The Deluge Part 41

"To get away from this," replied I to the waiting captain. "Go back down the Sound--to Dawn Hill."

Yes, I would go to the peaceful, soothing country, to my dogs and horses and those faithful servants bound to me by our common love for the same animals. "Men to cross swords with, to amuse oneself with," I mused; "but dogs and horses to live with." I pictured myself at the kennels--the joyful uproar the instant instinct warned the dogs of my coming; how they would leap and bark and tremble in a very ecstasy of delight as I stood among them; how jealous all the others would be, as I selected one to caress.

"Send her ahead as fast as she'll go," I called to the captain.

As the _Albatross_ steamed into the little harbor, I saw Mowbray Langdon's _Indolence_ at anchor. I glanced toward Steuben Point--where his cousins, the Vivians, lived--and thought I recognized his launch at their pier. We saluted the _Indolence_; the _Indolence_ saluted us. My launch was piped away and took me ash.o.r.e. I strolled along the path that wound round the base of the hill toward the kennels. At the crossing of the path down from the house, I paused and lingered on the glimpse of one of the corner towers of the great showy palace. I was muttering something--I listened to myself. It was: "Mulholland, Mrs. Mulholland and the four little Mulhollands." And I felt like laughing aloud, such a joke was it that I should be envying a policeman his potato patch and his fat wife and his four brats, and that he should be in a position to pity me.

You may be imagining that, through all, Anita had been dominating my mind.

That is the way it is in the romances; but not in life. No doubt there are men who brood upon the impossible, and moon and maunder away their lives over the grave of a dead love; no doubt there are people who will say that, because I did not shoot Langdon or her, or myself, or fly to a desert or pose in the crowded places of the world as the last scene of a tragedy, I therefore cared little about her. I offer them this suggestion: A man strong enough to give a love worth a woman's while is strong enough to live on without her when he finds he may not live with her.

As I stood there that summer day, looking toward the crest of the hill, at the mocking mausoleum of my dead dream, I realized what the incessant battle of the Street had meant to me. "There is peace for me only in the storm," said I. "But, thank G.o.d, there is peace for me somewhere."

Through the foliage I had glimpses of some one coming slowly down the zigzag path. Presently, at one of the turnings half-way up the hill, appeared Mowbray Langdon. "What is he doing here," thought I, scarcely able to believe my eyes. "Here of all places!" And then I forgot the strangeness of his being at Dawn Hill in the strangeness of his expression. For it was apparent, even at the distance which separated us, that he was suffering from some great and recent blow. He looked old and haggard; he walked like a man who neither knows nor cares where he is going.

He had not seen me, and my impulse was to avoid him by continuing on toward the kennels. I had no especial feeling against him; I had not lost Anita because she cared for him or he for her, but because she did not care for me--simply that to meet would be awkward, disagreeable for us both. At the slight noise of my movement to go on, he halted, glanced round eagerly, as if he hoped the sound had been made by some one he wished to see. His glance fell on me. He stopped short, was for an instant disconcerted; then his face lighted up with devilish joy. "You!" he cried. "Just the man!" And he descended more rapidly.

At first I could make nothing of this remark. But as he drew nearer and nearer, and his ugly mood became more and more apparent, I felt that he was looking forward to provoking me into giving him a distraction from whatever was tormenting him. I waited. A few minutes and we were face to face, I outwardly calm, but my anger slowly lighting up as he deliberately applied to it the torch of his insolent eyes. He was wearing his old familiar air of cynical a.s.surance. Evidently, with his recovered fortune, he had recovered his conviction of his great superiority to the rest of the human race--the child had climbed back on the chair that made it tall and had forgotten its tumble. And I was wondering again that I, so short a time before, had been crude enough to be fascinated and fooled by those tawdry posings and pretenses. For the man, as I now saw him, was obviously shallow and vain, a slave to those poor "man-of-the-world" pa.s.sions--ostentation and cynicism and skill at vices old as mankind and tedious as a treadmill, the commonplace routine of the idle and foolish and purposeless. A clever, handsome fellow, but the more pitiful that he was by nature above the uses to which he prost.i.tuted himself.

He fought hard to keep his eyes steadily on mine; but they would waver and s.h.i.+ft. Not, however, before I had found deep down in them the beginnings of fear. "You see, you were mistaken," said I. "You have nothing to say to me--or I to you."

He knew I had looked straight to the bottom of his real self, and had seen the coward that is in every man who has been bred to appearances only. Up rose his vanity, the coward's subst.i.tute for courage.

"You think I am afraid of you?" he sneered, bluffing and bl.u.s.tering like the school bully.

"I don't in the least care whether you are or not," replied I. "What are you doing here, anyhow?"

It was as if I had thrown off the cover of a furnace. "I came to get the woman I love," he cried. "You stole her from me! You tricked me! But, by G.o.d, Blacklock, I'll never pause until I get her back and punish you!"

He was brave enough now, drunk with the fumes from his brave words. "All my life," he raged arrogantly on, "I've had whatever I wanted. I've let nothing interfere--nothing and n.o.body. I've been too forbearing with you--first, because I knew she could never care for you, and, then, because I rather admired your pluck and impudence. I like to see fellows kick their way up among us from the common people."

I put my hand on his shoulder. No doubt the fiend that rose within me, as from the dead, looked at him from my eyes. He has great physical strength, but he winced under that weight and grip, and across his face flitted the terror that must come to any man at first sense of being in the angry clutch of one stronger than he. I slowly released him--I had tested and realized my physical superiority; to use it would be cheap and cowardly.

"You can't provoke me to descend to your level," said I, with the easy philosophy of him who clearly has the better of the argument.

He was shaking from head to foot, not with terror, but with impotent rage.

How much we owe to accident! The mere accident of my physical superiority had put him at hopeless disadvantage; had made him feel inferior to me as no victory of mental or moral superiority could possibly have done. And I myself felt a greater contempt for him than the discovery of his treachery and his shallowness had together inspired.

"I shan't indulge in flapdoodle," I went on. "I'll be frank. A year ago, if any man had faced me with a claim upon a woman who was married to me, I'd probably have dealt with him as your vanity and what you call 'honor' would force you to try to deal with a similar situation. But I live to learn, and I'm, fortunately, not afraid to follow a new light. There is the vanity of so-called honor; there as also the demand of justice--of fair play. As I have told her, so I now tell you--she is free to go. But I shall say one thing to you that I did not say to her. If you do not deal fairly with her, I shall see to it that there are ten thorns to every rose in that bed of roses on which you lie. You are contemptible in many ways--perhaps that's why women like you. But there must be some good in you, or possibilities of good, or you could not have won and kept her love."

He was staring at me with a dazed expression. I rather expected him to show some of that amused contempt with which men of his sort always receive a new idea that is beyond the range of their narrow, conventional minds. For I did not expect him to understand why I was not only willing, but even eager, to relinquish a woman whom I could hold only by a.s.serting a property right in her. And I do not think he did understand me, though his manner changed to a sort of grudging respect. He was, I believe, about to make some impulsive, generous speech, when we heard the quick strokes of iron-shod hoofs on the path from the kennels and the stables--is there any sound more arresting? Past us at a gallop swept a horse, on his back--Anita. She was not in riding-habit; the wind fluttered the sleeves of her blouse, blew her uncovered hair this way and that about her beautiful face. She sped on toward the landing, though I fancied she had seen us.

Anita at Dawn Hill--Langdon, in a furious temper, descending from the house toward the landing--Anita presently, riding like mad--"to overtake him,"

thought I. And I read confirmation in his triumphant eyes. In another mood, I suppose my fury would have been beyond my power to restrain it.

Just then--the day grew dark for me, and I wanted to hide away somewhere.

Heart-sick, I was ashamed for her, hated myself for having blundered into surprising her.

She reappeared at the turn round which she had vanished. I now tooted that she was riding without saddle or bridle, with only a halter round the horse's neck--then she had seen us, had stopped and come back as soon as she could. She dropped from the horse, looked swiftly at me, at him, at me again, with intense anxiety.

"I saw your yacht in the harbor only a moment ago," she said to me. She was almost panting. "I feared you might meet him. So I came."

"As you see, he is quite--intact," said I. "I must ask that you and he leave the place at once." And I went rapidly along the path toward the kennels.

An exclamation from Langdon forced me to turn in spite of myself. He was half-kneeling, was holding her in his arms. At that sight, the savage in me shook himself free. I dashed toward them with I knew not what curses bursting from me. Langdon, intent upon her, did not realize until I sent him reeling backward to the earth and s.n.a.t.c.hed her up. Her white face, her closed eyes, her limp form made my fury instantly collapse. In my confusion I thought that she was dead. I laid her gently on the gra.s.s and supported her head, so small, so gloriously crowned, the face so still and sweet and white, like the stainless entrance to a stainless shrine. How that horrible fear changed my whole way of looking at her, at him, at her and him, at everything!

Her eyelids were quivering--her eyes were opening--her bosom was rising and falling slowly as she drew long, uncertain breaths. She shuddered, sat up, started up. "Go! go!" she cried. "Bring him back! Bring him back! Bring him--"

There she recognized me. "Oh," she said, and gave a great sigh of relief.

She leaned against a tree and looked at Langdon. "You are still here? Then tell him."

Langdon gazed sullenly at the ground. "I can't," he answered. "I don't believe it. Besides--he has given you to me. Let us go. Let me take you to the Vivians." He threw out his arms in a wild, pa.s.sionate gesture; he was utterly unlike himself. His emotion burst through and shattered pose and cynicism and hard crust of selfishness like the exploding powder bursting the sh.e.l.l. "I can't give you up, Anita!" he exclaimed in a tone of utter desperation. "I can't! I can't!"

But her gaze was all this time steadily on me, as if she feared I would go, should she look away. "I will tell you myself," she said rapidly, to me.

"We--uncle Howard and I--read in the papers how they had all turned against you, and he brought me over here. He has been telegraphing for you. This morning he went to town to search for you. About an hour ago Langdon came.

I refused to see him, as I have ever since the time I told you about at Alva's. He persisted, until at last I had the servant request him to leave the house."

"But _now_ there's no longer any reason for your staying, Anita," he pleaded. "He has said you are free. Why stay when _you_ would really no more be here than if you were to go, leaving one of your empty dresses?"

She had not for an instant taken her gaze from me; and so strange were her eyes, so compelling, that I seemed unable to move or speak.

But now she released me to blaze upon him--and never shall I forget any detail of her face or voice as she said to him: "That is false, Mowbray Langdon. I told you the truth when I told you I loved him!"

So violent was her emotion that she had to pause for self-control. And I?

I was overwhelmed, dazed, stunned. When she went on, she was looking at neither of us. "Yes, I loved him, almost from the first--from the day he came to the box at the races. I was ashamed, poor creature that my parents had made me! I was ashamed of it. And I tried to hate him, and thought I did. And when he showed me that he no longer cared, my pride goaded me into the folly of trying to listen to you. But I loved him more than ever. And as you and he stand here, I am ashamed again--ashamed that I was ever so blind and ignorant and prejudiced as to compare him with"--she looked at Langdon--"with you. Do you believe me now--now that I humble myself before him here in your presence?"

I should have had no heart at all if I had not felt pity for him. His face was gray, and on it were those signs of age that strong emotion brings to the surface after forty. "You could have convinced me in no other way," he replied, after a silence, and in a voice I should not have recognized.

Silence again. Presently he raised his head, and with something of his old cynicism bowed to her.

"You have avenged much and many," said he. "I have often had a presentiment that my day of wrath would come."

He lifted his hat, bowed to me without looking at me, and, drawing the tatters of his pose still further over his wounds, moved away toward the landing.

I, still in a stupor, watched him until he had disappeared. When I turned to her, she dropped her eyes. "Uncle Howard will be back this afternoon,"

said she. "If I may, I'll stay at the house until he comes to take me."

A weary, half-suppressed sigh escaped from her. I knew how she must be reading my silence, but I was still unable to speak. She went to the horse, browsing near by; she stroked his muzzle. Lingeringly she twined her fingers in his mane, as if about to spring to his back! That reminded me of a thousand and one changes in her--little changes, each a trifle in itself, yet, taken all together, making a complete transformation.

"Let me help you," I managed to say. And I bent, and made a step of my hand.

She touched her fingers to my shoulder, set her narrow, graceful foot upon my palm. But she did not rise. I glanced up; she was gazing wistfully down at me.

"Women have to learn by experience just as do men," said she forlornly.

"Yet men will not tolerate it."

I suppose I must suddenly have looked what I was unable to put into words--for her eyes grew very wide, and, with a cry that was a sigh and a sob, and a laugh and a caress all in one, she slid into my arms and her face was burning against mine.

"Do you remember the night at the theater," she murmured, "when your lips almost touched my neck?--I loved you then--Black Matt--_Black Matt_!"

And I found voice; and the horse wandered away.