The Golden House

XXI

Waiting for something to turn up, Jack found a weary business. He had written to Mavick after the newspaper report that that government officer had been in the city on Henderson's affairs, and had received a very civil and unsatisfactory reply. In the note Mavick had asked him to come to Washington and spend a little time, if he had nothing better on hand, as his guest. Perhaps no offense was intended, but the reply enraged Jack. There was in the tone of the letter and in the manner of the invitation a note of patronage that was unendurable.

“Confound the fellow's impudence!” said Jack to himself; and he did not answer the invitation.

Personally his situation was desperate enough, but he was not inclined to face it. In a sort of stupor he let the law take its course. There was nothing left of his fortune, and his creditors were in possession of his house and all it contained. “Do not try to keep anything back that legally belongs to them,” Edith had written when he informed her of this last humiliation. Of course decency was observed. Jack's and Edith's wardrobes, and some pieces of ancestral furniture that he pointed out as belonging to his wife, were removed before the auction flag was hung out. When this was over he still temporized. Edith's affectionate entreaties to him to leave the dreadful city and come home were evaded on one plea or another. He had wild schemes of going off West or South—of disappearing. Perhaps he would have luck somewhere. He couldn't ask aid or seek occupation of his friends, but some place where he was not known he felt that he might do something to regain his position, get some situation, or make some money—lots of men had done it in a new country and reinstate himself in Edith's opinion.

But he did not go, and days and weeks went by in irresolution. No word came from Carmen, and this humiliated Jack more than anything else—not the loss of her friendship, but the remembrance that he had ever danced attendance on her and trusted her. He was getting a good many wholesome lessons in these days.

One afternoon he called upon Miss Tavish. There was no change in her. She received him with her usual gay cordiality, and with no affectation.

“I didn't know what had become of you,” she said.

“I've been busy,” he replied, with a faint attempt at a smile.

“Yes, I know. It's been an awful time, what with Henderson's death and everything else. Almost everybody has been hit. But,” and she looked at him cheerfully, “they will come up again; up and down; it is always so. Why, even I got a little twist in that panic.” The girl was doing what she could in her way to cheer him up.

“I think of going off somewhere to seek my fortune,” said Jack, with a rueful smile.

“Oh, I hope not; your friends wouldn't like that. There is no place like New York, I'm sure.” And there was a real note of friendliness and encouragement in her tone. “Only,” and she gave him another bright smile, “I think of running away from it myself, for a time. It's a secret yet. Carmen wants me to go abroad with her.”

“I have not seen Mrs. Henderson since her husband's death. How is she?”

“Oh, she bears up wonderfully. But then she has so much to do, poor thing. And then the letters she gets, the begging letters. You've no idea. I don't wonder she wants to go abroad. Don't stay away so long again,” she said as Jack rose to go. “And, oh, can't you come in to dinner tomorrow night—just Carmen—I think I can persuade her—and nobody else?”

“I'm sorry that I have an engagement,” Jack answered.

“Well, some other time. Only soon.”

This call did Jack temporarily a world of good. It helped his self-esteem. But it was only temporary. The black fact stared him in the face every morning that he was ruined. And it came over him gradually that he was a useless member of society. He never had done anything; he was not trained or fitted to do anything. And this was impressed upon him in the occasional attempts he made to get employment. He avoided as much as possible contact with those who knew him. Shame prevented him from applying to them for occupation, and besides he very well knew that to those who knew him his idle career was no recommendation. Yet he formed a habit of going down-town every day and looking for work. His appearance commanded civility, but everywhere he met with refusal, and he began to feel like a well-bred tramp. There had been in his mind before no excuse for tramps. He could see now how they were made.

It was not that he lacked capacity. He knew a great deal, in an amateurish way, about pictures, books, bric-a-brac, and about society. Why shouldn't he write? He visited the Loan Exhibition, and wrote a careful criticism on the pictures and sent it to a well-known journal. It was returned with thanks: the journal had its own art critic. He prepared other articles about curious books, and one about porcelain and pottery. They were all returned, except one which gave the history of a rare bit of majolica, which had been picked up forty cents and then sold for five hundred dollars, and was now owned by a collector who had paid four thousand dollars for it. For that the newspaper sent him five dollars. That was not encouraging, and his next effort for the same journal was returned. Either he hadn't the newspaper knack, or the competition was too great.

He had ceased going to his club. It was too painful to meet his acquaintances in his altered circumstances, and it was too expensive. It even annoyed him to meet Major Fairfax. That philosopher had not changed towards him any more than Miss Tavish had, but it was a melancholy business to talk of his affairs, and to listen to the repeated advice to go down to the country to Edith, and wait for some good opening. That was just what he could not do. His whole frivolous life he began now to see as she must have seen it. And it seemed to him that he could only retain a remnant of his self-respect by doing something that would reinstate him in her opinion.

“Very well,” said the Major, at the close of the last of their talks at the club; “what are you going to do?”

“I'm going into some business,” said Jack, stiffly.

“Have you spoken to any of your friends?”

“No. It's no use,” he said, bitterly; “they are all like me, or they know me.”

“And hasn't your wife some relations who are in business?”

“The last people I should apply to. No. I'm going to look around. Major, do you happen to know a cheap lodging-house that is respectable?”

“I don't know any that is not respectable,” the Major replied, in a huffy manner.

“I beg your pardon,” said Jack. “I want to reduce expenses.”

The Major did know of a place in the neighborhood where he lived. He gave Jack the address, and thereafter the club and his usual resorts knew him no more.

As the days went by and nothing happened to break the monotony of his waiting and his fruitless search, he became despondent. Day after day he tramped about the city, among the business portions, and often on the East Side, to see misery worse than his own. He had saved out of the wreck his ample wardrobe, his watch, and some jewelry, and upon these he raised money for his cheap lodgings and his cheap food. He grew careless of his personal appearance. Every morning he rose and went about the city, always with less hope, and every night he returned to his lodging, but not always sober.

One day he read the announcement that Mrs. Rodney Henderson and Miss Tavish had sailed for Europe. That ended that chapter. What exactly he had expected he could not say. Help from Carmen? Certainly not. But there had never been a sign from her, nor any word from Mavick lately. There evidently was nothing. He had been thrown over. Carmen evidently had no more use for him. She had other plans. The thought that he had been used and duped was almost more bitter than his loss.

In after-days Jack looked back upon this time with a feeling akin to thankfulness for Carmen's utter heartlessness in regard to his affairs. He trembled to think what might have happened to him if she had sent for him and consulted him and drawn him again into the fatal embrace of her schemes and her fascinations. Now he was simply enraged when he thought of her, and irritated with himself.

These were dark days, days to which he looked back with a shudder. He wrote to Edith frequently—a brief note. He was straightening out his affairs; he was busy. But he did not give her his address, and he only got her letters when the Major forwarded them from the club, which was irregularly. A stranger, who met him at his lodgings or elsewhere, would have said that he was an idle and rather dissipated-looking man. He was idle, except in his feeble efforts to get work; he was worn and discouraged, but he was not doing anything very bad. In his way of looking at it, he was carrying out his notion of honor. He was only breaking a woman's heart.

He was conscious of little except his own misfortunes and misery. He did not yet apprehend his own selfishness nor her nobility. He did not yet comprehend the unselfishness of a good woman's love.

On the East Side one day, as he was sauntering along Grand Street, he encountered Dr. Leigh, his wife's friend, whom he had seen once at his house. She did not at first recognize him until he stopped and spoke his name.

“Oh,” she said, with surprise at seeing him, and at his appearance, “I didn't expect to see you here. I thought everybody had gone from the city. Perhaps you are going to the Neighborhood Guild?”

“No,” and Jack forced a little laugh, “I'm not so good as that. I'm kept in town on business. I strolled over here to see how the other side of life looks.”

“It doesn't improve. It is one of the worst summers I ever saw. Since Mr. Henderson's death—”

“What difference did Henderson's death make over here?”

“Why, he had deposited a little fund for Father Damon to draw on, and the day after his death the bank returned a small check with the notice that there was no deposit to draw on. It had been such a help in extraordinary cases. Perhaps you saw some allusion to it in the newspapers?”

“Wasn't it the Margaret Fund?”

“Yes. Father Damon dropped a note to Mrs. Henderson explaining about it. No reply came.”

“As he might have expected.” Dr. Leigh looked up quickly as if for an explanation, but Jack ignored the query, and went on. “And Father Damon, is he as active as ever?”

“He has gone.”

“What, left the city, quit his work? And the mission?”

“I don't suppose he will ever quit his work while he lives, but he is much broken down. The mission chapel is not closed, but a poor woman told me that it seemed so.”

“And he will not return? Mrs. Delancy will be so sorry.”

“I think not. He is in retreat now, and I heard that he might go to Baltimore. I thought of your wife. She was so interested in his work. Is she well this summer?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Jack, and they parted. But as she went on her way his altered appearance struck her anew, and she wondered what had happened.

This meeting with Mr. Delancy recalled most forcibly Edith, her interest in the East Side work, her sympathy with Father Damon and the mission, the first flush of those days of enthusiasm. When Father Damon began his work the ladies used to come in their carriages to the little chapel with flowers and money and hearts full of sympathy with the devoted priest. Alone of all these Edith had been faithful in her visits, always, when she was in town. And now the whole glittering show of charity had vanished for the time, and Father Damon—The little doctor stopped, consulted a memorandum in her hand-bag, looked up at the tenement-house she was passing, and then began to climb its rickety stairway.

Yes, Father Damon had gone, and Ruth Leigh simply went on with her work as before. Perhaps in all the city that summer there was no other person whose daily life was so little changed as hers. Others were driven away by the heat, by temporary weariness, by the need of a vacation and change of scene. Some charities and some clubs and schools were temporarily suspended; other charities, befitting the name, were more active, the very young children were most looked after, and the Good Samaritans of the Fresh-Air Funds went about everywhere full of this new enthusiasm of humanity. But the occupation of Ruth Leigh remained always the same, in a faithful pertinacity that nothing could wholly discourage, in a routine that no projects could kindle into much enthusiasm. Day after day she went about among the sick and the poor, relieving and counseling individuals, and tiring herself out in that personal service, and more and more conscious, when she had time, at night, for instance, to think, of the monstrous injustice somewhere, and at times in a mood of fierce revolt against the social order that made all this misery possible and hopeless.

Yet a great change had come into her life—the greatest that can come to any man or woman in the natural order. She loved and she was loved. An ideal light had been cast upon her commonplace existence, the depths of her own nature had been revealed to herself. In this illuminating light she walked about in the misery of this world. This love must be denied, this longing of the heart for companionship could never be gratified, yet after all it was a sweet self-sacrifice, and the love itself brought its own consolation. She had not to think of herself as weak, and neither was her lover's image dimmed to her by any surrender of his own principle or his own ideal. She saw him, as she had first seen him, a person consecrated and set apart, however much she might disagree with his supernatural vagaries—set apart to the service of humanity. She had bitter thoughts sometimes of the world, and bitter thoughts of the false system that controlled his conduct, but never of him.

It was unavoidable that she should recall her last interview with him, and that the image of his noble, spiritual face should be ever distinct in her mind. And there was even a certain comfort in this recollection.

Father Damon had indeed striven, under the counsel of his own courage and of Brother Monies, to conquer himself on the field of his temptation. But with his frail physique it was asking too much. This at last was so evident that the good brother advised him, and the advice was in the nature of a command in his order, to retire for a while, and then take up his work in a fresh field.

When this was determined on, his desire was nearly irresistible to see Ruth Leigh; he thought it would be cowardly to disappear and not say good-by. Indeed, it was necessary to see her and explain the stoppage of help from the Margaret Fund. The check that he had drawn, which was returned, had been for one of Dr. Leigh's cases. With his failure to elicit any response from Mrs. Henderson, the hope, raised by the newspaper comments on the unexecuted will, that the fund would be renewed was dissipated.

In the interview which Father Damon sought with Dr. Leigh at the Women's Hospital all this was explained, and ways and means were discussed for help elsewhere.

“I wanted to talk this over with you,” said Father Damon, “because I am going away to take a rest.”

“You need it, Father Damon,” was Ruth's answer, in a professional manner.

“And—and,” he continued, with some hesitation, “probably I shall not return to this mission.”

“Perhaps that will be best,” she said, simply, but looking up at him now, with a face full of tender sympathy.

“I am sure of it,” he replied, turning away from her gaze. “The fact is, doctor, I am a little hipped—overworked, and all that. I shall pull myself together with a little rest. But I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your work, and—and what a comfort you have been to me in my poor labors. I used to hope that some time you would see this world in relation to the other, and—”

“Yes, I know,” she interrupted, hastily, “I cannot think as you do, but—” And she could not go on for a great lump in her throat. Involuntarily she rose from her seat. The interview was too trying. Father Damon rose also. There was a moment's painful silence as they looked in each other's faces. Neither could trust the voice for speech. He took her hand and pressed it, and said “God bless you!” and went out, closing the door softly.

A moment after he opened it again and stood on the threshold. She was in her chair, her head bowed upon her arms on the table. As he spoke she looked up, and she never forgot the expression of his face.

“I want to say, Ruth”—he had never before called her by her first name, and his accent thrilled her—“that I shall pray for you as I pray for myself, and though I may never see you again in this world, the greatest happiness that can come to me in this life will be to hear that you have learned to say Our Father which art in heaven.”

As she looked he was gone, and his last words remained a refrain in her mind that evening and afterwards—“Our Father which art in heaven”—a refrain recurring again and again in all her life, inseparable from the memory of the man she loved.