Part 10

Yes, he was doing the baby act again, making excuses and threatening suicide. He might have deceived Al and Father Hervey for a month or more with his "reform," but he couldn't deceive her for ten consecutive minutes. She had seen into the core of his nature, that it was weak and unstable as ever. Sooner or later he would relapse. What had been would be again.

He arose as if to leave, then hesitated to give her one last chance to relent.

"S'long," he said, slowly opening the door.

"You can come home, Jim--if you want."

"If I want!" He went to her quickly and took her in his arms and pressed his lips to her cold ones until she shuddered in his embrace.

When at last he left her she looked to the picture of the Sacred Heart as if for approval, and whispered, "Not my will, but Thine, be done."

XXI

WORSHIP

A few days later Georgia was discharged from the hospital with the warning that she was convalescent, but not cured. She might by indiscretion in the ensuing weeks make herself a semi-invalid for the rest of her life; she might even bring about an acute relapse, in which case she would be likely to die.

She telephoned the old man that she was ready to report the following Monday, but he ordered her to stay away for at least another week, saying that her place was absolutely safe and her salary running on. She thanked him so earnestly for his kindness that he was minded to break into her secret, congratulate her on her engagement, tell her it was Stevens who had been kind and generous, but according to his promise he refrained. He supposed she would quickly discover the facts after their marriage anyway.

Jim was rodman with the surveying department of an important landscape gardening firm. Sometimes his employment kept him out in the country for two or three days at a time, but he turned in ten or twelve dollars every Saturday night and the family was more comfortable than it had ever been.

Georgia had in fairness to acknowledge that Jim had shown unexpectedly decent feeling. During her fortnight of convalescence he had assumed no right of proprietorship, made no demands. He slept on a lounge in the front room and never went to her room without first knocking. She wished that things might go on so indefinitely, but she knew that it was now a question of days, perhaps of hours, before she must reassume all the obligations of wifehood. She was getting well so rapidly and so evidently that soon she would have no excuse for not meeting them.

She was grateful to Jim for his courtesy; and they spoke to each other more kindly than ever before. They had ceased to act upon the theory that it did not much matter what one said to the other since the other had to stand it anyway. She had already taken over a year out of their lives together to show that she did not have to stand it.

Their example was not without its influence upon the other members of the family, Al and Mrs. Talbot, and there was far less wrangling and friction in the household.

Not without hesitating dread Georgia brought herself to the grilled shutter of Father Hervey's Gothic confessional box. She had been derelict in this as in other obligations; except for her brief and half delirious words of general contrition in the hospital, it was her first confession for three years.

Sinking to her knees she whispered, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

She began the prayer of the penitent. "I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to blessed Michael, the archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

As she told her secret sins and pettiness to the priest, it seemed that the poison of them was being drained from her memory where they had become encysted. Her heart was cleaned and purified and lightened by the process of the confessional.

It is indeed doubtful whether any other ecclesiastical instrument since the world began has lifted so much sorrow from mankind.

Georgia's conspicuous and mortal sins were two--Doubt and her continued entertainment of that feeling for Mason Stevens which, since it was unlawful, the Church denominated Lust.

Doubt had followed naturally on absorption in worldly affairs, dangerous associations and reading, and neglect of her obligations to the Church. Especially reprehensible had been her frequent attendance at the Sunday Evening Ethical Club, where the very air was impregnated with dilute agnosticism.

In future she must be more careful in her choice of reading. Materialism and atheism were skillfully concealed in many a so-called sociological treatise. Not that sociology lacked certain elements of truth, but the danger for untrained minds lay in exaggerating their importance until they overshadowed greater truths. She would do well hereafter to leave sociology to sociologists.

The Sunday Evening Ethical Club was anathema. She must not go there again nor to any similar place where veiled socialism and anarchy were preached.

The confessor was rejoiced that her duty toward her husband and toward herself, for the two duties were one, had been so unmistakably revealed to her. Did the image of the other man ever trouble her mind?

Yes, Georgia acknowledged it did.

That was to be expected, in the beginning. But it would cease to trouble her before long. Did this image occur to her often?

Yes, she said, it did--very often, almost continually. It was not always actively before her, she explained, but it seemed never far away, as if it were just beneath the surface of her ordinary thoughts.

In that case it would be impossible to absolve her and she would remain in a state of mortal sin unless she would promise solemnly to refrain from all further thoughts of that man, and if ever they arose unbidden to banish them immediately, as an evil spirit is cast out from one possessed.

The priest waited, but the woman remained silent.

Did she remember, he asked severely, the words of our Savior, that "he who looketh in lust, committeth adultery." If she kept this idol in her heart, no priest had power to forgive her sins in His name. Her choice was before her, her Lord or her flesh.

Her head was bowed, her hands clasped before her, and she felt tears trickle slowly upon her knuckles.

"Oh, I promise, Father," she whispered, "to try never to think of him any more, and to put him out of my mind--when--the thought comes--unbidden."

The sincerity of her intention was evident in the tones of her voice and she was offered her penance; to be hereafter scrupulous in her religious observances; to hear one mass a week besides the Sunday mass for two months; to say her prayers night and morning always reverently on her knees, not standing or in bed; with the addition of five Our Fathers and Hail Marys night and morning until her penance was completed; to endeavor to influence her family to go with her to Sunday mass each week; and to examine her conscience daily.

The wise and gentle old priest had not been harsh with her, and she accepted humbly and gratefully the penance he imposed.

He prayed to God to regard her mercifully and to lead her to eternal life, then raising his right hand he recited over her the consecrated syllables of the sacrament, ending with the solemn words of peace, _Ego te absolvo a peccatis in nomine Patris_, here he made the sign of the cross, _et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen_. (I absolve thee from thy sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.)

Georgia left the confessional and went to the other part of the church to pray for a clean and strengthened spirit.

The Sunday following she went with Jim, Al and Mrs. Talbot to the cathedral where pontifical mass was celebrated. Encrusted with the accumulated observances of centuries of faith, it is, perhaps, the most intricate, aesthetic and impressive religious rite ever practiced by mankind.

From the archbishop seated on his throne, wearing his two-horned mitre in sign of the two testaments, his emerald ring as spouse of the Church, his silken tunic and dalmatic, his gloves of purity; with his shepherd's crosier in his hand, his woolen pallium over his shoulders, bound with three golden pins in memory of the three nails which fastened Him; from the archbishop crowned with gold to the least acolyte in surplice of white to recall His life, and cassock of black to recall His sorrow, the hierarchical symbolism is complex, mysterious, complete, beautiful.

When Georgia, genuflecting and signing herself with holy water, passed through the cathedral's double doors which prefigure the two sides of His being, she felt as if she were coming home again after a long, unhappy journey. The clustered shafts of the columns carried her eyes up to the high, darkened groins of the roof. The south sun streamed in colors through the saints of the windows. In the east, on the altar, the tall slender candles burned purely.

The incense puffed from the swinging censer, like smoke, familiar and pleasing to her. When the priest nine times uttered Kyrie eleison, the prayer of fallen humanity, she felt as if a friend were interceding for her before a great judge.

It made her proud to see the slow evolutions of the choir, regular and disciplined, to hear as if far away their solemn chants in stately Latin, to feel that she belonged to the same fabric of which they were a part.

As the service proceeded, the priests passing back and forth before the altar making obeisance and kissing its holy stone in ancient and regular form, the world outside receded continuously further from the people in the church, and they became increasingly merged into one single, splendid act of worship.

Holding the jewelled paten with its bread, above the jewelled chalice with its wine, the archbishop made three signs of the cross to commemorate the living hours of the crucifixion; then moving the paten he made two signs to signify the separation of His soul and body. The altar bell tinkled, a symbol of the convulsion of nature in that supreme hour. A great sigh went through the Church.

XXII

KANSAS CITY

Kansas City is growing vain and beautiful. She has, within recent years, spent ten million dollars on her looks--not to increase her terminal facilities or make her transit rapider--but simply and solely on her looks, to clear up her complexion and improve her figure.

Beauty pays dividends to towns, as to women and gardeners. Since Kansas City put in its park and boulevard system for ten million, adjoining real estate has advanced twelve, or according to the inhabitants, fifteen million.

Mason Stevens decided he would like to get transferred to Kansas City, with a raise of salary. Then he could pick out a small house in the trees at the end of one of the new macadam roads, and eventually go back and forth in a Panno Six just as he had planned. He put in a good many odd hours with the maps and prospectuses of proposed, suggested or hoped for subdivisions.

If he could arrange with Mr. Silverman to shift him, he would send for Georgia and they would scout for a lot near a boulevard end. The land out there was bound to appreciate in value as the town built up and the parkways were still further extended. He would like to buy one lot for himself and another for investment. He would have to buy on time, but that's an incentive to a young business man.

He felt confident of Georgia's enchantment with the project. The view from the bluffs was finer than anything one could get in Chicago for the same money. Besides the process of social stratification was not so far along. Kansas City was to Chicago as Chicago to New York, and New York to London. Comers-up, like himself and Georgia, would be more important more quickly in the smaller city.

Mason soon found out that there was not much to be said against Mr. Plaisted, the local agent in chief, except that he was getting old. In routine matters and methods he was excellent, but had ceased to be creative. In the terminology of a great art, he had lost his wallop.

It was the time when the big life companies were beginning their drive to get business in block; to insure for one large premium paid in a lump sum, the entire working force of a bank or business house. When the employe was honorably retired, say at sixty or sixty-five, after a stipulated number of years of steady work, he would be pensioned until he died, which pension might in whole or in part be continued to his wife if she survived him. Or he might receive, upon superannuation, an endowment equaling three years' salary. If he died before retirement his relict might become the beneficiary of an ordinary life policy. There were still other plans and combinations and permutations thereof, whose details were more or less veiled in a haze of actuarial figures, but whose broad effects were alike calculated to incite fidelity in the employe by holding out to him the prospect of a comfortable decline if he stuck to his employer through youth and middle age.

Mason quickly reported to Mr. Silverman that within six months the New England Life had written two such block policies for corporations and that three other rival companies had secured one each, while the Eastern had obtained none.

Silverman telegraphed sharply to Plaisted, "Why don't you get any corporation business in bulk! Our competitors do."

Mr. Plaisted responded with a laborious letter of explanation.

Then it developed that the New England Life had things already in shape for a third big deal--the Phosphate National Bank. Mason got the first wind of it, not in Kansas City, but by a direct tip from Mr. Silverman in New York, with instructions to investigate promptly. Within six hours he was able to report back that the proposed premium would exceed five thousand dollars a year, and furthermore that the Phosphate Trust & Savings, being controlled by the same parties as the Phosphate National, was preparing to follow its lead. That would make four banks for the New England in half a year and greatly increase its already disturbing prestige.

Silverman answered, "Immediately use all proper methods secure Phosphate business for us. We must maintain prestige. Authorize you act independently Plaisted your discretion. Draw on me in reason."

Mason drew on him for one thousand dollars, and obtained two five hundred dollar bills, one of which, after duly cautious preliminaries, he handed to the cashier, the other to the auditor of the Phosphate National. Again, after duly cautious preliminaries, they accepted. These two gentlemen had been detailed a committee to draw up for the convenience of the bank's Board of Directors an analytical syllabus of the differing propositions offered by the competing insurance companies. The Eastern Life got the Phosphate National's business, followed by that of its subsidiary, the Trust & Savings Bank, and Mason got Mr. Silverman's congratulations.

Two days later Silverman walked unexpectedly into Plaisted's office. Plaisted, who had just that instant signed his name to a letter addressed to his visitor in New York, was rattled.

"Mr. Plaisted," said Mr. Silverman, biting off the end of a three-for-a-dollar, "I have found out what is the trouble, that is, the main trouble with your agency here."

Plaisted winced. He hadn't realized that there was any trouble, and certainly not any main trouble with his agency. "Yes, Mr. Silverman."

"You're undermanned."

"Why, yes--perhaps. I've thought of breaking in a few new agents this winter."

"No," said Silverman, "I mean you're undermanned at the top. Weak on the executive side."

"Oh," said Plaisted.

"You need new blood, new ideas, new life, hustle," he snapped his fingers with each successive word--"speed--force--energy--vigor-- enterprise--vitality--dynamics--do you get me?"

"I--yes--I'm sure I do," answered Plaisted, in considerable apprehension.

"I suggest therefore that you appoint young Stevens--you have met him?"

"Yes," answered Plaisted, who detested the ground Mason walked on, "I have met him."

"I suggest you appoint him as your first assistant," remarked Mr. Silverman, calmly eyeing Plaisted. "He will take the burden of details off your shoulders."

"I--ah--don't know, Mr. Silverman, if that would be entirely wise. You see our methods--his and mine--"

"I have made my suggestion, Mr. Plaisted," answered Silverman slowly. "In my judgment that would be the best thing to do."

The two men looked at each other until at last Plaisted dropped his eyes murmuring, "I will think it over."

"I leave at two. I should like to know your decision before then."

Plaisted yielded by telephone within half an hour.

He wasn't deprived of the corner room; he would continue to sign _General Agent_ after his name. But he realized bitterly that he had left to him only the shadow of his long authority. The substance had passed to the young stranger.

At the beginning of the following year Plaisted was granted a six months' leave of absence with pay, and soon after his return resigned. He now travels peevishly from Palm Beach to Paris and back again in company with a valet-nurse.

Georgia's letter of farewell came in the afternoon mail, just after Mr. Silverman's departure. Mason read it over every night for a month and found it bad medicine for sleep. The lines in his shrewd face deepened perceptibly. Finally he locked the letter up in his safe deposit vault, and seemed to rest better afterwards.

He dickered with the hotel for room and bath by the year and got thirty-three per cent off. He was known by his office force as a hard man to please.

XXIII

THE LAST OF THE OLD MAN

Georgia pressed the knob of the time clock at fifteen minutes to nine the next morning. When she opened her locker to hang up her hat and jacket she discovered a novel which she had drawn from a circulating library six weeks before and which had been costing her two cents a day ever since, a box of linen collars, an umbrella she thought she had lost, and a shirt waist done up in paper.

She went from the locker hall into the room of the office, half expecting to find it changed in some way, but everything was the same. The same clerks were stoop-shouldered over the same desks, the same young auditor was lolling back in his swivel chair, pulling his stubby mustache, his elbow on the low mahogany railing that marked him off from his assistants. That was how he always began the day. At nine precisely he would ring for a stenographer and dictate from notes. He never dictated straight from his head, probably because his work was so full of figures.

Georgia was taken back by the casual way in which she was greeted. Several arose and shook hands and were briefly glad to see her again; others simply nodded a good morning. An oldish bookkeeper asked, "Been away, haven't you?"

The girls of the lunch club, however, welcomed her warmly as they came in one after the other and found her seated at her old desk, just outside the old man's door. But even they, she felt with a twinge of bitterness, failed to grasp the stupendousness of her experience.

Since last she had been in the office she had knocked at the gate of death and lost her lover and found her faith, yet the people of the office seemingly perceived no change in her except that she was pale.

All that they knew of her was the surface and that, she reflected, was all she knew of them. Perhaps during her absence the oldest bookkeeper had received notice to quit at the end of the year and dreaded to tell his invalid wife; perhaps he had had a daughter die, not recover, from typhoid; or his son had gone to prison or received a hero medal or become a licensed aviator.

The young auditor might be frowning and pulling his mustache because he had recently acquired a chorus lady for a stepmother. The tall, red-puffed girl with the open-work waist and abrupt curves might, as had been suspected, be no better than she should be. It wouldn't surprise Georgia greatly if that was so.

But, she reflected, what of it? None of them mattered to her, just as she mattered to none of them.

For everyone she supposed it was much the same; four or five people one knew and the rest strangers.

She slipped some paper into the machine to try her fingers. She wrote hadn't, "hand't" and stenographer, "stonegrapher." She was not pleased to find whoever had been subbing for her had put a black ribbon on her machine. She liked purple better.

Mechanically she pulled at the upper left-hand drawer where she had kept her note books and pencils, but it was locked. And she didn't have the key. She had sent it by Al from the hospital.

Miss Gerson walked briskly to the desk. "Oh," she said, "Miss Connor, you're back."

"Yes. How do you do!" They shook hands.

"That's fine--you do look a little pale--we were all so sorry to hear of your illness. I've been your understudy," she gave a little sigh, "using your desk. I'm afraid its cluttered up with my things. If I'd only known you were returning to-day I'd have left it spick and span for you." She took out the key and unlocked the master drawer, which released the others, and removed her notebook, pencils, erasers, some picture postal cards, a broken-crystalled lady's watch, an apple and a book on etiquette.

"I think the old man's just fine to work for, don't you!" she asked as she collected her belongings.

"Indeed I do," said Georgia jealously. "Will you be at the club for lunch to-day?"

"Indeed I will," responded Miss Gerson, departing.

The telephone tinkled on Georgia's desk.

"Hello," came the voice, "is this Miss Gerson?"

"Did you wish to speak to her personally?"

"I wish to speak with Miss Gerson, Mr. Tatton's secretary."

"This is his secretary," said Georgia.

"This is St. Luke's hospital," said the voice. "Mr. Tatton wants you to take a cab and come right down here to see him, and say--hello--I'm not through--bring your typewriter. Right away."

The old man was propped up in a chair, fully dressed, when Georgia arrived. "Oh, Miss Connor," he said when he saw her, "I wasn't expecting you. All the better, though. Glad you're well again. I'm not." He held his hand to his side and seemed to have difficulty with his breathing.

"Take this," he said. "Date it and write: Codicil. And I hereby declare and publish, being of sound mind and body, and in the presence of witnesses, that I do now revoke and cancel and make of no effect and void, in whole and in part, the clause numbered seven--then put also figure seven in parenthesis--in the foregoing instrument, will and testament of date July second, nineteen hundred and five. I expressly withdraw and withhold all the bequests therein made, named and stipulated."

Georgia took his words directly on the machine. A nurse and an interne witnessed his signature.

"Now," said the old man, "take this in shorthand, to my wife, care Platz & Company, Bankers, 18 Rue Scribe, Paris, France.

"Dear Marion: Except for those three pleasant days last summer we haven't seen each other for six years, and as you will know long before you read this, we shan't see each other alive again.

"I deeply regret that, especially of later years, our marriage has been so unsuccessful. I apprehend clearly that the fault lay with me insofar as I--quote--had grown so very prosy--end quote--as you remarked last summer.