Cynthia Wakeham's Money

XXIII.

A GROWING HORROR

"There are some men who fill you from the beginning with a feeling of revulsion. Such a one was Antony Harding. When he came into the parlor where I sat, I felt it difficult to advance and greet him with the necessary formalities, so forcibly did I shrink from his glance, his smile, his bow of easy assurance. Not that he was ugly of feature, or possessed of any very distinguishing marks in face or form to render him personally repulsive. He was what some might have called good-looking, and many others a gentlemanly-appearing man. But to me he was simply revolting, and I could not then or now tell why, for, as far as I know, he has never done anything incompatible with his standing as a gentleman and a man of family and wealth.

"He had some claim upon my father, and desired very much to see him. I, who could not dispute that claim, was going to call my father, when Mr. Harding stopped me, thinking, I really believe, that he would not see me again, and I was forced, greatly against my will, to stand and answer some half-dozen innocent enough questions, while his eyes roamed over my features and took in the scar I turned towards him as a sort of defence. Then he let me go, but not before I saw in him the beginning of that fever which made me for a while hate the very name of love.

"With a sense of disgust quite new to me, I rushed from the room to the laboratory. The name by which he had introduced himself was a strange one to me, and I had no idea my father would see him. But as soon as I uttered the word Harding, the impatience with which he always met any interruption gave way to a sudden and irresistible joy, and, jumping up from his seat, he cried:

"'Show him up! show him up. He is a rich man and interested in chemistry. He cannot but foresee the fame which awaits the man who brings to light the discovery I am seeking.'

"'He says he has some claim on you,' I murmured, anything but pleased at this prospect of seeing a man whose presence I so disliked, inveigled into matters which might demand his reappearance in the house.

"'Claims? claims? Perhaps he has; I cannot remember. But send him up; I shall soon make him forget any claims he may have.'

"I did as my father bade me. I sent the smiling, dapper, disagreeably attentive man to the laboratory, and when this was done, went to the window and threw it up with some vague idea of cleansing the room from an influence which stifled me.

"You may imagine then with what a sense of apprehension I observed that my father fairly glowed with delight when he came to the supper-table. From being the half-sullen, half-oblivious companion who had lately chilled our board and made it the scene of anything but cheer or comfort, he had brightened at once into a garrulous old man, ready with jests and full of condescending speeches in regard to his great experiments. Emma, to whom I had said nothing, looked her innocent pleasure at this, and both of us started in amazement when he suddenly turned towards me, and surveyed me with something like interest and pleasurable curiosity.

"'Why do you look at me like that?' I could not help saying. 'I should think you had never seen me before, father.'

"'Perhaps I never have,' he laughed. Then quite seriously: 'I was looking to see if you were as handsome as Mr. Harding said you were. He told me he had never seen so beautiful a woman in his life.'

"I was shocked; more than that, I was terrified; I half-rose from the table, and forgetting everything else which made my life a burden to me, I had some wild idea of rushing from the house, from the town, anywhere to escape the purpose I perceived forming itself in my father's mind.

"'Father,' I cried, with a trembling in my tones that was not common to them, even in the moments of my greatest displeasure; 'I hate that man, and abominate the very idea of his presuming to admire me. Do not ever mention him to me again. It makes my very soul turn sick.'

"It was an unwise speech; it was the unwisest speech I could have made. I felt this to be so the moment I had spoken, and stole a look of secret dismay at Emma, who sat quite still and helpless, gazing, in silent consternation, from my father to myself.

"'You will hate no one who can help me perfect my experiments,' he retorted. 'If I command you to do so, you must even love him, though we have not got so far as that yet.'

"'I will never love anybody again,' I answered bitterly. 'And I would not love this man if your discoveries and my own life even hung upon it.'

"'You would not?' He was livid now. 'Well, we shall see. He is coming here to dinner to-morrow, and if you dare to show him anything but the respect due to an honored guest you will live to rue it as you have never rued anything yet.'

"Threats that are idle on some lips are anything but idle on ours, as I think you have already begun to perceive. I therefore turned pale and said no more, but all night the tormenting terror was upon me, and when the next day came I was but little fitted to sustain the reputation for beauty which I had so unfortunately earned from a distasteful man's lips the day before.

"But Antony Harding was not one to easily change his first impressions. He had made up his mind that I was beautiful, and he kept to that opinion to the last. I had dressed myself in my most expensive but least becoming gown, and I wore my hair in a way to shock the taste of most men. But I saw from the first moment that his eyes fell on my face that this made no difference to him, and that I must take other means to disillusionize him. So then I resorted to a display of stupidity. I did not talk, and looked, if I looked at all, as if I did not understand. But he had seen glimpses of brightness in me the day before, and this ruse succeeded no better than the other. He even acted as if he admired me more as a breathing, sullen image than as a living, combative woman.

"My father, who watched us as he never had watched anything before but rising bubbles of gas or accumulating crystals, did not show the displeasure I feared, possibly because he saw that I was failing in all my endeavors; and when the meal over, he led the way to the parlor, he even smiled upon me in a not altogether unfriendly way. I felt a sinking of the heart when I saw that smile. Better to me were his frowns, for that smile told me that, love or no love, liking or no liking, I was to be made the bait to win this man's money for the uses of chemistry.

"Walking steadfastly into the parlor, I met the stranger's admiring eye.

"'You would not think,' I remarked, 'that my life at present was enclosed within these four walls.'

"It was the first sentence I had voluntarily addressed him, and it must have struck him as a very peculiar one.

"'I do not understand what you mean,' he returned, with that unctuous smile which to me was so detestable. 'Something interesting, I have no doubt.'

"'Very interesting,' I dryly rejoined. 'I have taken a vow never to leave this house, and I mean to keep it.'

"He stared at me now in some apprehension, and my heart gave a bound of delight. I had frightened him. He thought I was demented.

"My father, seeing his look of astonishment, but not knowing what I had said, here advanced and unconsciously made matters worse by remarking, with an effort at jocularity:

"'Don't mind what Hermione says; for a smart girl and a good one, she sometimes talks very peculiarly.'

"'I should think so,' my companion's manner seemed to assert, but he gave a sudden laugh, and made some observation which I scarcely heard in my fierce determination to end this matter at once.

"'Do you not think,' I persisted, 'that a woman who has doomed herself to perpetual seclusion has a right to be peculiar?'

"'A woman of such beauty possesses most any rights she chooses to assert,' was his somewhat lame reply. He had evidently received a shock, and was greatly embarrassed.

"'I laughed low to myself, but my father, comprehending as in a flash what I was attempting, turned livid and made me a threatening gesture.'

"'I fear,' said he, 'that you will have to excuse my daughter for to-night. The misfortune which has befallen her has soured her temper, and this is not one of her amiable days.'

"I made a curtsey deep as my disdain. 'I leave you to the enjoyment of your criticisms,' I exclaimed, and fled from the room in a flutter of mingled satisfaction and fear.

"For though I had saved myself from any possible persecution on the part of Mr. Harding, I had done it at the cost of any possible reconciliation between my father and myself. And I was not yet so hardened that I could contemplate years of such life as I was then living without a pang of dread. Alas! if I had known what I was indeed preparing for myself, and how much worse a future dwelt in his mind than any I had contemplated!

"Emma, who had been a silent and unobtrusive witness to what had occurred, soon followed me to my room.

"'What have you done?' she asked. 'Why speak so to a stranger?'

"'Father wants me to like him; father wants me to accept his attentions, and I detest him. I abhor his very presence in the house.'

"'But – '

"'I know he has only been here but twice; but that is enough, Emma; he shall not come here again with any idea that he will receive the least welcome from me.'

"'Is he a person known to father? Is he – '

"'Rich? Oh, yes; he is rich. That is why father thinks him an eligible son-in-law. His thousands would raise the threatened discovery into a fact.'

"'I see. I pity you, Hermione. It is hard to disappoint a father in his dearest hopes.'

"I stared at her in sudden fury.

"'Is that what you are thinking of?' I demanded, with reckless impetuosity. 'After all the cruel disappointment he has inflicted upon me – '

"But Emma had slipped from the room. She had no words now with which to meet my gusts of temper.

"A visit from my father came next. Though strong in my resolve not to be shaken, I secretly quaked at the cold, cruel determination in his face. A man after all is so much more unrelenting than a woman.

"'Hermione,' he cried, 'you have disobeyed me. You have insulted my guest, and you have shaken the hopes which I thought I had a right to form, being your father and the author of your being. I said if you did this you should suffer, but I mean to give you one more chance. Mr. Harding was startled rather than alienated. If you show yourself in future the amiable and sensible woman which you can be, he will forget this foolish ebullition and make you the offer his passion inspires. This would mean worldly prosperity, social consideration, and everything else which a reasonable woman, even if she has been disappointed in love, could require. While for me – you cannot know what it would be for me, for you have no capability for appreciating the noble study to which I am devoted.'

"'No,' I said, hard and cold as adamant, 'I have no appreciation for a study which, like another Moloch, demands, not only the sacrifice of the self-respect, but even the lives of your unhappy children.'

"'You rave,' was his harsh reply. 'I offer you all the pleasures of life, and you call it immolation. Is not Mr. Harding as much of a gentleman as Dr. Sellick? Do I ask you to accept the attentions of a boor or a scape-grace? He is called a very honorable man by those who know him, and if you were ten times handsomer than you are, ten times more amiable, and had no defect calculated to diminish the regard of most men, you would still be scarcely worthy to bear the name of so wealthy, honorable, and highly esteemed a young man.'

"'Father, father!' I exclaimed, scarcely able to bear from him this allusion to my misfortune.

"'Why he has taken such a sudden, and, if I may say it, violent fancy to you, I find it hard to understand myself. But he has done this, and he has not scrupled to tell me so, and to intimate that he would like the opportunity of cultivating your good graces. Will you, then – I ask it for the last time – extend him a welcome, or must I see my hopes vanish, and with them a life too feeble to survive the disappointment which their loss must occasion.'

"'I cannot give any sort of welcome to this man,' I returned. 'If I did, I would be doing him a wrong, as well as you and myself. I dislike him, father, more than I can make you understand. His presence is worse than death to me; I would rather go to my coffin than to his arms. But if I liked him, if he were the beau-ideal of my dreams, could I break the vow I made one day in your presence? This man is not Dr. Sellick; do not then seek to make me forget the oath of isolation I have taken.'

"'Fool! fool!' was my father's furious retort. 'I know he is not Dr. Sellick. If he were I should not have his cause to plead to you.'

"How nearly his secret came out in his rage. 'If I could make you understand; make you see – '

"'You make me see that I am giving you a great and bitter disappointment,' I broke in. 'But it only equalizes matters; you have given me one.'

"He bounded to my side; he seized my arm and shook it.

"'Drop that foolish talk,' he cried. 'I will hear no more of it, nor of your staying in the house on that account or any other. You will go out to-morrow. You will go out with Mr. Harding. You will – '

"'Father,' I put in, chill as ice, 'do you expect to carry me out in your arms?'

"He fell back; he was a small man, my father, and I, as you know, am large for a woman.

"'You vixen!' he muttered, 'curses on the day when you were born!'

"'That curse has been already pronounced,' I muttered.

"He stood still, he made no answer, he seemed to be gathering himself together for a final appeal. Had he looked at me a little longer; had he shown any sympathy for my position, any appreciation for my wrongs, or any compunction for the share he had taken in them, I might have shown myself to have possessed some womanly softness and latent gentleness. But instead of that he took on in those few frightful moments such a look of cold, calculating hate that I was at once steeled and appalled. I hardly knew what he said when he cried at last:

"'Once! twice! thrice! Will you do what I desire, Hermione?'

"I only knew he had asked something I could not grant, so I answered, with what calmness I could, in the old formula, now for some months gone into disuse, 'I will not,' and sank, weary with my own emotions, into a chair.

"He gave me one look – I shall never forget it, – and threw up his arms with what sounded like an imprecation.

"'Then your sin be upon your own head!' he cried, and without another word left the room.

"I was frightened; never had I seen such an expression on mortal face before. And this was my father; the man who had courted my mother; who had put the ring upon her finger at the altar; who had sat at her dying bed and smiled as she whispered: 'For a busy man, you have always been a good husband to me.' Was this or that the real man as he was? Had these depths been always hidden within him, or had I created them there by my hardness and disobedience? I will never know."

XXIV.

FATHER AND CHILD

"The night which followed this day was a sleepless one for me. Yet how I dreaded the morning! How I shrank from the first sight of my father's face! Had Auntie Lovell been with us I should have prevailed upon her to have gone to him and tried to smooth the way to some sort of reconciliation between us, but she was in Chicago, and I was not yet upon such terms with Emma that I could bear to make of her a go-between. I preferred to meet him without apology, and by dutifulness in all other respects make him forget in time my failure to oblige him in one. I had made up my mind to go out of the house that day, though not with Mr. Harding.

"But sometimes it seems as if Providence stepped in our way when we try to recover from any false position into which we have been betrayed by the heat and stress of our own passions. When I tried to rise I found myself ill, and for several days after that I knew little and cared less where I was, or what my future was like to be. When I was well enough to get up and go about my duties again, I found the house and my father in very much the same condition as they were before the fatal appearance of Mr. Harding. No look from his eye revealed that any great change had taken place in his attitude towards me, and after learning that Mr. Harding had come once since my illness, been closeted with my father for some time, and had then gone away with a rather formal and hard good-by to the anxious Emma, I began to feel that my fears had been part of the delirium of the fever which had afterwards set in, and that I was alarming myself and softening my heart more than was necessary.

"The consequence was that I did not go out that afternoon, nor the next morning, nor for a week after, though I was always saying to myself that I would surprise them yet by a sudden dash out of the house when they showed, or rather my father showed, any such relenting in his studied attitude of indifference as would make such an action on the part of one constituted like myself, possible.

"But he was thinking of anything else but relenting, and even I began to see in a few days that something portentous lay behind the apparent apathy of his manner. He worked as he had of old, or rather he shut himself up in his laboratory from morning until night, but when he did appear, there was something new in his manner that deeply troubled me. I began to shrink at the sound of his step, and more than once went without a meal rather than meet the cold glance of his eye.

"Emma, who seemed to have little idea of what I suffered and of what I dreaded (what did I dread? I hardly knew) used to talk to me sometimes of our father's failing health; but I either hushed her or sat like a stone, I was in such a state of shuddering horror. I remember one day as I stole past the laboratory door, I beheld her with her arms round his neck, and the sight filled me with tumult, but whether it was one of longing or repugnance, or a mixture of both, I can hardly tell. But I know it was with difficulty I repressed a cry of grief, and that when I found myself alone my limbs were shaking under me like those of one stricken with ague. At last there came a day when father was no longer to be seen at the table. He ordered his meals brought to the laboratory, but denied being sick. I stared at Emma, who delivered this message, and asked her what she thought of it.

"'That he is ill,' she declared.

"Two weeks later my father called me into his presence. I went in fear and trembling. He was standing by his desk in the laboratory, and I could not repress a start of surprise when I saw the change which had taken place in him. But I said nothing, only stood near the doorway and waited for what he had to say.

"'Look at me,' he commanded. 'I am standing to-day; to-morrow I shall be sitting. I wish you to watch your work; now go.'

"I turned, so shaken by his look and terrible wanness that I could hardly stand. But at the door I paused and cried in irrepressible terror:

"'You are ill; let me send for a doctor. I cannot see you dying thus before my eyes.'

"'You cannot?' With what a grim chuckle he uttered the words. 'We will see what you can bear.' Then as my eyes opened in terror, and I seemed about to flee, he cried, 'No doctor, do you hear? I will see none. And mark me, no talking about what goes on in this room, if you do not wish my curse.'

"Aghast, I rushed from that unhallowed door. What did his words mean? What was his purpose? Upon what precipice of horror was I stumbling?

"The next day he summoned me again. I felt too weak to go, but I dared not disobey. I opened his door with a shaking hand, and found him sitting, as he had promised, in an old arm-chair that had been his mother's.

"'Do I look any better?' he asked.

"I shook my head. He was evidently much worse.

"'The poison of disobedience works slowly, but it works sure,' he cried.

"I threw up my arms with a shriek.

"He seemed to love the sound.

"'You do not enjoy the fruits of your actions,' said he. 'You love your old father so dearly.'

"I held out my hands; I entreated; I implored.

"'Do not – do not look on me like this. Some dreadful thought is in your mind – some dreadful revenge. Do not cherish it; do not make my already ruined life a worse torture to me. Let me have help, let me send for a doctor – '

"But his sternly lifted finger was already pointing at the door.

"'You have stayed too long,' he muttered. 'Next time you will barely look in, and leave without a word.'

"I crouched, he cowed me so, and then fled, this time to find Emma, Doris, some one.

"They were both huddled in the hall below. They had heard our voices and were terrified at the sound.

"'Don't you think he is very ill?' asked Emma. 'Don't you think we ought to have the doctor come, in spite of his commands to the contrary?'

"'Yes,' I gasped, 'and quickly, or we will feel like murderers.'

"'Dr. Dudgeon is a big know-nothing,' cried Doris.

"'But he is a doctor,' I said. And Doris went for him at once.

"When he came Emma undertook to take him to the laboratory; I did not dare. I sat on the stairs and listened, shaking in every limb. What was going on in that room? What was my father saying? What was the doctor deciding? When the door opened at last I was almost unconscious. The sound of the doctor's voice, always loud, struck upon my ears like thunder, but I could not distinguish his words. Not till he had come half-way down the stairs did I begin to understand them, and then I heard:

"'A case of overwork! He will be better in a day or two. Send for me if he seems any worse.'

"Overwork! that clay-white cheek! those dry and burning lips! the eyes hollowed out as if death were already making a skeleton of him! I seized the doctor's hand as he went by.

"'Are you sure that is all?' I cried.

"He gave me a pompous stare. 'I do not often repeat myself,' said he, and went haughtily out without another word.

"Emma, standing at the top of the stairs, came down as the door closed behind him.

"'Father was not so angry as I feared he would be. He smiled at the doctor and seemed glad to see him. He even roused himself up to talk, and for a few minutes did not look so ill as he really is.'

"'Did the doctor leave medicine?' I asked.

"'Oh, yes, plenty; powder and pills.'

"'Where is it?'

"'On father's desk. He says he will take it regularly. He would not let me give it to him.'

"I reeled; everything seemed turning round with me.

"'Watch him,' I cried, 'watch – ' and could say no more. Unconsciousness had come to relieve me.

"It was dark when I came to myself. I was lying on my own bed, and by the dim light burning on a small table near by I saw the form of Doris bending over me. Starting up, I caught her by the arm.

"'What is going on?' I cried.

"Rude noises were in the house. A sound of breaking glass.

"'It comes from the laboratory,' she exclaimed, and rushed from the room.

"I rose and had barely strength enough to follow her. When we reached the laboratory door Emma was already there. A light was burning at one end of the long and dismal room, and amid the weird shadows that it cast we saw our father in a loose gown he often wore when at work, standing over his table with lifted fist. It was bleeding; he had just brought it down upon a favorite collection of tubes.

"'Ah!' he cried, tottering and seizing the table to steady himself; 'you have come to see the end of my famous discovery. Here it is; look!' And his fist came down again upon a jar containing the work of months.

"The smash that followed seemed to echo in my brain. I rushed forward, but was stopped by his look.