The Lever Part 41

"Must he still wear his full beard and his old corduroy clothes, with a blue handkerchief knotted around his throat, to recall himself to you?

Must I tell you that he called himself 'Roberts'?"

"Roberts!" she gasped, gazing at him spellbound, "--how could you know?"

"Look at me again, Eleanor," he urged with infinite tenderness, but with an eager expectancy manifest in every feature,--"look hard."

She drew back speechless as the truth came to her.

"Oh, my Robert," she cried at last, with a joy in her voice which thrilled her hearers, "you--you were that man!"

It seemed a sacrilege to the two spectators of the unexpected climax of this intimate personal drama to remain, so instinctively they both withdrew silently to the drawing-room, leaving Eleanor closely enfolded in her husband's arms. For the first time since Covington had disclosed himself, Alice was alone with him. Wrought up as the girl had been by the conflicting emotions which had consumed her strength during the past moments, and relieved beyond measure by the final outcome of what had promised only a tragedy, yet her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him.

"Why did you do this?" she asked. "Why did you come into my life to teach me that this beautiful world of ours can contain so much that is bad?--you, whom I respected and admired, and whom I was beginning to believe I loved? How could you do it?"

Covington made no answer to the impelling voice which spoke. The girl, with her varying moods and changing conceits, who had so amused him, had vanished, and in her place he saw the woman, supreme in the strength of a.s.serting that which is ever woman's creed,--justice and right. He could sense, in her att.i.tude, as in her words, that her resentment was not because of the indignity which he had forced upon herself, but rather because of the wrong he had done to those she loved. What a woman to have called his wife,--what a woman to have lived up to as a husband!

"I must see your father again," he said when he spoke at last. "Let us go back to them."

Covington stood in the doorway of the library as Alice slipped quietly into the room and took her place beside Eleanor and her father. As he looked upon the three, forming a group into which he had almost entered, he realized the infinite distance which now separated them. Their total disregard of his presence, Gorham's lack of open resentment, Alice's indifference,--all told him that in their eyes he was only the pariah, beneath their contempt, suffered to remain there until he saw fit to rid them of his presence. Yet he could not leave them thus. Somewhere within him a something, until now quiescent, demanded recognition and insisted upon expression. Why had it waited until now! It was a changed John Covington who spoke from that doorway, when at last silence became unendurable. The hard lines in the face had softened, and the previously insistent voice now betrayed realization of the present, and hopelessness for the future. The fires of truth and love and faith and honor, which burned so brightly before him, at least touched him with their heat. G.o.d pity him!

"It is all over, Mr. Gorham," he forced himself to say. "It is not you who have defeated me, it is I who have defeated myself. I offer no defence. I despised myself before I did this, I despise myself still further for having done it. I could not believe you sincere,--I could not believe any man capable of living the creed you preached. I accept the penalty which you or other men may impose upon me."

"You have imposed your own penalty, Covington," Gorham replied. "You, who have destroyed the way-marks to misguide others, now find yourself adrift because of your own act. You are a young man. If you are honest in what you now say, there is still hope for you. Fight those overpowering ambitions which have brought you to the brink until you have them properly controlled, then guide your undoubted abilities along lines which men recognize as true."

Covington bowed his head, and without a word disappeared. As the outer door closed Alice turned to her father, but her thought was not of the man who had pa.s.sed from their lives.

"You were that prospector, daddy? Why did you never tell Eleanor?"

"I have tried to make her recognize me ever since we were married, dear.

I have tried to make her tell me the story, hoping that the repet.i.tion might recall in her heart some a.s.sociation which would link me with that past, sad as it was to her. You never knew, Alice, of that experience when I went West in search of health, but now you know why I hurried back to Denver; why I kept myself constantly informed regarding the recovery and later life of this little woman who came into my heart during those days when she was pa.s.sing through her agony. I loved her then, but she was another man's wife. I knew when the court gave her back her freedom, and I lost no time in winning her at the first opportunity which offered."

"How could I have recognized you, ill as I was then,--and without your old prospector's clothes and your full beard? You should have told me."

"I wanted your love, dear heart, not your grat.i.tude."

She tenderly pushed back the gray hair from the high forehead, and pressed her lips against it reverently.

"You have both, Robert,--you have always had them."

x.x.x

Sanford located Allen's apartment from the address Gorham had given him.

He stood before the entrance for several moments, regarding its pretentious appearance and the aristocratic neighborhood.

"Gorham must have made a mistake," he muttered; "this can't be the place."

But the handsome Gothic figures over the doorway corresponded with those written upon the slip of paper, so he approached the elevator boy, resplendent in his bra.s.s b.u.t.tons.

"Does Mr. Allen Sanford live here?" he demanded.

"Yes, sir; eighth floor. What name shall I say, sir?"

"You needn't say any name,--I'll say it myself. I'm his father. Rents must be cheaper than they used to be," he remarked to himself in the elevator. "I guess the boy hasn't suffered much."

Allen had just risen from the window-seat after the painful revelry he had indulged in since Patricia and Riley left him. The ringing of the bell annoyed him. He was in no mood to see any one, and he resented the intrusion. Then he threw the door open and saw his father standing there. For a long moment he stood speechless with amazement, when his face broke into a smile of welcome which touched the old man's heart.

"The pater!" he cried, and in another moment he had him grasped in his arms with a grip which almost crushed him.

"What do you mean, you young reprobate," Sanford gasped, struggling to escape. "I'm not a football dummy. Let me get my breath."

Allen dragged him into the room, unwilling to release him.

"The dear old pater," he cried again, depositing him in the great Morris chair, and drawing back to regard him joyfully. "You've come just in time. There are my trunks packed all ready to go to you. You said I'd come back, and you were right. Oh, pater, I've made an awful mess of things. You knew that I was no good, but I've had to find it out for myself."

"Nothing of the sort," blubbered the old man, striving earnestly to conceal the emotion which almost overcame him as a result of the boy's welcome. "Any one who says you're no good will have to settle with me.

You're my son, that's what you are, and no Sanford was ever a failure yet."

"Then you must keep me from being the first."

"Nothing of the sort;--why do you try to make me lose my temper? Gorham says--"

"You've seen Mr. Gorham?" Allen interrupted, his heart leaping at the sound of the name. "What did he say?"

"Never mind what he said," Sanford replied, remembering the injunction laid upon him. Then he looked about him. "Gorham must have paid you a good deal more than you were worth," he remarked significantly.

"He did," admitted Allen, and then divining what was in his father's mind; "but not enough for this."

"You've run in debt, have you?" Allen noticed that the question did not contain the usual sting. The old man would have rejoiced at this opportunity to express his sympathy in the only way he knew how.

"Not yet. I sold my motor and some other things."

"Had to live like a gentleman, whatever your salary, didn't you?"

"I ought not to have done it," the boy admitted.

"Nothing of the sort," Sanford sputtered, again resorting to his favorite phrase. "My son has to live like a gentleman,--that's what I educated him for. Now help me off with my coat, and tell me all the d.a.m.n fool things you've been doing."

Their conference lasted well into the afternoon,--an afternoon filled with surprises for them both. For the first time Allen found his father an interested, sympathetic listener; for the first time Stephen Sanford came to know his son. The boy made no effort to spare himself, though eager for his father to realize that he had been earnest and industrious, albeit the net results of this had been but failure. Mr.

Gorham had done so much for him, and he had tried to a.s.similate the lessons both from his deeds and from his words; but instead he had seen chimeras breathing fire at every turn, and had charged them quixote-like to find them but windmills, harmful only to himself. He enlarged upon the personal characteristics of the directors and the other business men with whom he came in contact,--many of them well known to his listener,--and Sanford marvelled at the accuracy of the boy's insight, and the integrity of the portraits. Gorham was right,--Allen had developed, and far beyond what he himself realized. He was now a man to be reckoned with rather than a boy to be disciplined.

The old man's keen business sense also for the first time grasped the tremendous scope of Gorham's gigantic project. There was no room left to doubt the strength of the appeal of the absolute honesty of purpose after listening to Allen's unconsciously irresistible testimony. In words made pregnant by the simplicity of their utterance, he described Gorham the man and Gorham the Colossus of the business world; he pictured the waves of avarice and intrigue and discontent which he thought he saw beating against the feet of this towering figure, unheeded and unrecognized because so far beneath it; he told of his own puny efforts to warn this giant of the storm which he thought he saw approaching, but in doing this he had betrayed his own ignorance, and had prepared the pit into which he himself had fallen.

"And the worst of it all is," Allen concluded, "that I can't see even now where I was wrong; but if Mr. Gorham told me that Napoleon Bonaparte discovered America I would know that, all previous statements to the contrary, he was right."