Chapter 23. A Reprieve

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_ CHAPTER XXIII. A REPRIEVE

Lord James did not call upon Genevieve until late afternoon of the next day, and then he did not come alone. He had called first upon Mrs. Gantry and Dolores, who brought him on in their coupe.

Genevieve came down to them noticeably pale and with dark shadows under her fine eyes, but her manner was, if anything, rather more composed than usual. She even had a smile to exchange for the gay greeting of Dolores. Mrs. Gantry met her with a kiss a full degree more fervent than was consistent with strict decorum.

"My dear child!" she exclaimed. "I have hastened over to see you. Lord Avondale has told me all about that fellow."

"Yes?" asked Genevieve, looking at Lord James calmly but with a slight lift of her eyebrows that betrayed her astonishment.

"Hasn't your father told you?" replied Mrs. Gantry, reposing herself in the most comfortable seat. "It seems that he has arranged--"

"Beg pardon," said Lord James. "It was the Coville Construction Company that made the offer."

"Very true. An arrangement has been made, my dear, that will take that person to the bridge and keep him there."

"Provided he accepts the offer," added Lord James.

"How can it be otherwise? The salary is simply stupendous for a man of his class and standing."

"Laffie gets only twelve thousand a year, yet he designed the bridge," remarked Dolores. "He told me it wasn't even enough for pin-money."

"I fancy he must contrive to make it go farther since his last trip to town," said Mrs. Gantry. "The little visit proved rather expensive. His father made another reduction in his allowance."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Dolores. "Poor dear Laffie boy! If I conclude to marry him, I shall insist that Papa Ashton is to give me a separate allowance."

"My word, Miss Dolores!" expostulated Lord James. "You're not encouraging that fellow?"

"Oh, it's as well to have more than one hook on the line. Ask mamma if it isn't. Besides, Laffie would be a gilt-edged investment--provided his papa made the right kind of a will. Anyway, I could get Uncle Herbert's lawyers to fix up an agreement as to that--a kind of pre- nuptial alimony contract between me and Laffie's papa's millions."

Mrs. Gantry held up her hands. "Could you have believed it, Genevieve! She was frivolous enough before I went over for you. But now!"

Dolores coolly disregarded her mother, to turn a meaning look on Lord James. "If I have frivolled enough, it's about time you said something."

The young Englishman put an uneasy hand to his mustache. "Er--I should have preferred a--a rather more favorable time, Miss Dolores."

"Yes, and have mamma slam him before you put in the buffer," rejoined the girl. "See here, Vievie. It's too bad, but you must have tattled something to Uncle Herbert, and he--"

"Tattled!" repeated Genevieve. "I have always been candid with papa, if that is what you mean, Dolores."

"All right, then, Miss Candid. Though we called it tattling ten years ago. Anyway, Uncle Herbert wrote about it to mamma. He sent the letter out this noon. Next thing, it'll be all over Chicago--and England."

"Dolores! I must insist!" admonished Mrs. Gantry.

"So must I, mamma! If it's wrong to destroy the property of others, it's no less wrong to destroy their reputations."

Her mother expanded with self-righteous indignation. "Well, I never!-- indeed! When the fellow has neither character nor reputation!"

"Dear auntie," soothed Genevieve, "I know you too well to believe you could intentionally harm any one."

"I would do anything to save you from ruining your life!" exclaimed Mrs. Gantry, moved almost to tears.

"I shall not ruin my life," replied Genevieve, with a quiet firmness that brought a profound sigh of relief from her aunt.

"A-a-h!--My dear child! Then you at last realize what sort of a man he is."

"Vievie knows he is a man--which is more than can be said of some of them," thrust Dolores, with a mocking glance at Lord James.

"My dear," urged Mrs. Gantry, "give no heed to that silly chit. I wish to commend your stand against the fatal attraction of mere brute efficiency."

"Oh, I say!" put in Lord James. "It's this I must protest against, Miss Leslie--this talk of his brute qualities--when it's only the lack of polish. You should know that. He's a thistle, prickly without, but within soft as silk."

"Do I not know?" exclaimed Genevieve, for the moment unable to maintain her perfect composure.

"The metaphor was very touching and most loyal, my dear earl," said Mrs. Gantry. "Yet you must pardon me if I suggest that your opinion of him may be somewhat biased by friendship."

"But of course mamma's opinion isn't biased," remarked Dolores. She shot an angry glance at her mother, and added--"by friendship."

"It would relieve me very much if no more were said about Mr. Blake," said Genevieve.

"We can't--now," snapped Dolores, frowning at the footman who had appeared in the doorway. "Some one must have sighted the right honorable earl in our coupe."

Her irony was justified by the actions of the three young matrons who fluttered in on the breeze of the footman's announcement. They immediately fell into raptures over his lordship, who was forced in self-defence to tug and twist at his mustache and toy with his monocle. At this last Dolores flung herself out of the room in ill- concealed disdain.

She was not to be found when, all too soon, her mother tore the "charming Earl Avondale" away from his chattering adorers. After the worshipful one had been borne off, the dejected trio did not linger long. Their departure was followed by the prompt reappearance of Dolores.

She came at her cousin with eyes flashing. "Now you're all alone, Vievie! I've been waiting for this. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to give you a piece of my mind."

"Please, dear!" begged Genevieve.

"No. I'll not please! You deserve a good beating, and I'm going to give it to you. That poor Mr. Blake! Aren't you 'shamed of yourself? Breaking his big noble heart!"

"Dolores! I must ask you--"

"No, you mustn't! You've got to listen to me, you know you have. To think that you, who've always pretended to be so kind and considerate, should be a regular cat!"

"You foolish dear!" murmured Genevieve. "Do you imagine that anything that you can say can hurt me, after--after--" She turned away to hide her starting tears.

"That's it!" jeered her cousin. "Be a snivelly little hypocrite. Pretend to be so sorry--when you're not sorry at all. Pah!"

Genevieve recovered her dignity with her composure. "That is quite enough, my dear. I can overlook what you have already said. You know absolutely nothing about love and the bitter grief it brings."

"You don't say!" retorted Dolores, her nostrils quivering. "Much you know about me. But you!--the idea of pretending you love him--that you ever so much as dreamed of loving him!"

Genevieve shrank back as if she had been struck. "Oh! for any one to say that to me!"

"It's true--it must be true!" insisted Dolores, half frightened yet still too surcharged with anger to contain herself. "If it isn't true, how could you break his heart?--the man who saved you from that terrible savage wilderness!"

"I--I cannot explain to you. It's something that--"

"I know! You needn't tell me. It's mamma." "She's been knocking him. I'll bet she started knocking him when she first cabled to you--at least she would have, had she known anything about him. Think I don't know mamma and her methods? If only he'd been his lordship--Owh, deah! what a difference, don't y' know! She'd never have let you get out of England unmarried!"

"Dolores! this is quite enough!"

"The Countess of Avondale, future Duchess of Ruthby! Think I don't see through mamma's little game? And you'd shillyshally around, and throw over the true, noble hero to whom you owe everything--whom you've pretended you loved--to run after a title, an Englishman, when you could have that big-hearted American!"

Genevieve's lips straightened. "What a patriot!" she rejoined with quiet irony. "You, of course, would never dream of marrying an Englishman."

"That's none of your business," snapped Dolores, not a little taken aback by the counter attack.

"You spoke about pretence and hypocrisy," went on Genevieve. "How about the way you tease and make sport of Lord Avondale?"

For a moment the younger girl stood quivering, transfixed by the dart. Suddenly she put her hands before her eyes and rushed from the room in a storm of tears.

Genevieve started up as if to hasten after her, but checked herself and sank back into her chair. For a long time she sat motionless, in the blank dreary silence of profound grief, her eyes fixed upon vacancy, dry and lustreless.

When, a few minutes before their dinner hour, her father hurried into the room, expectant of his usual affectionate welcome, she did not spring up to greet him. The sound of his brisk step failed to penetrate to her consciousness. He came over to her and put a fond hand on her shoulder.

"H'm--how's this, my dear?" he asked. "Not asleep? Brown study, eh?"

She looked up at him dully; but at sight of the loving concern in his eyes, the unendurable hardness of her grief suddenly melted to tears. She flung herself into his arms, to weep and sob with a violence of which he had never imagined his quiet high-bred daughter capable. Bewildered and alarmed by the storm of emotion, he knew not what to do, and so instinctively did what was right. He patted her on the back and murmured inarticulate sounds of love and pity.

His sympathy and the blessed relief of tears soon restored her quiet self-control. She ceased sobbing and drew away from him, mortified at her outburst.

"There now," he ventured. "You feel better, don't you?"

"I've been very silly!" she exclaimed, drying her tear-wet cheeks.

"You're never silly--that is, since you came home this time," he qualified.

"Because--because--" She stopped with an odd catch in her voice, and seemed again about to burst into tears.

"Because he taught you to be sensible,--you'd say."

"Ye--yes," she sobbed. "Oh, papa, I can't bear it--I can't! To think that after he'd shown himself so brave and strong--! But for that, I should never have--have come to this!"

"H'm,--from the way you talked last night, I took it that the matter was settled. You said then that you could no longer--h'm--love him."

"I can't!--I mustn't! Don't you see? He's proved himself weak. How, then, can I keep on loving him? But they--they infer that it is my fault. I believe they think I tempted him."

"How's that?"

"Because I urged him to take the communion with me. I told you what he himself said about alcohol. But he did not blame me. He pointed out that if he was too weak to resist then, he would have yielded to the next temptation."

"H'm,--no doubt. Yet I've been considering that point--the fact that you did force him against his will."

"Surely, papa, you cannot say it was my fault, when he himself admits that his own weakness--"

"Wait," broke in her father. "What do you know about the curse of drink? It's possible that he might be able to resist the craving if not roused by the taste."

"Yet if he is so weak that a few drops of the holy communion wine could cause him to give way so shamelessly--"

"Holy?--h'm!" commented Mr. Leslie. "Alcohol is a poison. Suppose the Church used a decoction containing arsenic. Would that make arsenic holy?"

"Oh, papa! But it's so very different!"

"Yes. Alcohol and arsenic are different poisons. But they're similar in at least one respect. The effects of each are cumulative. To one who has been over-drugged with arsenic a slight amount more may prove a fatal dose. So of a person whose will has been undermined and almost paralyzed with alcohol--"

"That's it, papa. Don't you see? If he lacks the will, the strength, the self-control to resist!"

"No, that isn't the point. It's your part in this most unfortunate occurrence that I'm now considering."

"My part?"

"You told him that he must not look to you for help or even sympathy. I can understand your position as to that. At the same time, should you not have been as neutral on the other side? Was it quite fair for you to add to his temptations?"

"Yet the fact of his weakness--"

"I'm not talking about him, my dear. It's what you've done--the question whether you do not owe him reparation for your part in his-- misfortune."

"My part?"

"Had you not forced him into what I cannot but consider an unfair test of his strength, he would not have fallen. Griffith tells me that he was well along toward a solution of the Zariba Dam. Had you not caused this unfortunate interruption in his work, he might soon have proved himself a master engineer. That would have strengthened him in his fight against this hereditary curse."

"He was to fight it on his own strength."

"What else would this engineering triumph have been but a proof to himself of his strength? You have deprived him of that. Griffith tells me that, hard as he is striving to work out the idea which he was certain would meet the difficulties of the dam, he now seems unable to make any progress."

"So Mr. Griffith and you blame all upon me?"

"You mistake me, my dear. What I wish to make clear to you is that, however hopeless Blake's condition may be, you are responsible for his failure upon this occasion."

"And if so?"

"Premising that in one respect my attitude toward him is unalterable, I wish to say that he has risen very much in my esteem. I have had confidential talks with Griffith and Lord Avondale regarding him. I have been forced to the conclusion that you were justified in considering him, aside from this one great fault, a man essentially sound and reliable. He has brains, integrity, courage, and endurance. Given sufficient inducement, those qualities would soon enable him to acquire all that he lacks,--manners and culture."

"Oh, papa, do not speak of it! It was because I saw all that in him that I felt so certain. If only it were not for the one thing!"

"H'm," considered Mr. Leslie, scrutinizing her tense face. "Then I gather it's not true what yesterday you said and no doubt believed. You still regard him with the same feelings as before this occurrence."

"No! no! He has destroyed all my faith in him. I--I can pity him. But anything more than that is--it must be--dead."

"Can't say I regret it. But--this is another question. You've lost him one chance. I believe you should give him another."

"Another chance?--you say that?" she asked incredulously.

"You should cancel this record--this occurrence. Blot it out. Start anew."

"How can I? It is impossible to forget that he has failed so utterly."

"Thanks to the poison you put into his mouth."

"Father! I did not think that you--"

"I was unjust to him. You also have done him a wrong. I am seeking to make reparation. In part payment, I wish to make clear to you what you should do to offset your fault. In view of the development of your character (which, by the way, you claim was brought about by your African experience), I feel that I should have no need to urge this matter. You are not a thoughtless child. Think it over. Here's Hodges."

She went in with him to dinner, perfectly composed in the presence of the grave-faced old butler. But after the meal, when her father left for his customary cigar in the conservatory, she sought the seclusion of the library, and attempted to fight down the growing doubt of her justice toward Blake that had been roused by her father's suggestions.

It was easy for her to maintain the resolute stand she had taken so long as she kept her thoughts fixed on his fall from manhood. But presently she began to recall incidents that had occurred during those terrible weeks on the savage coast of Mozambique.

She remembered, most vividly of all, a day on the southern headland-- the eventful day before the arrival of the steamer--when he had spoken freely of the faults of his past life.... He had never lied to her or sought to gloze over his weakness.

And he could have concealed this present failure. She divined that both Griffith and Lord James would never have betrayed him. Yet he had come direct to her and confessed, knowing that she would condemn him.

The thought was more than she could withstand. She crossed over to her desk, and wrote swiftly:--

Dear Friend:

You are to consider that all which has taken place since Sunday is as if it had never happened.

Come to me to-morrow, at ten.

Jenny.

Enclosing the note in an envelope addressed to Blake, she gave it to a servant for immediate delivery. As soon as the man left the room, she went to the telephone and arranged for a private consultation with one of the most eminent physicians in the city. _

Read next: Chapter 24. The Way Of A Woman

Read previous: Chapter 22. Condemned

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