The Cost

XXII.

STORMS IN THE WEST.

While the Fanshaw-Herron storm was slowly gathering in Dumont's eastern horizon, two others equally black were lifting in the west.

In the two months between Scarborough's election and his inauguration, the great monopolies thriving under the protection of the state's corrupted statute-book and corrupted officials followed the lead of their leader, Dumont's National Woolens Company, in making sweeping but stealthy changes in their prices, wages, methods and even in their legal status. They hoped thus to enable their Legislature plausibly to resist Scarborough's demand for a revision of the laws—why revise when the cry of monopoly had been shown to be a false issue raised by a demagogue to discredit the tried leaders of the party and to aggrandize himself? And, when Scarborough had been thoroughly "exposed," business could be resumed gradually.

But Scarborough had the better brain, and had character as well. He easily upset their program and pressed their Legislature so hard that it was kept in line only by pouring out money like water. This became a public scandal which made him stronger than ever and also made it seem difficult or impossible for the monopolies to get a corruptible Legislature at the next election. At last the people had in their service a lawyer equal in ability to the best the monopolies could buy, and one who understood human nature and political machinery to boot.

Dumont began to respect Scarborough profoundly—not for his character, which made him impregnable with the people, but for his intellect, which showed him how to convince the people of his character and to keep them convinced. When Merriweather came on "to take his beating" from his employer he said among other things deprecatory: "Scarborough's a dreamer. His head's among the clouds." Dumont retorted: "Yes, but his feet are on the ground—too damned firmly to suit me." And after a moment's thought, he added: "What a shame for such a brain to go to waste! Why, he could make millions."

He felt that Gladys was probably his best remaining card. She had been in Indianapolis visiting the whole of February, Scarborough's second month as governor, and had gone on to her brother in New York with a glowing report of her progress with Scarborough's sister Arabella, now a widow and at her own invitation living with him in Indianapolis to relieve him of the social duties of his office. She was a dozen years more the Arabella who had roused her father's wrath by her plans for educating her brother "like a gentleman"; and Olivia and Fred were irritated and even alarmed by her anything but helpful peculiarities—though Scarborough seemed cheerful and indifferent enough about them.

It was a temperamental impossibility for Dumont to believe that Scarborough could really be sincere in a course which was obviously unprofitable. Therefore he attached even more importance to Arabella's cordiality than did Gladys herself. And, when the Legislature adjourned and Scarborough returned to Saint X for a brief stay, Dumont sent Gladys post-haste back to the Eyrie—that is, she instantly and eagerly acted upon his hint.

A few evenings after her return, she and Pauline were on the south veranda alone in the starlight. She was in low spirits and presently began to rail against her lot.

"Don't be absurd," said Pauline. "You've no right to complain. You have everything—and you're—free!"

That word "free" was often on Pauline's lips in those days. And a close observer might have been struck by the tone in which she uttered it. Not the careless tone of those who have never had or have never lost freedom, but the lingering, longing tone of those who have had it, and have learned to value it through long years without it.

"Yes—everything!" replied Gladys, bitterly. "Everything except the one thing I want."

Pauline did not help her, but she was at the stage of suppressed feeling where desire to confide is stronger than pride.

"The one thing I want," she repeated. "Pauline, I used to think I'd never care much for any man, except to like it for him to like me. Men have always been a sort of amusement—and the oftener the man changed, the better the fun. I've known for several years that I simply must marry, but I've refused to face it. It seemed to me I was fated to wander the earth, homeless, begging from door to door for leave to come in and rest a while."

"You know perfectly well, Gladys, that this is your home."

"Of course—in a sense. It's as much my home as another woman's house could be. But"—with a little sob—"I've seen my mate and I want to begin my nest."

They were side by side on a wide, wicker sofa. Pauline made an impulsive move to put her arm round Gladys, then drew away and clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

Gladys was crying, sobbing, brokenly apologizing for it—"I'm a little idiot—but I can't help it—I haven't any pride left—a woman never does have, really, when she's in love—oh, Pauline, do you think he cares at all for me?" And after a pause she went on, too absorbed in herself to observe Pauline or to wonder at her silence: "Sometimes I think he does. Again I fear that—that he doesn't. And lately—why doesn't he come here any more?"

"You know how busy he is," said Pauline, in a voice so strained that Gladys ought to have noticed it.

"But it isn't that—I'm sure it isn't. No, it has something to do with me. It means either that he doesn't care for me or that—that he does care and is fighting against it. Oh, I don't know what to think." Then, after a pause: "How I hate being a woman! If I were a man I could find out the truth—settle it one way or the other. But I must sit dumb and wait, and wait, and wait! You don't know how I love him," she said brokenly, burying her face in the ends of the soft white shawl that was flung about her bare shoulders. "I can't help it—he's the best—he makes all the others look and talk like cheap imitations. He's the best, and a woman can't help wanting the best."

Pauline rose and leaned against the railing—she could evade the truth no longer. Gladys was in love with Scarborough, was at last caught in her own toils, would go on entangling herself deeper and deeper, abandoning herself more and more to a hopeless love, unless—

"What would you do, Pauline?" pleaded Gladys. "There must be some reason why he doesn't speak. It isn't fair to me—it isn't fair! I could stand anything—even giving him up—better than this uncertainty. It's—it's breaking my heart—I who thought I didn't have a heart."

"No, it isn't fair," said Pauline, to herself rather than to Gladys.

"I suppose you don't sympathize with me," Gladys went on. "I know you don't like him. I've noticed how strained and distant you are toward each other. And you seem to avoid each other. And he'll never talk of you to me. Did you have some sort of misunderstanding at college?"

"Yes," said Pauline, slowly. "A—a misunderstanding."

"And you both remember it, after all these years?"

"Yes," said Pauline.

"How relentless you are," said Gladys, "and how tenacious!" But she was too intent upon her own affairs to pursue a subject which seemed to lead away from them. Presently she rose.

"I'll be ashamed of having confessed when I see you in daylight. But I don't care. I shan't be sorry. I feel a little better. After all, why should I be ashamed of any one knowing I care for him?" And she sighed, laughed, went into the house, whistling softly—sad, depressed, but hopeful, feeling deep down that she surely must win where she had never known what it was to lose.

Pauline looked after her. "No, it isn't fair," she repeated. She stayed on the veranda, walking slowly to and fro not to make up her mind, for she had done that while Gladys was confessing, but to decide how she could best accomplish what she saw she must now no longer delay. It was not until two hours later that she went up to bed.

When Gladys came down at nine the next morning Pauline had just gone out—"I think, Miss Gladys, she told the coachman to drive to her father's," said the butler.

Gladys set out alone. Instead of keeping to the paths and the woods along the edge of the bluff she descended to the valley and the river road. She walked rapidly, her face glowing, her eyes sparkling—she was quick to respond to impressions through the senses, and to-day she felt so well physically that it reacted upon her mind and forced her spirits up. At the turn beyond Deer Creek bridge she met Scarborough suddenly. He, too, was afoot and alone, and his greeting was interpreted to her hopes by her spirits.

"May I turn and walk with you?" he asked.

"I'm finding myself disagreeable company today."

"You did look dull," she said, as they set out together, "dull as a love-sick German. But I supposed it was your executive pose."

"I was thinking that I'll be old before I know it." His old-young face was shadowed for an instant. "Old—that's an unpleasant thought, isn't it?"

"Unpleasant for a man," said Gladys, with a laugh, light as youth's dread of age. "For a woman, ghastly! Old and alone—either one's dreadful enough. But—the two together! I often think of them. Don't laugh at me—really I do. Don't you?"

"If you keep to that, our walk'll be a dismal failure. It's a road I never take—if I can help it."

"You don't look as though you were ever gloomy." Gladys glanced up at him admiringly. "I should have said you were one person the blue devils wouldn't dare attack."

"Yes, but they do. And sometimes they throw me."

"And trample you?"

"And trample me," he answered absently.

"That's because you're alone too much," she said with a look of tactful sympathy.

"Precisely," he replied. "But how am I to prevent that?"

"Marry, of course," she retorted, smiling gaily up at him, letting her heart just peep from her eyes.

"Thank you! And it sounds so easy! May I ask why you've refused to take your own medicine—you who say you are so often blue?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I've always suspected the men who asked me. They were—" She did not finish what she feared might be an unwise, repelling remark in the circumstances.

"They were after your money," he finished for her.

She nodded. "They were Europeans," she explained. "Europeans want money when they marry."

"That's another of the curses of riches," he said judicially. "And if you marry a rich man over here, you may be pretty sure he'll marry you for your money. I've observed that rich men attach an exaggerated importance to money, always."

"I'd prefer to marry a poor man," she hastened to answer, her heart beating faster—certainly his warning against rich suitors must have been designed to help his own cause with her.

"Yes, that might be better," he agreed. "But you would have to be careful after you were married or he might fancy you were using your money to tyrannize over him. I've noticed that the poor husbands of rich women are supersensitive—often for cause."

"Oh, I'd give it all to him. He could do what he pleased with it. I'd not care so long as we were happy."

Scarborough liked the spirit of this, liked her look as she said it.

"That's very generous—very like you," he replied warmly. "But I don't think it would be at all wise. You'd be in a dangerous position. You might spoil him—great wealth is a great danger, and when it's suddenly acquired, and so easily— No, you'd better put your wealth aside and only use so much of it as will make your income equal to his—if you can stand living economically."

"I could stand anything with or from any one I cared for." Gladys was eager for the conversation to turn from the general to the particular. She went on, forcing her voice to hide her interest: "And you, why don't you cure your blues?"

"Oh, I shall," he replied carelessly. "But not with your medicine. Every one to his own prescription."

"And what's yours for yourself?" said Gladys, feeling tired and nervous from the strain of this delayed happiness.

"Mine?" He laughed. "My dreams."

"You are a strange combination, aren't you? In one way you're so very practical—with your politics and all that. And in another way—I suspect you of being sentimental—almost romantic."

"You've plucked out the heart of my mystery. My real name is non Quixote de Saint X."

"And has your Dulcinea red hands and a flat nose and freckles like the lady of Toboso?" Gladys' hands were white, her nose notably fine, her skin transparently clear.

"Being Don Quixote, I don't know it if she has."

"And you prefer to worship afar, and to send her news of your triumphs instead of going to her yourself?"

"I dare not go." He was looking away, far away. "There are wicked enchanters. I'm powerless. She alone can break their spells."

They walked in silence, her heart beating so loudly that she thought he must be hearing it, must be hearing what it was saying. Yes—she must break the spells. But how—but how? What must she say to make him see? Did he expect her to ask him to marry her? She had heard that rich women often were forced to make this concession to the pride of the men they wished to marry. On the other hand, was there ever a man less likely than Scarborough to let any obstacle stand between him and what he wanted?

The first huge drops of a summer rain pattered in big, round stains, brown upon the white of the road. He glanced up—a cloud was rolling from beyond the cliffs, was swiftly curtaining the blue.

"Come," he commanded, and they darted into the underbrush, he guiding her by her arm. A short dash among the trees and bushes and they were at the base of the bluff, were shielded by a shelf of rock.

"It'll be over soon," he assured her. "But you must stand close or you'll be drenched."

A clap of thunder deafened them as a flame and a force enswathed the sycamore tree a few yards away, blowing off its bark, scattering its branches, making it all in an instant a blackened and blasted wreck. Gladys gave a low scream of terror, fell against him, hid her face in his shoulder. She was trembling violently. He put his arm round her—if he had not supported her she would have fallen. She leaned against him, clinging to him, so that he felt the beat of her heart, the swell and fall of her bosom, felt the rush of her young blood through her veins, felt the thrill from her smooth, delicate, olive skin. And he, too, was trembling—shaken in all his nerves.

"Don't be afraid," he said—in his voice he unconsciously betrayed the impulse that was fighting for possession of him.

She drew herself closer to him with a long, tremulous sigh.

"I'm a coward," she murmured. "I'm shaking so that I can't stand." She tried to draw herself away—or did she only make pretense to him and to herself that she was trying?—then relaxed again into his arms.

The thunder cracked and crashed; the lightnings leaped in streaks and in sheets; the waters gushed from the torn clouds and obscured the light like a heavy veil. She looked up at him in the dimness—she, too, was drunk with the delirium of the storms raging without and within them. His brain swam giddily. The points of gold in her dark eyes were drawing him like so many powerful magnets. Their lips met and he caught her up in his arms. And for a moment all the fire of his intensely masculine nature, so long repressed, raged over her lips, her eyes, her hair, her cheeks, her chin.

A moment she lay, happy as a petrel, beaten by a tempest; a moment her thirsty heart drank in the ecstasy of the lightnings through her lips and skin and hair.

She opened her eyes to find out why there was a sudden calm. She saw him staring with set, white face through the rain-veil. His arms still held her, but where they had been like the clasp of life itself, they were now dead as the arms of a statue. A feeling of cold chilled her skin, trickled icily in and in. She released herself—he did not oppose her.

"It seems to me I'll never be able to look you—or myself—in the face again," he said at last.

"I didn't know it was in me to—to take advantage of a woman's helplessness."

"I wanted you to do what you did," she said simply.

He shook his head. "You are generous," he answered. "But I deserve nothing but your contempt."

"I wanted you to do it," she repeated. She was under the spell of her love and of his touch. She was clutching to save what she could, was desperately hoping it might not be so little as she feared. "I had the—the same impulse that you had." She looked at him timidly, with a pleading smile. "And please don't say you're sorry you did it, even if you feel so. You'll think me very bold—I know it isn't proper for young women to make such admissions. But—don't reproach yourself—please!"

If she could have looked into his mind as he stood there, crushed and degraded in his own eyes, she would have been a little consoled—for, in defiance of his self-scorn and self-hate, his nerves were tingling with the memory of that delirium, and his brain was throbbing with the surge of impulses long dormant, now imperious. But she was not even looking toward him—for, through her sense of shame, of wounded pride, her love was clamoring to her to cry out: "Take me in your arms again! I care not on what terms, only take me and hold me and kiss me."

The rain presently ceased as abruptly as it had begun and they returned under the dripping leaves to the highroad. She glanced anxiously at him as they walked toward the town, but he did not speak. She saw that if the silence was to be broken, she must break it.

"What can I say to convince you?" she asked, as if not he but she were the offender.

He did not answer.

"Won't you look at me, please?"

He looked, the color mounting in his cheeks, his eyes unsteady.

"Now, tell me you'll not make me suffer because you fancy you've wronged me. Isn't it ungallant of you to act this way after I've humiliated myself to confess I didn't mind?"

"Thank you," he said humbly, and looked away.

"You won't have it that I was in the least responsible?" She was teasing him now—he was plainly unaware of the meaning of her yielding. "He's so modest," she thought, and went on: "You won't permit me to flatter myself I was a temptation too strong even for your iron heart, Don Quixote?"

He flushed scarlet, and the suspicion, the realization of the truth set her eyes to flashing.

"It's before another woman he's abasing himself," she thought, "not before me. He isn't even thinking of me." When she spoke her tone was cold and sneering: "I hope she will forgive you. She certainly would if she could know what a paladin you are."

He winced, but did not answer. At the road up the bluffs she paused and there was an embarrassed silence. Then he poured out abrupt sentences:

"It was doubly base. I betrayed your friendly trust, I was false to her. Don't misunderstand—she's nothing to me. She's nothing to me, yet everything. I began really to live when I began to love her. And—every one must have a—a pole-star. And she's mine—the star I sail by, and always must. And—" He halted altogether, then blundered on: "I shall not forgive myself. But you—be merciful—forgive me—forget it!"

"I shall do neither," she replied curtly, jealousy and vanity stamping down the generous impulse that rose in response to his appeal. And she went up her road. A few yards and she paused, hoping to hear him coming after her. A few yards more and she sat down on a big boulder by the wayside. Until now all the wishes of her life had been more or less material, had been wishes which her wealth or the position her wealth gave had enabled her instantly to gratify. She buried her face in her arms and sobbed and rocked herself to and fro, in a cyclone of anger, and jealousy, and shame, and love, and despair.

"I hate him!" she exclaimed between clenched teeth. "I hate him, but—if he came and wanted me, oh, how I would LOVE him!"

Meanwhile Pauline was at her father's.

"He isn't down yet," said her mother. "You know, he doesn't finish dressing nowadays until he has read the papers and his mail. Then he walks in the garden."

"I'll go there," said Pauline. "Won't you bring him when he's ready?"

She never entered the garden that the ghosts of her childhood—how far, far it seemed!—did not join her, brushing against her, or rustling in tree and bush and leafy trellis. She paused at the end of the long arbor and sat on the rustic bench there. A few feet away was the bed of lilies-of-the-valley. Every spring of her childhood she used to run from the house on the first warm morning and hurry to it; and if her glance raised her hopes she would kneel upon the young grass and lower her head until her long golden hair touched the black ground; and the soil that had been hard and cold all winter would be cracked open this way and that; and from the cracks would issue an odor—the odor of life. And as she would peer into each crack in turn she would see, down, away down, the pale tip of what she knew to be an up-shooting slender shaft. And her heart would thrill with joy, for she knew that the shafts would presently rise green above the black earth, would unfold, would blossom, would bloom, would fling from tremulous bells a perfumed proclamation of the arrival of spring.

As she sat waiting, it seemed to her that through the black earth of her life she could see and feel the backward heralds of her spring—"after the long winter," she said to herself.

She glanced up—her father coming toward her. He was alone, was holding a folded letter uncertainly in his hand. He looked at her, his eyes full of pity and grief. "Pauline," he began, "has everything been—been well—of late between you and—your husband?"

She started. "No, father," she replied. Then, looking at him with clear directness: "I've not been showing you and mother the truth about John and me—not for a long time."

She saw that her answer relieved him. He hesitated, held out the letter.

"The best way is for you to read it," he said. It was a letter to him from Fanshaw. He was writing, he explained, because the discharge of a painful duty to himself would compel him "to give pain to your daughter whom I esteem highly," and he thought it only right "to prepare her and her family for what was coming, in order that they might be ready to take the action that would suggest itself." And he went on to relate his domestic troubles and his impending suit.

"Poor Leonora!" murmured Pauline, as she finished and sat thinking of all that Fanshaw's letter involved.

"Is it true, Polly?" asked her father.

She gave a great sigh of relief. How easy this letter had made all that she had been dreading! "Yes—it's true," she replied. "I've known about—about it ever since the time I came back from the East and didn't return."

The habitual pallor of her father's face changed to gray.

"I left him, father." She lifted her head, impatient of her stammering. A bright flush was in her face as she went on rapidly: "And I came to-day to tell you the whole story—to be truthful and honest again. I'm sick of deception and evasion. I can't stand it any longer—I mustn't. I—you don't know how I've shrunk from wounding mother and you. But I've no choice now. Father, I must be free—free!"

"And you shall be," replied her father. "He shall not wreck your life and Gardiner's."

Pauline stared at him. "Father!" she exclaimed.

He put his arm round her and drew her gently to him.

"I know the idea is repellent," he said, as if he were trying to persuade a child. "But it's right, Pauline. There are cases in which not to divorce would be a sin. I hope my daughter sees that this is one."

"I don't understand," she said confusedly. "I thought you and mother believed divorce was dreadful—no matter what might happen."

"We did, Pauline. But we—that is, I—had never had it brought home. A hint of this story was published just after you came last year. I thought it false, but it set me to thinking. 'If your daughter's husband had turned out to be as you once thought him, would it be right for her to live on with him? To live a lie, to pretend to keep her vows to love and honor him? Would it be right to condemn Gardiner to be poisoned by such a father?' And at last I saw the truth, and your mother agreed with me. We had been too narrow. We had been laying down our own notions as God's great justice."

Pauline drew away from her father so that she could look at him. And at last she saw into his heart. "If I had only known," she said, and sat numb and stunned.

"When you were coming home from college," her father went on, "your mother and I talked over what we should do. John had just confessed your secret marriage—"

"You knew that!"

"Yes, and we understood, Polly. You were so young—so headstrong—and you couldn't appreciate our reasons."

Pauline's brain was reeling.

"Your mother and I talked it over before you got home and thought it best to leave you entirely free to choose. But when we saw you overcome by joy—"

"Don't!" she interrupted, her voice a cry of pain. "I can't bear it! Don't!" Years of false self-sacrifice, of deceiving her parents and her child, of self-suppression and self-degradation, and this final cruelty to Gladys—all, all in vain, all a heaping of folly upon folly, of wrong upon wrong.

She rushed toward the house. She must fly somewhere—anywhere—to escape the thoughts that were picking with sharp beaks at her aching heart. Half-way up the walk she turned and fled to a refuge she would not have thought of half an hour before to her father's arms.

"Oh, father," she cried. "If I had only known you!"

Gladys, returning from her walk, went directly to Pauline's sitting-room.

"I'm off for New York and Europe to-morrow morning," she began abruptly, her voice hard, her expression bitter and reckless.

"Where can she have heard about Leonora?" thought Pauline. She said in a strained voice: "I had hoped you would stay here to look after the house."

"To look after the house? What do you mean?" asked Gladys. But she was too full of herself to be interested in the answer, and went on: "I want you to forget what I said to you. I've got over all that. I've come to my senses."

Pauline began a nervous turning of her rings.

Gladys gave a short, grim laugh. "I detest him," she went on. "We're very changeable, we women, aren't we? I went out of this house two hours ago loving him—to distraction. I came back hating him. And all that has happened in between is that I met him and he kissed me a few times and stabbed my pride a few times."

Pauline stopped turning her rings—she rose slowly, mechanically, looked straight at Gladys.

"That is not true," she said calmly.

Gladys laughed sardonically. "You don't know the cold and haughty Governor Scarborough. There's fire under the ice. I can feel the places on my face where it scorched. Can't you see them?"

Pauline gave her a look of disgust. "How like John Dumont's sister!" she thought. And she shut herself in her room and stayed there, pleading illness in excuse, until Gladys was gone.