The Scarlet Feather Part 23

Mrs. Swinton returned to the rector, who was waiting in the library, with set face and clenched hands, pacing up and down like a caged beast. The increased whiteness of his hair and the extreme pallor of his skin gave to his sorrow-shadowed eyes an extraordinary brilliancy. His lips moved incessantly as thoughts, surging in his brain, demanded physical utterance. At intervals, he would wring his hands and look upward appealingly, like a man struggling in the toils of a temptation too great to be mastered. A long period of worry and embarra.s.sment had broken his spirit. He was fated with the first real calamity that had ever overtaken him. With money difficulties, he was familiar. They scarcely touched his conscience. But, in this matter of his son's honor, the divergent roads of right and wrong were clearly defined; unhappily, he was not strong enough fearlessly to tread the path of virtue.

His wife's arguments seemed unanswerable. Indeed, whenever she was near, he hopelessly surrendered himself to her guidance. He knew perfectly well that the only proper course for a man of G.o.d was to go forth into the market-place and proclaim his son's innocence, to the shame of his wife, of himself, and of his daughter. It was not a question of precise justice. It was a plain issue between G.o.d and the devil. But Mary had pursued the policy of throwing dust in his eyes, and led him blindly along the road where he was bound to sink deeper and deeper into the mire.

When the love of wife conflicts with the love of child, a father is between the horns of a dilemma. The woman was living; the boy dead. The arguments were overpoweringly plausible. Mrs. Swinton had her life to live through; whereas d.i.c.k's trials were ended. And would a suspicious world believe he shared his wife's plunder without knowing how it was obtained? In addition, Netty's future would certainly be overshadowed to a cruel extent.

The arguments of the woman were, indeed, unanswerable: the misery of it was that the whole thing resolved itself into a simple question of right and wrong. As a clergyman of the church he could not countenance a lie, live a lie, and stand idly by while Herresford compelled the bank to refund the money stolen from them by his wife.

He had naturally argued the matter out with her, in love, in anger, in piteous appeal. It always came around to the same thing in the end--a compromise. The seven thousand dollars must be paid to the miser, if it took the rest of their lives to raise it; if they starved, and denied themselves common necessities. And Herresford must say that he drew the checks for innocent d.i.c.k.

His wife agreed with him on these points; but on the question of confessing their sin--their joint sin it had become now--she was obdurate. She had yielded to his entreaties so far as to face the ordeal of an interview with her father, she agreed to the most painful economies; but further she would not go.

If Herresford consented to add lie to lie, and to exonerate d.i.c.k by acknowledging the checks, all might yet be well.

Now, when his wife came in, with flushed face and lips working in anger, he cried out, tremulously:

"Well, Mary?"

"It is useless, worse than useless!" she answered. "He is quite impossible, as I told you."

"Then, he will not lend us the money?"

"No, indeed, no. Worse, John, he knows."

"Knows what?"

"That I did it. He understood d.i.c.k well enough, in spite of his wicked abuse of him, and he had made him his heir. He accused me of altering the checks, and--I couldn't deny it."

"Mary! Mary! You have ruined all. He will denounce us."

"No, he doesn't intend to do that, John. He knows the torture we are enduring, and he wants it to go on. He means to let the bank lose the money."

"Then, the burden of the guilt still rests on the shoulders of our dead son."

"Oh, don't, John--don't put it like that! I've borne enough--I can't bear much more. I think I'm going mad. My brain throbs, everything goes dim before my sight, and my heart leaps, and shooting pains--"

She tottered forward into her husband's arms. He clasped her close, drawing her to him and pressing kisses on her cheeks.

"My darling, my darling, be strong. It is not ended yet."

"Take me home, John--take me home!" she sobbed.

"No, I'll see the old man myself."

"John! John! It'll do no good--I beseech you! I cannot trust you out of my sight. I never know what you may do or what you will say. I know it's hard for you to go against your principles; but you mustn't absolutely kill me. I should die, John, if you played traitor to me, your wife, and allowed me to be sent to jail."

"Don't Mary--don't!" he groaned.

"When a man leaves his father and mother, he cleaves unto his wife: and, when I left my home, John, I was faithful and true to you. It was for you that I stooped to the trick which I now realize was a crime which my father uses as a whip to lash me with. We must live it down, John. The bank people are rich. It won't hurt them much--whereas confession would annihilate us."

"The money must be paid back," he cried resolutely, striking the air with his clenched fist, while he held her to him with the other arm.

"It's impossible, John, impossible. We cannot pay back without explaining why."

"We must atone--for d.i.c.k's sake. No man shall say that our son robbed him of money without compensation from us, his parents. Let us go home, Mary, and begin from to-day. The rectory must be given up. It must be let furnished, and the servants dismissed. We must go into some cheap place."

"Yes, let us go home, John. You'll talk more reasonably there, and see things in another light."

The man listened, and allowed himself to be led. This was as it had been always; but it could not go on forever. Deep down in John Swinton's vacillating nature, there was the spirit of a martyr.

CHAPTER XVIII

A SECOND PROPOSAL

Dora was undetermined in her att.i.tude toward d.i.c.k's enemy, who, for her sake, was ready to become his friend and save his name from public disgrace. She had a poor opinion of a man who was willing to further his own suit by making concessions to a rival, even though that rival were dead; but her att.i.tude of mind toward d.i.c.k was changing slowly under outside influence--as it was bound to do with a clear-headed girl, trained to the strict code of honor that exists among military men concerning other people's money. A soldier who had committed forgery could never hold up his head again in the eyes of his regiment, or of the woman he loved. He voluntarily made himself an outcast.

The colonel did not fail to drive home the inevitable moral, and congratulated himself upon his daughter's escape. Dora was obliged to acknowledge that d.i.c.k, if not a villain, was at least a fool. The sorrow he had brought upon his father and mother was alone sufficient to warrant the heartiest condemnation. The colonel was never tired of commenting on the awful change in the mother's appearance and the blight upon John Swinton, who went about like a condemned man, evading his friends, and scarcely daring to look his parishioners in the face.

There had been talk of a memorial service in the parish church, but nothing came of it. Its abandonment was looked upon as a tacit recognition of a painful situation, which would only be augmented by a public parade of sorrow.

Ormsby treated Dora with the greatest consideration. No lover could have been more sympathetic--not a word about d.i.c.k Swinton or the seven thousand dollars. He laid himself out to please, and self-confidence made him almost gay--if gaiety could ever be a.s.sociated with a man so somber and proud. The colonel persisted in throwing his daughter and the banker together in a most marked fashion, and Ormsby was at much pains to ignore the father's blundering diplomacy.

As a result of his skilled tactics, Dora had ceased to shrink away from him--because she no longer feared that he would make love to her. She laughed at her father's insinuations, because it was easier to laugh than to go away and cry. She put a brave face on things--for d.i.c.k's sake. She did not want it to be thought that he had spread around more ruin and misery than already stood to his credit at the rectory. Pride played its part. She supposed Ormsby understood that the idea of his being a lover was absurd. In this, she was rudely awakened one evening after the banker had dined at the house.

The colonel pleaded letters to write, and begged Dora to play a little and entertain their guest.

"Ormsby loves a cigarette over the fire, Dora, and he's fond of music. I shall be able to hear you up in the study."

Ormsby added his entreaties, and the colonel left them alone.

Dora was in a black evening-gown. It heightened the pallor of her skin, and made her look extremely slender and tall. Ormsby, whose clothes always fitted him like a uniform, looked his best in evening dress, with his black hair and dark eyes. His haughty bearing and stern, handsome features went well with the severe lines of his conventional attire. The colonel paused at the door before going out, and looked at the two on whom his hopes were now centred--Ormsby standing on the hearth-rug, straight as a dart, and Dora offering him the cigarette-box with a natural, sweet grace that was instinctive with her. He nodded in approval as he looked. Dora was an unfailing joy to him. She pleased his eye as she might have pleased a lover. He was proud of her, too, of her fearlessness, her tact, her womanliness, and, above all, her air of breeding. She certainly looked charming to-night, a fitting chatelaine for the n.o.blest mansion.

As the colonel remained in the doorway, still staring, Dora turned her head with a smile.

"What are you looking at, father?"

"I was only thinking," said the colonel bluntly, "what a magnificent pair you two would make if you would only bring your minds to join forces, instead of always fencing and standing on ceremony like two proud peac.o.c.ks."

"My mind requires no making up, colonel," responded Ormsby quickly, with an appealing, almost humble glance at Dora.

"Father, what nonsense you talk!" cried she, changing color and trembling so much that the cigarettes spilled upon the floor.

The colonel shut the door without further comment, and left them alone.

"How stupid of me," murmured Dora, seeking to cover her confusion by picking up the cigarettes.