Part 8

"Letitia," he cried, in a tone of warning, "take care! You've meddled enough already."

"You hid away your friendship with her as if it were shameful. You acted as if you were ashamed of her and of your knowing her--as if there was something wicked about her, so you couldn't even speak of her to me or any other woman that you knew well. When I asked you about her, though you were too much of a man of honor to tell me a lie, you were not too much of a man of honor to act one. You gave her father money, but you were ashamed to acknowledge that you even knew her."

"We've had enough of this conversation," he said, now trembling with rage. "Let it end."

He turned to leave the room, but Letitia's voice arrested him, and he stood with his back to her, listening.

"You ought to have known enough to trust her," she continued desperately, for she was singing the swan-song of her hopes. "You've only got to look into her face to see what she is. No matter what people say about her and her father, no matter what silly stories are repeated, even if there _were_ other men who gave the colonel money--"

Letitia stopped. Gault had wheeled suddenly round upon her, and the expression of his face made the words die on her lips.

"Other men!" he repeated. "Who said that?"

"Tod," she faltered.

"Who were they?"

"I--I--don't know; he didn't tell their names."

"What did he say?"

"He said--he said--" she stammered, bewildered by her own pain and sympathy for his obvious suffering. "No, it was I. I asked him if the colonel got money from other men, and he--he didn't say much; he laughed and said, 'Well, I should snicker!'"

"Thank you," answered Gault, in a low voice. "Good night."

He turned and left the room, and a moment later the hall door closed behind him with a muffled bang.

For a space Letitia stood motionless as a statue, a tall and splendid figure in her gleaming dress, on which fine lines of interwoven silver-work caught and lost the light. Then, rousing herself, she moved about heavily but methodically, putting out the remaining lights. When they were all extinguished she crossed the hall and slowly ascended the stairway, the silken whisperings of her skirts being the only sound in the sleeping house.

V

The season had worn itself away to June. The winds were an established fact, and blew from the ocean down the long clefts of the streets out into the bay beyond. Outside the Golden Gate the fog lay along the horizon like the faint gray shores of a distant country. When the winds dropped at sundown, it came creeping in, drawing its white cloak over the water, across the dunes, and finally down the streets and round the houses. All night it brooded close over the city, sleeping on its crowded hills, and in the morning lay brimming in every hollow till the valleys looked like cups crowned high with a curdling white drink.

When the sun had driven it back to its cloud-country on the horizon, there were wonderful mornings, all blue and gold. The warm rays licked up the night's moisture, and for a few clear, still hours had the world to themselves. They burned the land dry and parched. The hills at the mouth of the bay turned fawn-color, and looked like lean, crouching lions with hides that fell away from their gaunt bones. The sea and sky were a hard-baked blue, with the little sails of boats and the strenuous green leafage of tropical plants seeming as if inlaid in the turquoise background. The gardens about South Park grew dustier and drier. Only the aloes appeared to have sap enough to retain any color, and against the faded monochrome of the surrounding shrubs they shone a strong, cold gray-blue. In the Western Addition the gardens were watered and bloomed extravagantly, till the ivy geraniums hung from the window-boxes like pieces of pink carpet, and the heliotropes dashed themselves in purple spray to the second stories.

Fashionable people were leaving town daily. Some were going to the redwoods, where the forest glades are dim and still and full of a chill solemnity, like the aisles of old cathedrals. Others were en route for one of the twin towns which tip the points of the crescent that holds Monterey Bay between its horns. Many were repairing to the country houses which have sprung up in scattered clusters down the line of the railroad to the Santa Clara valley. Here they found the warmth and idleness which Californians love. All summer the vast expanse of the valley, shut in from wind and fog by a rampart of hills, brooded under perpetual sunshine. In the motionless noons its yellow fields, where the shadows of the live-oaks lie round and black, swam in quivering veils of heat, and the smell of the tar-weed rose heavy and aromatic, like the incense from a hundred altars.

The Mortimer Gaults, being fashionable folk, had broken up their household and gone their several ways--Letitia first, with many trunks, to make visits at hotels and country houses. Mrs. Gault, like other San Francisco matrons, did not close her house, but made quick flights into the country, which she sincerely hated, and then came back thankfully to town, where she dwelt in comfort with two servants, and, when her husband was not with her, ate meals of choice daintiness, which were laid on a square of drawn-work on the end of the dining-room table.

John Gault had not been able to see Letitia before her departure, which was not so strange, as she left shortly after the night at the opera. In the one or two small gatherings which took place at the Mortimer Gaults' before the family exodus, he had been unable to participate--at least, that was what he wrote to Maud. She, it is needless to state, knowing of that evening interview after the opera, had tried to elicit from Letitia an account of what had taken place. In this, however, she was unsuccessful. Letitia was at first stubbornly silent, then cross. But she accepted an invitation to stay with the McCormicks at their country place, the Hacienda del Pinos, in the Napa valley; and Maud felt that her extraordinary and inexplicable sister was, for once in her life, behaving like a rational human being.

Gault's reluctance to see Letitia had been the whim of a nature harassed past bearing. He had gone from her that evening in frenzy with her, himself, and a world where life was so unlivable and being alive so remorseless a tragedy. The man who had never had a serious check in his easy course from birth to middle age had now suddenly found himself the central figure in one of those maddening dilemmas which blight or make the lives of less fortunate individuals.

The time had come when the situation called for a determined step. But what step he could not decide. What particular course of action would end the whole matter most satisfactorily for himself was the question that besieged him. He hardly gave a thought to Viola. He was the victim of either a repulsively sordid plot, or else he was a man cruelly lured by fate into a position from which it seemed impossible to extricate himself without misery of one sort or another. At one moment he saw himself as the gullible victim of a clever pair of adventurers, and laughed fiercely at the scruples which prevented him from holding them at their own valuation. At the next he was sickened at the manner in which he was degrading himself and her by giving way to the meanest and most dastardly suspicions.

He longed to think that he wronged her, and yet, so fearful was he of being hoodwinked, so inclined to distrust himself and the rest of the world, that he could not rise up and believe in her, though his love bade him. Once he thought of going to Tod and asking him to explain his conversation with Letitia, and then revolted at the idea of exposing Viola and his own weakness to the vulgar curiosity of the shallow-brained youth. The only possible ground for believing in Viola's innocence was that her father was deceiving her, and it seemed to Gault that the old man had neither the subtlety nor the desire to deceive anybody.

After suffering these torments for some days he suddenly came to a decision. He resolved that he would have an interview with Viola, in which, if she did not voluntarily tell him the truth, he would demand it from her. He would at first try to beguile her into an explanation, and if she evaded this, he would, directly and without circumlocution, force her to tell him. He knew it was brutal, but he was past consideration for any one. He had thought of this before, but merely from the comfortable distance of casual speculation. His attitude now was one of determination. His self-indulgent, indolent nature had been goaded to a point where it could act more easily than it could endure.

Once having made up his mind, he was more at rest than he had been for weeks. He did not give much thought to the manner of attacking the subject, merely saying to himself that he was sure she could be induced to reveal all she knew by diplomacy. Of only one thing he felt convinced, and he felt this with the conviction that one has of the mandates of destiny--that the next time he saw her alone he would learn from her all there was to learn. Beyond this he shrank from looking.

While he had no desire to put off the interview that two months before would have seemed an impossibility, he was deliberative and unhurried. Thinking that the afternoon was the best time to find her by herself, he went to the house near South Park at four o'clock, a week after he had seen her at the opera. She was out, and on a second visit at a similar hour the result was the same. He had pushed his card under the door, and had hoped that she might have acknowledged the visits by a note; but she made no sign.

At the end of the second week he went again, in the evening, and found her, as usual, sitting with her father. She mentioned her disappointment at missing him, and said that the afternoon was a bad time to find her, as she was almost always either busy or out. This seemed to him to plainly indicate that she did not wish to encourage his afternoon visits. He began to wonder if she was endeavoring to avoid seeing him alone. If she was, she must have had some inkling of what he contemplated. The thought spurred him to a feverish determination to have the explanation with her at the earliest opportunity. Heretofore she had appeared to him a factor which, if he chose to be hard enough, he could always manage. Now, if she were to oppose him with strategy and evasion, the difficulties of solving the problem would be increased a hundredfold.

But if Viola seemed desirous of escaping a tête-à-tête, the colonel was more assiduous than ever in seeking the society and bounty of his obliging friend. The sum to which he now stood indebted to Gault he described as being "quite formidable." He constantly spoke of repaying it, and made many vague allusions to promising enterprises that were destined to enrich his old age.

Two days after the evening visit the colonel appeared as usual, and this time produced a sheet of paper upon which was written a statement of his indebtedness. It was copied out in his clear, fine hand, each sum scrupulously set down with its corresponding date, and at the end of the column of figures the total--$510. Slapping his breast-pocket, he remarked that a duplicate of the memorandum lay there for his benefit and the stimulating of his memory.

"And when the days of the lean kine are over," he said, "we will wipe it all out--clean the slate."

His friend disclaimed any eagerness as to the arrival of these golden days, accommodated the colonel with his customary sum, and saw the old man go striding out in lofty satisfaction. Left by himself, he idly looked over the colonel's memorandum. It was a full statement, the dates preceding each sum, and at the top bearing the legend, "Memorandum of moneys loaned by John Gault to Ramsay Reed."

He threw the paper into a drawer of his desk and thought no more about it, though he could not forbear smiling at the old man's studied preciseness.

After considerable reflection, Gault decided that the best way to bring matters to the crisis he desired was to ask Viola to accord him an interview. He would manage to make the request at some moment when the old man was either not listening--which was unusual--or had preceded him into the hall in the moment of departure. If Viola refused, as he had some reason to think she might, he would have to arrange another plan, but, for the present, this was the most feasible one he could think of.

It was late for a cross-town visit when he started from his club. The evening, too, was one of the most disagreeable of the season. The city lay soaked under a blanket of fog. On the West Side there was so much life and activity on the streets, so much light and sound and pressure of shifting humanity, that, to a certain extent, the dreariness of the weather was overcome; but in the dark desolation of the old quarter the chill weight of the fog lay like a veil of mystery over the silent streets.

Gault passed down narrow alleys where his own footsteps were the only sound, and where the light of the rare lamps seemed smothered by the dense atmosphere. On the broad thoroughfare the old mansions looked like vast, dim ghosts of a lordly past, rising vague and mournful from huddled masses of wet foliage. Underfoot the hollows in the worn asphaltum gleamed with water, and lengths of brick wall, touched by the beam of an adjacent lamp, shone as though rain were falling.

Turning out of this wider way into the cross-streets, he could hear in the silence the fog dripping off angles in slowly detaching drops. The old wooden pavements oozed water beneath the pressure of his foot. Sometimes from a crack in a sagging shutter an inquisitive yellow ray shot into the recesses of a tangled garden, gilding the shining leaves of great thirsty plants that drank in the reluctantly distilled moisture. Now and then a hurrying figure passed him with collar up and hat drawn down, but for the most part the streets were deserted, and even at this comparatively early hour the dwellers in the district seemed to be retiring, as most of the houses showed lights only in the upper stories.

In the Reeds' house there were the usual edges of light shining through the cracks and slits of the old blinds. In answer to his ring there was the usual moving of this light into the hall, where it shone out suddenly through the two narrow panes of glass that flanked the door. When the door opened there was the usual picture of Viola shading the light with one hand, that shone rosily, and looking questioningly out.

She seemed gladly surprised to see him, but the old days of her embarrassment were over. She helped him hang his coat, which was beaded with moisture, over the back of a chair, and then paused to arrange the wick of her lamp as he preceded her into the drawing-room. In the doorway he stopped and looked questioningly about. The colonel was not there.

"Where is your father?" he said, as she followed him, carrying her lamp.

"My father?" She set the lamp on the table, still occupied with the recalcitrant wick. "Oh, he's out. He hardly ever goes out in the evening, but to-night he wanted to see Mr. Maroney, who is only here from New York for a few days. Such a dreadful night, too! There--I don't think it will smoke any more."

Gault, who had absently taken the colonel's chair, made no response. So the opportunity he had been planning for had come! He felt a sensation of sickening repulsion at the task he had set himself. Already his heart seemed to have begun to beat like a hammer and his mouth felt dry. Without consciousness of what he looked at, his eyes moved about the room and rested on a black coat which was hanging over the back of a chair. On the edge of the table were a pair of scissors, a thimble, and some spools of thread.

Viola took the vacant chair near these and put on the thimble.

"You'll not mind if I go on sewing?" she said. "I never thought of your coming to-night, and so I was fixing this. It will only take a few moments to finish it."

"What is it?" Gault asked, in order to say something, noticing that the garment seemed heavy and difficult for her to handle.

"My father's coat--the one he wears every day," she answered. "I was mending it while he had his other one on. He gets fond of clothes, and it's next to impossible to get them away from him."

She turned the coat about every now and then, her needle assaulting it, and catching splinters of light as it darted in and out. Gault leaned back, watching her. She bent her face over the work as she sewed, presenting to his gaze the fine white parting down the middle of her head, and the close-growing threads of her hair, here and there transmuted into filaments of gold. There was an air of serenity, of quietness and peace, about her, that seemed to tell of an inner sense of happiness.

As he sat back staring at her, and wondering, with that breathless beating of his heart growing stronger, what he should say, she suddenly raised her head and, looking straight into his eyes, said:

"What are you thinking about?"

Her face, with the lamplight shining full on it, seemed to radiate a soft, pervasive content. She asked the question with the indescribable charm of glance and smile of the woman who knows that her lightest word gives pleasure. The increase in her beauty and attraction which he had felt rose from the consciousness that she was loved.

"I wasn't thinking about anything much," he said evasively. "I'd like to sit on here this way, not thinking or worrying or caring, but just watching you."

"There is no reason why you shouldn't do it; only it doesn't sound very amusing."

"It isn't amusing."

"I know it isn't," she said contritely, "and I'm so sorry that I have to do this old coat; but it will be done soon, and then we can talk. Just a minute--just a minute!"

She spoke in a busy tone, and went on turning the coat about, jerking at the buttons, and plunging her hands into the pockets.

Gault felt that the pleasure of thus sitting and looking at her was sapping his resolution. He felt himself drifting away, aimless and irresponsible, on the current of the moment. The duties of past and future were lost sight of in the dreamy satisfaction of watching the light on her hair and the movements of her hands.

He rose suddenly and walked to the window, with a remark about seeing if the fog was lifting. As he turned, he saw her take a folded paper from one of the coat-pockets, and, standing looking out of the window, heard the crisp rustling of the paper as she unfolded it. There was a moment of perfect silence, and then he heard again the same light rustling, which sounded curiously loud and intrusive to his irritated nerves.

He turned toward her, wondering why she did not speak. She was sitting with the opened paper in her hands, her eyes riveted on it. As he drew near, he saw that the rustling rose from the fact that her hands were trembling violently, causing the paper to vibrate.

She heard his approaching step and looked up. At the sight of her face he stopped.

"What is it?" she cried, rising suddenly to her feet and holding it out toward him.

He glanced at it. It was the colonel's duplicate memorandum. Without aid or provocation the hour of revelation had come.

His first impulse was to seize it. But she drew it back from him, repeating in a high, strained voice:

"What is it? I don't understand. What is it?"

"It's nothing--nothing but a business paper. Give it to me."

He did not know what to say or do--the scene had changed so suddenly and horribly. Her face looked at him, pale, bewildered, quivering with a terrified surmise. Without a moment's memory of what he had come for, he felt as if all he wanted was to get the paper and hide it.

"Give it to me!" he demanded authoritatively. "It doesn't concern you."

"It does," she cried, "it does! But what is it? What does it mean?"

She looked back at it, and her eyes ran down the list of figures, and then were raised to his, full of a piercingly anguished inquiry.

"It's nothing but a business matter between your father and me; and you don't understand business."

"I do understand--I understand this!" she answered; and then, with a sudden cry of shame and pain, she threw the crumpled paper on the table and covered her face with her hands. "Oh, how could he!" she whispered. "How could he!"

Gault looked at her, mute and motionless. From the moment he had seen her face as she read the paper, he knew that every suspicion he had had was groundless. He was ashamed to speak, almost to move. The sound of his own voice was hateful to him. He stood helplessly looking at her, shaken with pity, passion, and remorse. Finally he said gently:

"Look at me, Viola."

She obeyed him like a child. Her face was drawn; her eyes, after the moment of meeting his, sank.

"Any man would have done what the colonel did. It's nothing of the least importance."

"Perhaps not to you," she answered in a hardly audible voice; "but to me!"

He looked away and tried to speak lightly:

"It is of no importance whatever to me, and I don't see why it should be of any to you."

"Oh, Mr. Gault, what do you think I am, that you should say that?"

"A foolish girl who takes a trifling matter too seriously," he answered quickly.

"No--a woman who has been hurt and humiliated. It may have been of no importance to you that you were giving us the clothes we wore and the food we ate--but oh! to me--"

Her voice broke, and she turned her face away.

He made an impatient movement with his head.

"Come, don't let's talk about that anymore. You're not yourself. Besides, whatever insignificant matter you're worrying about was not of your doing."

"No," she said, turning on him passionately, "but the responsibility rests on me; for whatever my father may have done that was wrong or foolish was for me. There is an excuse for him. You--other people--outsiders--don't know. He hasn't wanted these things for himself. It was all done for me. I was his idol, and it has almost broken his heart that his money and position were gone before I was old enough to profit by them. He always wanted to be rich again, but it was for me. He wanted me to have everything--pretty clothes to wear, and good things to eat, and theaters and amusements, like other girls. He tried to keep up with his old bonanza friends who were tired of him and had no use for him, because he thought their wives might be kind to me and ask me to their houses. He has forgotten himself and what he owed to me, but it was because he loved me so much."

"Viola dear," he said pleadingly, "I understand all this. No one blames the colonel."

She did not seem to hear him. Her mood was past control.

"When we first met you things were at their worst. We were in terrible need. We had had some money--quite a good deal--three years before; it was for a mortgage on the house, or something; but it had all gone, mostly in Pine Street. Yours must have gone there, too. Everything he has had of late years goes there, because he is determined to make a second fortune for me before he dies. And he never will--poor old man! he never will. I did what I could and made a little, but he couldn't bear it, because he hated to think I worked at anything. So that was why he went to you. We were in despair when we knew you first--we were starving."

"Dear child, why go over all this? It's only a pain to us both."

He tried to take her hands, but she drew them back and made a gesture as though pushing him away.