Part 22

"Because a woman always mixes her religion with her love--if she has any religion. A man may have one or the other, or both, but he never confuses them."

"Pardon me for taking issue with you, Mrs. Hazard; but with many a man his love for a woman is his only religion."

"Which means, Mr. Rutledge, that he has love--not religion."

As Rutledge turned to Mrs. Hazard Elise had the first opportunity to look at him unobserved. She saw that his face had less colour than usual, that his manner seemed to lack its accustomed spontaneity, that there was a tired look about his eyes--which provoked in her heart a fleeting maternal impulse to lay her hand upon them. She watched him furtively and became convinced that he was in some measure distressed. At first it rather amused her and flattered her vanity to think that he was approaching her with a becoming self-distrust. As she studied him longer, however, she began to doubt the reason for his constraint.

Lola Hazard turned from her discussion with Rutledge to give Elise another song, and the young woman at the piano sang three or four while Rutledge listened in appreciative silence. Before the last was finished Mrs. Hazard was gone to receive other guests.

"Now will you not sing one of your own choosing?" asked Rutledge.

"I have no choice;" said Elise, "but this occurs to me." She sang him Tosti's _Good-bye_.

If she put more of the spirit in that song than into the others it was not because she felt its pertinence to the present status of her love. But through the wakeful night, and all the day long till Rutledge's note had come, the words of that _Good-bye_ had come and gone through her brain with passionate realism:

"Falling leaf and fading tree, Lines of white on a sullen sea, Shadows rising on you and me--"

her heart had sung its "good-bye for ever" with all the smothered passion of renunciation. So, in the very moment of blissful waiting for the telling of his love, she could sing to Rutledge with all the wildness of farewell which so short a time since had wrung her spirit.

She struck the last chord softly, and, after holding down the keys till the strings were dumb, dropped her hands in her lap. She did not look up, but she knew that Rutledge's gaze was upon her. She waited for a space unspeaking, without lifting her eyes--and realized that she had waited too long.... The silence was eloquent; and with every moment became more significant. She tried to look up, but could not. She knew that the situation had gotten beyond her in that careless ten seconds, and that if she looked up now she was lost.... She sat as if under a spell--and waited for Rutledge to move or to speak.... After an age he was coming toward her.... And he was so very slow in coming. Her heart was thumping suffocatingly, her breathing in suspense.... He did not speak as he came to her.... She felt he was very near.... Still unspeaking--was he going to take her in his arms? ... Her head drooped lower over the keyboard....

Oh, why did he not take her in his arms.

"Elise, I love you. I've always loved you."

Elise's eyes were upon the idle hands in her lap; and her heart had stopped to listen. Rutledge's sentences were broken and jerky. She had never heard him speak in that fashion.

"I've loved you always, Elise, and once I was rash enough to think--you loved me. My presumption was fitly punished.... Now I have only--hope. In the last few months you--have been so--gracious that--I have been led to think you--wait, wait till I have done--so gracious that I have been led to think--not that you love me, but at least that I--do not excite your antipathy--as for a long time it seemed.... So now I have only hope--but such a hope, Elise--a hope that is--beyond words, for my love is such. My love is--I love you, Elise--I love you as--as my father loved my mother."

Elise slowly raised her eyes to his. There was no smile upon her face, but as she turned it to him it was ineffably sweet, and a smile was in her heart. But she was startled by his look. His was not the face of a lover, whether triumphant, despondent, hopeful or militant. She did not know that he had not been able to banish his mother from his thought for a waking moment since he parted with her at her mother's bed-side the night before.

"Will you--be my wife, Elise?"

Never before in all the world was that question asked in such a voice. Its tone like a dagger of ice touched the girl's heart with a deadly chill. She looked steadily and long into his eyes. At last with a little shiver she murmured inaudibly "_noblesse oblige_"--and answered his question:

"No, Mr. Rutledge, I will not be your wife."

Her words were as cold as her heart, and her self-possession as cold as either. She was surprised that her answer did not bring the faintest shadow of relief to Rutledge's drawn face--rather a greater distress. A tingle of fire shot through her bosom. (It was not too late--oh why did he not take her in his arms.)

"No, I will not be your wife," she repeated slowly. (It was not yet too late--oh why--) "I am deeply sensible of the honour you--"

"Stop! Don't say that! In God's name don't say that! Don't add mockery to--"

"Mr. Rutledge!"

For the moment Rutledge forgot that there was any person in the world other than Elise and himself.

"You _have_ mocked me--you have _played_ with me! And--"

"Will you please go, Mr. Rutledge!"

"Played with me--yes--as if I were the simplest--oh well, I have been--and you--you have been--you are--an artist. Tell me that you do not love me, that you have only laughed at me. Tell me!" he sneered.

"Go, I say! Oh, _can't_ you _go_!"

"Yes, I'll go--when you say it. Tell me! Do you love me--have you ever loved me?--the veriest little bit?"

"Never. Not the veriest little bit," she said, looking straight at him.

"That's it!--the truth at last--spoken like a m--like a lady!"--he bowed mockingly at her--"and it proves you are false--false, do you understand?--unspeakably false! And I have loved you like m--but very well, it's better so--perhaps."

He turned to go; but turned quickly about.

"I'll kiss you once if I swing for it!--for what I thought you were"--and, for a moment robbed by anger of his sense of proprieties, with unpardonable roughness he crushed and kissed her, flung her violently from him, and went, without looking back at her.

* * * * *

Mrs. Hazard, looking across the shoulders of a knot of her guests, caught a glimpse of Rutledge as he passed down the hall toward the outer door. She waited a minute or more for him to reappear, and when he had not done so she lost interest in the people and things about her. At the first possible moment she sought Elise, and found her again sitting before the grate. Lola came into the room so quickly and quietly that Elise had not time to dissemble, if she had wished to do so. Her head was thrown back against the chair and both hands covered her face. Lola took her wrists and against some little resistance pulled her hands away.

"Elise?" she said.

"He does not love me," Elise replied, defensively, without opening her eyes.

"Didn't he tell you?"

"Oh, yes," the answer came wearily; "he told me; but he told me because he thought he had given me to expect it. It was _noblesse oblige_--not love."

"Noblesse fiddlesticks! I don't believe a word of it."

"Oh well," said Elise, looking up, "he said it was just as well that I refused him, there's no mistaking that."

"Oh, certainly, _after_ you refused him. What did you expect?"

"I expected him to--no, I didn't. I didn't expect anything. Southern men are so--" Elise stopped. She was about to be unjust to Rutledge.

"But come, let's go," she said, rising from her chair. "Are all the people here?"

"All except Senator Richland, and he never fails _me_," Lola answered.

"I don't want to see that man to-night," said Elise; and yet she joined the other guests appearing nothing other than her usual self save for the added brightness of her eyes, and when Senator Richland managed finally to isolate her she gave him quite the most interesting twenty minutes of his life.

When the company was broken up, Elise, who was stopping over night with Lola, avoided the customary heart to heart talk by asking for a pen and paper with which to write a letter. Mrs. Hazard was consumed with desire to hear all about it, but she deferred her inquiries with good grace as she argued that a note written by Elise at such an unearthly hour could be only to Rutledge, and must, therefore, be important.

Elise shut herself in her room and, pitching the paper on the dressing-table, sat down to think. For nearly an hour she sat without turning a hand to undress, trying to unravel the tangled skein of her heart's affairs and see a way out; but she could not get her thoughts to the main issue. Like a fiery barrier to her thinking was the man's burning denunciation: "You are false--unspeakably false!" It had rung in her ears all the evening, and however she tried she could not get away from it. At last she began hurriedly to undress, but before that process was half finished she brushed the toilet articles from a corner of the dressing-table, drew up a chair, and began to write.

"Unspeakably false? No, no, Evans, I am not false. I have not been false: for I love you. Such a long time I have loved you. Sometimes I have believed you loved me, and sometimes I have doubted; but I do not doubt since you told me to-night I was unspeakably false. Shame on you to swear at your sweetheart so!--and bless you for saying it, for now I know. O why did you not say it earlier so that I might not have misread you? I thought you felt yourself committed, and must go on: that your love was dead, but honour held you. You looked so distressed, dear heart, that I was misled. Forgive me. And do not think I do not know your distress. I, too--but no, I must not. I love you, I cannot do more. In your rage were you conscious that your kiss fell upon _my lips_, dearest? Blind you were when you said I was unspeakably false.--"

She had written rapidly and almost breathlessly while the impulse was warm within her heart. She paused for a moment--held the pen poised as if uncertain what to say next--hesitated as to how to say it--next, as to whether to say it--laid the pen down and picked up the sheet to read what she had written. A blush came to her cheeks as she read, and at the end she dropped her face upon her arm on the table and suffered a revulsion of shame for her unmaidenliness. She tried hard to justify her writing and had all but succeeded when Rutledge's words, "It is better so," put all her love's excuses to final rout. She took the written sheet and went across to drop it on the smoldering fire. But her resolution failed her: she felt that it would be to burn her very heartbeats if she gave these words to the flames.

Going again to the dressing-table she laid the letter upon the scattered sheets of paper to await a more mature decision, and, hurriedly disrobing, went to bed.

She found it very hard to go to sleep. Even in the dark she could feel the continuing blushes in her cheeks as she thought of what she had written. Finally in desperation she tumbled up and in the dim glow of the coals in the grate crossed the room to the dressing-table, snatched up and crumpled in her hand the disturbing letter, hurriedly gathered up the remaining sheets of paper and chucked them in the table drawer, walked quickly over and dropped the offending tender missive upon the coals and went to bed again in the light of its destruction. A very long time after its last gleam was dark and dead she found the sleep she sought.

*CHAPTER XXXV*

It is not within the province of this chronicle to recall the sensational excitement that swept the nation in those days further than as it affected the persons mentioned in this narrative. The details of that sensation, the screams, the howls, the jeers, the predictions, the warnings, the laments, the philosophizings, a newspaper-reading people but too well remember. They have no proper place of rehearsal in this history; and if they had, a comprehensive statement which would present the matter fairly to those who come after would be too voluminous for the plan upon which this book is projected.

In that time of tumult and of trial Mr. Phillips stood indeed alone. If he had braced himself firmly in his determination to save Helen's happiness at all cost, it was well: for his trial was to the uttermost. Although it would have crushed any other than his adamantine will, the storm-beaten father withstood, as one accustomed to do battle, the pressure from without: but the rebellion of his own soul was an unrelieved tragedy that shook him day and night with its terror. If his love for Helen had not approached the infinite, surely in the shrieking revulsion of his spirit he would have cast her off. There was a demand from loud-mouthed people the nation over that he should disown her and drive her into the outer darkness. Some relief there was in that demand, for it only stirred the combative in his nature. The yells and hoots aroused his fighting blood. But the silence, the unspeaking horror--as if in the presence of death--in which sober-minded friend and foe stood aghast and looked upon Helen's plight, made his courage faint and tremulous. It was so awfully akin to the sickening horror and silence in his own heart.

He was indeed alone; and in that loneliness it was given to him to teach to himself the far bounds of a father's love. If he only could have fought something!--or somebody! If he only openly could have snapped his fingers in the face of public opinion, in the teeth of his own mutinous soul--openly--and told them he cared more for Helen's untroubled laugh than for them all, and be damned to 'em! If he only could have died! But no: he must stand and be still to the most thankless task that ever called for a hidden loyalty. Helen must not know of the travail of his love, lest that defeat love's purpose. It was too late, too late, for knowledge to do other than tear her heart-strings out, blight her young soul, and write _Remorse_ eternally upon her life. She must _never_ know how much he loved her!

There was no lack of personal--and professing---friends to stand more or less loyally beside the father in that time, but their support was wormwood to him. From the very few who were altogether sincere he turned in aversion even as he suffered their commendations, while for the insincere and sycophantic he had a doubly unspeakable contempt; and that disgust and scorn was agony, for that he must swallow it and belie his own spirit as he listened to these friends.

His private correspondence furnished him as little comfort. Some persons there were--and a few of these men and women of repute--who wrote to him letters that should have been consoling, for they agreed very heartily with his view, or what they thought was his view, and commended him without stint for his attitude: but never an one spoke of the sacrificial love of a father for his daughter--_justice to the negro_ was their theme. Upon such letters from men--it would have surprised the writers much to hear it--he uttered maledictions profane; while, for the one woman who thus approved him, he forebore profanity, but relieved his wrath with a volcanic "Freak!"

From the time the announcement burst upon the public the President was overwhelmed with a flood of newspaper comment, most of it harsh, the best of it deprecatingly sympathetic, none, except that from negro papers, uncritical. Very shortly the clippings bureau which served him was ordered to discontinue everything referring to Mrs. Hayward Graham's marriage.

Mr. Phillips did not give that order because he was too weak to stand criticism. Far from it. He was schooled to conflict, and knew the rules. He had never asked concession from an opponent in all his life of struggle, and he would have scorned to ask it then, even with the uncounted odds against him. His critics might have shrieked till the crack o' doom and he would have listened without a quiver of his resolution.

But the impartial bureau had sent, among an avalanche of criticism, an appreciation in the form of the following editorial clipped from the columns of _The Star of Zion_:

"The dramatic culmination of the beautiful romance in which Miss Helen Phillips, daughter of the President of the United States, proudly proclaims herself the wife of Mr. John Hayward Graham, and the graceful acquiescence of the bride's distinguished father in his beautiful daughter's love-match, is but another proof of the rapid coming of the negro race into its own as the recognized equal of any race of men on earth. Mr. Graham's career is an inspiration to his people, for it teaches the rising generation of negro boys and girls that they need no longer live Within the Veil, that in the most enlightened minds there is no longer a silly prejudice against colour, but that if the young negro will only make the most of himself and his opportunities he will be graciously received as an equal, as a member, in the proudest families in this mighty nation.--"

President Phillips read just that much of that editorial. Then went the order to shut off the press clippings.

It required all the father's self-control to dissemble in Helen's presence and he feared that he would be unable to keep the truth from her. It was fortunate for the girl that her condition demanded seclusion and that her removal from Washington took her away from the danger of enlightenment. At her father's instance preparations were hurried with all speed, and she and her husband went to Hill-Top for their belated honeymoon and a stay indefinite....

Hayward Graham would have been a paragon if he had conducted himself with entire discretion when the limelight first was turned upon him. The colour of his skin was not responsible for his foolish mistakes in those first days. Any footman so suddenly elevated to that pinnacle likely would have made them. One of his errors of judgment was serious. That was his continued offence against the dignity of Henry Porter. The withering letter he had written in answer to the old man's apology was of itself enough to call up the devil in old Henry's heart; but that doubtless would have been forgotten had Hayward remained in obscurity.

To dispute with the President the title to a son-in-law, however, was a distinction too fascinating to the negro magnate. He had already been to Bob Shaw's office for a tentative discussion of the law in his case and was just coming away when he ran plump into Hayward on the sidewalk. A judicious condescension on the young man's part even then might have placated him, but instead an evil spirit called to Hayward's memory his first meeting with Porter, the insufferable affront, and his own oath to even the score. Too strong in Hayward's heart was the temptation to "take it out of him for keeps" then and there. At the worst, though, he hardly did more than any gentleman would do upon meeting another who had driven him from his house.

"Mr. Hay-- Mr. Graham!" said Porter, hardly knowing himself whether he intended to be polite or other, but having a general purpose to fetch the young fellow up roundly for that letter.

"I believe I don't know you," said Hayward, stopping and observing him coolly for two seconds, and turning away to continue his journey up the street.

Now, to those of his race, Henry Porter was a "figure" on the streets of Washington, and Graham was by that time almost as well known as the President himself. There were but four people who could have witnessed the meeting of these celebrities. These were three negroes of low degree loafing along the sidewalk and a dago pushing a cart just outside the curb.

At his rebuff Henry Porter gave a gasp, swallowed it, and looked around to see who had seen him. The "common niggers" at his elbow snickered, and as they passed on burst out into loud guffaws.

"Um-huh! Tried to butt into the White House, but _Mister_ Graham _he_ don't know him! Can't interdoose 'im! _Too_ black! Law-dee, didn't he th'ow 'im down!"

Henry Porter heard enough of this. He rapidly retraced his steps to Shaw's office.

"Here, Mr. Shaw, you can jist git them papers out this evenin'. There's no use waitin'."

"All right, Mr. Porter," said Shaw, who didn't favour the idea but was too much afraid of his client to refuse. "But wouldn't to-morrow do as well? We could think it over a little further."

"No, suh, Mr. Shaw. We don't wait till no to-morrer. We don't think about that damn young nigger no mo' till we take him with the papers and let him think about hisself awhile. Can't you git 'em served on him this evenin'?"

"If he's to be found in the city," said Shaw.

"Oh, he's to be found all right. I saw him goin' up the street jist awhile ago. You jist git them papers out and have 'em served on him this evenin' and no mistake about it."

"All right, if you say so," Shaw consented.

"Well, I say so--and I can pay the damage," said the irate client with emphasis, and stalked out of the office, only to stick his head back into the door with the last injunction:

"This evenin' now, and no mistake about it!"

* * * * *

As chance ordained, Henry Porter did not go amiss in his haste to have the summons served on Graham. It was late in the afternoon and less than four hours before the former footman and his wife were scheduled to leave the city for Stag Inlet that the officer served the paper.

A bomb exploding under Hayward's feet could not have been so unexpected by him. As the officer read the summons and its import broke upon his mind he felt, for the first time in his life, physical weakness in the presence of danger. It staggered him to think of possible results. He had no feeling of guilt: but an awful fear.

President Phillips had passed out of the White House for his regular constitutional while the process was being served, and recognized the officer by his badge and Graham's excitement by the look on his face, but had not stopped to inquire what the trouble was,--for which Graham was profoundly thankful, as it gave him time to catch his breath.

Think as he would, no way of escape could Graham conceive. Being virtually without money, he could not hope in four hours to bring Henry Porter to terms and avoid a publication of the scandal. Exactly what the old man had in mind, anyway, was uncertain, excruciatingly uncertain. The precise nature of the complaint did not appear from the summons. As the suit was based on a lie, it well might be any sort of a lie. But surely, surely, he thought, no woman would _falsely_ speak disgrace to herself. He had had a genuine respect for Lily Porter's character. She had been the best of them all, with the highest ideas and the highest ideals. He would have sworn that she could not have lent herself to a thing of this sort. But since she had been willing to do so at all, to what lengths might she not go? What was the limit they had set? To what public disgrace were they trying to bring him? To what awful lie must he make answer?

As he thought of it the keen sense of his peril, the disgrace, the loss of his commission, and his helplessness, became well-nigh unbearable. If Henry Porter could only have known the extremity of torture he had inflicted in thus making the young fellow "think about hisself awhile," his wrath might have been appeased.