Floyd Grandon's Honor Part 18

St. Vincent is awake and quite revived. Grandon touches carefully on this little scene, and proposes that Violet shall be allowed in the sick-room, since the sad secret has been betrayed.

"Oh, how can I leave her?" he groans, in anguish, "alone, unprotected, to fight her way through strife and turmoil, to learn the world's coldness and cruelty! or perhaps be made a prey through her very innocence that has been so sedulously guarded. Heaven help us both!"

"It will all be right, believe me," says the strong, firm voice. "And the shock would be terrible to her if there were no sweet last words to remember afterward. Comfort her a little with your dying love."

He signs with his hand. Grandon goes down-stairs again.

"Violet, my child," he says, with a tenderness no one but Cecil has ever heard in his voice, "listen to me. You must control your grief a little or it will be so much harder for your father. You know the sad secret now. Can you comfort him these few days, and trust to G.o.d for your solace afterward? Nothing can so soothe these hours as a daughter's love,--if you can trust yourself not to add to his pangs."

The sobs shake her slender figure as she lies on Denise's sorrowing heart. Oh, what can he say to lighten her grief? His inmost soul aches for her.

"Violet!" He takes her hand in his.

"I will try," she responds, brokenly. "But he is all I have; all,"

drearily.

"Do you want to see him?"

She makes an effort to repress her sobs. "Denise," she says, "walk in the garden awhile with me. It was so sudden. I shall always shudder at the sound of that man's voice, as if he had indeed announced papa's death warrant."

If Floyd Grandon had not resolved before, he resolves now. He goes back, taking with him the sc.r.a.p of paper. After reading it, St. Vincent hands it to him. The gist of it all is that to-morrow at ten Wilmarth will come with a lawyer to sign the contracts he spoke of yesterday, and hopes to find Miss Violet prepared.

"There was no agreement," says St. Vincent, feebly. "I cannot give him my darling unless she consents. It is not that we love our children less, Mr. Grandon, that we endeavor to establish their future, but because we know how hard the world is. And of the two, I will trust you."

His breath is all gone. Floyd fans him and gives him the drops again.

Half an hour afterward Violet comes into the room, so wan and changed that yesterday seems a month ago. It is a scene of heart-breaking pathos at first, but she nerves herself and summons all her fort.i.tude.

It must be so, if she is to stay there.

St. Vincent dozes off again when the pa.s.sion is a little spent. He grows frailer, the skin is waxen white, and the eyes more deeply sunken. All that is to be of any avail must be done quickly, if St.

Vincent is to die in peace as regards his child.

What if he and Cecil were at just this pa.s.s! What if he lay dying and her future not a.s.sured? These people are not kith and kin of his that he need feel so anxious, neither are they friends of long standing.

Then he sees the lithe figure again, stepping from crag to crag, holding out its girlish arms, with a brave, undoubting faith, and clasping Cecil. Yes, it is through her endeavor that his child is not marred and crushed, even if the great question of life is put aside.

Does he not owe _her_ something?

She raises her head presently. Denise is sitting over by the window, Grandon nearer. "Is it true?" she asks, tearless now and sadly bewildered, all the pathos of desolation in her young voice,--"is it true? He has always been so pale and thin, and how could I dream--oh, he _will_ get well again! He was so ill in Canada, you know, Denise?"

And yet she realizes now that he has never recovered since that time.

How can they answer her? Grandon is moved with infinite pity, yet words are utterly futile. Nothing can comfort her with this awful reality staring her in the face.

She buries her woe-stricken face in the pillow again. There is a long, long silence. Then Denise bethinks herself of some homely household duties. It is not right to leave her young mistress alone with this gentleman, and yet,--but etiquette is so different here. Ah, if the other one was like this, if she could go to such a husband; and Denise's old heart swells at the thought of what cannot be, but is tempting, nevertheless.

Towards evening Grandon feels that he must return for a brief while.

St. Vincent has rallied wonderfully again, and the pulse has gained strength that is deceptive to all but Grandon.

"I will come back for the night," he says. "You must not be alone any more. There ought to be some good woman to call upon."

Denise knows of none save the washerwoman, who will be here Tuesday morning, but she is not certain such a body would be either comfort or help. "And he could not bear strange faces about him; he is peculiar, I think you call it. But it is hardly right to take all your time."

"Do not think of that for a moment," he returns, with hearty sympathy.

At home he finds Cecil asleep. "She was so lonely," explains Jane. "I read to her and took her walking, but I never let her go out of my sight an instant now," the girl says with a tremble in her voice. "She talked of Miss Violet constantly, and her beautiful doll, and the tea they had together, but she wouldn't go to madame nor to her Aunt Gertrude."

Floyd kisses the sweet rosy mouth, and his first desire is to awaken her, but he sits on the side of the bed and thinks if Violet were here what happy days the child would have. She is still so near to her own childhood; the secret is that so far she has never been considered anything but a child. Her womanly life is all to come at its proper time. There is everything for her to learn. The selfishness, the deceit, the wretched hollowness and satiety of life,--will it ever be hers, or is there a spring of perennial freshness in her soul? She might as well come here as his ward. In time Eugene might fancy her.

There would be his mother and the two girls. Why does he shrink a little and understand at once that they are not the kind of women to train Violet? Better a hundred times honest, old-fas.h.i.+oned, formal Denise.

An accident has made dinner an hour late, so he is in abundant time.

Mrs. Grandon has been dull all day. Laura and Marcia had this excellent effect, they kept the mental atmosphere of the house astir, and now it is stagnant. She complains of headache.

"Suppose we go to drive," he proposes, and the two ladies agree. Madame is in something white and soft, a ma.s.s of lace and a marvel of fineness. She has the rare art of harmonious adjustment, of being used to her clothes. She is never afraid to crumple them, to trail them over floors, to _use_ them, and yet she is always dainty, delicate, never rough or prodigal. She is superlatively lovely to-night. As she sits in the carriage, with just the right poise of languor, just the faint tints of enthusiasm that seem a part of twilight, she is a very dangerous siren, in that, without the definite purpose being at all tangible, she impresses herself upon him with that delicious sense of being something that his whole life would be the poorer without. A subtile knowledge steals over him that he cannot a.n.a.lyze or define, but in his soul he knows this magnificent woman could love him now with a pa.s.sion that would almost sweep the very soul out of him. He has no grudge against her that she did not love him before,--it was not her time any more than his; neither is he affronted at the French marriage,--it was what she desired then. But now she has come to something else. Of what use would life be if one had always to keep to sweet cake and marmalade? There are fruits and flavors and wines, there is knowledge sweet and bitter.

Very little is said. He glances at her now and then, and she reads in his face that the tide is coming in. She has seen this questioning softness in other eyes. If she could have him an hour or two on the porch after their return!

That is the bitter of it. He feels that he has stayed away from sorrow too long. His mother makes some fretful comment, she gives him a glance that he carries with him in the darkness.

A quiet night follows. The doctor is up in the morning. "Comfortable,"

he says. "You may as well go on with the anodynes. There will be great restlessness at the last, no doubt, unless some mood of excitement should carry him off. Three days will be the utmost."

Briggs comes with Mr. Grandon's mail. There is a postal from Eugene, who considers the subject unworthy of the compliment of a sealed letter.

"No, a thousand times _no_! Bore me no more with the folly!"

Floyd's face burns as he thrusts it in Denise's stove to consume.

"Have you heard?" St. Vincent asks, as he enters the room.

"Yes." The tone acknowledges the rest.

"It is all vain, useless, then! Young people are not trained to pay heed to the advice of their elders. My poor, poor Violet!"

The utter despair touches Grandon. He has ceased to fight even for his child.

What impulse governs Grandon he cannot tell then or ever. It may be pity, sympathy, the knowledge that he can fight Violet's battle, insure her prosperity in any case, protect her, and give her happiness, and smooth the way for the dying. Of himself he does not think at all, strangely enough, and he forgets madame as entirely as if she never existed.

"Will you give her to me as my wife?" he asks, in a slow, distinct tone. "I am older, graver, and have a child."

The light that overflows the dying eyes is his reward. It is something greater than joy; it is trust, relief, satisfaction, grat.i.tude intense and heartfelt. Then it slowly changes.

"It is taking an advantage of your generosity," he answers, with a voice in which the anguish cannot be hidden. "No, I will not be so selfish when you have been all that is manly, a friend since the first moment----"

A light tap is heard and the door opens. Violet comes in, dressed in clinging white, her eyes heavy, her sweet face filled with awe.

Grandon takes her cold hand in his and leads her to the bed. "Violet,"

he begins, with unsmiling tenderness, "will you take me for your husband, your friend, your protector?"

Violet has been instructed in some of the duties of womanhood. Marriage is a holy sacrament to be entered into with her father's consent and approval. She looks at him gravely, questioningly.