A Fool There Was Part 26

Blake, leaving the house, lifted Muriel into the big, French car and got in beside her. Her little mind was in great puzzlement; and of Blake she began to ask the countless questions that flew to her lips. "Why was daddy living there, when mother dear and she were with Aunt Elinor?" "Who was the lady that she had seen, and did he know her?" "Was daddy living there all alone, and when was he coming to live with them, as he used?"

and many, many more.

Some of them Blake answered as best he could; others he evaded. His heart ached within him sorely.... Almost he wished that he were a woman; the relief of tears would have meant much.

With childish, wondering question stinging deeper and yet more deep, he watched the stream of traffic swirl past--car and cab, brougham and 'bus.

They were on the Avenue--Fifth Avenue, like which there is no other street in our land.

On they went, past great club, past rows of magnificent residences, past towering church and staid old dwelling. They came at length to the Plaza, with its hotels, and glistening statue. The Park lay to the left, a thing of green, with its arching trees. Uniformed nurses were wheeling little perambulators; others were watching active, tousled-headed little charges. Anon there flashed past a group of galloping riders.

At length they turned into a side street. The car stopped before a house of brick and stone, with wrought-iron lattices. Blake got out, lifting the child.

The butler admitted them. Mrs. VanVorst was in, he said, in response to Blake's query; Mrs. Schuyler was out....

It had been some time since Blake had seen Kathryn. She had been very ill, very ill--ill almost unto death. This had followed the receipt of a letter from John Schuyler--a letter which made futile all their efforts to spare her suffering--a letter in which he had been condemned of his own hand. Dr. DeLancey had labored hard, and well. In the end she was saved. But Dr. DeLancey was an old man--a very old man; and, when he had seen that she was saved, he himself had pa.s.sed away. Possibly it was as well; for he was a lonely old man, you know; and those few whom he loved had brought him much suffering. It was a strange letter, that letter that had wrought so much--a letter utterly unlike the man who wrote it. It was, in part:

"... G.o.d himself only knows how I feel. I can scarce believe that it is I who write. And yet it must be I. There is no such thing as redemption-- no such thing as hope--no such thing as palliation, or excuse. It is simply an end of me that is not death. Would to G.o.d it were. Death would be welcome--even a death of torture refined. There is nothing that I could say that you would understand for nothing that I could say would I myself understand. It is simply the end.... I hope I am insane. Yet I fear that I am not.... I am a s.h.i.+p without a rudder. My will is gone from me; I have no volition of my own--no soul--nothing. All that is left of me is a body, and the power still to suffer, and for the rest, only a great emptiness, and a greater pain."

Kathryn had fainted, when she received that letter. Then fever had come, and with it, delirium. Which was merciful. For weeks she lay closer to death than to life.... Now she was better; and yet far from well. Violet eyes were sad--dull. Brown-gold flesh was pallid. She moved with languor.

For weeks no word of all that meant so much was spoken; it was a topic carefully avoided.

One day Kathryn had said that she must go to see Schuyler. They had tried to dissuade her; without success. This was to have been the day. So Blake himself had gone, eager to bear for her the shock, should there be a shock to be borne; and if not, to render easy her going.

Elinor met him as he entered the drawing room. He set the child down, bidding her go find her nurse; then he turned to Mrs. VanVorst.

"I have seen him," he said, simply.

She looked the query that there was no need for lips to speak.

He shook his head.

"It is impossible," he declared. "Quite impossible. She was there."

"We must dissuade Kathryn from going, then," said Elinor.

He smiled, grimly, sadly.

"It will not be hard, I fear. Muriel was there, too."

And that was why Kathryn Schuyler did not go, then, to John Schuyler.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

THAT WHICH MEN SAID.

A winter had come, and gone. It had been a bitter winter, and a cold.

For Kathryn Schuyler had it been a bitter winter, indeed. Sick of heart, sick of body, she had stayed in the city, going out not at all, seeing of all her friends only Blake, trying with all her pride, with all her strength, to adjust herself to the new order of things. It had been a weary winter--a winter that dragged along on laggard feet, loitering, waiting.

The love of Muriel, the sympathy of Elinor, the devotion of Blake were in it the only bits of brightness. She felt strange--lost--astray. By day, she was dull, listless. At night sometimes, she slept a little; at others she would bury her face in her tumbled pillow, and her lithe body would heave with the wracking of her sobs; for the entire structure of her life had been ruthlessly torn down by the hand of one man. It seemed to her that from its ruin nothing might ever be erected.

She told this to Blake, one day. Side by side, they had been sitting by the window, gazing out into a sleet-swept street where horses slipped and slid, and hurrying foot-pa.s.sengers pa.s.sed with heads buried in collars, or furs.

He had said but little in reply--merely that there are things in this world that we do not know, and that happiness sometimes come whence we least expect it. He did not say these things with any great degree of confidence. In his own life, there had been but little save longing unsatisfied, prayers ungranted. But she took from it comfort--even though there seemed in it so pitifully little from which comfort might be derived. Perhaps it was the way in which he said it; or perhaps it was because it was he who said it.

However, winter at length dragged out its weary life to its weary end.

Spring came, and with it the soft green of the new born gra.s.s, and the lighter shoots of crocus, and lily, and the buds of the trees. Spring grew; and the stolid phalanx of city homes began to don their summer armor of boards, and blinds and shaded windows.

And then the Larchmont place was opened. John Schuyler had sent to Kathryn the deed of it; the one request that he had made was that she continue to live there--that she take Muriel there.

During all this time no word of him had come to her. Blake had heard. But no word had he said to Kathryn, because of the things that he had heard.

A man of the breadth of acquaintance, of the breadth of interests, that was John Schuyler's may not fall to desuetude unwatchful. And Blake heard, at clubs, at theatres, wherever men congregate, of Schuyler, and of the life that was his. And he, as little as they, could explain.

Schuyler was drinking, they told him--drinking hard. The woman? Was she still in New York? Yes; she had been seen at the opera; she had been seen driving in the Mall. A d.a.m.nable strange case, the whole thing. Grewsome!

And, save Blake, they would wash the taste of it all from their mouths with liquor. Devilishly good fellow, Schuyler. Brainy, too. He would have been one of the big men of the country, if it hadn't been for this.

A chance to save him? They shook their heads, and smiled, grimly. You know how it is, yourself. When a man gets into the hands of a woman like that, what can you do? Say anything against her, and you have to fight him. Tell him he's a fool and he tells you to mind your own business. Try to reason with him, then? If the man had any reason left in him, there would be no occasion to reason. It's hard, true. But your hands are tied.

It's just, "Good-bye," and a prayer for the next man.... So they reasoned. And could Blake say that they were wrong? ... Could you?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

IN THE GARDEN.

Kathryn stood beside the blossom-laden arbor, culling fragrant tender blossoms from the wealth before her. Beside her, Muriel, little skirt upheld, received them.

"Mother, dear," said the child, at length.

"Yes, honey?"

"Does G.o.d make roses?"

"Yes, dearie."

"Who made G.o.d?"

Her mother smiled. "He made Himself. G.o.d makes everything, dearie."