Chapter 28

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_ CHAPTER XXVIII

The storm burst in all its fury when Thorpe was half way down the Avenue in the taxi he had picked up at the Plaza. Pedestrians scurried in all directions, seeking shelter from the wind and rain; the blackness of night had fallen upon the city; the mighty roar of a thousand cannon came out of the clouds; terrifying flashes rent the skies. The man in the taxi neither saw nor heard the savage assault of the elements. He was accustomed to the roar of battle. He was used to thinking with something worse than thunder in his ears, and something worse than raindrops beating about him.

He knew that Anne was afraid of the thunder and the lightning. More than once she had huddled close to him and trembled in the haven of his arms, her fingers to her ears, while storms raged about them. He was thinking of her now, down there in that grim old house, trembling in some darkened place, her eyes wide with alarm, her heart beating wildly with terror,—ah, he remembered so well how wildly her heart could beat!

He had forgotten his words to Simmy: "I can't trust myself!" There was but one object in his mind and that was to retract the unnecessary challenge with which he had closed his letter to her in January. Why should he have demanded of her a sacrifice for which he could offer no consolation? He now admitted to himself that when he wrote the blighting postscript he was inspired by a mean desire to provoke anticipation on her part. "If you also are not a coward, you will return to my grandfather's house, where you belong." What right had he to revive the hope that she accounted dead? She still had her own life to live, and in her own way. He was not to be a part of it. He was sure of that, and yet he had given her something on which to sustain the belief that a time would come when their lives might find a common channel and run along together to the end. She had taken his words as he had hoped she would, and now he was filled with shame and compunction.

The rain was coming down in sheets when the taxi-cab slid up to the curb in front of the house that had been his home for thirty years. His home! Not hers, but _his_! She did not belong there, and he did. He would never cease to regard this fine old house as his home.

He was forced to wait for the deluge to cease or to slacken. For many minutes he sat there in the cab, his gaze fixed rigidly on the streaming, almost opaque window, trying to penetrate the veil of water that hung between him and the walls of the house not twenty feet away. At last his impatience got the better of him, and, the downpour having diminished slightly, he made a sudden swift dash from the vehicle and up the stone steps into the shelter of the doorway. Here he found company. Four workmen, evidently through for the day, were flattened against the walls of the vestibule.

They made way for him. Without realising what he did, he hastily snatched his key-ring from his pocket, found the familiar key he had used for so many years, and inserted it in the lock. The door opened at once and he entered the hall. As he closed the door behind him, his eyes met the curious gaze of the four workmen, and for the first time he realised what he had done through force of habit. For a moment or two he stood petrified, trying to grasp the full significance of his act. He had never rung the door-bell of that house,—not in all the years of his life. He had always entered in just this way. His grandfather had given him a key when he was thirteen,—the same key that he now held in his fingers and at which he stared in a sort of stupefaction.

He was suddenly aware of another presence in the hall,—a figure in white that stood near the foot of the staircase, motionless where it had been arrested by the unexpected opening of the door,—a tall, slender figure.

He saw her hand go swiftly to her heart.

"Why—why didn't you—let me know?" she murmured in a voice so low that he could hardly hear the words. "Why do you come in this way to—"

"What must you think of me for—for breaking in upon you—" he began, jerkily. "I don't know what possessed me to—you see, I still have the key I used while I lived—Oh, I'm sorry, Anne! I can't explain. It just seemed natural to—"

"Why did you come without letting me know?" she cried, and now her voice was shrill from the effort she made to suppress her agitation.

"I should have telephoned," he muttered. Suddenly he tore the key from the ring. "Here! It does not belong to me. I should not have the key to your—"

"Keep it," she said, drawing back. "I want you to keep it. I shall be happier if I know that you have the key to the place where I live. No! I will not take it."

To her infinite surprise, he slipped the key into his pocket. She had expected him to throw it upon the floor as she resolutely placed her hands behind her back.

"Very well," he said, rather roughly. "It is quite safe with me. I shall never forget myself again as I have to-day."

For the first time since entering the door, he allowed his gaze to sweep the lofty hallway. But for the fact that he knew he had come into the right house, he would have doubted his own senses. There was nothing here, to remind him of the sombre, gloomy place that he had known from childhood's earliest days. All of the massive, ugly trappings were gone, and all of the gloom. The walls were bright, the rugs gay, the woodwork cheerfully white. He glanced quickly down the length of the hall and—yes, the suit of mail was gone! He was conscious of a great relief.

Then his eyes fell upon her again. A strange, wistful little smile had appeared while his gaze went roving.

"You see that I am trying not to be a coward," she said.

"What a beast I was to write that thing to you," he cried. "I came down here to tell you that I am sorry. I don't want you to live here, Anne. It is—"

"Ah, but I am here," she said, "and here I shall stay. We have done wonders with the place. You will not recognise it,—not a single corner of it, Braden. It was all very well as the home of a lonely old man who loved it, but it was not quite the place for a lonely young woman who hated it. Come! Let me show you the library. It is finished. I think you will say it is a woman's room now and not a man's. Some of the rooms upstairs are still unfinished. My own room is a joy. Everything is new and—"

"Anne," he broke in, almost harshly, "it will come to nothing, you may as well know the truth now. It will save you a great deal of unhappiness, and it will allow you to look elsewhere for—"

"Come into the library," she interrupted. "I already have had a great deal of unhappiness in that room, so I fancy it won't be so hard to hear what you have come to say to me if you say it to me there."

He followed her to the library door, and there stopped in amazement, unwilling to credit his eyes. He was looking into the brightest, gayest room he had ever seen. An incredible transformation had taken place. The vast, stately, sober room had become dainty, exquisite, enchanting. Here, instead of oppressive elegance, was the most delicate beauty; here was exemplified at a glance the sweet, soft touch of woman in contrast to the heavy, uncompromising hand of man. Here was sweetness and freshness, and the sparkle of youth, and gone were the grim things of age. Here was light and happiness, and the fragrance of woman.

"In heaven's name, what _have_ you done to this room?" he cried. "Am I in my right senses? Can this be my grandfather's house?"

She smiled, and did not answer. She was watching his face with eager, wistful eyes.

"Why, it's—it's unbelievable," he went on, an odd tremor in his voice. "It is wonderful. It is—why, it is beautiful, Anne. I could not have dreamed that such a change,—What has become of everything? What have you done with all the big, clumsy, musty things that—"

"They are in a storage warehouse," said she crisply. "There isn't so much as a carpet-tack left of the old regime. Everything is gone. Every single thing that was here with your grandfather is gone. I alone am left. When I came down here two months ago the place was filled with the things that you remember. I had made up my mind to stay here,—but not with the things that I remembered. The first thing I did was to clean out the house from cellar to garret. I am not permitted to sell the contents of this house, but there was nothing to prevent me from storing them. Your grandfather overlooked that little point, I fear. In any event, that was the first thing I did. Everything is gone, mind you,—even to the portrait that used to hang over the mantelpiece there,—and it was the only cheerful object in the house. I wish I could show you my boudoir, my bedroom, and the rooms in which Mr. Thorpe lived. You—you would love them."

He was now standing in the middle of the room, staring about him at the handiwork of Aladdin.

"Why, it isn't—it will not be so dreadful, after all," he said slowly. "You have made it all so lovely, so homelike, so much like yourself that—you will not find it so hard to live here as I—"

"I wanted you to like it, Braden. I wanted you to see the place,—to see what I have done to make it bright and cheerful and endurable. No, I sha'n't find it so hard to live here. I was sure that some day you would come to see me here and I wanted you to feel that—that it wasn't as hard for me as you thought it would be. I have been a coward, though. I confess that I could not have lived here with all those things about to—to remind me of—You see, I just _had_ to make the place possible. I hope you are not offended with me for what I have done. I have played havoc with sentiment and association, and you may feel that I—"

"Offended? Good heavens, Anne, why should I be offended? You have a right to do what you like here."

"Ah, but I do not forget that it is _your_ home, Braden, not mine. It will always be home to you, and I fear it can never be that to me. This is not much in the way of a library now, I confess. Thirty cases of books are safely stored away,—all of those old first editions and things of that sort. They meant nothing to me. I don't know what a first edition is, and I never could see any sense in those funny things he called missals, nor the incunabula, if that's the way you pronounce it. You may have liked them, Braden. If you care for them, if you would like to have them in your own house, you must let me _lend_ them to you. Everybody borrows books, you know. It would be quite an original idea to lend a whole library, wouldn't it? If you—"

"They are better off in the storage warehouse," he interrupted, trying to steel himself against her rather plaintive friendliness.

"Don't you intend to shake hands with me?" she asked suddenly. "I am so glad that you have come home,—come back, I mean,—and—" She advanced with her hand extended.

It was a perilous moment for both of them when she laid her hand in his. The blood in both of them leaped to the thrill of contact. The impulse to clasp her in his arms, to smother her with kisses, to hold her so close that nothing could ever unlock his arms, was so overpowering that his head swam dizzily and for an instant he was deprived of vision. How he ever passed through that crisis in safety was one of the great mysteries of his life. She was his for the taking! She was ready.

Their hands fell apart. A chill swept through the veins of both,—the ice- cold chill of a great reaction. They would go on loving each other, wanting each other, perhaps forever, but a moment like the one just past would never come again. Bliss, joy, complete satisfaction might come, but that instant of longing could never be surpassed.

He was very white. For a long time he could not trust himself to speak. The fight was a hard one, and it was not yet over. She was a challenge to all that he tried to master. He wondered why there was a smile in her lovely, soft eyes, while in his own there must have been the hardness of steel. And he wondered long afterward how she could have possessed the calmness to say:

"Simmy must have been insane with joy. He has talked of nothing else for days."

But he did not know that in her secret heart she was crying out in ecstasy: "God, how I love him—and _how he loves me_!"

"He is a good old scout," said he lamely, hardly conscious of the words. Then abruptly: "I can't stay, Anne. I came down to tell you that—that I was a dog to say what I did in my note to you. I knew the construction you would put upon the—well, the injunction. It wasn't fair. I led you to believe that if you came down here to live that sometime I would—"

"Just a moment, Braden," she interrupted, steadily. "You are finding it very difficult to say just the right thing to me. Let me help you, please. I fear that I have a more ready tongue than you and certainly I am less agitated. I confess that your note decided me. I confess that I believed my coming here to live would result in—well, forgiveness is as good a word as any at this time. Now you have come to me to say that I have nothing to gain by living in this house, that I have nothing to gain by living in a place which revolts and terrifies me,—not always, but at times. Well, you may spare yourself the pain of saying all that to me. I shall continue to live here, even though nothing comes of it, as you say. I shall continue to sit here in this rather enchanting place and wait for you to come and share it with me. If you—"

"Good God! That is just what I am trying to tell you that I cannot—"

"I know, I know," she broke in impatiently. "That is just what you are trying to tell me, and this is just what I am trying to tell you. I do not say that you will ever come to me here, Braden. I am only saying to you that I shall wait for you. If you do not come, that is your affair, not mine. I love you. I love you with every bit of selfishness that is in my soul, every bit of goodness that is in my heart, and every bit of badness that is in my blood. I am proud to tell you that I am selfish in this one respect, if no longer in any other. I would give up everything else in the world to have you. That is how selfish I am. I want to be happy and I selfishly want you to be happy—for my sake if not for your own. Do you suppose that I am glorifying myself by living here? Do you suppose that I am justifying myself? If you do, you are very greatly mistaken. I am here because you led me to believe that—that things might be altered if I—" Her lips trembled despite the brave countenance she presented to him. In a second she had quelled the threatened weakness. "I have made this house a paradise. I have made it a place in which you may find happiness if you care to seek for it here. At night I shudder and cringe, because I am the coward you would try to reform. I hide nothing from myself. I am afraid to be alone in this house. But I shall stay—I shall stay."

"Do you think that I could ever find happiness in this house—now?" he demanded hoarsely.

"Do you expect to find happiness anywhere else, Braden?" she asked, a little break in her voice.

"No. I shall never find happiness anywhere else,—real happiness, I mean. I cannot be happy without you, Anne."

"Nor I without you," she said simply. "I don't see that it makes very much difference _where_ we choose to be unhappy, Braden, so I shall take mine here,—where it is likely to be complete."

"But that is just what I don't want you to do," he cried angrily. "I don't want you to stay here. You must leave this place. You have had hell enough. I insist that you—"

"No use arguing," she said, shaking her head. "I can love you here as well as anywhere else, and that is all I care for,—just my love for you."

"God, what a cruel thing love is, after all. If there was no such thing as love, we could—"

"Don't say that!" she cried out sharply. "Love is everything. It conquers everything. It is both good and evil. It makes happiness and it makes misery. Braden,—oh, my dearest!—see what it has made for us? Love! Why, don't you know it is Love that we love? _We love Love._ I would not love you if you were not Love itself. I treated you abominably, but you still love me. You performed an act of mercy for the man you loved, and he loved you. You cursed me in your heart, and I still love you. We cannot escape love, my friend. It rules us,—it rules all of us. The thing that you say stands between us—that act of mercy, dearest,—what effect has it had upon either of us? I would come to you to-morrow, to-day,—this very hour if you asked me to do so, and not in all the years that are left to me would I see the shadow you shrink from."

"The shadow extends back a great deal farther, Anne," he said, closing his eyes as if in pain. "It began long before my grandfather found the peace which I have yet to find. It began when you sold yourself to him."

She shrank slightly. "But even that did not kill your love for me," she cried out, defensively. "I did not sell my love,—just my soul, if you must have a charge against me. I've got it back, thank God, and it is worth a good deal more to me to-day than it was when Mr. Thorpe bargained for it. Two million dollars!" She spoke ironically, yet with great seriousness. "If he could have bought my love for that amount, his bargain would have been a good one. If I were to discover now that you do not care for me, Braden, and if I could buy your love, which is the most precious thing in the world to me, I would not hesitate a second to pay out every dollar I have in—"

"Stop!" he cried eagerly, drawing a step nearer and fixing her with a look that puzzled and yet thrilled her. "Would you give up everything—everything, mind you,—if I were to ask you to do so?"

"You said something like that a few months ago," she said, after a moment's hesitation. There was a troubled, hunted look in her eyes, as of a creature at bay. "You make it hard for me, Braden. I don't believe I could give up everything. I have found that all this money does not give me happiness. It does provide me with comfort, with independence, with a certain amount of power. It does not bring me the thing I want more than anything else in the world, however. Still I cannot say to you now that I would willingly give it up, Braden. You would not ask it of me, of course. You are too fair and big—"

"But it is exactly what I would ask of you, Anne," he said earnestly, "if it came to an issue. You could not be anything more to me than you are now if you retained a dollar of that money."

She drew a long, deep breath. "Would you take me back, Braden,—would you let me be your wife if I—if I were to give up all that I received from Mr. Thorpe?" She was watching his face closely, ready to seize upon the slightest expression that might direct her course, now or afterwards.

"I—I—Oh, Anne, we must not harass ourselves like this," he groaned. "It is all so hopeless, so useless. It never can be, so what is the use in talking about it?"

She now appeared to be a little more sure of her ground. There was a note of confidence in her voice as she said: "In that event, it can do no harm for me to say that I do not believe I could give it up, Braden."

"You _wouldn't_?"

"If I were to give up all this money, Braden dear, I would prove myself to be the most selfish creature in the world."

"Selfish? Good Lord! It would be the height of self-denial. It—"

"When a woman wants something so much that she will give up everything in the world to get it, I claim that she is selfish to the last degree. She gratifies self, and there is no other way to look at it. And I will admit to you now, Braden, that if there is no other way, I will give up all this money. That may represent to you just how much I think of _self_. But," and she smiled confidently, "I don't intend to impoverish myself if I can help it, and I don't believe you are selfish enough to ask it of me."

"Would you call Lutie selfish?" he demanded. "She gave up everything for George."

"Lutie is impulsive. She did it voluntarily. No one demanded it of her. She was not obliged to give back a penny, you must remember. My case is different. You would demand a sacrifice of me. Lutie did not sell herself in the beginning. She sold George. She bought him back. If George was worth thirty thousand dollars to her, you are worth two millions to me. She gave her _all_, and that would be my _all_. She was willing to pay. Am I? That is the question."

"You would have to give it up, Anne," said he doggedly.

He saw the colour fade from her cheeks, and the lustre from her eyes.

"I am not sure that I could do it, Braden," she said, after a long silence. Then, almost fiercely: "Will you tell me how I should go about getting rid of all this money,—sensibly,—if I were inclined to do so? What could I do with it? Throw it away? Destroy it? Burn—"

"There isn't much use discussing ways and means," he said with finality in his manner. "I'm sorry we brought the subject up. I came here with a very definite object in view, and we—well, you see what we have come to."

"Oh, I—I love you so!" came tremulously from her lips. "I love you so, Braden. I—I don't see how I can go on living without—" She suppressed the wild, passionate words by deliberately clapping her hands, one above the other, over her lips. Red surged to her brow and a look of exquisite shame and humiliation leaped into her eyes.

"Anne, Anne—" he began, but she turned on him furiously.

"Why do you lie to me? Why do you lie to yourself? You came here to-day because you were mad with the desire to see me, to be near me, to—Oh, you need not deny it! You have been crying out for me ever since the day you last held me in your arms and kissed me,—ages ago!—just as I have been crying out for you. Don't say that you came here merely to tell me that I must not live in this house if it leads me to hope for—recompense. Don't say that, because it is not the real reason, and you know it. You would have remained in Europe if you were through with me, as you would have yourself believe. But you are not through with me. You never will be. If you cannot be fair with yourself, Braden, you should at least be fair with me. You should not have come here to-day. But you could not help it, you could not resist. It will always be like this, and it is not fair, it is not fair. You say we never can be married to each other. What is there left for us, I ask of you,—what will all this lead to? We are not saints. We are not made of stone. We—"

"God in heaven, Anne," he cried, aghast and incredulous. "Do you know what you are saying? Do you think I would drag you down, despoil you—"

"Oh, you would be honest enough to marry me—_then_," she cried out bitterly. "Your sense of honour would attend to all that. You—"

"Stop!" he commanded, standing over her as she shrank back against the wall. "Do you think that I love you so little that I could—Love? Is that the kind of love that you have been extolling to the skies?"

She covered her flaming face with her hands. "Forgive me, forgive me!" she murmured, brokenly. "I am so ashamed of myself."

He was profoundly moved. A great pity for her swept through him. "I shall not come again," he said hoarsely. "I will be fair. You are right. You see more clearly than I can see. I must not come to you again unless I come to ask you to be my wife. You are right. We would go mad with—"

"Listen to me, Braden," she interrupted in a strangely quiet manner. "I shall never ask you to come to me. If you want me you must ask me to come to you. I will come. But you are to impose no conditions. You must leave me to fight out my own battle. My love is so great, so honest, so strong that it will triumph over everything else. Listen! Let me say this to you before I send you away from me to-day. Love is relentless. It wrecks homes, it sends men to the gallows and women to the madhouse. It makes drunkards, suicides and murderers of noble men and women. It causes men and women to abandon homes, children, honour—and all the things that should be dear to them. It impoverishes, corrupts and—defiles. It makes cowards of brave men and brave men of cowards. The thing we call love has a thousand parts. It has purity, nobility, grandeur, greed, envy, lust—everything. You have heard of good women abandoning good husbands for bad lovers. You have heard of good mothers giving up the children they worship. You have heard of women and men murdering husbands and wives in order to remove obstacles from the path of love. One woman whom we both know recently gave up wealth, position, honour, children,—everything,—to go down into poverty and disgrace with the man she loved. You know who I mean. She did it because she could not help herself. Opposed to the evil that love can do, there is always the beautiful, the sweet, the pure,—and it is that kind of love that rules the world. But the other kind _is_ love, just the same, and while it does not govern the world, it is none the less imperial. What I want to say to you is this: while love may govern the world, the world cannot govern love. You cannot govern this love you have for me, although you may control it. Nor can I destroy the love I have for you. I may not deserve your love, but I have it and you cannot take it away from me. Some other woman may rob me of it, perhaps, but you cannot do it, my friend. I will wait for you to come and get me, Braden. Now, go,—please go,—and do not come here again until—" she smiled faintly.

He lowered his head. "I will not come again, Anne," he said huskily.

She did not follow him to the door. _

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