The Wheel of Life Part 17

"By the way, Laura hates them--she says they have the devil's energy without his intellect."

He laughed indifferently. "Does she? I'll teach her better."

Gerty looked back to protest as she stepped into her carriage. "But you'll never have a chance," she said.

"I'll make one," he persisted, gayly.

From the midst of her fur rugs she leaned out with a provoking little laugh, while he watched her green eyes narrow in an arch and fascinating merriment. "What would you say if I told you she was at home all the time?" she asked. Then before he could remonstrate or reply, she rolled off leaving him transfixed and questioning upon the sidewalk.

Was Laura Wilde really at home? The suspicion piqued him into a curiosity he could not satisfy, and because he could not satisfy it he found himself dwelling with a reawakened interest upon the woman who had avoided him. If she had in truth refused to receive his visit it could mean only that she entertained a dislike for his presence, and for a dislike so evident there must be surely some foundation either in fact or in intuition. No woman, so far as he could remember--and so unusual an occurence would not easily have slipped his memory--had ever begun his acquaintance with a distinctly expressed aversion, and the very strangeness of the experience was not without attraction for his eager and dominant temperament. What a queer little oddity she was, he thought as he glanced up at the grave old house before turning rapidly away--as light and sensitive as thistle-down, as vivid as flame. He tried to recall her delicately distinguished figure and profound dark eyes, but her charming smile seemed to come between him and her features, and her face was obscured for him in a mysterious radiance.

Her features taken in themselves were plain, he supposed, certainly they were not beautiful, yet of her whole appearance his memory held only the fervent charm of her expression. It was a face with a soul in it, he though--all the mystery of flame and of shadow was in her smile, so what mattered the mere surface modelling or the tinting of the skin which was less ivory than pale amber. An hour ago he had been absolutely indifferent, almost forgetful of her existence, but his vanity if not his heart was stung now into an emotion which had in it something of the primitive barbarian ardour of pursuit. He cared nothing--less than nothing--for Laura Wilde herself, yet it was not in his nature that he should suffer in silence before a sudden and unreasonable affront.

Some hours later, when he sat with Adams at dinner, the subject occurred to him again, and he broke in upon a discussion of the varied fortunes of their fellow cla.s.smen to allude directly to the cause of his inquietude.

"By the way, I had the pleasure of meeting a protegee of yours the other afternoon," he said.

Adams met the remark with his whimsical laugh. "Of mine? Thank heaven I haven't any," he retorted, "but I suppose you mean young Trent, who has just come up from Virginia."

"I've heard something of him from Mrs. Bridewell, I believe," answered Kemper across the centrepiece of red carnations, "but I haven't met him as yet--I was thinking of Miss Wilde when I spoke. I wish you'd try this sherry--it's really first rate--I brought it over myself."

When Wilkins had filled his gla.s.s, Adams lifted it against the light and looked at the colour of the wine a moment before drinking. "First rate--I should say so. It's exquisite," he observed as he touched it to his lips in answer to Kemper's glance of enquiry. "Yes, she's done some rather fine things," he resumed presently, returning to the subject of Laura, "but she'll hardly make a popular appeal, I fancy, unless she turns her talent to patriotic airs. The only poetry we tolerate to-day is the poetry that serves some definite material purpose--it must either send us into battle or set us to building churches. The simple spirit of contemplation we've come to regard as a pauperising habit and it puts us out of patience. Great poetry grows out of quiet and n.o.body is quiet any longer--a thought no sooner creeps into our head than we begin to talk about it at the top of our voice."

The branched candlestick at the end of the table shed a glimmering, pearly light upon his face, and Kemper, as he watched him critically, was struck suddenly by the fact that Adams was no longer young. He could not be over forty, yet his features had the drawn and pallid look of a man who has known, not only ill health, but the shock of emotional catastrophes. Physically he appeared worn to the point of exhaustion, but if there was pathos in the slight, elastic figure, there was also an impression of power for which the other found it impossible to account.

By mere bodily force Kemper could have thrown Adams from the window with one hand, he realised with a perfectly amiable self-congratulation--yet in Adams' presence he invariably felt himself to be the weaker man, and the att.i.tude he unconsciously adopted showed an almost boyish recognition of a superior intelligence. Something in Roger Adams--a quality which was neither brute strength nor imperious personality--exerted a power which Kemper generously admitted to be greater even than these. Nothing in the man was conspicuous--he exercised no dominant magnetism--but the invisible spirit which controlled his life, controlled also, in a measure, the thoughts of those who came directly beneath his influence. Was it true, Kemper now wondered, as Perry Bridewell had once declared with unspeakable mirth, that the thing he liked in Adams was, after all, merely simple goodness in a manifest form? Goodness in a masculine personality had always appeared to Kemper to be ridiculously out of place--a masquerading feminised virtue--but at this instant as he drank to Adams' health across the carnations, he felt again the power of an attraction which possessed a sweetness that made his past "wine and honey" sicken in his memory. "Is it possible that what I admire in this man is the quality I have laughed at all my life?" he found himself asking suddenly; and the power of self-restraint, the grace of denial, the strength which could do without, though it could not take the thing it wanted, the quietness of sacrifice, the sweetened humour that is learned only in sorrow--these showed to him at the moment in a singularly new and vivid light. "I know nothing of his life except that he has had courage," he thought again, "yet because of this one thing--and because, too, of a quality which I recognise, though I cannot name it, I would trust him sooner than any man or woman whom I know--sooner, by Jove, than I would trust myself."

Among his many generous traits was the ability to appreciate keenly where he could not follow, to apprehend almost instinctively the finer attributes of the spirit, and though he himself preferred the pleasures of the senses to the vaguer comforts of philosophy, he was not without a profound admiration for the man who, as he believed, had deliberately chosen to forfeit the joy of life. Roger Adams impressed him to-night as a peculiarly happy man--not with the hectic happiness he himself had sought--but with a secure, a reposeful, an indestructible possession--the happiness which comes not through the illusion of desire, but which is bound up in the peace of an eternal reconciliation.

The man beyond the carnations, he knew by an intuition surer than knowledge, had never even for an hour dallied in the primrose path where his own pursuit of delight had begun and ended--he could not imagine Adams' control yielding to a fleeting impulse of pa.s.sion--yet had not the very power he recognised come to his friend in the stony places through which he had been constrained to walk with G.o.d? Sitting there Kemper was brought suddenly for the first time in his life face to face with the profoundest truth that lies hidden in the deeps of knowledge--that renunciation may become the richest experience in the consciousness of man; that to renounce for the sake of goodness is not merely to refrain from sin but to achieve virtue; and that he who gives up his happiness and is still happy has gained not only the beauty of his forfeited joys, but has added to his own a strength that is equal to the strength of his unfulfilled desire. Kemper had always believed himself strong because he had attained, yet he knew now that Adams was stronger than he inasmuch as he had gone without for the sake of his own soul.

From his reflections, which were dimly like these, Kemper came back abruptly to his memory of Laura. "Do you know," he said, speaking to himself rather than to his companion, "that she really interests me very much indeed."

"Well, she is interesting," laughed Adams, "in spite of the fact that Perry finds her rather dull. He complains that she doesn't talk like a book, which is a trifle odd when you consider that he has never read one."

"What I like about her is that she's different," said Kemper. "She is, isn't she?"

"Different from other people? Yes, I dare say she is, but all the Wildes are that, you know. She comes of an eccentric stock. Did you ever happen to meet her aunt, Mrs. Payne?"

Kemper nodded as he leaned forward to make a division in the centre of the intervening carnations, "The old lady who looks like a chorus girl in her dotage? Yes, I've had the pleasure and I found her decidedly better than she looked. Her husband, by the way, is a great old chap, isn't he? He held the biggest share in iron last spring and I guess he has made a pretty figure."

"He's a philosopher who got into the stock market by mistake," observed Adams. "I believe he would have been perfectly happy if he could have owned a single farm, a cow or two and a pair of horses to his plough, but he's condemned to bear the uncongenial weight of millions, and I hear that he has even to give his charities in secret. I never look at him that I don't think of Marcus Aurelius oppressed by the burden of the whole Roman Empire."

Kemper was peeling a pear, which he had taken from a dish upon the table, and he laid down his knife for a moment to push aside his cup of coffee.

"Has he any children?" he asked abruptly.

"Two--both sons and gay young birds, I'm told."

"Then Miss Wilde will hardly come in for a share of the burden?"

"Hardly. The sons will probably dissipate a good half of it before it reaches them."

"It's a pity," said Kemper thoughtfully; and having finished his pear, he dipped his fingers in his finger bowl, moistened his short moustache, and turned to take a cigar from the little silver tray which Wilkins held before him. "Do you know I can't imagine a greater happiness than the quick acc.u.mulation of wealth," he observed in his hearty voice.

Adams laughed aloud with a merriment that was almost boyish. "Well, I dare say you come in for your part of it," he returned, while he flicked the ashes from his cigar.

"I?" Kemper shook his head without a smile. "Oh, I acc.u.mulate nothing except habits. I make and I spend--I win and I lose--and on my word I'm no richer to-day than I was ten years ago. I've made a fortune in a day," he added regretfully, "to lose it in an hour."

A glow had sprung to his face, and as he spoke he leaned his elbow on the table, and closing his eyes inhaled the delicious aroma of his cigar. Finance interested him always--wealth in its material ma.s.s had a tremendous attraction for him, and he loved not only the sound of figures but the clink of coin. Though he was a lavish liver when it suited his impulses, the modern regard for money as a concrete possession--a personal distinction--was strong in his blood; but here, as in other ways, he was redeemed from positive vulgarity by the very candour with which he confessed his weakness. He drifted presently into stocks, and they sat talking until eleven o'clock, when Adams, after glancing in surprise at the hour, remarked, with a laugh, that he had forgotten he no longer boasted the const.i.tution of his college days. It had been a pleasant evening to both, and as Kemper threw off his coat a little later, he found himself reflecting, not without wonder, that the quiet--the absolute inaction of the last few hours had refreshed rather than bored him. On the whole he was inclined to admit that he liked Adams better than any man he knew--liked his a.s.sured self-possession, his indifference to small creature comforts; liked, too, the quiet tolerance which characterised his human relations--and he impulsively determined that he would arrange to see him often during the next few years. It was time now, he concluded with an admirable midnight resolution, while he struggled in exasperation to unfasten his collar, that he himself should begin to pay a due regard to his health--to restrict his indulgences; and he drew an agreeable picture of the consolation that Adams' friendship might afford to an abstemious man of middle age. "By Jove--confound this b.u.t.ton--there, I've twisted it like the deuce--by Jove, it is refreshing to be thrown with a chap who is interested in something besides women and horses--who finds other objects--or subjects if you choose--suffice for his entertainment." For the first time in his life he found himself wishing regretfully that at least a share of his own enjoyments had a.s.sumed a character which belonged less exclusively to the external world. The joy in knowledge, the delight in contemplation were unknown to him, though he was dimly aware that for another man they might prove to be an unfailing, a permanent solace. But his virtues were the magnificent virtues of the animal, and amid the many warring impulses of the body there was but little room for a more gracious development of the soul. He had lived for the world and the world had repaid him as she repays all her lovers with the fruit which is rarely bitter before the fortieth year.

Adams, meanwhile, had walked rapidly home, thinking with enthusiasm that Kemper was a thoroughly good fellow. His social pleasures were few, and he had enjoyed the fine wine and the choice cigars as a man enjoys a taste for luxury which he seldom gratifies. He had expected to find Connie still out, but to his surprise there was a sound on the staircase as he entered the front door, and she came rapidly to meet him, her blonde hair hanging upon her shoulders and the soiled white silk dressing-gown she wore trailing on the carpeted steps behind her.

"I was all alone and I've been so frightened," she said with a sob.

He took her hand, which felt dead and cold, and grasped it warmly while he turned to fasten the outer door.

"Why, I thought you were at the theatre," he responded. "I've been to dine with Kemper, but heaven knows I'd have stayed at home if you'd told me you meant to keep me company."

A shudder ran through her, and he saw when he turned to look at her, that her face was pinched and blue as if from cold. In her white gown, under her tangled fair hair, she had a ghastly look like one just awakened from a fearful dream. But she was very little--so little in her terror and her blighted prettiness that his heart contracted as it would have done at the sight of a suffering child.

"I say, little girl, what is it all about?" he asked gently, and as she swayed unsteadily, he put his arm around her and drew her against his side. "Wait a minute while I turn out the light," he added cheerfully, pressing the electric b.u.t.ton with his free hand. Then holding her closer in a steadying support, they ascended together the darkened staircase.

"I went to the theatre, but I was so ill I couldn't stay," she said, and he felt the heavy breaths that laboured through the thin figure within his arm. "Oh, I am in agony--in agony and I am so afraid."

She began crying in loud, uncontrollable sobs as a child cries when it is hurt, protesting that she was afraid--that she was fearfully afraid.

He felt her terror struggling like a live thing within her--like an imprisoned animal that could not find an escape into the light. Her hysteria was almost akin to madness, and the form it took was one of a blind presentiment of evil--as if she felt always in the air about her the presence of an invisible, unspeakable horror. Half dragging, half carrying her, he crossed the hall to her room, and laid her upon the bed, which was tumbled as if she had lain tossing wildly there for hours. Every electric jet was blazing high, and Connie's evening clothes were lying in a huddled heap upon the floor. There was a sickening smell of perfume in the room, and he saw that she had broken a bottle of extract and spilled its contents upon the carpet.

"Tell me what it is--tell me, Connie," he commanded, rather than pleaded, sitting beside the bed and laying his hand upon her shuddering body.

"It is nothing--but it is everything," she gasped, clutching his hand with fingers which were cold and moist. "I am not in pain--at least not physically, but I feel--I believe--I know that I am going mad. I see horrible things and I can't keep them away--I can't--I can't. They come in flashes--in coloured flashes, all red and green, and there is something dreadful about to happen to me. Oh, don't let it, don't let it!"

She clung to him, shuddering, sobbing, imploring, moaning again that she was afraid, beseeching him to keep off the horror--not to let it come any nearer--not to let it look her in the eyes. The spasm ended at last in a wild burst of tears, while she shrieked out frantically in a terror that was pitiable and abject. Her hallucinations seemed to have got entirely beyond the control of reason, and as she crouched, with drawn up knees and quivering arms, among the pillows she looked like some small helpless, distracted mortal in the grasp of the avenging furies.

At the moment she seemed to him less his wife than his child.

"Listen to me, Connie," he said presently in a voice whose quiet authority silenced for an instant her despairing moans. "You haven't a trouble on earth that I am not willing to share and I am sharing this--I have made it mine this very minute. Whatever there is to face, I'll face it for you, so get this into your head and go to sleep. Nothing can get to you--neither man nor devil--until it has first pa.s.sed by me. There, now--don't sob so; don't, you'll hurt yourself. There's nothing to cry about--it's all a false alarm."

"I'm so afraid," she repeated over and over again, as she clung to him.

"Promise not to leave me an instant--not to take your hands off of me.

If I am left alone again I shall die of fear."

"You shall not be alone, I swear it," he answered with cheerful a.s.surance. "Lie quiet and I'll sit here the whole blessed night if it's any comfort."

"It is a comfort," she answered; and her words entered his ears with a piercing sweetness, which was not unlike the sweetness of love. Love it was indeed, he knew now, but a love so s.e.xless, so dispa.s.sionate that its joys were like the joys of religion. The tenderness that flooded his breast was less the emotion of man for woman than of the soul for the soul, and the wife whom he had ceased to love in the world's way was nearer to him, more closely, more divinely his, than she had been in the hour of his greatest ecstasy. The appeal she made to him now, lying there helpless, distraught and unlovely, was an appeal which is woven of the strongest fibres in the heart of man--the appeal to the immortal soul to arise and discover its immortality. Connie cried out to him to save her--to save her from the world, from herself, from the hovering powers of evil, and he knew now that his joy in the hour of her salvation would be as the joy of the angels in heaven. He would fight for her as he had never fought for his own life, and he felt suddenly that there was nothing upon the earth nor in the sky that was strong enough to contend against the power of his compa.s.sion. All lesser desires or emotions shrank before it and vanished utterly away--his ambition, his longing for health wherewith to work, the increasing ardour of his love for Laura--these were as naught before the bond which united him to the terrified, small soul that trembled beneath his hands.

And immediately that goodness at which Kemper or Perry Bridewell would have laughed--the goodness which is spirit, which both builds and destroys, which knows no law except the divine law of its own being; in which there is neither the whitened surface nor the loud self-glorification of the Pharisee--the goodness which is a pure flame, a consuming pa.s.sion--this appeared to his eyes in all its alluring beauty. The way of it was hard, he knew, a way of service, of self-sacrifice, and yet the one way of happiness as well. This lesson he had learned from himself--for it is the thing that no man can teach another--and because it had come to him from himself he knew that it had come to him from G.o.d.

"I made a plan on the way home to-night," he said, keeping his firm touch upon her throbbing temples. "To-morrow I shall arrange for a fortnight's absence at the office and the next day I'll take you South.

There you'll stay out of doors and get well again. The flesh will come back to your body and the colour to your cheeks.

"I shall never be pretty again--never," she moaned, as he held her.

"Nonsense. You're a trifle pale and f.a.gged that's all--but we'll have you a beauty again before two weeks are up."