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She moved through the acid-sharp November air, a white-faced automaton. She felt a vague, numb infinity of pain. She perceived neither the causes of the blow nor its probable results; she merely felt its impact, and that impact had made her whole being inarticulate.
But presently her senses began to rouse. She began to see the outlines of her disaster, its consequences; her great vague pain separated into distinct pangs, each agonisingly acute. She felt an impulse to cry out in the street, but her instinctive pride closed her throat. She turned back and hurried to her room, locked herself in, and flung her hat upon the floor and herself upon the bed.
But even here she could not cry. All her life she had been strong, aggressive, self-defending; she had cried so rarely that she knew not how. So she lay, dry-eyed, her whole body clenched, retched with sobs that would not come up.
Lillian Drew's words, "He's ten thousand miles above you," sat upon her pillow and cried into her ear. She had seen David's superior quality and his superior training; but she and he had both been thieves – they were both struggling to rise clear of thievery. This commonness of experience and of present effort had made him seem very near to her – very attainable. It was a bond between them, a bond that limited them to one another. And she had steadfastly seen a closer union a little farther ahead.
But now he was not a thief. The bond was snapped – he was ten thousand miles above her! Her despair magnified him, diminished herself; and when she contrasted the two she shrunk to look upon the figure of her insignificance. He must see her as such a pigmy – how could he ever care for such paltriness? He never could. He was lost to her – utterly lost!
All that afternoon she was tortured by her hopelessness. In the evening she became possessed by an undeniable craving to see David, and she went to David's house and asked him to walk with her. For the first minute after they were in the street the silence of constraint was between them. David could but know, in a vague way, of Kate's suffering; he was pained, shamed, that he was its cause.
In the presence of her suffering, to him, with his feeling of guilt, all else seemed trivial. But there was one matter that had to be spoken of. "You've not told a soul, have you, what you learned this afternoon?" he asked.
"No," she returned, in a muffled voice.
"I was sure you hadn't. I was afraid this afternoon that Rogers had overheard, but he didn't; either you talked in low voices, or he was asleep. No one must ever know the truth – no one – and especially Rogers."
"Why him especially?" she asked mechanically.
David hesitated. "Well, you see one thing that makes him feel close to me is that he believes we have both been in the same situation. In a way that has made us brothers. If he knew otherwise, it might make a difference to him."
"I understand!" said Kate's muffled voice.
She asked him details of the story Lillian Drew had revealed, and since she already knew so much, he told her – though he felt her interest was not in what he told her.
At length – he had yielded himself to her guidance – they came out upon the dock where they had talked a month before. She had wanted to be with him alone, and she had thought of no better place. Despite the wind's being filled with needles, they took their stand at the dock's end.
They looked out at the river that writhed and leaped under the wind's pricking – black, save beneath the arc lamps of the Williamsburg bridge, where the rearing little wave-crests gleamed, sunk, and gleamed again. For several minutes they were silent. Then the choked words burst from her:
"I'm not fit to be your friend!"
"You mustn't let this afternoon make a difference, Kate," he besought. "It doesn't to me. Fit to be my friend! You are – a thousand times over! I admire you – I honour you – I'm proud to have you for a friend!"
She quickly looked up at him. The light from the bridge lamps, a giant string of glowing beads, lay upon her face. In it there gleamed the sudden embers of hope.
"But can you love me – some time?" she whispered.
It was agony to him to shake his head.
"I knew it!" she breathed dully.
When he saw the gray, dead despair in her face, he cried out, in his agony and abasement:
"Don't take it so, Kate! I'm not worthy to be the cause of so much pain."
She looked back at the river; the wind had set her shivering, but she did not know she was cold. He saw that she was thinking, so he did not speak. After several minutes she asked in a low voice:
"Do you still love Miss Chambers?"
He remained silent.
"Do you?"
"Yes."
"As much as I love you?"
"Yes."
There was a pause. When she next spoke she was looking him tensely in the face.
"Would she love you if she knew the truth?"
"I shall never tell her."
"But would she love you?" she repeated, fiercely. She clutched his arms and her eyes blazed. "She'd better not! – I'd kill her!"
The face he looked down into was that of a wild animal. He gazed at it with fear and fascination.
The vindictive fire began slowly to burn lower, then, at a puff, it was out. "No! – No!" she cried, convulsively, gripping his arms tighter. "I wouldn't! You know I wouldn't!"
The face, so rageful a minute before, was now twitching, and the tears, that came so hard, were trembling on her lashes. Her eyes embraced his face for several moments.
"Ah, David!" she cried, and her words were borne upward on the sobs that now shook her, "even if you don't love me, David – I want you to be happy!"
CHAPTER V
THE COMMAND OF LOVE
Mr. Allen put down his teacup and gazed across the table at Helen. Since Mrs. Bosworth had left the drawing-room, ten minutes before, they had been arguing the old, old point, and both held their old positions.
"Then you will never, never give your ideas up?" he sighed, with mock-seriousness that was wholly serious.
"Then you will never, never give your ideas up?" she repeated in the same tone.
"Never, never."
"Never, never."
They looked at each other steadily for a moment, then their make-believe lightness fell from them.
"We certainly do disagree to perfection!" he exclaimed.
"Yes. So perfectly that the more I think of what you've asked for, the more inadvisable does it seem."
"But you'll change yet. A score of drawn battles do not discourage me of ultimate victory."
"Nor me," she returned quietly.
Their skirmish was interrupted by the entrance of a footman. Helen took the card from the tray and glanced at it.
"Show her into the library and tell her I'll join her soon." She turned back to Mr. Allen. "Perhaps you remember her – she was a maid at your house a little while – a Miss Morgan."
"I remember her, yes," he said indifferently.
His face clouded; he made an effort at lightness, but his words were sharp. "Where, oh where, are you going to stop, Helen! You are at St. Christopher's twice a week, not counting frequent extra visits. Two days ago, so you've just told me, that Mr. Aldrich was here. To-day, it's this girl. And the week's not yet over! Don't you think there might at least be a little moderation?"
"You mean," she returned quietly, "that, if we were married, you would not want these friends of mine to come to your house?"
"I should not! And I wish I knew of some way to snap off all that side of your life!"
She regarded him meditatively. "Since there's so much about me you don't approve of, I've often wondered why you want to marry me. Love is not a reason, for you don't love me."
The answers ran through his head: He admired her; she had beauty, brains, social standing, social tact, and, last of all but still of importance, she had money – the qualities he most desired in his wife. But to make a pretence of love, whatever the heart may be, is a convention of marriage – like the bride's bouquet, or her train. So he said:
"But I do love you."
"Oh, no you don't – no more than I love you."
"Then why would you marry me? – if you do."
"Because I like you; because I admire your qualities; because I believe my life would be richer and fuller and more efficient; and because I should hope to alter certain of your opinions."
"Well, I don't care what the reasons are – just so they're strong enough," he said lightly. He rose and held out his hand; his face grew serious; his voice lowered. "I must be going. Four more days, remember – then your answer."
After he had gone she sat for several minutes thinking of life with him, toward which reason and circumstances pressed her, and from which, since the day he had declared himself, she had shrunk. This marriage was so different from the marriage of her dreams – a marriage of love, of common ideals; yet in it, her judgment told her, lay the best use of her life.
She dismissed her troubling thoughts with a sigh and walked back to the library. As she entered Kate rose from a high-backed chair behind the great square library-table, whose polished top shone with the light from the chandelier. Kate's face was white, the mouth was a taut line, the eyes gleamed feverishly amid the purpled rings of wakeful nights.
Helen came smiling across the noiseless rug, her hand held out.
"I'm very happy to see you, Miss Morgan."
Kate did not move. She allowed Helen to stand a moment, hand still outheld, while her dark eyes blazed into Helen's face. Then she abruptly laid her hand into the other, and as abruptly withdrew it.
"I want to speak to you," she said.
"Certainly. Won't you sit down?"
Kate jerked a hand toward the wide, curtained doorway through which Helen had entered.
"Close the door."
"Why?" asked Helen, surprised.
"Close the door," she repeated in the same low, short tone. "Nobody must hear."
The forced voice, and the repressed agitation of Kate's bearing, startled Helen. She drew together the easy-running doors, and returned to the table.
Kate jerked her hand toward the open plate-glass door that led into the conservatory.
"And that door."
"There's no one in there." But Helen closed the heavy pane of glass.
"Won't you sit down," she said, when this was done, taking one of the richly carved chairs herself.
"No."
Kate's eyes blazed down upon Helen's face; her breath came and went rapidly, with a wheezing sound; her hands, on the luminous table-top, were clenched. Her whole body was so rigid that it trembled.
The colour began to leave Helen's face. "I'm waiting – go on."
Kate's lips suddenly quivered back from her teeth. She had to strike, even if she struck unjustly.
"People like you" – her voice was harsh, tremulous with hate – "you always believe the worst of a man. You throw him aside – crush him down – walk on him. You never think perhaps you've made a mistake, perhaps he's all right. Oh, no – you never think good of a man if you can think bad." She leaned over the corner of the table. "I hate your kind of people! I hate you!"
"Is this the thing you wanted no one to hear?" Helen asked quietly.
Kate slowly straightened up. After two days and two nights – a long, fierce, despairing battle between selfish and unselfish love – she had decided she must come here; but now her rehearsed sentences all left her. For a moment she stood choking; then the bald words dropped out:
"He's not a thief – never was one."
"Who?"
"David Aldrich."
Helen came slowly to her feet. Her face was white, her eyes were wide. For a moment she did not speak – just stared.
"What do you mean?"
"He did not take the money from the Mission."
Helen moved from the corner of the table, her wide eyes never leaving Kate's gleaming ones, and a hand clutched Kate's arm and tightened there.
"Tell me all."
"You hurt me."
Helen removed her hand.
Kate crept closer and stared up into her face.
"Does it make any difference to you?" she breathed, tensely.
"Tell me all!"
Kate drew back a pace, and leaned upon her clenched hands. "You knew Mr. Morton," she said, in a quick strained monotone. "When he was young, he lived with a woman. He wrote her a lot of letters – love letters. She turned up again a few months before he died, and threatened to show the letters if he didn't pay her. He had no money; he took money from the Mission and paid her. Then he died. His guilt was about to be found out. But David Aldrich said he took the money and went to prison. He did it because he thought if Mr. Morton's guilt was found out, the Mission would be destroyed and the people would go back to the devil. You know the rest. That's all."
Helen continued motionless – silent.
"It's all so," Kate went on. "The woman herself told me. She knew the truth. She'd been making David pay her to keep from telling that he was innocent. She told me before him. He had to admit it."
Kate leaned further across the corner of the table. "He made me promise never to tell." For a moment of dead quiet she gazed up into Helen's fixed face. "And why do you think I've broken my promise?" she asked in a low voice, between barely parted lips.
Helen rested one hand on the back of a chair and the other on the table. She trembled slightly, but she did not reply.
"Because" – there was a little quaver in Kate's voice – "I thought it might sometime make him happy."
There was another dead silence, during which Kate gazed piercingly into Helen's face.
"Do you love him?" she asked sharply.
Helen's arms tightened. After a moment her lips moved.
"You love him yourself."
"Me? – it's a lie. I don't!"
Kate moved round the corner of the table and laid a fierce hand on Helen's arm.
"Do you love him?" she demanded.
Silence. "Thank you – for telling me."
Kate laughed a low, harsh laugh, and flung Helen's arm from her.
"You! – you think you're way above him, don't you! Well – you're not! You're not fit for him!" Her eyes leaped with flame. "I hate you!"
Again a moment of silence. A tremor ran through Helen. She moved forward, and her hands reached out and fell upon Kate's shoulders.
"I love you," she whispered.
Kate shrunk sharply away. Her eyes never leaving Helen's face, she backed slowly toward the doors. She pushed them apart, and gazed at Helen's statued figure. Kate's face had become ashen, drawn. After a moment she slipped through the doors and drew them to.
As the doors clicked, Helen swayed into a chair beside the table, and her head fell forward into her arms.
CHAPTER VI
ANOTHER WORLD
At half-past eight o'clock that evening David walked up the broad steps of the Chambers's house and rang the bell. The footman left him in the great hall, rich with carved oak and old tapestries, and went off with his card. As he waited, he continued to wonder at the telegram he had received half an hour before from Helen, which had merely said, "Can you not call this evening?" Why could she so suddenly desire to see him? He had no faintest guess.
In a few minutes the footman returned, led him up the stairway and directed him into the library. A wood fire was burning in the broad fire-place, and on a divan before it she was sitting, all in white.
She rose. "Will you draw the doors, please," her voice came to him.
He did so, and went toward her eagerly. But his steps slowed. Two or three paces from her he came to a stop. She stood, one hand on the divan's arm, gazing at him with parted lips, and wide, marvelling eyes. The look put a spell upon him; he returned it silently, with a growing bewilderment.
For several moments her whole being was brought to a focus in the awed wonder of her face. Then her breast began to rise and fall, her face to twitch, her eyes to flood with tears. The tears glinted down her cheeks and fell upon her swelling breast. She gave them no heed, but continued to hold her quivering face full upon him.
"What is it?" he whispered.
She stretched out her hands and slowly moved toward him, her eyes never leaving his face. He automatically took her hands. They were warm and tight, and through them he felt her whole body trembling. He thrilled under their pressure and under her look – under her glorious, brimming eyes.
As she gazed upon him his last five years ran through her mind – his trial, his prison life, his struggle for a foothold, his dishonoured name. A sob broke from her, and upon it came her low, vibrant voice – quavering, awed:
"It was God-like!"
He could barely ask, "What?"
"What you did."
He could not find a word, he was so bewildered, so thrilled by her gaze, by her clinging hands.
Her tears continued to drop from her eyes to her heart. There was a momentary silence, then the awed, quavering voice, said slowly:
"You never took the money! – the Mission money!"
For a space he was utterly dazed. The room swam; he held to her hands for support. Slowly the bewilderment of ignorance passed into the greater bewilderment of knowledge. She knew the truth! The secret of his life that he had hidden from her, thought always to hide from her, she had found out!
He realised this, but no more. It did not occur to him even to wonder how she had learned – and her words, "Miss Morgan told me," lodged an explanation in his mind that would waken after a while, but did not now stir a single thought regarding Kate. That she knew, had burst upon him so suddenly as to set everything whirling within him – to overwhelm, outcrowd all else. He sank to the couch, and she sank to a place beside him, their hands and eyes still clasped.
"Oh, you never took it!"
The voice dripped with tears, vibrated with a rising note of triumph.
"To think what you've gone through!" she marvelled on, quaveringly. "Your struggles – such struggles! – and everybody believing you dishonoured. And all the time, you being this splendid thing that you are!" A great sob surged up.
He was still whirling and still saw her face hazily. But his faculties were coming back. "What I did was not active – it was merely passive," he said.
"To achieve by suffering, and be repaid by dishonour – what can be higher?"
She gazed at him, and gazed at him. "And to think that I believed you – you! – guilty! To think that I never sent you even a single word while you were in prison! How I drew away from you when I found you sick in that poor room! How since then I have tried to help you reform! Ah, the irony of that now! And the irony of my proposing to you to pay back the money you never took!"
The words, the voice, had reached the ears of his heart; it was going madly. He gazed into her glorious face, quivering, tear-splashed, into her glorious, swimming eyes. Even in his daringest fancy he had never pictured his innocence affecting her so! He felt himself suddenly a wild, exultant flame. The insuperables were swept out of the world. He was the lover he had tried seven years to stifle.
He had thought the words would never be spoken. But they came out boldly – with a rush.
"I love you!"
She paled slightly. For a moment she looked wonderingly into his eyes. Her head slowly shook.
"Ah – how can you!" she whispered. "After I've had no faith! – after I've treated you so!"
She tried to draw away. But he caught her hands, held them tight.
"I love you!"
Again her head shook. "I'm … not worthy."
"But you're glad – I did not take it?"
There was silence. Her eyes held steadfastly to his.
"It's another world!" she whispered.
Her glorious self looked at him, leaned toward him, from her divine eyes. His soul reeled; awe descended upon him. One hand loosed itself from hers, and weak, tingling, fearful, crept slowly about her, drew her toward him. She came at his touch. He bent down breathless. He felt her tremble in his arm. Her face was white, but it did not waver; her eyes glowed into his. As their lips touched, her free arm slipped about his neck and she shook with sobs.
"Yes … another world!" she breathed.
When he had finished the long story of his acceptance of Morton's guilt and of what had followed, she sat gazing at him with her look of awe.
"I shall never stop being amazed that a man could do a thing like that," she said. "It was wonderful!"
He shook his head. "No," he said slowly, "the real wonder is that you could learn to love a man whom you believed to be a criminal." For a moment he looked silently into her eyes; this great thing that had come to pass still seemed hardly true. "That's the wonder – Helen."
It was the first time he had used her name, and he spoke it with a fervent hesitancy. He repeated it softly, "Helen!"
She flushed. "I loved you long before I thought you were guilty," she said. "It seems that I have always loved you."
"Always!" he repeated, amazed. "Always? – just as I've always loved you?"
"Yes."
For a space he was lost in his astonishment. "It doesn't seem possible. What was there in me to make you love me?"
"I loved you because of your idealism, because there was an indefinable something in you that was good and great. I loved you – Oh, I don't know why I loved you. I just loved you. And how I felt when I thought you had taken the money! Oh, David, it was – "
"Say it again!" he broke in.
"What?"
"David."
She smiled. "David."
Her face became serious. "It was weeks before I could sleep. I tried to forget you. As the years passed I sometimes thought I had; but when I tried to listen to other men talk of love, I knew I hadn't. I never forgot you. I was on trial with you. I was in prison with you. Though I kept away from you, I suffered with you when you were sick in that poor little room. I have searched for work with you. I have struggled with you to regain place in the world. Haven't you ever felt me beside you?"
"I have always thought of you as far away from me. Of you here" – his eyes swept the library – "in this life."
The glance about the room was an abrupt transition. For an hour or more he had been oblivious to all things save herself and himself. Now the library's material richness recalled to him the circumstances his rapture had for the time annihilated – her wealth, her social position, his poverty, his disgrace. Slowly these forced upon him one relentless fact. His face became grave, then pale.
"Why, what's the matter?" she cried.
"After all, we are as inexorably separated as ever," he said. "We can be merely friends."
"Why?"
"I'm poor – without position in life – covered with dishonour."
"It's your soul that I love," she said. "It's rich, and full of honour."
Her look, the ring in her voice, made him catch his breath.
"What! – you don't mean you'd marry me – as I am!"
"Yes."
Wild joy sprang up within him. But he choked it down.
"No – No! You couldn't. You haven't thought. You couldn't give up all the richness of your life, all your friends, for my poverty, my friendlessness. And this isn't all – nor the worst. There's my disgrace." He paused a moment before the great fact that must always be a barrier between them. "Do you realise, Helen," he went on, "that I can never clear myself. To do that would be to destroy the people of St. Christopher's. I can never do that. I never will."
She was thoughtful for several moments. "No, you never can," she said slowly. Then a glow came into her face, and she added suddenly in a tone that vibrated through him:
"But I shall marry you anyhow!"
He caught her hands. "God bless you!" he said huskily.
He shook his head slowly, with pale resolution. "But no. I love you too much, honour you too much, to drag you from your place – to let you marry a criminal!"
CHAPTER VII
AS LOVE APPORTIONS
After David had gone Helen sat gazing into the rich romance of the glowing logs, reproached by the remembrance of her treatment of David, awed by his long sacrifice, thrilled with love and the knowledge of his innocence. Her imagination showed her scenes of David's trial, of his prison life, of his struggles to regain place in the world, and she cried softly as she looked upon him amid these travails. That she had not believed in him despite appearance and his own declaration, she regarded as evidence of her weakness, and she told herself that her five years of suffering were too light a punishment for her lack of faith. She should have learned his innocence – and lost him!