A Top-Floor Idyl Part 34

We sat there for some long minutes, in silence. Gordon was thinking deeply. His expression, the abandonment shown in the looseness of his limbs and the falling forward of his head, were instinct with something that represented to me a forgetting of pose and calculated conduct.

"I've seen so much suffering," he suddenly said. "That sort of thing either hardens a man into stone or softens his heart till he can cry out in hatred of the idea of inflicting pain that can be spared."

I made no answer. It was best to chance no interruption of his mood. My thoughts were of the meeting that would take place in a few minutes.

Indeed, I felt that I ought not to be there, that my presence might hinder some cry of the heart, words a woman's soul might dictate. But I was compelled to remain, since Gordon wished me to. He was now like a child needing the comfort of a friendly hand before entering a place of darkness. But I would seize the first opportunity of leaving them alone.

At any rate, I could cross the long studio and go into the next room, if needed.

Then the bell rang. I think it startled Gordon. The old woman went to the door, and we heard the girl asking for Mr. McGrath, in her pleasant and a.s.sured voice. I rose to meet her, lifting one of the portieres to one side.

She looked at me, slightly surprised, but put out her hand, smiling rather vaguely, her eyes belying the calmness of her voice, her movements showing slight nervousness. Gordon was standing. I expected him to come forward, but he remained where he was, rather helplessly, and she stepped forward toward him, swiftly.

"h.e.l.lo, Gordon!" she exclaimed. "I'm so glad to see you again. What a bad boy you've been not to write to me! That--that only letter of yours implied that you gave me back my freedom, and so I suppose I am at liberty to consider myself as a little sister--or a pretty big one, and greet you as one."

With a swift motion of her hand she pushed up the tiny transparent veil she wore, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him, quickly, as if he really had been a brother she was delighted to see again. Then she sat down on the stool he had used to put his palette and tubes on and turned to me.

"It isn't very conventional, Mr. Cole," she said, with a little laugh that sounded forced. "Gordon and I have already kissed one another a few times. Once more will make no difference. I have done nothing to prevent him from at least continuing to consider me as a good friend, perhaps as the sister I've been playing at. Of course we'll have to give it up, now, because--because people can't keep on playing all the time and--and others wouldn't understand. I don't mind you, because you wrote that wonderful book and--and you seem to know so many things."

Then she turned to him again.

"Now tell me about yourself, Gordon," she said pleasantly, folding her hands upon her lap.

He had remained standing. An instinct of shyness, something like the humiliation of the man imperfectly clad or conscious of an ugly blemish, made him keep his right arm behind him.

"There--there's not much to tell," he began, rather haltingly, though he soon regained control. "I've come back because I could no longer be any good over there and--and because I became hungry for a sight of old things--and of old friends, I suppose. You--you're awfully kind, you--you've always been a splendid woman--a proud one, too, but now you come here and put out your hand in friendship to--to a fellow who has behaved rottenly to you. No, don't say anything! Dave used that word. He sometimes speaks to the point. I'll tell you everything. It will hurt you, I'm afraid, as it hurts me, but I've got to do it and I will beg your pardon afterwards. It was all a plan on my part, at first. You were a wonderful, gorgeous creature, one to whom any man would be attracted, and I thought you would make a grand wife and a great stepping-stone to the ambitions that filled my stupid head. And then, somehow, these all went by the board, and a pa.s.sion came to me--yes, a pa.s.sion like the week's or the month's insanity that comes to some, for another woman.

She is a good woman and a very beautiful one also, the sort of woman who, like yourself, deserves the best and n.o.blest in the man whose love she may return. And she refused me, quickly, sharply, with just a word or two. I think she also thought I was insane; I remember that she looked frightened. And then I wrote to you, a beastly letter. I tore up a score of them and sent the worst, I'm afraid. Then I took the steamer and went off to drive up and down those roads. It--it has, perhaps, been good for me, for I've seen how little a man himself amounts to, and how great and n.o.ble his heart and soul may be. And that pa.s.sion pa.s.sed away, so that I no longer thought of her, but always I grew hot and angry at myself, when I remembered you. I've seen you before me a good many times, yes, even in that hospital they took me to, a few weeks ago, during the nights when I couldn't sleep. It was a great vision of a fine woman, big-hearted and strong, too good for such a cad as I. No, don't interrupt! I felt that it was fortunate for you, the best thing that ever happened, that I had shown myself to you under my true colors and saved you--saved you from marrying me. That madness has gone long ago, and there's no trace of it left in me, I swear, but I'm the same impossible Gordon, I daresay, except for that missing hand."

He slowly brought the maimed limb forward, but she never looked at it.

Her eyes were upon his, very shiny with unshed tears.

"Yes, the same old Gordon, with perhaps a little of his silly pose gone, with a realization of his uselessness and worthlessness. And now I humbly beg your pardon, Sophia--I mean Miss Van Rossum, for I have forfeited every t.i.tle to your forbearance--I no longer deserve it.

And--and now I stand before you with my soul naked and ashamed, and--and Dave will see you to the door, for--for he's a good man, fit to touch any woman's hand!"

His legs seemed to weaken under him. His left hand sought the window-ledge behind him, and he sank on the seat beneath. She rose from the stool and went to him, sitting down at his side, and put her hand on his right arm.

"You have been very unhappy, Gordon," she said gently. "I am not sure that you have the right perspective as yet, and I don't see in all this anything to prevent our remaining good friends. We've had so many of the good things of life, you and I, and, perhaps, it is good for one to pay for them with a little sorrow. It may prevent one from getting too conceited. And you're so much better off than if this--this hurt had come just in wrecking a motor, or in being stepped on by a polo pony, because you will always realize that it happened while you were giving the best of yourself towards helping others, towards doing big things.

And perhaps, some day, you might be able to paint again. They--they make such wonderful artificial things, I have heard, with aluminum and--and stuff that's ever so light. It might take you a whole year of practice before you could do anything; but what is a year when one's heart isn't too sad and weary. Even if you can't draw as well as you used to, you could take to landscapes, done broadly and strongly. There is no one who can ma.s.s colors and produce such effects as you are able to find. When you get confidence, I know you will be able to draw also, ever so well, and, perhaps, for your first trial, you will let me come and sit here and we'll chat together as we used to, and you'll paint again."

"Never!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, yes, sometime, I'm sure, when you feel better, Gordon, because you will forgive yourself after a time. That's so much harder for a man to do than to obtain the pardon of a woman! If you really think you want mine, it is yours, with all my heart, and----"

But she stopped, looking at him wistfully, her long lashes wet, her voice faintly tremulous. I knew that she would have granted him not only the pardon he had sued for, but also her strong and n.o.ble self, if he had begged for it.

He probably forgot his missing hand, for he swept the silk-wrapped thing across his eyes.

"You must think again, Sophia," he said very slowly. "You can't really mean it. Do you indeed feel that you can forgive me? Is it true that in your heart there is such charity?"

"It--I don't think it's charity, Gordon. I--I'm afraid it's something more than that. Perhaps you don't know as much as you think about women's hearts. Ask our friend David, here, he has looked into them very wisely, or he couldn't have written 'Land o' Love.' And now I think I must be going away. You mustn't use that word charity again, it is one that hurts just the least little bit. It's so dreadfully inexpressive, you know! And--and you'll write to me when you want me, won't you?"

"I want you now!" he cried. "I'd give the last drop of my blood for a shred of hope, for the knowledge that things might again, some day----"

"One moment, Gordon dear," she said, smiling through her tears, and looked into a tiny gold-meshed bag from which she pulled out a ring with a glistening stone. "I have always kept it. Do you mean that you would like me to put it on again?"

"Do, for the love of G.o.d!" he cried.

"Yes, and of dear old Gordon," she consented gently.

So I rose, quickly, with something very big and uncomfortable in my throat, and looked at my watch.

"I must run," I said. "I am ever so late. I'll come in again to-morrow, Gordon! G.o.d bless you both!"

I only heard, confusedly, the word or two with which they sought to detain me, but I ran away.

She had said that I knew women's hearts. G.o.d forgive her! What man on earth can penetrate such things, can ever gauge the depths of them, see all the wondrous beauty that may hide in them and blossom forth, full of awe and wonder. Every one must worship something, if it be but an idea, and my reverence goes out to the woman who exalts, to the mother of men, to the consoler, for, when she is at her highest and best, she becomes an object of veneration among such earthly things as we may bend a knee to.

The man had remained strong in his abas.e.m.e.nt, and the woman had seen it.

She had been unembarra.s.sed by my presence. Hers was the strength that spurns all pettiness. She knew that I loved Gordon and was a.s.sured of my regard for herself. If in her words there had been renunciation and the casting away of wounded pride, if in them there had been the surging of the great love that had long filled her heart, the whole world was welcome to hear them and to behold her while she gave her troth again into the man's keeping. She had risen above the smallness of recrimination, and, with a gesture, had swept away the past since in it there was nothing really shameful, nothing that could soil her ermine coat of fair and clean womanhood. Her faith in the man had returned, and, with it, the confidence born of her instinctive knowledge of a pure woman's mastery over men. She knew that Gordon had beheld those visions of h.e.l.l that strengthen a man's dire need of heaven, and so, in all simplicity and with the wondrous openhandedness of a Ceres sowing abroad a world's supply of germinating seed, she had cast the treasure of herself before him.

I jumped into a taxi and drove over to the little apartment where Baby Paul was to lie motherless for a few days. I rang the bell and heard Eulalie's heavy steps, hurrying to the door.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I am so glad you have come, but I was hoping it was Monsieur the doctor!"

Whereat I rushed in, filled with alarm.

CHAPTER XXIV

"THE MOTHER AND CHILD"

Little Paul, as I immediately saw as soon as I looked at him, was very ill. He had, of late, always shown pleasure at my coming; he had babbled of simple things and of mysteries; his little arms spontaneously came to me and I would take him in my arms and get moist kisses from his tiny lips and dandle him and share in his ecstasies over woolly lambs.

Porter came in a few minutes later and declared the trouble to be a beginning of measles. Eulalie acknowledged that, a week or ten days before, Baby Paul had come in contact with a blotchy infant in the Park.

She had s.n.a.t.c.hed him up and carried him away, after which she had thought no more about it. We sent at once for a trained nurse, whom Eulalie at first considered as an intruder with evil intentions, but whose gentle ministrations soon won her heart.

"Am I to send immediately for Mrs. Dupont?" I asked the doctor.

"It doesn't look like a very severe case," he answered, "but it might be better to communicate with her."

A few minutes later I had Frances on the long-distance telephone, greatest of marvels. I stood in her little hallway in New York, and over in Buffalo, a half a thousand miles away or so, I heard her dear voice becoming excited and tremulous.

"I simply must sing to-night," she was saying, "but from the concert-hall I will rush to the station and take the train. No, don't take the trouble to meet me, David dear, for I'll jump in a taxi and come ever so quick, but you can be at the apartment, if you like. No, I can't tell you the exact time, but it will be the first train after eleven o'clock. You can look in the time table and find out when it reaches New York. Thank you a thousand times, David dear!"

When I announced my intention of remaining all night at the flat, Eulalie gave a clamorous sigh of relief. She proposed to make a bed for me on the sofa. She regretted that she had but a much worn pair of her slippers she could offer me, vast pedic recipients she brought me apologetically and which I felt compelled to decline. She insisted I should use a rug to wrap around my legs, because that woman in the cap persisted in leaving the window open. She wanted to know what she could prepare for my supper?