Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman Part 24

"Come in, Phil!" he cried--"Come--_Why, Madeleine!_"

She stood just outside the door, a heavy brown veil tied over her hat, her trim figure half concealed by a long cloak. For an instant she did not speak, nor did she move.

"Yes, it's I, Mr. Gregg," she sobbed. "Are you sure there's n.o.body with you? Oh, I'm so wretched! I had to come: Please let me talk to you. Father told me you had been to see me. He was furious when you went away, and I know how he must have behaved to you." She seemed completely prostrated. Buoyant temperaments pendulate in extremes.

He had drawn her inside now, his arms about her, holding her erect as he led her to a seat with the same tenderness of voice and manner he would have shown his own daughter.

"You poor, dear child!" he cried at last. "Now tell me about it. You know how I love you both."

"Oh, Mr. Gregg, it is so dreadful!" she moaned in piteous tone as she sank upon the cushions of the divan, Adam sitting beside her, her hand tight clasped in his own. "I didn't think Phil would bring all this trouble on us. I would forgive him anything but the way in which he deceived papa. He knew there was no copper in the mine, and he kept saying there was, and went right on speculating and using up everything they had, and then when it was all to be found out he turned coward and ruined everybody--and broke my heart! Oh, the cruel--cruel--" and again she hid her face in the cushions.

"What would you think, little girl, if I told you that I advised him to do it?" he pleaded as he patted her shoulder to quiet her.

"You couldn't do it!" Madeleine burst out in an incredulous tone, raising herself on her elbow to look the better into his eyes. "You _wouldn't_ do it! You are too kind."

"But I did--as much for your sake and your father's and brother's as for his own. All the firm has lost so far is money. That can be replaced. Had Philip not told the truth it would have been their honor. That could never have been replaced."

And then with her hands fast in his, every thought that crossed her mind revealed in her sweet, girlish face, Adam, his big, frank, brown eyes looking into hers, told her the story of Philip's resolve. Not the part which the portrait had played--not one word of that. She would not have understood; then, too, that was Phil's secret, not his, to tell; but the awakening of the dormant nature of an honest man, incrusted with precedents and half-strangled in financial sophistries, to the truth of what lay about him.

"You wouldn't want his lips to touch yours, my child, if they were stained with a lie; nor could you have worn your wedding-gown if the money that paid for it had been stolen. Your father will see it in the same light some day. Then, if he had a dozen daughters he would give every one of them to men like Philip Colton. The boy wants your help now; he is without a penny in the world and has all his life to begin over again. Now he can begin it clean. Get your arms around his neck and tell him you love him and trust him. He needs you more to-day than he will ever need you in all his life."

She had crept closer to him, nestling under his big shoulders. It seemed good to touch him. Somehow there radiated from this man a strength and tenderness which she had never known before: In the tones of his voice, in the feel of his hand, in the restfulness that pervaded his every word and gesture. For the first time, it seemed to her, she realized what it was to have a father.

"And won't you talk to papa again, Mr. Gregg?" she pleaded in a more hopeful voice.

"Yes, if you wish me to, but it would do no good--not now. It is not your father this time, it's you. Will you help Phil make the fight, little girl? You love him, don't you?"

"Oh, with all my heart!"

"Well, then, tell him so. He will be here in a few minutes."

Madeleine sprang from her seat:

"No, I must not see him," she cried in frightened tones; "I promised my father. I came at this time because I knew he would not be here.

Let me go: We are having trouble enough. No--please, Mr. Gregg--no, I must go."

"And what shall I tell Phil?" He dared not persuade her.

"Tell him--tell him--Oh, Mr. Gregg, you know how I love him!"

She was through the curtains and halfway down the corridor before he could reach the door. All the light had come back to her eyes and the spring to her step.

Adam walked to the banisters and listened to the patter of her little feet descending the stairs to the street. Then he went back into the studio and drew the curtains. Thank G.o.d, her heart was all right.

Once more he picked his brushes from the ginger-jar where in his despair he had thrust them. Nothing in the situation had changed. The fear that Madeleine had lost her love for Phil had never troubled him for an instant. Women's hearts did not beat that way. That Phil's future was a.s.sured once he got his feet under him was also a foregone conclusion. What Mr. Eggleston thought about it was another matter, and yet not a serious one. He might be ugly for a time--would be--but that was to be expected in a man who had lost his special capital, a son-in-law and considerable of his reputation at one blow. What had evidently hurt the banker most was the wounding of his pride. He had always stood well with Mr. Stockton--must continue to do so when he realized how many of his other interests depended on his good-will and the trust company's a.s.sistance. Phil had not told Adam this when he went over the scene in the office the morning they closed up the accounts, but Gregg had read between the lines. The one bright ray of sunshine was Madeleine's refusal to break her word to her father. That pleased him most of all.

A knock at the door interrupted his revery. It did not sound like Phil's, but Adam had been deceived once before and he hurried to meet him.

This time a messenger stood outside.

"A note for Mr. Adam Gregg," he said. "Are you the man?"

Adam receipted the slip, dismissed the boy and stepped to the middle of the room under the skylight to see the better. It was from Phil.

"I cannot reach you until late. Have just received a note from the Seaboard Trust Company saying Mr. Stockton wants to see me. More trouble for P. C. & Co., I guess. Hope for good news from Madeleine."

This last note filled his mind with a certain undefined uneasiness.

What fresh trouble had arisen? Had some other securities on which money had been loaned--made prior to Phil's awakening--been found wanting in value? He hoped the boy's past wasn't going to hurt him.

With this new anxiety filling his mind he laid down his brushes--he had not yet touched his canvas--put on his hat and strode out into the street. A breath of fresh air would clear his head--it always did.

For two hours he walked the pavements--up through the Park; out along the edge of the river and back again. With every step there came to him the realization of the parallels existing between his own life's romance and that of Philip's. Some of these were mere creations of his brain; others--especially those which ended in the sacrifice of a man's career for what he considered to be right--had a certain basis of fact. Then a shiver crept over him: For honor he had lost the woman he loved: Was Phil to tread the same weary path and for the same cause? And if fate should be thus cruel would he and Madeleine forget in time and lead their lives anew and apart, or would their souls cry out in anguish as his had done all these years, each day bringing a new longing and each day a new pain: he in all the vigor of his manhood and the full flower of his accomplishment and still alone and desolate.

With these reflections, none of them logical--but all showing the perturbed condition of his mind and his anxiety for those he loved, he mounted the stairs of the building and pushed open the door of his studio.

It had grown quite dark and the studio was filled with shadows. As he crossed to the mantel--he rarely entered the room without pausing for a moment in front of the portrait--Olivia's face, with that strange, wan expression which the fading light always brought to view, seemed to stand out from the frame as if in appeal, a discovery that brought a further sinking of the heart to his already overburdened spirit.

With a quick movement, as if dreading the power of prolonged darkness, he struck a match and flashed up the circle of gas jets, flooding the studio with light.

Suddenly he stopped and swept his eyes rapidly around the room. Some one beside himself was present. He had caught the sound of a slight movement and the murmur of whispering voices. Then a low, rippling laugh fell upon his ears--the notes of a bird singing in the dark, and the next instant Madeleine sprang from behind a screen where she had been hiding and threw her arms around his neck.

"Guess!" she cried, pressing his ruddy cheeks, fresh from his walk, between her tiny palms. "Guess what's happened! Quick!"

The revulsion was so great that for the moment he lost his breath.

"No! you couldn't guess! n.o.body could. Oh, I'm so happy!

_Father's--made--it--up--with--Phil!_"

"Made it up! How do you know?" he stammered.

"Phil's just left him. Come out, Phil!"

Phil's head now peered from behind the screen.

"What do you think of that, Old Gentleman?" he cried, clasping Adam's outstretched hand.

"And there isn't any trouble, Phil, over Mr. Stockton's note?"

exclaimed Gregg in a joyous but baffled tone of voice: he was still completely at sea over the situation.

"Trouble over what?" asked Phil, equally mystified.

"That's what I want to know. You wrote me that it meant more trouble for your firm."

"Yes, but that was before I had seen Mr. Stockton. Then I ran across Mr. Eggleston just as he was coming out of the trust company, and he sent me to Madeleine--and we couldn't get here quick enough. She beat me running up your stairs. Hasn't she told you? And you don't know about Stockton's letter? No! Why, he has offered me the position of head of the bond department of the trust company at a salary of ten thousand a year, and I go to work to-morrow! Here's his letter. Let me read you the last clause:"

"No, let me," cried Madeleine, reaching for the envelope.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "It is all her doing, Phil."]