Part 3

"Again?" he cried, raging. "You ask me again to go to one of those vile cures? after all I've said and sworn? God in Heaven! how often must I tell you that, if I've only a few months to live, I'm going to _live!_ not die by inches. Fool that you are!"

She covered her face with her hands and turned away from him.

"Go to those beastly mountains," he snarled, venomously. "Go where all that makes life worth living will be out of reach and I dogged by a pack of vile, prying doctors and attendants! If you're tired of keeping me I'll take an extra dose and end it to-night!"

"Liol!"

"Then don't madden me! Here! you said you couldn't stay long, didn't you? My last poems are on the table. Send a couple more to 'Hosmer's Monthly'--they asked for them--God! is this another fit coming on? ... There! I feel better. It passes sometimes and I daresay I'll outlive you all, yet." His face brightened and became luminous with hope and defiance. The terrible paroxysm of coughing had flooded his dusky cheeks with rose; his black hair curled limply back from his damp forehead; his magnificent eyes expanded and fired with the consumptive's cheating illusion of future health. Beside his glowing, burning beauty Lynn Thayer seemed one of those daughters of earth who, in former ages, loved the sons of God. She devoured him with her eyes in a silence so tense and sorrow-laden that the very air seemed to vibrate with it.

"Ah God, how I love you," she said at last, hopelessly. "And you--oh, Liol, Liol, you never even kissed me, to-night."

"What? Never even kissed you?" answered the other, good-humouredly. "Well, but, my dear old girl, you must remember that the fool doctors say that consumption's catching. They're right, too; I caught it from my father, curse him! I wouldn't be where I am to-day if it wasn't for him." His face darkened, moodily; then he shrugged his shoulders and held out his arms with a smile that was more mirthful than tender.

Lynn Thayer walked swiftly to the couch, dropped on her knees beside it and buried her face in the frail shoulder of its occupant. She remained thus for a few minutes while he wound thin arms about her and murmured endearments which held a perfunctory note even to her love-deafened ears. Presently she rose.

"Leo Ricossia is making quite a name by his prose writing," she said with forced cheerfulness. "I must try to keep it up, Liol. Do you remember when I called you 'Liol' once, before some people and they thought it so funny and we were so worried about it? Yet you see no one has ever suspected anything."

"No. If they did, I suppose it would have to come out," said the boy, slowly.

"What?"

Lynn started and looked confounded.

"What?" she cried. "Break my word to my dead mother? Tell who you are? how she made me promise to keep you and watch over you until you died and let no one know who you were?--What are you dreaming of, Liol?"

"Why, it's nothing to me," returned the other, watching her composedly. "Girls must go into heroics over something, I suppose; but you must see for yourself that all this would look pretty badly if it came out and wasn't explained, and it would hardly be worth while to lose your reputation and your home and your position too, for an oath to a dead woman. Too bad you have to come here by night, but, of course, day-time is impossible, for people would be sure to see you, whereas the chances are ten to one against it in the dark and dressed as you are. That absurd oath! What was it now? And she was going to come back and curse you, too, if you broke it, wasn't she?" He laughed.

"Our mother, Liol!" said Lynn, in a choked voice.

"Yes, our mother. I've almost forgotten what she looked like even, but I suppose you remember her better than I do, though I don't see why you should, considering the length of time that you were away from her and--see here, Lynn, you've been here an ungodly time; I don't want to hurry you, but--oh, I say! Amherst is puzzling his brains out as to how I can write such healthy, humourous prose. You would have shouted if you had heard him, the other night."

"Perhaps. But I must go, directly."

Lynn shivered and drew her fur a little more closely about her throat.

"I must go now, Liol," she repeated in a low voice. "Good-bye. And don't--but there! what's the use of talking? Do as you please, dear; only try to love me a little if you can. You're all I've got."

"Mighty little at that, too! You have but little here below nor will you have that little long--there, don't look like that, old girl! I'm only joking, you know."

With this joke ringing in her ears Lynn left; passed down the rickety stairs, through the dark doorway, out upon the noisy street. It was not a savoury neighbourhood this, where her brother had elected to take up his abode. In fact, it was not a place for a lady at any hour of the day or night. In face of an overpowering compulsion, however, a woman sometimes forgets that she is a lady, and this was what had happened in Lynn's case. The love which, in the majority of instances, is divided among parents, brothers, sisters, husband, children, had been concentrated upon one object. A foolish vow exacted by a delirious and dying woman had become the important thing in Lynn Thayer's life, the keeping of it a sacred duty.

We are usually punished both for our follies and our virtues, and Lynn was certainly severely punished for hers. Ricossia, as he was called, in Montreal, kept her on a constant rack of uncertainty and suspense. Daily, hourly, she expected to hear of his death and, sometimes, in moments of more than usual bitterness and grief, she almost wished that he were safe in the grave and incapable of doing himself or her more harm. The unworthiness of the loved object, moreover, made life proportionately bitter; the necessity for constant deceit and stealth was a cruel necessity to one of her nature, and the witty tales which helped to procure her brother the luxuries he craved were frequently written in anguish of heart and despair of spirit. Poor Punchinello, dancing gaily on the night his love died and his heart was broken, has many a modern prototype.

Yet through all the disgust and grief which his nature and actions caused her, her love never faltered. To her, the drinking, drug-crazed youth in whose degenerate nature there was not a trace of anything high or kind was the baby brother of early days; the baby brother whom she had tended, adored, sacrificed and been sacrificed for during the most impressionable years of her life. The tiny creature had crept into the lonely heart of the child, satisfying every want, sweetening every bitterness. There had been nothing else in Lynn's life that had held comparison with this.

*CHAPTER IV*

*A BRILLIANT MATCH*

"Love is a pastime for one's youth; marriage, a provision for one's old age."--_Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler_.

"For life is not the thing we thought and not the thing we plan, And woman, in a bitter world, must do the best she can." --_Robert Service_.

In order that the reader may more fully understand the foregoing chapters and the predicament in which certain of the characters find themselves, it is necessary to ask him to return with us to a period some thirty years before, when a certain young lady, known as Clara Brooks, had just made a most sensible match.

Now, as this was the first sensible thing that Miss Brooks had ever been known to do, it naturally attracted some attention and created some discussion. For she was one of those impossible beings who want to be happy and who, instead of viewing happiness in the light of a series of discreetly conducted flirtations, ending in marriage with the most eligible of the flirtees, had persisted in prolonging these flirtations to a really indiscreet period of time and had even carried her folly so far as to refuse two or three really desirable offers. She had a vague yet fairly positive idea that marriage, in order to be at all happy or satisfactory, must be based on mutual love and esteem, and, because of this antiquated and most unfortunate notion, she had remained unmarried until the age of twenty-five.

This attitude of Clara's laid her open to much well-deserved censure. There were two opinions about it; the first being that she had no common sense, whatever; the second being that she was unfortunately romantic and fanciful, yet somewhat to be commended in that her ideals were of a slightly higher order than those of the average girl. There was not much truth in either of these views. Clara Brooks, like most of the rest of the world, was supremely selfish, though not unpleasantly so. She loved love; she also loved money; she wanted to be happy, whatever the price she paid for happiness; and she did not care to do anything that she thought likely to militate against her happiness. That was all.

It seemed very hard to Clara, who possessed beauty of quite an unusual order, a wheedling tongue, and a pretty taste in dress, that she could not marry both for love and money. She would have preferred to marry for love, however, if she had been obliged to make a choice. This was partly because she had never known poverty and could not compute its discomforts with any degree of accuracy; but, also, because she was one of those women who are capable of an overpowering infatuation and who are, therefore, instinctively on the watch for a possible object which may awaken it. The object had not appeared; Clara was twenty-five, and twenty-five, at the period of which I write, was not the twenty-five of to-day. Only people of unusual fascination and prettiness, such as Miss Brooks, dared to be unmarried at twenty-five. Already her enemies were beginning to brand her with the awful stigma of "old maid," already her friends were beginning to murmur plaintively, "What can she be thinking about?"

Clara's thoughts ended in a very usual fashion. As Prince Charming had not arrived; as the time was fast approaching when she would be relegated to the dreadful social lumber room where all such derelicts of love were stowed by grieving relatives in the "good old days"; as enemies were, as has before been said, beginning to murmur "old maid" behind her back, and friends, "silly girl" to her face; for all these reasons and for fifty others, Clara Brooks suddenly made up her mind to accept a well-to-do and silent man, by name Lowden Thayer, who for some time past had been obviously attracted by her undoubted charms. Now the sky brightened for Clara. She, as a bride-to-be, received many handsome wedding presents, a number of compliments on her most unexpected good sense, and a vast amount of eminently imbecile advice from well-meaning ignoramuses of both sexes.

The wedding was a fine one; all Clara's relatives were pleased to know that she was settled and would be provided for until the day of her death no matter how ugly or unpleasant or incapable she became with age; and all Lowden Thayer's relatives were pleased to think that he had married at all, though the majority of them felt that he had made a most unsuitable choice. Wherein they were undoubtedly right.

After the honeymoon, the Thayers took up their abode in a handsome house in a fashionable quarter of Montreal; the gentleman went to business every day and the lady began to receive and return calls from the elite of what is known as "society."

She had many calls of all kinds to return, for she had fulfilled the whole duty of civilized woman; she had married, and married well. Within a year she further absolved herself of blame by bringing into the world a little, helpless infant, bald and thin and red-faced, who howled most objectionably and seemed as indignant at having existence thus forced upon it as though it knew what existence really was. Probably it was no prophetic instinct but some more prosaic ailment that led Clara's infant daughter to make night hideous with her cries. Be that as it may, its mother conceived something that almost amounted to dislike for the ugly little voyager upon the sea of life for whose existence she was responsible. She loved men and boys; why then should she give birth to a daughter? She loved beauty; why should her first-born be devoid even of hair? Besides ... the baby resembled its father; the "good match" which Fate had compelled her to make, much against her wishes; the detested crumple in her bed of roses; the hated benefactor to whose unwise fancy she was indebted for board and clothing, place in society and honourable title of "married woman"; the loathed necessity which spoilt everything--even her child--for her.

This much, however, must be said for Clara Thayer; though the child meant less than nothing to her, she did not neglect it on that account. She may have been an unnatural mother, but she was not a soulless brute, and she therefore attended carefully to its wants and saw that it lacked for nothing that she could give it. What she could not give it, it necessarily went without; but she did her duty so far as she was able and was unexpectedly and munificently rewarded. For when her little girl was three years of age its father died, leaving her a wealthy and beautiful widow.

Now when Fortune is too kind to us Fate sometimes plays a grim joke, in order to level us with the vast mass of toiling, yearning, disappointed, suffering fellow-humans. This is what Fate did with Clara Thayer.

She was young, rich, beautiful, able to marry whom she pleased and live as she liked without let or hindrance. Fate had given her good coin with which to purchase anything her vagrant fancy might light upon. She might have chosen whom she would. Therefore she chose an extremely good-looking scoundrel whose Irish mother and Italian father had bequeathed to him, together with the light-hearted fascinations of their kindred natures, the sum total of every vice of which both lands are capable. The sweet kindness of heart and warm devotion to cause and kindred which characterize the Italian and Irish races lay in the softness of his dark eyes, the velvet smoothness of his voice, but were quite absent from his nature. This Clara Thayer did not know; and, had she known, it is more than probable that she would not have cared. For the first time in her life she was in the grip of a perfectly irrational fascination, an infatuation which drove her as a whirlwind might drive wheat. The infatuation ended, moreover, only when her life did.

This was, perhaps, a natural ending to Clara Thayer's career. It was natural, too, that people should refer to her as that poor girl who made "such a sensible first match" and "such an idiotic second one." As a matter of fact it would be difficult to determine which of Clara's two marriages was the more idiotic. Her first was for money, her second, for love. Her first supplied her with good food, pretty clothes and unlimited boredom. Her second gave her sharp rapture and equally poignant pain. Possibly, if she had remained unmarried she might have encountered worse things than any of these. Of the three wishes which the bad fairy, Life, gives the average woman it is difficult to say which is the least fraught with unhappiness.

"Woman in a bitter world must do the best she can." Clara Brooks did the best she could and bad was the best.

However she died at forty-five, and many women live to be old.

*CHAPTER V*

*"BLIND FOOLS OF FATE"*

"Blind fools of fate and slaves of circumstance, Life is a fiddler and we all must dance." --_Robert Service_.

When Clara Thayer gave birth to a daughter she was, as has been before stated, disappointed. When that daughter developed the appearance and characteristics of its father Clara began to dislike it. In vain she reasoned with herself, in vain upbraided herself, secretly and severely, in vain called herself "an unnatural mother." The sad fact remained that she did not care for the child. It had no pretty ways, no graceful tricks; its eyes were dull, its skin was pale, its hair ordinary. If it had resembled her she would have loved it; if it had resembled her mother, her father, anyone for whom she cared, she would have idolized it. It resembled no one, however, but her husband, and, although when Clara had married Lowden Thayer she had been supremely indifferent to him, that indifference had, unfortunately, deepened into a positively appalling dislike. Not dislike for his character which she respected; not dislike for his attitude toward her which left nothing to be desired; no, dislike for the man, himself, dislike for his personality, his manners, his way of entering a room, his way of brushing his hair, his way of walking, talking, breathing.

It is easy here for the reader to throw down this veracious account of a real woman with the single comment that she was unreasonable and ungrateful. It is true that she was unreasonable but not that she was ungrateful. She knew all that she owed to her husband, she sometimes hated herself for her lack of feeling, and she strove earnestly to hide her dislike and to do her duty in a way befitting a wife and mother. It was a bitter addition to what seemed to her an already difficult life when the child, to whose advent she had looked with so much hope and longing, turned out the counterpart of her husband. Instead of a distraction it was a perpetual reminder of the galling chain; instead of a delight it represented merely another disagreeable duty.

Clara was generally considered a model wife and mother; every domestic obligation was scrupulously performed, every connubial and matronly demand upon her time, health and patience, uncomplainingly complied with. When Mr. Thayer died, however, four years after their marriage, Clara felt only an unspeakable relief; and when, nine years later, Mr. Thayer's brother offered to adopt Lynn, on condition that her mother gave her up, entirely, Clara felt only that a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

She had one child by her second husband after she had been married to him five years, and that child was a boy who combined his father's picturesque, foreign beauty with his mother's refinement and grace. To him, she was an adoring mother; he was second in her heart only to Guido Allardi. Just as Lynn had been the image of the man whom Clara had disliked, so Lionel was the image of the man whom she worshipped. There was no wish or choice in the matter; she always felt sorry that she could not care for Lynn, and she sometimes wished, in moments of bitterness, that Lionel did not resemble his father so closely. It was a rare retribution of Fate, this! the unloved child of the unloved father who was all that a mother could wish and the idolized child of the idolized father who inherited from him every trait that could break a mother's heart. If Lowden Thayer could have looked into the future he would have been amply revenged. It is improbable, however, that he wanted revenge; he wanted his wife's love and, failing that, he wanted rest. He never had the first but we may reasonably hope that he had the latter.

"Love's eyes are very blind," but they are never so blind as not to perceive dislike on the part of the loved object, however conscientiously that dislike may be hidden. Lowden Thayer was a just man; he saw that his wife did her best and he, on his part, did his best, hid his sorrow manfully, and, when he died, willed Clara all his property, unhampered by any galling restrictions.

The little daughter whom he left behind developed in a rather interesting fashion.

The widely diverse natures of Lowden Thayer and his wife mingled oddly in her. She had her father's face but her mother's pliant, graceful figure and movements. She inherited from her father a useful brain, capable of assimilating considerable knowledge and of reasoning accurately and carefully; but she had her mother's brilliancy and lively wit. She had her father's industry, business ability, and sense of justice, and her mother's love of popularity and social gayety. From both she inherited one thing in overwhelming measure; the capacity for any amount of silent, tenacious affection which no ill-treatment could shake, no disillusionment alter. Another thing, too, she had from both; the ability to suffer in silence, keeping a cool and careless front to the world and hiding a bleeding heart and a broken spirit behind a smiling face and manner. Lynn was thus, in many ways, not so unlike her mother as that mother supposed.

At the time when Lynn was adopted by her uncle Horace she was twelve years of age. The next seven years were very busy ones. Child though she was, she felt keenly the fact that her uncle had taken her into his home in fulfilment of a sense of duty, rather than from motives of affection. She determined that she would be indebted to him for nothing more than was absolutely necessary. In pursuance of this idea she begged to be allowed to train for a teacher and, on graduating, insisted on taking a position which offered itself. Her uncle made little objection; he cherished the common masculine delusion that women who live at home have nothing to do with their time and he thought it rather a good idea that some of this time should be occupied. The idea of his niece being a public school teacher did not exactly appeal to his sense of the fitness of things; but, after all, since the girl was bent on it, "let her do as she likes" was his ultimatum. Therefore Lynn did as she liked; and events which shortly afterwards transpired made her think with horror of the fact that, had she followed her aunt's wishes, she would have been without any money that she could call her own.

It was when she was nineteen that she received a letter in an unknown handwriting. Its contents were brief and pregnant. Her mother was dying; would Lynn visit her in New York before she died? as there was much that she had to say. The letter ended with an injunction to hide the matter from her uncle and aunt, who would never allow her to travel alone, and would insist on accompanying her, which her mother did not wish.

It would be difficult to describe the effect which this letter had upon Lynn. She had always known that she held no place in her mother's heart, and that knowledge was a settled grief, not an active sorrow. The letter gave her a dull pain, almost like the pain which one would experience, could the corpse of a dead friend whom one had mourned, then almost though not quite forgotten, suddenly come to life and demand recognition.