Home > Authors Index > Charles Neville Buck > Destiny > This page
Destiny, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
||
Part 2. The Book Of Life - It Might Have Been - Chapter 19 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ PART II. THE BOOK OF LIFE - IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CHAPTER XIX Mary Burton's usually colorful cheeks were now as pale as ivory. Her attitude and expression declared a total dedication to one idea: war upon the brother who could see in her entire future only a house of cards to be swept down because it had not been reared in harmony with his requirements. As she took a step toward the door Hamilton stepped between, barring her way. His outburst of infuriated words had left him breathing fast, and he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it across his brow. "Mary!" he exclaimed. "Are you mad?" "I am so sane," she assured him, "that to your demented eyes I must seem a very maniac. You turned me from a woman into a doll and this man turned me from a doll into a woman again. I am his woman. He is my man, and my place is with him." "That man," her brother pointed an outstretched finger to her fiance, "is going to have no place for you to share. My hand holds the power to make and crush and I have stamped him for obliteration. He is doomed. You are my sister, and you must hold loyalty above infatuation. You must not give countenance to my enemies in time of war, Mary. That spells treason." It was as though the three persons standing there had all passed, at a single step, through the explosive phases of wrath to the colder, steadier and deadlier zone of feeling where all their words came level, and with an almost monotonous quiet. "Loyalty!" Into her eyes came so splendid and serene a light that she seemed transfigured. "I am ready to hold loyalty above life itself. If Jefferson Edwardes goes to his execution, I shall go with him and I shall be prouder to share his ruin than any other man's victory. I have just promised to marry him...." Slowly she raised her hand and gazed at the engagement ring. The ghost of a smile trembled about her lips, though a sudden moisture dimmed her eyes. It was a mist of tenderness, not fear. "That promise was not given lightly," she added. "It outweighs even a Monte Cristo's arrogance." Edwardes shook his head. "I release you from that promise, dear," he told her. "It is to be war now, and bitter war. Before he can hurt me he must ruin hundreds of innocent noncombatants; must trample down scores of honorable institutions; and because I am responsible to them I must fight their fight to the end, asking no quarter." For just a moment his chin came up and he spoke with pride. "Our concern is no weak one. It has foundations in a nation's faith. Now it must meet the assaults of a Colossus running amuck. Your brother or I must go down. If it is I, you mustn't go down with me, dearest." Very gravely she shook her head, and, turning her back on Hamilton, clasped her hands about her lover's neck. "That, dear," she told him, "isn't exactly my idea of loving. Whoever fights you fights me as well. I am your mate. My brother has revealed his monstrous malignity of nature today and to sleep one night more under his roof would shrivel my soul. I'd rather walk the streets. I accepted you without terms. Now I impose one condition. You must marry me tonight. Take me away--make me anything but a Burton." Edwardes pressed her close and neither of them for the moment spoke to Hamilton or looked at him. "It can't be too soon," fervently declared the lover. "Do you suppose," inquired Hamilton Burton, his eyes narrowing until they held a homicidal gleam, "that I shall permit you to leave my house--with _him_?" Mary laughed, then suddenly her voice rose fiercely, ignoring his question. "You say, Hamilton, it is to be war. I shall start the war--now. Jefferson, please find Len Haswell's telephone number. I'm going to give him warning." With an exclamation of incoherent fury Hamilton Burton leaped for the telephone and tore it loose from its wires. He hurled the broken instrument clattering to the floor and the directory into the flames. Then he stood above the wreckage with his feet apart and his hands clenching and unclenching in a panting picture of demoniac rage. Mary laughed as one might laugh at the passion of a child. "After all there are other telephones," she said, then added quietly: "You will find in my rooms all the gifts you have loaded upon me. Unfortunately I should have to go out of your house naked if I left behind me everything that has come from you. Will you ring for my maid?" For a moment the financier stood glaring and silent; then with a powerful struggle for self-mastery he went over and touched a bell. "I can't use physical force against my sister," he said. "You are of age, and your own mistress, but if you make common cause with my enemies, you become my enemy yourself." When Harrow responded to the call, only the broken telephone bore evidence of the violence of the past few minutes. "Please ask Julie," instructed the girl quietly, "to pack a bag for me and one for herself. I shall only need enough things for a day or two. Ask her to hurry." For several minutes the three stood without further speech, and when the brother broke the silence it was in an altered tone. "Mary," he said seriously, "your happiness is very dear to me. For nothing else would I let any differences between us amount to an issue. For God's sake, forego this mad idea. You are disrupting a family for whose upbuilding I have fought with a very fierce singleness of purpose." "And to what end?" she demanded, with blazing eyes. "Of my father you have made an artificial gentleman--and once he was a real man. To my mother you have given luxuries instead of life. Paul you have turned into a society lap-dog, and now by adding your strength to his weakness you are trying to make him a beast of prey." "Those are very bitter accusations," he answered gravely. His face was set, but shame for his recent outburst safeguarded him for the moment against a second. Harrow appeared after a short time to announce that the maid was ready, and Mary rose from her seat. "Good-by, Hamilton," she said. "Will you at least go to my mother's house?" he questioned. "Mother's house is as much your house as this one. No, I shall go where Jefferson Edwardes chooses to take me." "Then, by God Almighty, you will not go at all!" Hamilton Burton took his place at the door, and stood barring their way while a dangerous gleam came into Edwardes' eyes. Mary spoke very coldly. "Hamilton, please let us pass. It would be a pity to edify your servants with a physical collision." Over the taut whiteness of the brother's face went a wave of doubt. He recognized confronting him a spirit as indomitable as his own. Somehow his arrogance, under her gaze, withered and shrunk into a cheap bravado, and he realized it as such. He spoke once more and his words came slowly. "I shall not use force. It is, of course, for you to decide. I have perhaps loved you better than any other member of my family. My pride in you has been triumphant. That man who stands at your side came into my house and poisoned your heart against me. He is a traitor and I have marked him for ruin. Decide between us calmly, Mary, because when I resolve I do not deviate." "I have already decided," she answered. "Please let us pass." He drew aside and stood there motionless as the street-door opened and closed. Afterward he walked slowly back into the room and stood restlessly on the great bear pelt, gazing into the cavernous hearth. Then he dropped down into the tall Moorish chair where a little while before his sister had been sitting, her eyes brimming with joy. He leaned forward and his hands fell limp from the wrists that rested limp on his knees. Something had gone suddenly out of Hamilton Burton. The eyes that stared into the blaze wore, for the first time, a trace of that fatigue and distress which portraits show in the eyes looking out from St. Helena. Mary was gone; gone with his enemy to fight under his enemy's colors! Her motive bewildered him. What was this love that so powerfully impelled her to desert her own blood? Suddenly his mind flashed back to a kitchen tableau of a small girl breaking into a sudden tempest of tears, and a boy saying, "I mean to see that Mary gets whatever she wants out of life." Then quite irrelevantly a fragment of verse leaped into his memory and prickled it with irritation. "The Emperor there in his box of state, looked grave
Well, she had chosen. One thing remained possible. The man responsible for this greatest sorrow and humiliation with which he had ever been visited should pay in full the score of reprisal. With an abrupt impulse he sent for Paul and he was still pacing the room with quick, nervous strides when his brother arrived. The younger man's face was haggard and he cast a quick glance of trepidation about the room. "Where's Mary?" he demanded, and Hamilton wheeled on him with eyes that were scarcely sane. "Gone!" he barked out. "Gone with that rat, Edwardes. That's one of the things your whim has cost so far--your baby-doll--your toy-woman!" With a sudden cry that came from his heart, Paul dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook to his convulsive sobbing, and after a moment Hamilton went over and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Forgive me, little brother," he said softly. "After all, Edwardes was the real reason. Edwardes with his damned self-righteousness! Mary flew virtuously to his standards. She is no longer my sister, Paul." But Paul rose with his face full of pleading. He talked rapidly, excitedly, like a frightened child. "Hamilton, she _is_ our sister. She loves him.... You promised her happiness years ago.... You can't let her go like this. It will kill us all." His elder brother thrust him back at arm's length and gazed into his grief-stricken face. "It's not a question of letting her go. She went in spite of me. She went to the enemy." The words came very bitterly and for the first time in his life Paul saw tears in Hamilton's eyes. The musician rose and passed an unsteady hand over his brow. "I'm thinking about mother," he said brokenly. "I must go up and be with her when she learns." Hamilton wheeled, speaking quickly. "Yes, do. I shall follow you shortly. Tell mother that I withheld my approval to this marriage, and they took the bit in their teeth." Within the half-hour Carl Bristoll, Ruferton and Tarring were with their chief and between them lay sheafs of memoranda and financial data, which littered the table. "I want to know in exact detail," Hamilton Burton told them as his glance burned into their faces, "everything that it is possible to learn concerning the firm of Edwardes and Edwardes. Most particularly I want to learn their points of greatest vulnerability. I must have lists of those securities in which, directly or indirectly, they are most vitally interested and the exact nature and extent of all their liabilities." * * * * * Outside, Jefferson Edwardes found his car waiting, and the realization came ironically to his mind that it was precisely the hour he had expected to leave Hamilton Burton's house--though his intention had been to leave only long enough to change into evening-clothes and return for dinner. To his chauffeur he said in a low voice, "Drive in the park until I tell you to stop." Then as he took his seat beside the girl he turned upon her very serious eyes and said resolutely, "I couldn't debate it with you in his presence, Mary, but I can't marry you tonight." She turned her face to him and the color left her cheeks. "Not marry me?" she questioned in a dazed voice. "Not yet, dearest. Under other circumstances no time could be too soon, but now--" He raised his hands in a gesture of weariness and sat looking at her with a hunger of the heart. "Now what?" she prompted. "Now I am pledged to a life-and-death duel with your brother. Now I must fight not only my fight, but that of many others. It is foolish to treat lightly the threats of Hamilton Burton. His power is incalculable and his implacability is absolute. I can't tear away every family tie that is rooted in your life merely to make you my comrade in ruin. That is not my idea of loving, dearest." "And if not that--what?" Her chin was raised and her lips parted. Her voice was very soft, almost faint. Never, Edwardes thought, had she been so beautiful. "I have left my brother's house to go with you. I shall not return. Am I, then, to find myself like a beggar woman, with no place to go except the streets of New York?" With a gasping exclamation of pain in his throat he bent forward and seized her in his arms. The car was now in the park and between the light globes were spaces of darkness. "For God's sake," he cried, "don't. It is because I love you so!" "I think, Jefferson," she answered as he held her close with his kisses on her cheeks, "you need me as much as I need you." "Need you! Because I need you so much, I can't let you do this now." "You spoke just now," she said, "as though you had no hope of victory in this warfare. If that is true you need me to help you fight. I have no intention of tame submission. You must have a Burton to fight this Burton." "If I spoke so," he declared, and his voice was far from submissive, "it was because any chance of ruin is too great a chance to subject you to. It is because I mean to defend myself and my clients and my honor to the last breath that I say I can't marry you now. Certainly not until you have gravely considered these new occurrences. I shall take small pleasure in his overthrow, if I overthrow him, because he is your brother." "I think," her eyes flashed into a fierce animosity, "I shall glory in it. I know that I shall not go back to his support. I offer myself to you. I cannot compel you." For a long while they talked, she resolved to fight his fight with him or take off his ring; and he, in a torture of soul, refusing so great a gift at so ruinous a cost to herself. At last it was arranged that she should go to her mother's until she had made up her mind, and that they should both accept an invitation for a week at the hunting-lodge of friends in the Adirondacks. There, except for their host and hostess, they would be alone and Edwardes might have a breathing space before his battle. There they tramped together on snowshoes over white-mantled hills and forgot that any shadow threatened their happiness. They drank deep of air that was spicy with the fragrance of pines and because to them the present seemed so perfect they refused to borrow fears from the future. Sometimes the man would see a vagrant shadow of foreboding steal into the mismated eyes, but when Mary became aware of its recognition in his own, it was always swiftly banished for one of serene happiness and confidence. "Dearest," he told her at such a moment--it was the moment of candle-lighting, when dusk brings shadows of fear, "why 'heed the rumble of the distant drum'? We love each other, and when my fight is over no one shall part us." And she in the circle of his arms looked up and laughed and they both banished from their hearts all thought of Hamilton Burton. At her mother's house before she came away, Mary had talked to Paul, and had won his weak promise that he would permit his brother to take no dishonorable step toward freeing Loraine Haswell. So she had not kept her threat of warning the husband, and after she had returned to town, her mother fell ill, and in the first call of loyalty there Mary remained with her. About this time she read that Loraine had gone to Europe, and had gone alone. Days had passed into weeks and Hamilton Burton had struck no blow. Mary had begun to believe that he meant to strike none, and her lover encouraged that view, but he himself knew that it was a phantom hope. He knew that the arch master of financial strategy was building and strengthening every sinew of war, and that the crushing impact of his attack would be only the more terrific because he had curbed his impatience and held his hand until the exact fraction of the psychological moment. _ |
||