Chapter 5

It was incredible to think that at that very instant she was sleeping quietly, without a suspicion of what was awaiting her. Everything was incredible--incredible and impossible. As he looked around the room, in which every book, every photograph, every pen and pencil, was a part of him, he found himself once more straining for a hope, catching at straws. He took a sheet of paper, and sitting down at his desk began again, for the ten thousandth time, to balance feverishly his meagre assets against his overwhelming liabilities. He added and subtracted and multiplied and divided with a sort of frenzy, as though by dint of sheer forcing the figures he could make them respond to his will.

Suddenly, with a gesture of mingled anger and hopelessness, he swept the scribbled sheets and all the writing paraphernalia with a crash to the floor, and, burying his face in his hands, gave utterance to a smothered groan. It was a cry, not of surrender, but of protest--of infinite, exasperated protest, of protest against fate and law and judgment and the eternal principles of right and wrong, and against himself most of all. With his head pressed down on the bare polished wood of his desk, he hurled himself mentally at an earth of adamant and a heaven of brass, hurled himself ferociously, repeatedly, with a kind of doggedness, as though he would either break them down or dash his own soul to pieces.

"O God! O God!"

It was an involuntary moan, stifled in his fear of becoming hysterical, but its syllables arrested his attention. They were the syllables of primal articulation, of primal need, condensing the appeal and the aspiration of the world. He repeated them:

"O God! O God!"

He repeated them again. He raised his head, as if listening to a voice.

"O God! O God!"

He continued to sit thus, as if listening.

It was a strange, an astounding thought to him that he might pray. Though the earth of adamant were unyielding, the heaven of brass might give way!

He dragged himself to his feet.

He believed in God--vaguely. That is, it had always been a matter of good form with him to go to church and to call for the offices of religion on occasions of death or marriage. He had assisted at the saying of prayers and assented to their contents. He had even joined in them himself, since a liturgical service was a principle in the church to which he "belonged." All this, however, had seemed remote from his personal affairs, his life-and-death struggles--till now. Now, all at once, queerly, it offered him something--he knew not what. It might be nothing better than any of the straws he had been clutching at. It might be no more than the effort he had just been making to compel two to balance ten.

He stood in the middle of the room under the cluster of electric lights and tried to recollect what he knew, what he had heard, of this Power that could still act when human strength had reached its limitations. It was nothing very definite. It consisted chiefly of great phrases, imperfectly understood: "Father Almighty," "Saviour of the World," "Divine Compassion" and such like. He did not reason about them, or try to formulate what he actually believed. It was instinctively, almost unconsciously, that he began to speak; it was brokenly and with a kind of inward, spiritual hoarseness. He scarcely knew what he was doing when he found himself saying, mentally:

"Save me!... I'm helpless!... I'm desperate!... Save me!... Work a miracle!... Father!... Christ! Christ! Save my daughter!... We have no one--but--but You!... Work a miracle! Work a miracle!... I'm a thief and a liar and a traitor--but save me! I might do something yet--something that might render me--worth salvation--but then--I might not.... Anyhow, save me!... O God! Father Almighty!... Almighty! That means that You can do anything!... Even now--You can do--anything!... Save us!... Save us all!... Christ! Christ! Christ!"

* * * * *

He knew neither when nor how he ceased, any more than when or how he began. His most clearly defined impression was that of his spirit coming back from a long way off to take perception of the fact that he was still standing under the cluster of electric lights and the clock was striking three. He was breathless, exhausted. His most urgent physic need was that of air. He strode to the window-door leading out to the terraced lawn, and, throwing it open, passed out into the darkness.

There was no mist at this height above the Charles. The night was still, and the moon westering. The light had a glimmering, metallic essence, as from a cosmic mirror in the firmament. Long shadows of trees and shrubbery lay across the grass. Clear in the moonlit foreground stood an elm, the pride of Tory Hill--springing as a single shaft for twice the measure of a man--springing and spreading there into four giant branches, each of which sprang and spread higher into eight--so springing and spreading, springing and spreading still--rounded, symmetrical, superb--till the long outermost shoots fell pendulous, like spray from a fountain of verdure. The silence held the suggestion of mighty spiritual things astir. At least the heaven was not of brass, if the earth continued to be of adamant. On the contrary, the sky was high, soft, dim, star-bestrewn, ineffable. It was spacious; it was free; it was the home of glorious things; it was the medium of the eternal.

He was not reassured; he was not even comforted; what relief he got came only from a feeling--a fancy, perhaps--that the weight had been eased, that he was freed for a minute from the crushing pressure of the inevitable. It would return again and break him down, but for the moment it was lifted, giving him room and power to breathe. He did breathe--long deep draughts of the cool night air that brought refreshment and something like strength to struggle on.

He came back into the room. His pens and papers were scattered on the floor, and ink from the overturned inkstand was running out on the Oriental rug. It was the kind of detail that before this evening would have shocked him; but nothing mattered now. He was too indifferent to lift his hand and put the inkstand back into its place. Instead, he threw himself on a couch, turning his face to the still open window and drinking in with thirsty gasps the blessed, revivifying air.

V

Guion awoke in a chill, gray light, to find himself covered with a rug, and his daughter, wrapped in a white dressing-gown, bending above him. Over her shoulder peered the scared face of a maid. His first sensation was that he was cold, his first act to pull the rug more closely about him. His struggle back to waking consciousness was the more confused because of the familiar surroundings of the library.

"Oh, papa, what's the matter?"

He threw the coverlet from him and dragged himself to a sitting posture.

"What time is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. "I must have dropped off to sleep. Is dinner ready?"

"It's half-past six in the morning, papa dear. Katie found you here when she came in to dust the room. The window was wide open and all these things strewn about the floor. She put the rug on you and came to wake me. What is it? What's happened? Let me send for the doctor."

With his elbow on his knee, he rested his forehead on his hand. The incidents of the night came back to him. Olivia seated herself on the couch beside him, an arm across his shoulder.

"I'm cold," was all he said.

"Katie, go and mix something hot--some whisky or brandy and hot water--anything! And you, papa dear, go to bed. I'll call Reynolds and he'll help you."

"I'm cold," he said again.

Rising, he crawled to the mirror into which he had looked last night, shuddering at sight of his own face. The mere fact that he was still in his evening clothes, the white waistcoat wrinkled and the cravat awry, shocked him inexpressibly.

"I'm cold," he said for the third time.

But when he had bathed, dressed, and begun his breakfast, the chill left him. He regained the mastery of his thoughts and the understanding of his position. A certain exaltation of suffering which had upheld him during the previous night failed him, however, now, leaving nothing but a sense of flat, commonplace misery. Thrown into relief by the daylight, the facts were more relentless--not easier of acceptance.

As he drank his coffee and tried to eat he could feel his daughter watching him from the other end of the table. Now and then he screened himself from her gaze by pretending to skim the morning paper. Once he was startled. Reflected in the glass of a picture hanging on the opposite wall he caught the image of a man in a blue uniform, who mounted the steps and rang the door-bell.

"Who's that?" he asked, sharply. He dared not turn round to see.

"It's only the postman, papa darling. Who else should it be?"

"Yes; of course." He breathed again. "You mustn't mind me, dear. I'm nervous. I'm--I'm not very well."

"I see you're not, papa. I saw it last night. I knew something was wrong."

"There's something--very wrong."

"What is it? Tell me."

Leaning on the table, with clasped hands uplifted, the loose white lace sleeves falling away from her slender wrists, she looked at him pleadingly.

"We've--that is, I've--lost a great deal of money."

"Oh!" The sound was just above her breath. Then, after long silence, she asked: "Is it much?"

He waited before replying, seeking, for the last time, some mitigation of what he had to tell her.

"It's all we have."

"Oh!" It was the same sound as before, just audible--a sound with a little surprise in it, a hint of something awed, but without dismay.

He forced himself to take a few sips of coffee and crumble a bit of toast.

"I don't mind, papa. If that's what's troubling you so much, don't let it any longer. Worse things have happened than that." He gulped down more coffee, not because he wanted it, but to counteract the rising in his throat. "Shall we have to lose Tory Hill?" she asked, after another silence.

He nodded an affirmative, with his head down.

"Then you mean me to understand what you said just now--quite literally. We've lost all we have."

"When everything is settled," he explained, with an effort, "we shall have nothing at all. It will be worse than that, since I sha'n't be able to pay all I owe."

"Yes; that _is_ worse," she assented, quietly.

Another silence was broken by his saying, hoarsely:

"You'll get married--"

"That will have to be reconsidered."

"Do you mean--on your part?"

"I suppose I mean--on everybody's part?"

"Do you think he would want to--you must excuse the crudity of the question--do you think he would want to back out?"

"I don't know that I could answer that. It isn't quite to the point. Backing out, as you call it, wouldn't be the process--whatever happened."

He interrupted her nervously. "If this should fall through, dear, you must write to your Aunt Vic. You must eat humble pie. You were too toplofty with her as it was. She'll take you."

"Take me, papa? Why shouldn't I stay with you? I'd much rather."

He tried to explain. It was clearly the moment at which to do it.

"I don't think you understand, dear, how entirely everything has gone to smash. I shall probably--I may say, certainly--I shall have to--to go--"

"I do understand that. But it often happens--especially in this country--that things go to smash, and then the people begin again. There was Lulu Sentner's father. They lost everything they had--and she and her sisters did dressmaking. But he borrowed money, and started in from the beginning, and now they're very well off once more. It's the kind of thing one hears of constantly--in this country."

"You couldn't hear of it in my case, dear, because--well, because I've done all that. I've begun again, and begun again. I've used up all my credit--all my chances. The things I counted on didn't come off. You know that that happens sometimes, don't you?--without any one being to blame at all?"

She nodded. "I think I've heard so."

"And now," he went on, eager that she should begin to see what he was leading her up to--"and now I couldn't borrow a thousand dollars in all Boston, unless it was from some one who gave it to me as a charity. I've borrowed from every one--every penny for which I could offer security--and I owe--I owe hundreds of thousands. Do you see now how bad it is?"

"I do see how bad it is, papa. I admit it's worse than I thought. But all the same I know that when people have high reputations other people trust them and help them through. Banks do it, don't they? Isn't that partly what they're for? It was Pierpoint & Hargous who helped Lulu Sentner's father. They stood behind him. She told me so. I'm positive that with your name they'd do as much for you. You take a gloomy outlook because you're ill. But there's no one in Boston--no one in New England--more esteemed or trusted. When one can say, 'All is lost save honor,' then, relatively speaking, there's very little lost at all."

He got up from the table and went to his room. After these words it was physically impossible for him to tell her anything more. He had thought of a means which might bring the fact home to her through the day by a process of suggestion. Packing a small bag with toilet articles and other necessaries, he left it in a conspicuous place.

"I want Reynolds to give it to my messenger in case I send for it," he explained to her, when he had descended to the dining-room again.

She was still sitting where he left her, at the head of the table, pale, pensive, but not otherwise disturbed.

"Does that mean that you're not coming home to-night?"

"I--I don't know. Things may happen to--to prevent me."

"Where should you go?--to New York?"

"No; not to New York."

He half hoped she would press the question, but when she spoke it was only to say:

"I hope you'll try to come home, because I'm sure you're not well. Of course I understand it, now I know you've had so much to upset you. But I wish you'd see Dr. Scott. And, papa," she added, rising, "don't have me on your mind--please don't. I'm quite capable of facing the world without money. You mayn't believe it, but I am. I could do it--somehow. I'm like you. I've a great deal of self-reliance, and a great deal of something else--I don't quite know what--that has never been taxed or called on. It may be pride, but it isn't only pride. Whatever it is, I'm strong enough to bear a lot of trouble. I don't want you to think of me at all in any way that will worry you."

She was making it so hard for him that he kissed her hastily and went away. Her further enlightenment was one more detail that he must leave, as he had left so much else, to fate or God to take care of. For the present he himself had all he could attend to.

Half-way to the gate he turned to take what might prove his last look at the old house. It stood on the summit of a low, rounded hill, on the site made historic as the country residence of Governor Rodney. Governor Rodney's "Mansion" having been sacked in the Revolution by his fellow-townsmen, the neighborhood fell for a time into disrepute under the contemptuous nickname of Tory Hill. On the restoration of order the property, passed by purchase to the Guions, in whose hands, with a continuity not customary in America, it had remained. The present house, built by Andrew Guion, on the foundations of the Rodney Mansion, in the early nineteenth century, was old enough according to New England standards to be venerable; and, though most of the ground originally about it had long ago been sold off in building-lots, enough remained to give an impression of ample outdoor space. Against the blue of the October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was not without a certain stateliness--rectangular, three-storied, mellow, with buff walls, buff chimneys, white doorways, white casements, white verandas, a white balustrade around the top, and a white urn at each of the four corners. Where, as over the verandas, there was a bit of inclined roof, russet-red tiles gave a warmer touch of color. From the borders of the lawn, edged with a line of shrubs, the town of Waverton, merging into Cambridge, just now a stretch of crimson-and-orange woodland, where gables, spires, and towers peeped above the trees, sloped gently to the ribbon of the Charles. Far away, and dim in the morning haze, the roofed and steepled crest of Beacon Hill rose in successive ridges, to cast up from its highest point the gilded dome of the State House as culmination to the sky-line. Guion looked long and hard, first at the house, then at the prospect. He walked on only when he remembered that he must reserve his forces for the day's possibilities, that he must not drain himself of emotion in advance. If what he expected were to come to pass, the first essential to his playing the man at all would lie in his keeping cool.

So, on reaching his office, he brought all his knowledge of the world into play, to appear without undue self-consciousness before his stenographer, his bookkeeper, and his clerks. The ordeal was the more severe because of his belief that they were conversant with the state of his affairs. At least they knew enough to be sorry for him--of that he was sure; though there was nothing on this particular morning to display the sympathy, unless it was the stenographer's smile as he passed her in the anteroom, and the three small yellow chrysanthemums she had placed in a glass on his desk. In the nods of greeting between him and the men there was, or there seemed to be, a studied effort to show nothing at all.

Once safely in his own office, he shut the door with a sense of relief in the seclusion. It crossed his mind that he should feel something of the same sort when locked in the privacy of his cell after the hideous publicity of the trial. From habit as well as from anxiety he went straight to a mirror and surveyed himself again. Decidedly he had changed since yesterday. It was not so much that he was older or more care-worn--he was different. Perhaps he was ill. He felt well enough, except for being tired, desperately tired; but that could be accounted for by the way in which he had spent the night. He noticed chiefly the ashy tint of his skin, the dullness of his eyes, and--notwithstanding the fact that his clothes were of his usual fastidiousness--a curious effect of being badly dressed more startling to him than pain. He was careful to brush his beard and twist his long mustache into its usual upward, French-looking curve, so as to regain as much as possible the air of his old self, before seating himself at his desk to look over his correspondence. There was a pile of letters, of which he read the addresses slowly without opening any of them.

What was the use? He could do nothing. He had come to the end. He had exhausted all the possibilities of the situation. Besides, his spirit was broken. He could feel it. Something snapped last night within him that would never be whole, never even be mended, again. It was not only the material resources under his control that he had overtaxed, but the spring of energy within himself, leaving him no more power of resilience.

An hour may have passed in this condition of dull suspense, when he was startled by the tinkle of his desk telephone. It was with some effort that he leaned forward to answer the call. Not that he was afraid--now; he only shrank from the necessity of doing anything.

"Mr. Davenant would like to see you," came the voice of the stenographer from the anteroom.

There was nothing to reply but, "Ask Mr. Davenant to come in." He uttered the words mechanically. He had not thought of Davenant since he talked with Olivia on the stairs--a conversation that now seemed a curiously long time ago.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. Guion," the visitor said, apologetically, with a glance at the letters on the desk.

"Not at all, my dear fellow," Guion said, cordially, from force of habit, offering his hand without rising from the revolving chair. "Sit down. Have a cigar. It's rather a sharp morning for the time of year."

The use of the conventional phrases of welcome helped him to emerge somewhat from his state of apathy. Davenant declined the cigar, but seated himself near the desk, in one of the round-backed office chairs. Not being a man easily embarrassed by silences, he did not begin to speak at once, and during the minute his hesitation lasted Guion bethought him of Olivia's remark, "That sort of Saxon-giant type is always good-looking." Davenant _was_ good-looking, in a clear-skinned, clear-eyed way. Everything about him spoke of straight-forwardness and strength, tempered perhaps by the boyish quality inseparable from fair hair, a clean, healthily ruddy complexion, and a direct blue glance that rested on men and things with a kind of pensive wondering. All the same, the heavy-browed face on a big, tense neck had a frowning, perhaps a lowering expression that reminded Guion of a young bull before he begins to charge. The lips beneath the fair mustache might be too tightly and too severely compressed, but the smile into which they broke over regular white teeth was the franker and the more engaging because of the unexpected light. If there was any physical awkwardness about him, it was in the management of his long legs; but that difficulty was overcome by his simplicity. It was characteristic of Guion to notice, even at such a time as this, that Davenant was carefully and correctly dressed, like a man respectful of social usages.

"I came in to see you, Mr. Guion," he began, apparently with some hesitation, "about what we were talking of last night."

Guion pulled himself together. His handsome eyebrows arched themselves, and he half smiled.

"Last night? What _were_ we talking of?"

"We weren't talking of it, exactly. You only told us."

"Only told you--what?" The necessity to do a little fencing brought some of his old powers into play.

"That you wanted to borrow half a million dollars. I've come in to--to lend you that sum--if you'll take it."

For a few seconds Guion sat rigidly still, looking at this man. The import and bearing of the words were too much for him to grasp at once. All his mind was prepared to deal with on the spur of the moment was the fact of this offer, ignoring its application and its consequences as things which for the moment lay outside his range of thought.

As far as he was able to reflect, it was to assume that there was more here than met the eye. Davenant was too practised as a player of "the game" to pay a big price for a broken potsherd, unless he was tolerably sure in advance that within the potsherd or under it there lay more than its value. It was not easy to surmise the form of the treasure nor the spot where it was hidden, but that it was there--in kind satisfactory to Davenant himself--Guion had no doubt. It was his part, therefore, to be astute and wary, not to lose the chance of selling, and yet not to allow himself to be overreached. If Davenant was playing a deep game, he must play a deeper. He was sorry his head ached and that he felt in such poor trim for making the effort. "I must look sharp," he said to himself; "and yet I must be square and courteous. That's the line for me to take." He tried to get some inspiration for the spurt in telling himself that in spite of everything he was still a man of business. When at last he began to speak, it was with something of the feeling of the broken-down prize-fighter dragging himself bleeding and breathless into the ring for the last round with a young and still unspent opponent.

"I didn't suppose you were in--in a position--to do that."

"I am." Davenant nodded with some emphasis.

"Did you think that that was what I meant when I--I opened my heart to you last night?"

"No. I know it wasn't. My offer is inspired by nothing but what I feel."