Part 9

"I didn't know where it came from. I believed him. Oh, Mr. Gault, if he told me what was not true, you can't blame him. You've never known what it feels like to have some one you love wanting the necessaries of life. You could beg for them--steal for them! And when I told you those things about the mining stock, what did you think I meant? What did you believe?"

She spoke less to him than to her own dazed and miserable consciousness, which moment by moment saw new matter for humiliation in the deception of which she had been the victim.

But Gault, with the guilt of his own hateful suspicions weighing upon him, feared that she had realized his previous state of mistrust, and said fervently:

"If I did believe what was a wrong to you, forgive me, Viola. I was a blind fool."

She raised her head like a stag and transfixed him with a sudden glance. Unprepared for the innocence of her point of view, he met the look shamefacedly, and in an instant she guessed what he had suspected. In one terrible moment, illuminated with a blasting flash of memory, she understood his attitude in the past, and heard again the words that had puzzled and surprised her. Horror and despair seemed to choke her. She drew away from him, her eyes full of tragic accusation, murmuring almost under her breath:

"You--that I believed in, and trusted, and loved!"

"I was a fool--a brute! I know it. All I can say is to ask you to forgive me."

"I can't forgive--or forget. Never--never!"

He tried again to take her hands, but she drew back from him with what seemed a fierce repugnance, and cried wildly:

"Go--you and my father, what have you done to me? I can't forgive him, either! How can I? You've dragged me down, between you. You've destroyed me and broken my heart."

"Viola," he cried desperately, "listen to me. You don't know my side. Listen to me while I tell you."

"There's nothing to say. I don't want to hear. I know enough. Go--go away from me! Oh, my father! My poor father! How could you! How could you!"

She burst into tears--the most terrible tears that he had ever seen. Throwing herself into the colonel's chair, she lay huddled there, her face pressed into the arm, her slender figure shaken by the explosive force of her grief.

To his broken words and appeals she made no answer. He doubted whether she heard him. The storm of feeling, stronger than he had ever supposed her capable of, swayed her as a blast sways a sapling. Finally he bent over her and rested his cheek on her hair, whispering:

"I want to do everything you ask me. But before I go, say you forgive me."

She raised herself and pushed him away. Her face was almost unrecognizable, blurred and swollen with tears.

"Go--go!" she cried. "That is all I want of you. You've done enough harm to me. Do what I ask now."

He attempted to bend over her and say some last words of farewell, but she turned her face away from him and pressed it into the upholstered arm of the chair. He kissed her hair, and stood for a moment looking at her, then turned and crossed the room. At the door he stopped and looked back.

"Good-by," he said hesitatingly.

A smothered good-by came from her. He waited, hoping for some word of forgiveness or recall. Instead, she said once more, this time pleadingly:

"Oh, go! please go--I want to be alone."

He obeyed her--softly opened the door into the hall, put on his coat, and let himself out into the cold and fog-bedewed night. As he fumbled with the gate he heard a quick, swinging step coming from the darkened end of the street. It approached rapidly, and into the dense aureole of light shed by a lamp half-way up the block, a tall, muscular figure emerged from the surrounding blackness. Gault recognized the walk and the square, erect shoulders. With as little noise as possible he opened the gate, and, turning in the opposite direction, passed into the darkness with a stealthy tread.

The colonel let himself in with his latch-key, pulled off his coat in the hall, and entered the drawing-room with the buoyancy that characterized all his movements. As was often the case in these days of prosperity, he carried a paper bag full of fruit and a box of candy for Viola.

To his eye, dulled by the darkness without, the room looked brilliantly illuminated and seemed to welcome him with the warm and cheery note of home. Viola was standing with her back to him, her elbow on the chimney-piece. When she heard his step on the walk she had made a violent effort to control herself, had tried to rub away the stains of her tears, and had turned the paper flower on the lamp-globe so that the light, as it fell upon her, was subdued.

The colonel was in good spirits. He laid his packages on the table and began opening them.

"Wasn't that Gault that I saw coming away as I came down the street?" he asked.

Viola said "Yes."

"Why didn't you keep him longer? I'd like to have seen him. Look at that pear," said the old man, holding up a yellow Bartlett that gleamed like wax in the lamplight. "Did you ever see anything finer than that? And there are people who say they don't like the Californian fruit."

Viola did not look at the pear, but he was too occupied in his purchases to notice her.

"He ought to have stayed till I came in. You oughtn't to have let him go. Poor old Gault, coming out in all this wet! It's a devil of a night. You could cut the fog with a knife. What did he have to say for himself?"

"Nothing much," said Viola.

"I don't think myself he's much of a talker. Now, see what I've brought for you." Viola heard the tearing away of the wrappers that were folded around the candy-box. "Look, young woman; isn't that tempting?"

The colonel held out the box. Viola did not turn. He drew it back, a puzzled expression on his face.

"What's the matter?" he said. "Why don't you look at me? Don't you feel well?"

She turned round slowly and made a feint to take the box. As the colonel's glance fell on her face he gave a sharp exclamation and started to his feet.

"What's happened?" he said. "What's the matter with you?"

She tried to tell him, but could not. The love and honor of him that had been the faith of her life were still alive. She could not say the words that would bring him to shame. Suddenly she pointed to the crumpled paper on the table. The colonel snatched it and pulled it open while she turned away. He recognized it at the first glance.

"Well," he said, holding his head high and looking at her with a defiant air, "what of it?"

She made no answer, and he went on violently:

"What's there wrong about this to make you cry as if you'd lost everything in the world, and Gault to sneak out of the house like a thief?"

"What's wrong about it?" she burst out. "What's wrong about you to make you ask such a question?"

"My dear, don't be so violent," said the colonel, trying to assume his old jaunty manner. "It's all a very simple matter, easily explained."

"Then explain it, father--explain it. Oh, if there's anything to be said, say it!"

"It's merely a business matter, a financial transaction between myself and Gault--nothing that concerns you."

"Oh, father, it concerns me more than anything that has ever happened to me in my life before."

Her tone wrung the colonel's soul. He tried to silence his pain and fear by a sudden attempt to divert the blame from himself.

"Did that dog--that mean, underhanded sneak--come here to-night, when he knew I was out, to show you that paper?"

His manner and words horrified her, and she shrank from him.

"I found the paper in your coat. He tried to take it from me. He never breathed to me or let me suspect what you were doing. To-night, when I found the paper, he tried to make me think it was all right, quite an ordinary thing--that you had done what every one else would have done."

"Well, then, why do you get so worked up about it? Why should a business transaction between him and me put you into such a state of mind?"

"A business transaction? Oh, father, have you deceived yourself, or are you trying to deceive me? What has been the matter with you? How could you do it! How could you forget yourself that way--yourself and me!"

The colonel's bravado began to give way, but he tried to take a last stand.

"If there was anything wrong, as you seem to think, in what I did, you shouldn't blame me for it. I did it for you. I was trying to make you comfortable and make things a little easier for you. I was only trying the best way I knew to make you happy."

"Make me happy!" she repeated. "Did you think it would make me happy to have a man think I was being sold to him?"

The words burst from her, vibrating with all the anguish of the last two hours. They struck the colonel like a dagger in his heart.

"Oh, Viola!" he said. "Viola--don't!"

He began to tremble, and sat down, looking at her with an aghast, protesting look. Whatever his idea had been in so openly using Viola's name in his dealings with Gault, he had not meant that. Old age, bitter poverty, trampled pride--all had combined to lower that high standard, that proud self-respect, which his daughter had believed to be his. She would never believe in them again.

"You oughtn't to say that, Viola," he said in a low voice; "you oughtn't to say that to me."

She did not stir, and he said again, after a moment's pause:

"It's not right for you to say that. I thought I was doing for the best. I may have done foolishly, but it was because I loved you."

He spoke heavily, sitting inert and sunken, with the lamplight pouring over his wrinkled face and white hair.

Suddenly Viola ran toward him. She put her arms round his neck, close and warm, and her tears fell on his hair, on his face, on his coat. She hugged his head against her breast and kissed it wildly, sobbing over and over:

"Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father!"

The old man patted her head and said gently:

"Don't--don't go on that way. You didn't say anything. I've forgotten it already."

But she knew he had not, and continued sobbing out passionate, broken sentences:

"I didn't mean it--I spoke without thinking. Oh, please forget it! Don't look like that! I didn't mean it--I didn't mean it for a minute."

He tried to soothe and comfort her, but he himself was very quiet. When she had sobbed herself into a state of apathetic exhaustion, he helped her up-stairs to her room, and prowled up and down in the passageway, every now and then listening at her door till he heard her caught breaths regulate themselves into the long, regular ones of heavy sleep.

Then he went into his own room. He did not go to bed, but sat motionless, shrunk together, staring at the light. His love for his daughter had been dear to him, but a thousand times dearer had been his realization of her love for him. When all the world had turned its back on him, the knowledge that he was still believed in, watched for, cherished by this one young girl had made life as well worth living as it had been in the days of his glory. And now he had lost that--it was gone forever. He was an old man, and to-night he had received his death-blow.

The day after his scene with Viola was the happiest John Gault had known for many months. The memory of her pain, of her tears, of her humiliation, could not outweigh the joy he felt in her exculpation. Even his own shame at the meanness of the part he had played was pushed aside by this pervasive, irradiating, uplifting sense of happiness. No cloud, no shadow of disbelief, could ever come between them now. He could love her without mistrust, without fear, without suspicion. He would absorb her, envelop her, inwrap her in the might of his passion. He had wronged her bitterly, but with what limitless tenderness, what depths of devotion, would he make up for it! He was troubled by no doubts as to her feeling for him. The memory of the light in her eyes as they met his, of the flush on the cheek, were enough. Viola was his when he chose to claim her.

Still, the deliberative habits of his curiously sensitive and conventional nature were stronger than the force of his last and deepest attachment. Three days followed his interview with Viola, and he had not yet gone to see her. He could not bring himself to intrude upon her. Her girl's passion of shame and grief seemed a sanctuary into which no man's coarse eye should look. He thought of her with a deep, almost reverential tenderness, but he did not feel as if he ought to see her till the first anguish of her discovery had spent itself. Then--then--he would take her in his arms, and there would be nothing to say, only to ask her to forgive him, to hear her say it, and then happiness--happiness--happiness--on to the end of time.

On the fourth day he decided to send her some flowers. But after he had bought them it seemed to him so meaningless, so banal, to send such a formal offering, one that he had sent so often to women for whom his sentiments were so widely different, that he suddenly changed his mind, and ordered the flowers to be sent to his sister-in-law, who was just then in town. When he walked away from the florist's he looked rather ashamed of himself and of his burst of sentiment. But what did he want to send her flowers for? He wanted to see her, to take her hands in his and look down deep into those beautiful gray eyes and say--perhaps not say anything. She and he understood.

He made up his mind that he would go on the morrow, and on this decision he went to sleep with a light heart. In the morning he was awakened by a messenger to say that his brother Mortimer had returned from the country seriously ill. He was at the house on Pacific Avenue inside an hour. Mortimer had come home a week before with a bad cold which had developed into a dangerous case of pneumonia. Maud Gault was helpless and distracted. Her brother-in-law spent the day in attending to the numerous duties which crop up with sickness, and in the evening telegraphed for Letitia.

For the four following days Mortimer Gault hung between life and death, brooded over by a frantic wife, three doctors, two nurses, a fond sister-in-law, and an extremely anxious brother. The tie between the two men was very close--John had never realized how close till those four days of desperate anxiety were over. During this time, as he sat either by his brother's bedside or in one of the rooms adjoining, or made hasty visits to his office, he thought of Viola and wondered if she was puzzled by his lengthened absence. He did not think that she would misunderstand it. Like many men, he took it for granted that her knowledge of his character and affairs had been as thorough as the knowledge his superior insight and experience had given him into all that pertained to her.

On the sixth day after his brother's summons Mortimer was pronounced out of danger. This was the first opportunity John had had of seeing Viola.

At four o'clock he alighted from the car that had carried him across town to the old quarter about South Park. As he passed through the dingy side streets holiday reigned in his heart. Life in the past seemed dun and dreary compared to what it had become under the influence of the still, almost rapt joy which now possessed him. An immense, deep tenderness seemed to well from his heart over all his being. His love for Viola seemed to have made him see and feel all that was love-worthy in others--in the children that ran across his path or played in chattering groups in the gutters, the women he met trudging home with baskets on their arms, the lean-shanked boys playing ball in the deserted gardens, the tousled young matrons exchanging gossip from open upper windows. He had never noticed these people before, save with cold repugnance; now he seemed to be able to see into them and note their justifiable ambitions, their unselfish struggles, their smiling, patient courage. The thought passed through his mind that perhaps this exalted, unusual affection was the love of the future state, the happiness that awaits the liberated soul.

He turned the last corner and came in sight of the house. For the first few advancing steps he did not realize what gave it an unfamiliar look. Then, as he approached, he saw that the vines which had hung in bunches about the bay-window were cut away. There were frilled white curtains in the lower windows. He drew near, staring astonished through his glasses, each step revealing some innovation.

They were evidently renovating the whole place. The two thick-set brick posts that supported the gate had been painted. The steps to the porch had been mended with new wood. Then, as he put his hand forward to unlatch the gate, he saw a woman--a broad-backed, red-necked woman in a blue print dress--kneeling on the ground just below the bay-window, evidently gardening. The sight surprised him into immobility, and for a moment he stood motionless, gazing at the back of her head, where her hair was twisted into a tight and uncompromising coil about as big as a silver dollar.

The next moment he pressed the latch, and the gate opened with a click. The woman started and turned round. Evidently greatly surprised at the figure her glance encountered, she straightened herself from her stooping posture, eying him curiously and wiping her earthy hands on her apron.

"Is Miss Reed in?" he said, advancing up the flagged walk.

"Miss Reed?" said the woman "No. She ain't here any more."

Gault stopped.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Colonel Reed lives here."

"Not now," said the woman, struggling to her feet. "He did until last week. We bought the place off of him just seven days ago, and moved in Tuesday."

"Do you mean that he has sold it and gone away?"

"That's it. We rushed it through, both of us. He wanted to sell 'bout as much as we wanted to buy, so there wasn't much time wasted on either side."

"Had he thought of selling it for any length of time?"

"I can't rightly say as to that. We've had our eyes on it for the past five years. My husband--he's Robson, the dry-goods dealer, on Third, just below here--was pretty well satisfied that the colonel couldn't hang on to it forever. 'Bout three years ago he offered him three thousand. But the old man wouldn't hear of it. Said he wouldn't even raise a mortgage on it, as it was all he had to leave to his daughter when he died. But we knew he couldn't hold out much longer. He didn't have no work, nor nothing to live on. Miss Reed she made a little, but not enough to run everything, and--"

"Yes--I know all about that. When did you say they left?"

"On Monday, and we moved in Tuesday. Saturday the old man came round to Mr. Robson's place and said he'd let him have the house for anything he chose to give. There ain't nothing mean about Mr. Robson. He could 'a' beat the colonel down to 'most anything, but he said he'd give him two thousand cash down, and the old man just jumped at it. Mr. Robson said it would 'a' been business to get the colonel to a lower figure, and he said he supposed he would 'a' done it if it hadn't been for the daughter. She was sick, and the old man said he'd got to have money to take her away."

"Sick?--seriously sick?"

"Well, as to that I can't say. But she was about the peakedest-looking girl I ever seen. I was awful sorry for them."

"Where have they gone?"

"I ain't able to say."

"But you surely have some idea of where they've moved to? Didn't they say something about their intentions? Didn't the colonel tell your husband in reference to the transfer of the money?"

"They didn't neither of 'em say a word. They're the most close-mouthed pair I ever ran into. My husband paid the money down in cash the day we moved in. They took it, and that's all I know about them."

"Can't you tell me some one about here who may know more--some of the tradespeople--butchers, grocers, that sort of thing?"

"You might try Coggles, the grocer at the corner. I think they had an account with him. But they didn't deal regular with any one else."

Gault thanked her and turned to go. She followed him down the walk, anxious to be agreeable, for his manner and appearance had impressed her immensely.

"If I hear anything about them I'll let you know," she said affably.

"Thanks; it's very good of you," he answered, opening the gate. But he had no intention of giving her either his name or address, as he did not for a moment think that this disappearance of the Reeds was other than temporary.

At the corner he stopped and inquired for them at Coggles the grocer's. Coggles himself answered his inquiries. He had even less information to give than Mrs. Robson. A week before the colonel had paid such small amounts as he yet owed, and had casually mentioned the fact that he had sold his house and was about to leave the city. This was all Coggles knew. He showed some desire to talk over the colonel's pecuniary difficulties, but Gault cut him short and left the store.

Gault walked away, feeling dazed and hardly master of himself. It had been so absolutely unexpected that he did not yet send his mind back over their past intercourse to ask what she might have been thinking since he saw her last. As is the case of the man in love, he had seen the situation only from his own side. But he did not for a moment doubt that he would hear from her within the next few days.

He was still with his brother a good deal of the time, and the days that followed passed with the swiftness which characterizes hours filled with various anxieties. Four days after learning of her flight, two weeks from the evening that he had seen her last, the janitor at his office handed him a small but heavy package. It had been left early in the morning by a boy, the janitor said, who had merely asked if this was Mr. John Gault's office, and had then hastened away.

An instinct told him it was from her, and he shut himself into his inner office before he opened it. It was a rough wooden box, and contained the money given by him to the colonel--five hundred and ten dollars in gold coin. Lying on the top was a slip of paper bearing the words: "Good-by. VIOLA."

Still he could not but believe that she would soon reveal her whereabouts. The move was occupying her, and such an operation would seem a gigantic undertaking to her youthful inexperience. That she should treat him this way was thoughtless, cruel even, but she had been deeply wounded, and her hurt was evidently still sore. He could only wait patiently.

He did so for two weeks, his uncertainties growing into fears, his conviction of her intention to communicate with him gradually weakening. Uneasiness gave place to alarm. For the first time the haunting thought that she had gone from him purposely, fled forever from his love, entered his mind.

Finally, unable to endure the anxiety that now beset him, he commissioned a private detective agency to run to earth the boy who had brought the money. He supposed it had come directly from her, and that, through the boy, without drawing her into the affair, her hiding-place could be discovered.

The finding of the boy was not so simple a matter as might have been supposed. It required a week's search to locate him. He was the only son of a poor widow living near South Park, who had done the Reeds' washing. Before her departure Miss Reed had commissioned him to deliver the package at Mr. Gault's office at a certain date, and at an hour when there would be no chance of his coming into personal contact with Mr. Gault himself.

Gault snatched at this meager information, and lost no time in seeking out the widow in her own home. She was a good-natured and loquacious Irish-American,--Mrs. Cassidy by name,--and was full of terror at the thought that detectives had been occupied in discovering her place of abode. Her fears, however, were soon allayed, and she became exceedingly discursive. But when it came to information of Viola, she could tell no more than the others.