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The Danger Mark, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 17. The Danger Mark |
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_ CHAPTER XVII. THE DANGER MARK Her letters to him still bore the red cross:
"Dear, I know what you are going through is one of the most dreadful things that any man is called upon to bear--your father stricken, your mother and sister prostrate; the newspapers--for I have read them--cruel beyond belief! But whatever they say, whatever is true or untrue, Duane, remember that it cannot affect my regard for you and yours. "If I had a father, whatever he might have done, or permitted others to do, would not, _could_ not alter my affection for him. "Men say that women have no sense of honour. I do not know what that sense may be if it falters when loyalty and compassion are needed, too. "I have read the papers; I know only what I read and what you tell me. The rules that custom has framed to safeguard and govern financial operations, I do not understand; but, as far as I can comprehend, it seems to me that custom has hitherto sanctioned what disaster has now placed under a bann. It seems to me that the very men who now blame your father have all done successfully what he did so disastrously. "One thing I know: no kinder, dearer man than your father ever lived; and I love him, and I love his family, and I will marry his son when I am fit to do it."
"Who are these Wall Street men who would not help the Algonquin when they could? Why is the Clearing House so bitter? I don't know what it all means; I read columns about poor Jack Dysart--words and figures and technical phrases and stock quotations--and it means nothing, and I understand nothing of it save that it is all a fierce outcry against him and against the men with whom he was financially involved. "The papers are so gloomy, so eager in their search for evil, so merciless, so exultant when scandal is unearthed, that I can scarcely bear to read them. Why do they drag in unhappy people who know nothing about these matters? The interview with your mother and Naida, which you say is false, was most dreadful. How cruel men are! "Tell them I love them dearly; tell your father, too. And, dear, I don't know exactly how Scott and I are situated, but if we can be of any financial use to you, please, please let us! Our fortune, when it came to us, was, I believe, all in first mortgages and railroad securities. I believe that Scott made some changes in our investments under advice from your father. I don't know what they were. "Don't bother your father with such details now; he has enough to think of lying there in his grief, bewildered, broken in mind and body. Duane, is it not more merciful that he is unable to understand what the papers are saying? "Dear, heart and soul I am loyal to you and yours."
"Duane, I absolutely forbid you to worry. My brother is of age, sound in mind and body, responsible for whatever he does or has done. It is his affair if he solicits advice, his affair if he follows it. Your father has no responsibility whatever in the matter of the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Besides, Scott tells me that what he did was against the advice of Mr. Tappan. "I remember last winter that he brought a Mr. Skelton to luncheon, and a horrid man named Klawber. "Poor Scott! He certainly knows nothing about business matters. I know he had no desire to increase his private fortune; he tells me that what interested him in the Cascade Development and Securities Company was the chance that cheap radium might stimulate scientific research the world over. Poor Scott! "Dear, you are not to think for one instant that any trouble which may involve Scott is due to you or yours. And if it were, Duane, it could make no difference to him or to me. Money and what it buys is such a pitiful detail in what goes to make up happiness. Who but I should understand that! "Loss of social prestige and position, is a serious matter, I suppose; I may show my ignorance and inexperience when I tell you how much more serious to me are other things--like the loss of faith in one's self or in others--or the loss of the gentler virtues, which means the loss of what one once was. "The loss of honour is, as you say, a pitiful thing; yet, I think that when that happens, love and compassion were never more truly needed. "Honour, as I understand it, is not to take advantage of others or of one's better self. This is a young girl's definition. I cannot see--if one has yielded once to temptation, and truly repents--why honour cannot be regained. "The honour of men and nations that seems to require arrogance, aggression, violence for its defence, I do not understand. How can the misdeeds of others impair one's true honour? How can punishment for such misdeeds restore it? No; it lies within one, quite intangible save by one's self. "Why should I not know, dear?--I who have lost my own and found it, have held it desperately for a while, then lost it, then regained it, holding it again as I do now--alas!--against no other enemy than I who write this record for your eyes! "Dear, I know of nothing lost which may not be regained, except life. I know of nothing which cannot be rendered tolerable through loyalty. "That material happiness which means so much to some, means now so very little to me, perhaps because I have never lacked it. "Yet I know that, once mistress of myself, nothing else could matter unless your love failed."
"You know it's rather bewildering to me where millions go to. I don't quite comprehend how they can so utterly vanish in such a short time, even in such a frightful fiasco as the Cascade Development Company. "So many people have been here--Mr. Landon and Mr. Gayfield, Mr. Stainer of Elting & Stainer, that dreadful creature Klawber, a very horrid man named Amos Flack--and dear, grim, pig-headed Mr. Tappan--old Remsen Tappan of all men! "He practically kicked out Mr. Flack and the creature Klawber, who had been trying to frighten Scott and me and even our lawyers. "And think, Duane! He never uttered one sarcasm, one reproach for Scott's foolishness; he sat grim and rusty as the iron that he once dealt in, listening to what Scott had to tell him, never opening that cragged jaw, never unclosing that thin line of cleavage which is his mouth. "We did not know what he had come for; but we know now. He is _so_ good--so good, Duane! And I, who hated him as a child, as a girl--I am almost too ashamed to let him take command and untangle for us, with those knotted, steel-sinewed fingers of his, the wretched, tangled mess that has coiled around Scott and me. "Surely, this man Klawber is a very great villain; and it seems that Mr. Skelton and the wretched Flack creature are little less. As for Jack Dysart, it is all too sorrowful to think about. How must he feel! Surely, surely he could not have known what he was doing. He must have been desperate to go to Delancy Grandcourt. It was wrong; nothing on earth could have propped up the Algonquin, and why did he let his best friend go down with it? "But it was fine of Delancy to stand by him--fine, fine! His father is perfectly furious, but, Duane, it _was_ fine! "And now, dear, about Scott. It will amuse you, and perhaps horrify you, if I tell you that he has not turned a hair. "Not that he doesn't care; not that he is not more or less mortified. But he blames nobody except himself; and he's laying plans quite cheerfully for a career on a small income that really does not require the austerity and frugality he imagines. "One thing is certain; the town house is to be sold. My income is not sufficient to maintain it and Roya-Neh, and live as we do, and have anything left. I don't yet know how far my fortune is involved, but I have a very unpleasant premonition that there is going to be much less left than anybody believes, and that ultimately we ought to sell Roya-Neh. "However, it is far too early to speculate; besides, this family has done enough speculating for one generation. "Dear, you ask about myself. I am not one bit worried, sad, or apprehensive. I am _better_, Duane. Do you understand? All this has developed a set of steadier nerves in me than I have had since I was a child. "A new and curiously keen enjoyment has been slowly growing in me--a happiness in physical and violent effort. I've a devilish horse to ride; and I love it! I've climbed all over the Gilded Dome and Lynx Peak after the biggest and shaggiest boar you ever saw. Oh, Duane! I came on him just at the edge of evening, and he winded me and went thundering down the Westgate ravine, and I fired too quickly. "But I'm after him almost every day with old Miller, and my arms and legs are getting so strong, and my flesh so firm, and actually I'm becoming almost plump in the face! Don't you care for that kind of a girl? "Dear, do you think I've passed the danger mark? Tell me honestly--not what you want to think, but what you do believe. I don't know whether I have passed it yet. I feel, somehow, whichever side of it I am on, that the danger mark is not very far away from me. I've got to get farther away. The house in town is open. Mrs. Farren, Hilda, and Nellie are there if we run into town. "Kathleen is so happy for me. I've told her about the red cross. She is too sweet to Scott; she seems to think he really grieves deeply over the loss of his private fortune. What a dear she is! She is willing to marry him now; but Scott strikes attitudes and declares she shall have a man whose name stands for an achievement--meaning, of course, the Seagrave process for the extermination of the Rose-beetle. "Duane, I am quite unaccountably happy to-day. Nothing seems to threaten. But don't stop loving me."
Then another letter came, desperate, almost incoherent, yet still bearing the red cross faintly traced. And on the heels of it a telegram:
On the train a dispatch was handed her:
"DUANE."
At last, far away under a heavy sky, the vast misshapen landmarks of New York loomed up gray through the falling snow; the train roared over the Harlem, halted at 125th Street, rolled on into the black tunnel, faster, faster, slower, then more slowly, and stopped. All sounds ceased at the same moment; silence surrounded her, dreary as the ominous silence within. Dunn met her with a brougham; Fifth Avenue was slippery with filthy, melting slush; yet, somehow, into her mind came the memory of her return from her first opera--the white avenue at midnight, the carriage, lamps lighted, speeding through the driving snow. Yesterday, the quiet, untainted whiteness of childhood; to-day, trouble and stress and stained snow melting into mud--so far behind her lay innocence and peace on the long road she had travelled! So far had she already journeyed--toward what? She pressed her lips more tightly together and buried her chin in her sable muff. Beside her, her maid sat shivering and stifling yawn after yawn and thinking of dinner and creature comforts, and of Dunn, the footman, whom she did ardently admire. The big red brick house among its naked trees seemed sad and deserted as the brougham flashed into the drive and stopped, the horses stamping and pawing the frozen gravel. Geraldine had never before been away from home so long, and now as she descended from the carriage and looked vaguely about her it seemed as though she had, somehow, become very, very young again--that it was her child-self that entered under the porte-cochere after the prescribed drive that always ended outdoor exercise in the early winter evenings; and she half expected to see old Howker in the hall, and Margaret trotting up to undo her furs and leggings--half expected to hear Kathleen's gay greeting, to see her on the stairs, so young, so sweetly radiant, her arms outstretched in welcome to her children who had been away scarcely a full hour. "I'd like to have a fire in my bedroom and in the upper library," she said to Hilda, who had smilingly opened the door for her. "I'll dine in the upper library, too. When Mr. Mallett arrives, you need not come up to announce him. Ask him to find me in the library." To Mrs. Farren she said: "Nobody need sit up. When Mr. Mallett leaves, I will put the chains on and bolt everything." She was destined not to keep this promise. * * * * * Bathed, her hair brushed and dressed, she suffered her maid to hook her into a gown which she could put off again unassisted--one of those gowns that excite masculine admiration by reason of its apparent inexpensiveness and extreme simplicity. It was horribly expensive, of course--white, and cut out in a circle around her neck like a young girl's gown; and it suited Geraldine's slender, rounded throat and her dainty head with its heavy, loosely drawn masses of brown hair, just shadowing cheeks and brow. When the last hook was looped she dismissed her maid for the night; Hilda served her at dinner, but she ate little, and the waitress bore away the last of the almost untouched food, leaving her young mistress seated before the fire and looking steadily into it. The fire was a good one; the fuel oak and ash and beech. The flames made a silky, rustling sound; now and then a coal fell with a softly agreeable crash and a swarm of golden sparks whirled up the chimney, snapping, scintillating, like day fireworks. Geraldine sat very still, her mouth resting on her white wrist, and when she lifted her head the marks of her teeth showed on the skin. Then the other hand, clutching the arm of her chair, fell to her side cramped and quivering; she stood up, looked at the fire, pressed both palms across her eyes, turned and began to pace the room. To and fro she moved, slowly, quickly, as the craving for motion ebbed or increased. At times she made unconscious movements with her arms, now flinging them wide, now flexing the muscles, clenching the hands; but always the arms fell helpless, hopeless; the slim, desperate fingers relaxed; and she moved on again, to and fro, up and down, turning her gaze toward the clock each time she passed it. In her eyes there seemed to be growing a dreadful sort of beauty; there was fire in them, the luminous brightness of the tortured. On both cheeks a splendid colour glowed and waned; the slightly drawn lips were vivid. But this--all of it changed as the slow minutes dragged their course; into the brown eyes crept the first frosty glimmer of desperation; colour faded from the face, leaving it snowy white; the fulness of the lips vanished, the chin seemed to grow pointed, and under the eyes bluish shadows deepened. It promised to go hard with her that night; it was already going very badly. She knew it, and digging her nails into her delicate palms, set her teeth together and drew a deep, unsteady breath. She had looked at the clock four times, and the hands seemed to have moved no more than a minute's space across the dial; and once more she turned to pace the floor. Her lips had lost almost all their colour now; they moved, muttering tremulous incoherences; the outline of every feature grew finer, sharper, more spiritual, but dreadfully white. Later she found herself on her knees beside the couch, face buried in the cushions, her small teeth marking her wrist again--heard herself crying out for somebody to help her--yet her lips had uttered no sound; it was only her soul in its agony, while the youthful, curved body and rigid limbs burnt steadily in hell's own flames. Again she raised her head and lifted her white face toward the clock. Only a minute had crept by, and she turned, twisting her interlocked hands, dry-eyed, dry lips parted, and stared about her. Half stupefied with pain, stunned, dismayed by the million tiny voices of temptation assailing her, dinning in her senses, she reeled where she knelt, fell forward, laid her slender length across the hearth-rug, and set her teeth in her wrist again, choking back the cry of terror and desolation. And there her senses tricked her--or she may have lost consciousness--for it seemed that the next moment she was on the stairs, moving stealthily--where? God and her tormented body seemed to know, for she caught herself halfway down the stairs, cried out on her Maker for strength, stood swaying, breathless, quivering in the agony of it--and dragged herself back and up the stairs once more, step by step, to the landing. For a moment she stood there, shaking, ghastly, staring down into the regions below, where relief lay within her reach. And she dared not even stare too long; she turned blindly, arms outstretched, feeling her way back. Every sense within her seemed for the moment deadened; sounds scarcely penetrated, had no meaning; she heard the grille clash, steps on the stair; she was trying to get back to the library, paused to rest at the door, was caught in two strong arms, drawn into them: "Duane," she whispered. "Darling!"--and as he saw her face--"My God!" "Mine, too, Duane. Don't be afraid; I'm holding firm, so far. But I am very, very ill. Could you help me a little?" "Yes, child!--yes, little Geraldine--my little, little girl----" "Can you stay near me?" "Yes! Good God, yes!" "How long?" "As long as you want me." "Then I can get through with this. I think to-night decides.... If you will remain with me--for a while----" "Yes, dear." He drew a chair to the fire; she sank into it; he seated himself beside her and she clung to his hand with both of hers. His eyes fell upon her wrist where the marks of her teeth were imprinted; he felt her body trembling, saw the tragedy in her eyes, rose, lifted her as though she were a child, and seating himself, drew her close against his breast. The night was a hard one; sometimes in an access of pain she struggled for freedom, and all his strength was needed to keep her where she lay. At times, too, her senses seemed clouded, and she talked incoherently; sometimes she begged for relief, shamelessly craved it; sometimes she used all her force, and, almost beside herself, defied him, threatened him, turned on him infuriated; but his strength held her locked in a vicelike embrace, and, toward morning, she suddenly relaxed--crumpled up like a white flower in his arms. For a while her tears fell hot and fast; then utter prostration left her limp, without movement, even without a tremor, a dead weight in his arms. And, for the second time in his life, lifting her, he bore her to her room, laid her among the pillows, slipped off her shoes, and, bending above her, listened. She slept profoundly--but it was not the stupor that had chained her limbs that other time when he had brought her here. He went into the library and waited for an hour. Then, very quietly, he descended the stairs and let himself out into the bitter darkness of a November morning. * * * * * About noon next day the Seagraves' brougham drew up before the Mallett house and Geraldine, in furs, stepped out and crossed the sidewalk with that swift, lithe grace of hers. The servant opened the grille; she entered and stood by the great marble-topped hall-table until Duane came down. Then she gave him her gloved hands, looking him straight in the eyes. She was still pale but self-possessed, and wonderfully pretty in her fur jacket and toque; and as she stood there, both hands dropped into his, that nameless and winning grace which had always fascinated him held him now--something about her that recalled the child in the garden with clustering hair and slim, straight limbs. "You look about fifteen," he said, "you beautiful, slender thing! Did you come to see my father?" "Yes--and your father's son." "Me?" "Is there another like you, Duane--in all the world?" "Plenty----" "Hush!... When did you go last night?" "When you left me for the land of dreams, little lady." "So you--carried me." He smiled, and a bright flush covered her cheeks. "That makes twice," she said steadily. "Yes, dear." "There will be no third time." "Not unless I have a sleepy wife who nods before the fire like a drowsy child." "Do you want that kind?" "I want the kind that lay close in my arms before the fire last night." "Do you? I think I should like the sort of husband who is strong enough to cradle that sort of a child.... Could your mother and Naida receive me? Could I see your father?" "Yes. When are you going back to Roya-Neh?" "To-night." He said quietly: "Is it safe?" "For me to go? Yes--yes, my darling"--her hands tightened over his--"yes, it is safe--because you made it so. If you knew--if you knew what is in my heart to--to give you!--what I will be to you some day, dearest of men----" He said unsteadily: "Come upstairs.... My father is very feeble, but quite cheerful. Do you understand that--that his mind--his memory, rather, is a little impaired?" She lifted his hands and laid her soft lips against them: "Will you take me to him, Duane?" Colonel Mallett lay in the pale November sunlight, very still, his hands folded on his breast. And at first she did not know him in this ghost of the tall, well-built, gray-haired man with ruddy colour and firm, clear skin. As she bent over, he opened his eyes, smiled, pronounced her name, still smiling and keeping his sunken eyes on her. They were filmy and bluish, like the eyes of the very old; and the hand she lifted and held was the stricken hand of age--inert, lifeless, without weight. She said that she was so happy to know he was recovering; she told him how proud everybody was of Duane, what exceptional talent he possessed, how wonderfully he had painted Miller's children. She spoke to him of Roya-Neh, and how interesting it had become to them all, told him about the wild boar and her own mishaps with the guileful pig. He smiled, watching her at times; but his wistful gaze always reverted to his son, who sat at the foot of the couch, chin balanced between his long, lean hands. "You won't go, will you?" he whispered. "Where, father?" "Away." "No, of course not." "I mean with--Geraldine," he said feebly. "If I did, father, we'd take you with us," he laughed. "It is too far, my son.... You and Geraldine are going too far for me to follow.... Wait a little while." Geraldine, blushing, bent down swiftly, her lips brushing the sick man's wasted face: "I would not care for him if I could take him from you." "Your father and I were old friends. Your grandfather was a very fine gentleman.... I am glad.... I am a little tired--a little confused. Is your grandfather here with you? I would like to see him." She said, after a moment, in a low voice: "He did not come with me to-day." "Give him my regards and compliments. And say to him that it would be a pleasure to see him. I am not very well; has he heard of my indisposition?" "I think he--has." "Then he will come," said Colonel Mallett feebly. "Duane, you are not going, are you? I am a little tired. I think I could sleep if you would lower the shade and ask your mother to sit by me.... But you won't go until I am asleep, will you?" "No," he said gently, as his mother and Naida entered and Geraldine rose to greet them, shocked at the change in Mrs. Mallett. She and Naida went away together; later Duane joined them in the library, saying that his father was asleep, holding fast to his wife's hand. Geraldine, her arm around Naida's waist, had been looking at one of Duane's pictures--the only one of his in the house--merely a stretch of silvery marsh and a gray, wet sky beyond. "Father liked it," he said; "that's why it's here, Geraldine." "You never made one brush-stroke that was commonplace in all your life," said Geraldine abruptly. "Even I can see that." "Such praise from a lady!" he exclaimed, laughing. Geraldine smiled, too, and Naida's pallid face lightened for a moment. But grief had set its seal on the house of Mallett; that was plain everywhere; and when Geraldine kissed Naida good-bye and walked to the door beside her lover, a passion of tenderness for him and his overwhelmed her, and when he put her into her brougham she leaned from the lowered window, clinging to his hand, careless of who might see them. "_Can_ I help in any way?" she whispered. "I told you that my fortune is still my own--most of it----" "Dear, wait!" There was a strange look in his eyes; she said no more with her lips, but her eyes told him all. Then he stepped back, directing Dunn to drive his mistress to the Commonwealth Club, where she was to lunch with Sylvia Quest, whom she had met that morning in the blockade at Forty-second Street, and who had invited her from her motor across the crupper of a traffic-policeman's horse. _ |
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