“No, I am not. If I could fill his days with grief like mine,—oh, to his latest hour,—if I could make his nights, like mine, one long anguish of yearning and unrest, I should be satisfied.”

He touched the thin, white hand which lay on her knee. He made no other reply. The malady was past his helping. She turned and looked at him steadily. A certain tender sweetness in his silent failure to respond, some fresh recognition of resemblance, disturbed her as she said:

“For good or ill, I suppose it is at an end.”

Then, as he heard a heavy footfall behind him, she was on her feet. John Greyhurst was standing in the doorway. Tall, broad-shouldered, pale, and with eyes deeply congested, he came quickly to the middle of the room and stood still as Mrs. Trescot leaped to her feet and faced him.

Kent laid a hand on his arm. “This,” he said, “is the last house you should dare to enter.”

“What do you want?” said Mrs. Trescot, faintly; and then, in sudden anger, “Out of this, murderer—go!”

He shook off Kent’s arm and said in unnaturally measured tones:

“No; this is my hour, not yours. For these many months you have driven me to despair. You have taken from me, at last, all that was left to me—a woman’s love. I am here to end it—to settle my debt.”

As he spoke, and his hand dropped to his pocket, Kent instantly threw himself before him. The woman stood still, glad of the swift coming of death.

With his left arm Greyhurst threw Kent violently from him across the room, and as the young man fell, stunned for the moment, he covered her with his revolver. She stood motionless.

“Thank you,” she said; “I am glad—glad to die!”

He laughed. “You fool!” he cried, and turning the pistol to his temple, fired. His arm dropped in jerks. For a moment he stood, staring, and then fell as a tree falls, shaking the room with his bulk.

The woman staggered back, caught behind her with both hands the edge of a table, and stared at the man at her feet—dead.

As the servants ran in and out again, screaming, Kent was on his feet. He knelt beside Greyhurst, and then looked up as Susan ran in and stood still, terrified.

“Is he dead?” asked Constance.

“Yes, he is dead.”

“Then he is gone, and I am alive. Will you have it taken away—quick, quick—out of my house?”

Kent caught her as she staggered to the door, swaying and crying, “Take him away, take him away, out of this house—anywhere!” She pushed Kent aside, passed into the study, and, as Susan followed her, fell on to a lounge. The house filled with a crowd of neighbors. Susan, always most quiet when others lost their heads, shut the door. Kent, having said a word of explanation to those in the parlors, reëntered the study.

Constance was breathing fast, her eyes wide open. Leaving a scared maid beside her, Kent led Susan into the hall, and in as few words as possible told her what had happened.

“And this is the end,” she said. “How terrible! My poor Conny! Did he mean to kill her, Reginald?”

“I thought so for a moment; I do not know. I struck my head as he threw me, and what followed I did not fully see. I will go for Dr. Eskridge and send for General Averill. Shall you mind my leaving you alone with her?”

“Oh, no; I think there is no danger. She seems conscious. I will get her up to bed. Come back soon.”

As he went out he cast his eyes on the sword upon the table, the Bible with its marking glove, the dead flower-petals, the sacredly guarded room. “I wonder,” he thought, as he hurried up the street, “what this woman would have been had George Trescot lived.”

As he hastened to find the doctor he sought to recall just what had happened. Surely the man meant to kill Constance Trescot and then himself. She most plainly was glad to die. Yes, she had said so; on which he had turned the pistol on himself, saying, “You fool!” What did he mean? Did he not want to kill her because she wished to die? “Ah, poor lady!” he said. “Perhaps George Trescot was fortunate—and my poor Susan!”

X

Contrary to what the doctor and Susan expected, Constance came out of her dazed state in a few hours. She asked quickly if they had taken it away. When assured as to this, she seemed at ease and put no other questions. Although her mind was clear, she spoke little, and was apparently indifferent to everything. She asked, however, after a few days to be taken to her Beverly home. Kent made all the needed arrangements and went with them. This seemed to excite no surprise in the mind of Constance; she accepted everything in an apathetic way, and when Kent was leaving them at the end of their journey, said good-by listlessly and with no word of thanks. For a month or more she lost flesh and vigor daily, so that Susan thought that she would surely find the relief of death.

In August she began to recover her strength, but not her looks. She had lived many years in one, and, except for the still lovely eyes, had little left of her former beauty. The framework of her face was on a scale which needed the fullness of health, and this she had lost forever.

As she slowly regained her strength she turned anew to Susan for the only society she cared to have, and by degrees taxed more and more heavily the time and attention of the self-sacrificing sister. She began at last to read, or liked better to be read to; but never returned to her music, and never spoke of the Averills, or of Kent,—nor, indeed, of any one in St. Ann. Neither did she ever mention George Trescot. So long as she had been actively employed in thinking of means of ruining Greyhurst, she had asked of Susan no more attention and care than was easy and pleasant to give. When once her pursuit had ended, and one dominating idea had ceased to occupy her mind, she began to enlarge the boundaries of those despotic claims which the feeble or suffering sometimes make upon the unselfish. It is probable that Constance was not fully aware of this avarice of affection which caused her to accept or grasp and use the service of the sister, and to overesteem the love she herself gave in return. At first Susan looked upon it all as evidence of a revival of Constance’s former affection. She was unwilling to be alone, she desired no occupation, and would not ride or walk far. What she liked best was to sit in silence with Susan reading aloud to her in the garden, or to drive for hours in the carriage. To escape from her company was so difficult that Susan found only those hours her own in which Constance slept. At times she wondered whether or not this jealous absorption of a life would not soon or late have been applied to George Trescot.

As the warm summer days came and went, Susan was made to feel more and more plainly that she was becoming the slave of exactions which had in them something morbid. To her alarm, she began also to suspect that incessant care of a depressed and too dependent woman might prove to be a dangerous tax on health, and recognized at last with some alarm that she herself was consciously losing vigor.

When making vain efforts to assert her independence she was met by unlooked-for difficulties. In her uncle’s house, as the elder sister, Susan had exerted more or less authority; but now she had the feeling that Constance was, as indeed she looked, the older sister. By degrees Susan also learned that Constance relied on her misfortunes and her long illness to insure to her an excess of sympathetic affection and unremitting service. The discoveries thus made troubled the less selfish sister, and her good sense made plain to her that to permit limitless use of this form of devotion was to commit suicide of health and to sacrifice more than herself. There was one escape possible, and of this she knew that at some time she should have to speak, for her health and all that was once hers alone she felt were no longer to be risked without unfairness to one more dear to her than Constance. Over and over, when approaching this subject, her courage failed her.

When she chanced to mention, even in the most casual way, the man whom she had promised to marry, Constance said at once: “You must know, Susan,—you ought to know,—that I have no desire to hear of him, or of any one in St. Ann. I think you show small consideration for my feelings.” Although aware that her sister and Kent corresponded, and that letters came and went daily, she took no more interest in it than she did in whatever was outside of her own immediate and limited life. It was to Susan an almost inconceivable condition, and she was well aware that not only must it come to an end, but that to hear of her decision would be to Constance a painful awakening.

At last, when, in September, Constance seemed still better, Susan knew that she must speak out, and frankly. Constance furnished the opportunity. They were seated at evening in the garden above a quiet sea. Constance said: “I have been thinking, Susan, about the winter and what would be best for me. The doctor talks about Algiers. How would that do? It is time I made my plans. I do not suppose you care where we go, so long as we are together.”

For a moment Susan made no reply; then she said: “Let us put that aside for a moment. I have long wanted to talk to you, Conny, about another matter, but you have never been willing to listen. While you were so weak I felt that you must not be troubled by what I knew you must some day know. I am engaged to Reginald Kent, and we are to be married late in October. You must have known, Conny, that it would be.”

Constance heard her with an appearance of indifference.

“Oh, I saw there was something; but you cannot really mean to leave me. You are all I have, all I care for. It is simply out of the question. You must see that your duty lies with me.”

“Yes, dear, I see that; and we hope that you will live with us. Reginald is to have a parish near Boston.”

“I will never consent to it. Must I always be sacrificed?”

“If you mean that you will not consent to my marriage, you have no right to say that; if you mean not to live with us, I shall be sorry. I do not think that you should have spoken as you have done. You have had from me all that I could give, and, dear, you do not know how much you claim, nor do you seem to see that even with my sound health I am not fit to be and do what you expect of me—in fact, that it is I who am sacrificed.”

“Then you think I am selfish?”

“I think, dear, that in your sorrow and weakness you need more than I can give.”

“And you intend to marry that man and leave me?”

“I mean to marry Reginald Kent.”

“Then I shall find a companion and go abroad,” she said; and, rising, went away into the house.

Transcriber’s Notes

The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here (before/after):

[p. 78]: ... cuss I’d down on my knees and thank the Lord. ... ... cuss I’d be down on my knees and thank the Lord. ...