SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.
Dick Ware lives with his mother on the family estates. For all his life, he has been in love with his mother's ward, Viviette Hastings. Viviette does not know her own mind. Austin Ware, a brilliant, successful barrister, a great contrast to his big, somewhat heavy brother, comes down from London, and also falls in love with Viviette. Katherine Holroyd, a young widow, is also staying in the house. Viviette knows that Dick is discontented and she begs Austin to get him some appointment abroad. Dick discovers Austin's love, and mistaking some of their actions, thinks his brother and Viviette are making fun of him and his hopeless passion. He sees Austin kiss her, and all goes red before him. He had promised to show his collection of weapons to Mrs. Holroyd and the others. Half drunk, he loads one of a pair of duelling pistols, and, while narrating the story of an old-time duel, forces a pistol into his brother's hand, and makes him impersonate one of the opponents. Afterward Austin discovers that Dick's pistol, which had missed fire, was loaded.
Chapter V.
Viviette, having repaired the disorder caused by her tears, went down to tea. Mrs. Ware, Katherine, and a curate deliberately calling or taking shelter from the rain, were in the drawing room. Austin, to his mother's mild astonishment, had sent down a message to the effect that he was busy. On ordinary occasions Viviette would have flirted monstrously with the clerical youth and sent him away undecided whether to offer to share his lodgings and hundred pounds a year with her, or to turn Catholic and become a monk. But now she had no mind to flirtation. She left him to the undisturbing wiles of Mrs. Ware, and petted and surreptitiously fed Dick's Irish terrier, whose brown eyes looked pathetic inquiry as to his master's whereabouts. She was sobered by the uncomprehended scene in the armory—sobered by Dick's violence and by Austin's final coldness. A choice had been put before her in deadly earnest; she had refused to make one. But the choice would have to be made very soon, unless she sent both her lovers packing, a step which she did not for a moment contemplate.
“You must promise to marry one or the other and end this tension,” said Katherine, a little later, after the curate had gone with Mrs. Ware to look at her greenhouses.
“I wish to goodness I could marry them both,” said Viviette. “Have a month with each, turn and turn about. It would be ideal.”
“It would be altogether horrid!” exclaimed Katherine. “How could such a thought enter your head?”
“I suppose it must have entered every woman's head who has two men she's fond of in love with her at once. I said yesterday that it was great fun being a woman, I find it's a d-d-d-d-d imposition,.”
“For Heaven's sake, child, make up your mind quickly,” said Katherine.
Viviette sighed. Which should it be? Dick, with his great love and rough tenderness and big protecting arms, or Austin, with his conquering ways, his wit, his charm, his perception? Austin could give her the luxury that her sensuous nature delighted in, social position, the brilliant life of London. What could Dick give her? It would always be a joy to dress herself with Austin. Dick would be content if she went about in raiment made of dusters and bath towels. In return, what could she give each of these men? She put the question to herself. She was not mercenary or heartless. She gave of herself freely and loved the giving. What could she give to Austin? What could she give to Dick? These questions, in her sober mood, weighed the others down.
When the rain ceased and a pale sun had dried the gravel, she went out into the grounds by herself and faced the problem. She sighed again—many times. If only they would let her have her fun out and give her answer six months hence!
Her meditations were cut short by the arrival of a telegraph boy on his bicycle at the front gate. He gave her the telegram. It was for Austin. Her heart beat. She went into the house with the yellow envelope containing Dick's destiny and mounted to the little room off the first landing which had been Austin's private study since his boyhood. She knocked. Austin's voice bade her enter. He rose from the desk where, pen in hand, he had been sitting before a blank sheet of paper, and, without a word, took the telegram. She noticed, with a shock, that he had curiously changed. The quick, brisk manner had gone. His face was gray.
“It is the telegram, isn't it?” she asked eagerly.
“Yes,” said he, handing it to her. “It's from Lord Overton.”
She read:
The very man. Send him along to me early to-morrow. Hope he can start immediately.
“Oh, how splendid!” she exclaimed, with a little gasp of happiness. “How utterly splendid! Thank Heaven!”
“Yes. Thank Heaven,” Austin acquiesced gravely. “I forgot to mention to you that Lord Overton knows Dick personally,” he added, after a pause. “They met at my house the last time Dick was in London.”
“This is good news,” said Viviette. “At last I can give him a birthday present worth having.”
“He will not be here for his birthday,” said Austin, in cold, even tones. “He must catch the mail to-night.”
Viviette echoed: “To-night?”
“And in all probability he will sail for Vancouver in a day or two. It won't be worth his while to come back here.”
She laid a hand on her heart, which fluttered painfully.
“Then—then—we'll never see him again?”
“Probably not.”
“I never thought it would be so sudden,” she said, a little wildly.
“Neither did I. But it's for the best.”
“But supposing he wants some time to look about him?”
“I'll see to everything,” said Austin.
“Anyhow, I must be the first to tell him,” said Viviette.
“You would do me a very great favor if you would let me have that privilege,” said Austin. “I make a particular point of it. I have some serious business to discuss with him before dinner, and that will be the time for me to break the news.”
He was no longer the fairy godmother's devoted and humble factotum. He spoke with a cold air of authority that chilled the fairy godmotherdom in Viviette's bosom. Her pretty little scheme dwindled into childishness before the dark, uncomprehending thing that had happened. She assented with unusual meekness.
“But I'm desperately disappointed,” she said.
“My dear Viviette,” he answered, more kindly, and looking at her with some wistfulness, “the pleasures and even the joy of life have to give way to the sober, business side of existence. It isn't very gay, I know, but we can't alter it.”
He held out his hand. Instinctively she gave him hers. He raised it to his lips, and held the door open for her. She went out, scarcely knowing that she had been dismissed. Austin closed the door, stood unsteadily for a moment like a man stricken with great pain, and then, sitting down at his desk again, put his elbows on the table, rested his head in his hands, and stared at the white piece of paper. When would Dick come home? He had given orders that Dick should be asked to go to him as soon as he arrived.
Would Dick ever come home again? It was quite possible that some misfortune might have happened. Tragedy is apt to engender tragedy. He shuddered, hearing in his fancy the tramp of men and seeing a shrouded thing they carried across the hall. He bitterly accused himself for not having sought Dick far and wide as soon as he had made his ghastly discovery. But he had required time to recover his balance. The horrible suddenness had stunned him. Attempted fratricide is not a common happening in gentle families. He had to accustom himself to the atmosphere of the abnormal so as to state the psychological case in its numberless ramifications. This he had done. His head was clear. His unalterable decision made. Now the minutes dragged with leaden feet until Dick should come.
Viviette was the first to see him. She had dressed early for dinner, and, as the late June afternoon had turned out fine, was taking her problem out to air on the terrace when she came upon him standing at the door of his armory. His hair was wet and matted, his eyes bloodshot, his clothes dripping, and he himself splashed with mud from head to foot. He trembled all over, shaken by a great terror. The case of pistols had gone. Who had taken them? Had the loaded pistol been discovered?
As Viviette appeared, robed in deep blue chiffon that seemed torn from the deep blue evening sky and looking, in the man's maddened eyes, magically beautiful, he held out imploring hands.
“Come in for a moment. For the love of God, come in for a moment.”
He stepped back invitingly. She hesitated for a moment on the threshold, and then followed him down the dim gallery, past the screen where all the swords and helmets lay scattered on the table. He looked at her haggardly, and she met his gaze with kind eyes in which there was no mockery. No. Nothing had happened, he told himself; otherwise she would shrink from him as from something accursed.
“My God, if you knew how I loved you!” he said hoarsely. “My God, if you only knew!”
His suffering racked her heart. All her pity melted over him. She laid her caressing fingers on his arm,
“Oh, my poor Dick!” she said.
The touch, the choke in her voice, brought about her downfall. Perhaps she meant it to do so. Who can tell? What woman herself ever knows? In a flash his arms were around her, and his kisses, a wild, primitive man's kisses, were on her lips, her eyes, her cheeks. Her face was crushed against the rough, wet tweed of his coat, and its odor, raw and coarse, was in her nostrils. She drooped, intoxicated, gasping for breath in his unheeding giant's grip, but she made no effort to escape. As he held her a thrill agonizing and delicious swept through her, and she raised her lips involuntarily to his and closed her eyes.
At last he released her, mangled, touzled, her very self a draggled piece of chiffon like the night-blue frock soiled with wet and mud.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I had no right. Least of all now. God knows what is to become of me. But whatever happens, you know that I love you.”
She had her hands clasped before her face. She could not look at him.
“Yes. I know,” she murmured.
In another moment he had gone, leaving Viviette, who had entered the room a girl, transformed into a woman with the first shiver of passion in her veins.
Dick, vaguely conscious of damp and dirt, went up to his bedroom, The sight of his evening things spread out on the bed reminded him that it was nearly dinner time. Mechanically he washed and dressed. As he was buckling on his ready-made white tie—his clumsy fingers, in spite of many lessons from Viviette, had never learned the trick of tying a bow—a maid brought him a message. Mr. Austin's compliments, and would he see Mr. Austin for a few moments in Mr. Austin's room. The words were like the dreaded tap on the shoulder of the hunted criminal.
“I'll come at once,” he said.
He found Austin sitting on the chair by his desk, resting his chin on his elbow. He did not stir as Dick entered.
“You want to speak to me?”
“Yes,” said Austin, “Will you sit down?”
“I'll stand,” said Dick impatiently. “What have you to say to me?”
“I believe you have expressed your desire to leave England and earn your living in a new country. Is that so?”
The brothers' eyes met. Dick saw that the loaded pistol had been discovered, and read no love, no pity, only condemnation in the hard gaze. Austin was pronouncing sentence.
“Yes,” he replied sullenly.
“I happen,” said Austin, “to know of an excellent opportunity. Lord Overton, whom you have met, wants a man to take charge of his timber forests in Vancouver. The salary is seven hundred pounds a year. I wired to Lord Overton asking for the appointment on your behalf. This is his answer.”
Dick took the telegram and read it, with muddled head. Austin had lost no time.
“You see, it fits in admirably. You can start by the night mail. Your sudden departure needs no other explanation to the household than this telegram. I hope you understand.”
“I understand,” said Dick bitterly. A sudden memory of words that Viviette had used the day before occurred to him. “I understand. This is to get me out of the way. 'David put Uriah in the forefront of the battle.' Vancouver is the forefront.”
“Don't you think we had better avoid all unprofitable discussion?” Austin rose and confronted him. “I expect you to accept this offer and my conditions.”
“And if I refuse,” asked Dick, with rising anger, “what dare you threaten me with?”
Austin raised a deprecatory hand.
“Do you suppose I'm going to threaten you? I simply expect you not to refuse. Your conscience must tell you that I have the right to do so. Doesn't it?”
Dick glowered sullenly at the wall and tugged his great mustache.
“You force me to touch on things I should have liked to keep hidden,” said Austin. “Very well.” He took a scrap of crumpled paper from the desk. “Do you recognize this? It formed the wad of the pistol that was in your hand.”
Dick started back a pace. “You're wrong,” he gasped. “It was your pistol that was loaded.”
“No. Yours. The cap missed fire, or I should have been a dead man—murdered by my brother.”
“Stop,” cried Dick. “Not murdered. No, no; not murdered. It was in fair fight. I gave you the choice. When I thought I had the unloaded one I called on you to fire. Why the devil didn't you? I wanted you to fire. I was mad for you to fire. No one can say I shirked it. I gave you your chance.”
“That's nothing to do with it,” said Austin sternly. “When you fired you meant murder. Your face meant killing. And supposing I had fired—and killed you! Good God! I would sooner you had killed me than burdened my soul with your death. It would have been less cowardly. Yes, cowardly. The conditions were not even. To me it was trivial fooling. To you deadly earnest. Are you not man enough to see that I have the right to exact some penalty?”
Dick remained silent for a few moments, while the powers of light and darkness struggled together in his soul. At last he said in a low voice, hanging his head:
“I'll accept your terms.”
“You leave by the night mail for Witherby?”
“Very well.”
“There's another point,” said Austin. “The most important point of all. You will not speak alone to Viviette before you start.”
Dick turned, with an angry flash.
“What?”
“You will not speak to Viviette alone. When you are gone—for there is no need for you to come back here before you sail—you will not write to her, You will go absolutely and utterly out of her life.”
Dick broke into harsh, furious laughter.
“And leave her to you? I might have known that the lawyer would have had me in the trap. But this time you've overreached yourself. I'll never give her up. Do you hear me? Never, never, never! I would go through the horror of to-day a thousand times—day by day until I die, rather than give her up to you. You shall not take this last thing from me—this hope of winning her—as you have taken everything else. You have supplanted me since first you learned to speak. It has been Esau and Jacob”
“Or Cain and Abel,” said Austin.
“You can taunt me if you like,” cried Dick, goaded to fury, and the whole bitterness of a lifetime surging up in passionate speech. “I have got past feeling it. Your life has been one continual taunt of me. You have thought me a dull, good-natured boor, delighted to have a word thrown at him now and again by the elegant gentleman, and rather honored than otherwise to be ridden over roughshod, or kicked into the mud when it pleased the elegant gentleman to ride by. No, listen to me,” he thundered, as Austin was about to protest. “By God—you shall listen this time. You've made me your butt, your fool, your doer of trivial offices. I've wondered, sometimes, why you haven't addressed me as 'my good fellow,' and asked me to touch my cap to you. I've borne it all these years without complaining—but do you know what it is to eat your heart out and remain silent? I have borne it for my mother's sake—in spite of her dislike of me—and for your sake because I loved you. Yes. If ever one man has loved another I've loved you. But you took no heed. What was my affection worth? I was only the stupid, dull boor—but I suffered it all till you came between me and her. I had spent the whole passion of my life upon her. She was the only thing left in the world for which I felt fiercely. I hungered for her, thirsted for her, my brain throbbed at the thought of her, the blood rushed through my veins at the sight of her. And you came between us. And if I have damned my soul—by God!—the damnation is your doing. Do you think, while I live, that I'll give her up to you? I'll get my soul's worth, anyhow!”
He smote his palm with his clenched fist and strode about the little room. Austin sat for a while dumb with astonishment and dismay. His cherished, lifelong conception of “Dear old Dick” lay shattered. A new Dick appeared to him, a personality stronger, deeper than he could have imagined. A new respect for him, also a new pity that was generous and not contemptuous, crept into his heart.
“Listen, Dick,” said he, using the familiar name for the first time. “Do I understand that you accuse me of sending you out to Vancouver and hastening your departure so as to gain my own ends with Viviette?”
“Yes,” returned Dick, “I do. You have laid this trap for me.”
“Have you ever heard me lie to you?”
“No,” said Dick.
“Then I tell you, as man to man, that until this afternoon I had no suspicion that your feelings toward Viviette were deeper than those of an elder brother.”
Dick laughed bitterly. “You couldn't conceive a clod like me falling in love. Well?”
“That's beside the question,” said Austin. “I did not behave dishonorably toward you. I fell in love with Viviette. How could I help it? How could I help loving her? How could I help telling her so? But she is young and innocent, and her heart is her own yet. Tell me—man to man—dare you say that you have won it or that I have won it?”
“What's the good of talking?” said Dick, relapsing into his sullen mood. “If I go, she is yours. But I won't go.”
Austin rose again, and laid his hand on his brother's arm.
“Dick, if I give her up, will you obey my condition?”
“You give her up voluntarily? Why should you?”
“A damnable thing was done this afternoon,” said Austin. “I see I had my share in it, and I, as well as you, have to make reparation. Man alive! You are my brother!” he cried, with an outburst of feeling. “The nearest thing in the world to me. Do you think I could rest happy with the knowledge that a murderous devil is always in your heart and that it's in my power to—to exorcise it. Do you think the cost matters? Come. Shall we make this bargain? Yes or no?”
“It's easy for you to promise,” said Dick. “But when I am gone, how can you resist?”
Austin hesitated for a moment, biting his lips. Then, with the air of a man who makes an irrevocable step in life, he crossed the room and rang the bell.
“Ask Mrs. Holroyd if she will have the kindness to come here for a minute,” he said to the servant.
Dick regarded him wonderingly. “What has Mrs. Holroyd to do with our affairs?”
“You'll see,” said Austin, and there was silence between them, till Katherine came.
She looked from one joyless face to the other, and sat without a word on the chair that Austin placed for her. Her woman's intuition divined a sequel to the afternoon's drama. Some of it she had already learned. For, going earlier into Viviette's room, she had found her white and shaken, still disordered in hair and dress as Dick had left her; and Viviette had sobbed on her bosom and told her, with some incoherence, that the monkey had at last hid the lyddite shell in the wrong place and that it was all over with the monkey. So before Austin spoke, she half divined why he had summoned her. Her heart throbbed painfully.
“Dick and I,” said Austin, “have been talking of serious matters, and we need your help.”
She smiled wanly. “I'll do whatever I can, Austin.”
“You said this afternoon you'd do anything I asked you. Do you remember?”
“Yes. I said so; and I meant it.”
“You said it in reply to my question whether you could accept me if I asked you to marry me.”
Dick started from the sullen stupor into which he had fallen and listened with perplexed interest.
“You are not quite right in your tenses, Austin,” she remarked. “You said: 'Would I have accepted you if you had asked me.'”
“I want to change the tense into the present,” he replied.
She met his glance calmly. “You ask me to marry you in spite of what you told me this afternoon?”
“In spite of it and because of it,” he said, drawing up a chair near to her. “A great crisis has arisen in our lives that must make you forget other words I spoke this afternoon. Those other words and everything connected with them I blot out of my memory forever. I want you to do me an infinite service. If there had been no deep affection between us I should not dare to ask you. I want you to be my wife—to take me into your keeping—to trust me as an upright man to devote my life to your happiness. I swear I'll never give you a moment's cause for regret.”
She plucked for a while at her gown. It was a strange wooing. But in her sweet way she had given him her woman's aftermath of love. It was a gentle, mellow gift, far removed from the summer blaze of passion, and it had suffered little harm from the sadness of the day. She saw that he was in great stress. She knew him to be loyal to the core.
“Is this the result of that scene in the armory?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” said Austin.
“I was right, then. It was a matter of life and death.”
“It was,” said he. “So is this.”
She looked again from one face to the other, rose, hesitated a moment, and then held out her hand.
“I am willing to trust you, Austin,” she said.
He touched her hand with his lips, and said gravely: “I will not fail your trust.”
As soon as she had gone he went to the chair where Dick sat in gloomy remorse and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Well?” said he.
“I agree,” Dick groaned, without looking up. “I have no alternative. I appreciate your generosity.”
Then Austin spoke of the appointment in Vancouver. He explained how the idea had occurred to him; how Viviette had come late the night before to tell him of what he had never before suspected—Dick's desire to go abroad; how they had conspired to give him a birthday surprise; how they had driven over to Witherby to send the telegram to Lord Overton. And as he spoke, Dick looked at him with a new ghastliness on his face.
“This afternoon—in the dining room—when you said that Viviette had told you everything.”
“About your wish to go to the colonies. What else?”
“And what I overheard in the armory—about a telegram—telling me—putting me out of my misery?”
“Only whether we should tell you to-night or to-morrow about the appointment. Dick—Dick,” said Austin, deeply moved by the great fellow's collapse. “If I have wronged you all these years, it was through want of insight, not want of affection. If I have taunted you, as you say, it was merely a lifelong habit of jesting which you never seemed to resent. I was unconscious of hurting you. For my blindness and carelessness I beg your forgiveness. With regard to Viviette—I ought to have seen, but I didn't. I don't say you had no cause for jealousy—but as God hears me—all the little conspiracy to-day was lovingly meant—all to give you pleasure. I swear it.”
Dick rose and stumbled about among the furniture. The setting sun fell just below the top of the window, and its rays flooded the room and showed Dick in a strange, unearthly light.
“I wronged you,” he said bitterly. “Even in my passion I'm a dull fool. I thought you a scoundrel—and my resentment grew—and I drank—I was drunk all this afternoon—and madness came—and when I saw you kiss her—yes, I saw you—I was peeping from behind the screen—things went red before my eyes—and it was then that I loaded the pistol to shoot you on the spot. God forgive me! May God have mercy upon me!”
He leaned his arms on the sill and buried his face.
“I can't ask your forgiveness,” he went on, after a moment. “It would be a mockery.” He laughed mirthlessly. “How can I say: 'I'm sorry I meant to murder you—please don't think anything more about it'?” He turned with a fierce gesture. “Oh, you must take it all as said, man! Now, have you finished with me? I can't stand it much longer. I agree to all your terms. I'll drive over to Witherby now and wait for the train—and you'll be free of me.”
He turned again and moodily looked out of the window in the full flood of the sunset.
“We must play the game, Dick,” said Austin gently, “and go through the horrible farce of dinner—for mother's sake.”
Dick heard him vaguely. Below, on the terrace, Viviette was walking, and she filled his universe. She had changed the bedraggled frock for the green one she had worn the night before. Presently she raised her eyes and saw him leaning out of the window.
“Have they told you that dinner is not till a quarter to eight?” she cried. “Lord Banstead sent a message to mother that he was unexpectedly detained, and mother has put back dinner. Isn't it impudence?”
But Dick was far too crushed with misery to respond. He nodded dejectedly. She remained staring up at him for a while, and then ran into the house.
Dick listlessly mentioned the postponement of dinner.
“I'm sorry I asked the little brute, but I couldn't avoid it.”
“What does it matter?” said Austin.
He was silent for a moment. Then he came close to Dick.
“Dick,” said he, “let us end this awful scene as friends and brothers. As Heaven hears me there is no bitterness in my heart. Only deep sorrow—and love, Dick. Shake hands.”
Dick took his hand, and broke down utterly, and said such things of himself as other men do not like to hear. Presently there was a light rap of knuckles at the door. Austin opened it and beheld Viviette.
“I won't disturb you,” she said. “I only want to give this note to Dick.”
“I will hand it to him,” said Austin.
She thanked him and departed. He closed the door and gave Dick the note. Dick opened it, read, and, with a great cry of “Viviette!” rushed to the door. Austin interposed, grasped him by the wrist.
“What are you doing?”
“I'm going to her,” shouted Dick wildly, wrenching himself free. “Read this.” He held up the note before Austin's eyes, with shaking fingers. Austin read:
I can't bear to see the misery on your face, when I can make you happy. I love you, dear, better than anything on earth. I know it now—and I'll go out with you to Vancouver.
“She loves me. She'll marry me. She'll go out to Vancouver!” cried Dick. “It changes everything. I must go to her.”
“You shall not go,” said Austin.
“Shall not? Who dares prevent me?”
“I do. I hold you to your word.
“But, man alive, she loves me! Don't you see? The bargain is dissolved. This is none of my seeking. She comes of her own free will. I am going to her.”
Austin put both his hands affectionately on the big man's shoulders and forced him into a chair.
“Listen to me just for one minute, Dick. Dick—you dare not marry. Don't drive me to tell you the reason. Can't you see for yourself why I've imposed this condition on you all along?”
“I know no reason,” said Dick. “She loves me, and that is enough.”
The grayness deepened on Austin's face, and the pain in his eyes.
“I must speak, then, in plain terms. That horrible murder impulse is the reason. To-day, in a fit of frenzied jealousy, you would have killed me, your brother. Is there any guarantee that in another fit of frenzied jealousy you might not”
A shudder ran through Dick's great frame. He stretched out his hand. “For God's sake—don't!”
“I must—until you see this ghastly business in its true aspect. Look at the lighter side of Viviette's character. She is gay—fond of admiration—childishly fond of teasing—a bright creature of bewildering moods. Would she be safe in your hands? Might you not one day again see things red before your eyes and again go mad?”
“Don't say any more,” Dick said, in a choking voice. “I can't stand it.”
“Heaven knows I didn't want to say as much,”
Dick shuddered again. “Yes, you are right. I am a man with a curse. I can't marry her. I daren't. But, oh, God!” he cried, in a voice that wrung the other to the soul. “I would have been as tender and as faithful to her as a dog!”
Chapter VI.
Presently Dick raised the face of Cain when he told the Lord that his punishment was greater than he could bear. Tears leaped to Austin's eyes, but he turned his head away lest Dick should see them. He would have given years of his life to spare Dick—everything he had in the world—save his deep convictions of right and wrong. He was responsible for Viviette. The risk of horror he could not let her run. He had hoped, with a great agony of hope, that Dick would have seen this for himself. To formulate it had been torture. But he could not weaken. The barrier between Dick and Viviette was not of his making. It was composed of the grim psychological laws that govern the abnormal. To have disregarded it would have been a crime from which his soul shrank. All the despair in Dick's face, though it wrung his heart, could not move him. It was terrible to be chosen in this way to be the arbiter of destiny. 3ut there was the decree, written in letters of blood and flame. And Dick had bowed to it.
“What's to become of her?” he groaned,
“This will be her home as it always has been,” said Austin.
“I don't mean that—but between us we shall break her heart. She has given it to me just in time for me to do it. My luck!”
Austin tried to comfort him. A girl's heart was not easily broken. Her pride would suffer most. Pain was inevitable, but time healed many wounds. In this uncertain world nothing was ever so good as we hoped and nothing ever so bad as we feared. Dick paid little heed to the platitudes.
“She must be told.”
“Not what happened this afternoon,” cried Austin quickly. “That we bury forever from all human knowledge.”
“Yes,” said Dick, staring in front of him and speaking in a dull, even voice. “We must hide that. It's not a pretty thing to spread before a girl's eyes. It will be always before my own until I die. But she must be told that I can't marry her. I can't ride away, and leave her in doubt and wonder forever and ever.”
“Let us face this horrible night as best we can,” said Austin. “Avoid seeing her alone. You'll be with mother or packing most of the evening. Slip away to Witherby an hour or so before your time. When you're gone I'll arrange matters. Leave it to me.”
He made one of his old self-confident gestures. But now Dick felt no resentment. His spirit in its deep abasement saw in Austin the better, wiser, stronger man.
At a quarter to eight they went slowly downstairs to what promised to be a nightmare kind of meal. There would be four persons, Viviette, Katherine, and themselves in a state of suppressed eruption, and two, Mrs. Ware and the unspeakable Banstead, complacently unaware of volcanic forces around them, who might by any chance word bring about disaster. There was danger, too —and the greatest—from Viviette, ignorant of destiny. Austin dreaded the ordeal; but despair and remorse had benumbed Dick's faculties; he had passed the stage at which men fear. With his hand on the knob of the drawing-room door, Austin paused and looked at him.
“Pull yourself together, man. Play your part. For God's sake, try to look cheerful.”
Dick tried. Austin shivered.
“For God's sake, don't!” he said.
They entered the drawing room, expecting to find the three ladies and possibly Lord Banstead assembled for dinner. To Austin's discomfiture Viviette was alone in the room. She rose, made a step or two to meet them, then stopped.
“What a pair of faces! One would think it were the eve of Dick's execution, and you were the hangman measuring him for the noose.”
“Dick,” said Austin, “is leaving us to-night—possibly for many years.”
“I don't see that he is so very greatly to be pitied,” said Viviette, trying in vain to meet Dick's eyes.
She drew him a pace or two aside.
“Did you read my note—or did you tear it up like the other one?”
“I read it,” he said, looking askance at the floor.
“Then why are you so woebegone?”
He replied, in a helpless way, that he was not woebegone. Viviette was puzzled, hurt, somewhat humiliated. She had made woman's great surrender, which is usually followed by a flourish of trumpets very gratifying to hear. In fact, to most women the surrender is worth the flourish. But the recognition of this surrender appeared to find its celebration in a funeral march with muffled drums. A condemned man being fitted for the noose, as she had suggested, a mute conscientiously mourning at his own funeral, a man who had lost a stately demesne in Paradise and had been ironically compensated by the gift of a bit of foreshore of the Styx, could not have worn a less joyous expression than he on whom she had conferred the boon of his heart's desire.
“You're not only woebegone,” she said, with spirit, “but you're utterly miserable. I think I have a right to know the reason. Tell me, what is it?”
She tapped a small, impatient foot.
“We haven't told my mother yet,” Austin explained, “and Dick is rather nervous as to the way in which she will take the news.”
“Yes,” said Dick, with lame huskiness, “it's on mother's account.”
Viviette laughed somewhat scornfully.
“I'm not a child, my dear Austin. No man wears a face like that on account of his mother—least of all, when he meets the woman who has promised to be his wife.”
She flashed a challenging glance at Austin, but not a muscle of his gray face responded. Her natural expectations were baffled. There was no start of amazement, no fierce movement of anger, no indignant look of reproach. She was thrown back on herself. She said:
“I don't think you quite understand. Dick had two aims in life—one to obtain a colonial appointment—the other—so he led me to suppose—to marry me. He has the appointment and I have promised to marry him.”
“I know,” said Austin, “but you must make allowances.”
“If that's all you can say on behalf of your client,” retorted Viviette, “I rather wonder at your success as a barrister.”
“Don't you think, my dear,” said Austin gently, “that we are treading on delicate ground?”
“Delicate ground!” she scoffed. “We seem to have been treading on a volcano all the afternoon. I'm tired of it.” She faced the two men with uplifted head. “I want an explanation.”
“Of what?” Austin asked.
“Of Dick's attitude. What has he got to be miserable about? Tell me.”
“But I'm not miserable, my dear Viviette,” said poor Dick, vainly forcing a smile. “I'm really quite happy.”
Her woman's intuition. rejected the protest with contumely. All the afternoon he had been mad with jealousy of Austin. An hour ago he had whirled her out of her senses in savage passion. But a few minutes before she had given him all a woman has to give. Now he met her with hangdog visage, apologies from Austin, and milk-and-water asseveration of a lover's rapture. The most closely folded rosebud miss of early Victorian times could not have faced the situation without showing something of the Eve that lurked in the hearts of the petals. So much the less could Viviette, child of a freer, franker day, hide her just indignation under the rose leaves of maidenly modesty.
“Happy!” she echoed. “I've known you since I was a child of three. I know the meaning of every light and every shadow that passes over your face—except this shadow now. What does it mean?”
She asked the question imperiously, no longer the elfin changeling, the fairy of bewildering moods of Austin's imagining, no longer the laughing coquette of Katherine's less picturesque fancy, but a modern young woman of character, considerably angered and very much in earnest. Austin bit his lip in perplexity. Dick looked around like a hunted animal seeking a bolting hole.
“Dick is anxious,” said Austin at length, seeing that some explanation must be given, “that there should be no engagement between you before he goes out to Vancouver.”
“Indeed?” said Viviette. “May I ask why? As this concerns Dick and myself, perhaps you will leave us alone for a moment so that Dick may tell me.”
“No, no,” Dick muttered hurriedly. “Don't leave us, Austin. We can't talk of such a thing now.”
Again she tapped her foot impatiently.
“Yes, now. I'm going to hear the reason now, whatever it is.”
The brothers exchanged glances. Dick turned to the window, and stared at the mellow evening sky. Austin again was spokesman.
“Dick finds he has made a terrible and cruel mistake. One that concerns you intimately.”
“Whatever Dick may have done with regard to me,” replied Viviette proudly, “I forgive him for it beforehand. When once I give a thing I don't take it back. I have given him my love and my promise.”
“My dear,” said Austin gravely and kindly. “Here are two men who have loved you all your life. Don't think hardly of us. You must be brave and bear a great shock. Dick can't marry you.”
She looked at him incredulously.
“Can't marry me? Why not?”
“It would be better not to ask.”
She moved swiftly to Dick, and with her light touch swung him round to face the room.
“I don't understand. Is it because you're going out into the wilds? That doesn't matter. I told you I would go to Vancouver with you. I want to go. My happiness is with you.”
Dick groaned. “Don't make it harder for me.”
“What are you keeping from me?” she asked. “Is it anything you don't think fit for my ears? If so, speak? I'm no longer a child. Is there another woman in the case?”
She met Austin's eyes full.
He said: “No, thank God! Nothing of that sort.” And as her eyes did not waver, he made the bold stroke. “He finds that he doesn't love you as much as he thought. There's the whole tragedy in a few words.”
She reeled back as if struck.
“Dick doesn't love me!”
Then the announcement seemed so grotesque in its improbability that she began to laugh, a trifle hysterically.
“Is this true?”
“It's quite true,” said poor Dick.
“You see, my dear,” said Austin, “what it costs him—what it costs us both—to tell you this.”
“But I don't understand. I don't understand!” she cried, with sudden piteousness. “What did you mean, then—a little while ago—in the armory?”
Austin, who did not see the allusion, had to allow Dick to speak for himself.
“I was drunk,” said Dick desperately. “I've been drinking heavily of late—and not accountable for my actions. I oughtn't to have done what I did.”
“And so, you see,” continued Austin, with some eagerness, “when he became confronted with the great change of his life—Vancouver—he looked at things soberly. He found that his feelings toward you were not of the order that would warrant his making you his wife.”
Before Viviette could reply the door opened and Mrs. Ware and Katherine entered the room. Mrs. Ware, ignorant of tension, went smilingly to Austin, and drawing down his shapely head with both hands, kissed him.
“My dear, dear boy, I'm so glad, so truly glad. Katherine has just told me.”
“Told you what, mother?” asked Viviette quickly, with a new sharpness in her voice.
Mrs. Ware turned a beaming face. “Can't you guess, darling? Oh, Austin, there's no living woman whom I would sooner call my daughter. You've made me so happy.”
The facile tears came, and she sat down and dried them on her little wisp of handkerchief.
“I thought it for the best to tell your mother, Austin,” said Katherine, somewhat apologetically. “We were speaking of you—and—I couldn't keep it back.”
Viviette, white-lipped and dazed, looked at Austin, Katherine, and Dick in turns. She said in a high-pitched voice to Austin:
“Have you asked Katherine to marry you?”
“Yes,” he replied, not quite so confidently and avoiding her glance, “and she has done me the honor of accepting me.”
Katherine held out a conciliatory hand to Viviette.
“Won't you congratulate me, dear?”
“And Austin, too,” said Mrs. Ware.
But Viviette lost control of herself.
“I'll congratulate nobody! I'll congratulate nobody!” she cried shrilly.
She burned with a sense of intolerable outrage. Only a few hours before she had been befooled into believing herself to be the mistress of the destinies of two men. Both had offered her their love. Both had kissed her. The memory lashed her into fury. Now one of them avowed that she had been merely the object of a drunken passion, and the other came before her as the affianced husband of the woman who called herself her dearest friend.
Katherine in deep distress laid her hand on the girl's arm.
“Why not, dear? I thought that you and Dick—in fact—I understood”
Viviette freed herself from Katherine's touch.
“Oh, no, you didn't. You didn't understand anything. You didn't try to. You are all lying. The three of you. You have all lied, and lied, and lied to me. I tell you to your faces you have lied to me.” She swung passionately to each in turn. “'Austin can never be anything to me but a friend.' How often have you said that to me? Ah—Saint Nitouche! And you”—to Austin—“how dared you insult me this morning? And you—how have you dared to insult me all the time? You've lied—the whole lot of you—and I hate you all!”
Mrs. Ware had risen, scared and trembling.
“What does the girl mean? I've never heard such unladylike words in a drawing room in my life.”
Dick blundered in: “It's all my fault, mother”
“I've not the slightest doubt of that,” returned the old lady, with asperity. “But what Austin and Katherine have to do with it I can't imagine.”
The servant opened the door.
“Lord Banstead.”
He entered in a cold, strange silence. Every one had forgotten him. He must have attributed the ungenial atmosphere to his own lateness—it was half-past eight—for he made penitent apology to Mrs. Ware. Austin greeted him coldly. Dick nodded absently from the other side of the room. Viviette, with a sweeping glance of defiance at the assembled family, held herself very erect, and, with hard eyes and quivering lips, came straight to the young fellow.
“Lord Banstead,” she said, “you have asked me four times to marry you. Did you mean it, or were you lying, too?”
3anstead's pallid cheeks flushed. He was overcome with confusion.
“Of course I meant it—meant to ask you again to-day—ask you now.”
“Then I will marry you.”
Dick strode forward and, catching her by the wrist, swung her away from Banstead, his face aflame with sudden passion.
“No, by God, you shan't!”
Banstead retreated a few paces, scared out of his life. Mrs. Ware sought Austin's protecting arm.
“What does all this mean? I don't understand it.”
Austin led her to the door. “I'll see nothing unpleasant happens, dear. You had better go and tell them to keep back dinner yet a few minutes.”
His voice and authority soothed her, and she left the room, casting a terrified glance at Dick standing threateningly over Lord Banstead, who had muttered something about Viviette being free to do as she liked.
“She can do what she likes, but, by God, she shan't marry you!”
“I'm of age,” declared Viviette fiercely. “I marry whom I choose.”
“Of course she can,” said Banstead. “Are you taking leave of your senses?”
“How dare you ask a pure girl to marry you?” cried Dick furiously. “You who have come this minute”
Banstead found some spirit.
“Shut up, Ware,” he interrupted. “Play the game. You've no right to say that.”
“I have the right,” cried Dick.
“Hush!” said Austin, interposing. “There's no need to prolong this painful discussion. To-morrow—as Viviette's guardian”
“To-morrow?” Dick shouted. “Where shall I be to-morrow? Away from here—unable to defend her—unable to say a word.”
“If you said a thousand words,” said Viviette, “they wouldn't make an atom of difference. Lord Banstead has asked me to marry him. I have accepted him openly. What dare you say to it?”
“Yes,” said Banstead. “She has made no bones about it. I've asked her five times. Now she accepts me. What have you to say to it?”
“I say she shan't marry you,” said Dick, glaring at the other.
“Steady, steady, Dick,” said Austin warningly.
But Dick shook his warning angrily aside, and Austin saw that, once again that day, Dick was desperate.
“Not while I live shall she marry you. Don't I know your infernal, beastly life?”
“Now, look here,” said Banstead, at bay. “What the deuce have you got to do with my affairs?”
“Everything. Do you think she loves you, cares for you, honors you, respects you?”
Viviette faced him with blazing eyes.
“I do,” she said defiantly.
“It's a lie,” cried Dick. “It's you that are lying now. Heaven and earth! I've suffered enough to-day—I thought I had been through hell—but it's nothing to this. She loves me—do you hear—me—me—me—and I can't marry her—and I don't care a damn who knows the reason.”
“Stop, man, stop!” said Austin.
“Let me be. She shall know the truth. Every one shall know the truth. At any rate, it will save her from this.”
“I will do it quietly, later, Dick.”
“Let me be, I tell you,” said Dick, with great, clumsy, passionate gesture. “Let's have no more lies.” He turned to Viviette. “You wrote me a letter. You said you loved me—would marry me—come out to Vancouver. The words made me drunk with happiness—at first. You saw me. I refused your love and your offer. I said I didn't love you. I lied. I said I couldn't marry you. It was the truth. I can't. I can't. But love you! There were flames of hell in my heart—but couldn't you see the love shining through?”
“Don't, Dick; don't!” cried Katherine.
“I will,” he exclaimed wildly. “I'll tell her why I can't marry any woman. I'm a murderer in my heart. I tried to murder Austin this afternoon!”
Katherine closed her eyes. She had guessed it. But Viviette, with parted lips and white cheeks, groped her way backward to a chair, without shifting her terror-stricken gaze from Dick; and sitting, she gripped the arms of the chair.
There was a moment of tense silence. Banstead at last relieved his feelings with a gasping: “Well, I'm damned.”
Dick continued:
“It was jealousy—mad, hideous, fiendish jealousy—this afternoon—in the armory—the mock duel—one of the pistols was loaded. I loaded it—first, in order to kill him out of hand—then I thought of the duel—he would have his chance—either he would kill me or I would kill him. Mine happened to be loaded. It missed fire. It was only the infinite mercy of God that I didn't kill him. He found it out. He has forgiven me. He's worth fifty millions of me. But my hands are red with his blood, and I can't touch your pure garments. They would stain them red—and I could see red again before my eyes some day. A man like me is not fit to marry any woman. A murderer is beyond the pale. So I said I didn't love her to save her from the knowledge of this horror. And now I'm going to the other side of the world to work out my salvation—but she shall know that a man loves her with all his soul and would go through any torment and renunciation for her sake—and, knowing that, she can't go and throw herself away on a man unworthy of her. After what I've told you, will you marry this man?”
Still looking at him, motionless, she whispered: “No.”
“I say!” exclaimed Banstead. “I think”
Austin checked further speech. Dick looked haggardly round the room.
“There. Now you all know. I'm not fit to be under the same roof with you. Good-by.”
He slouched in his heavy way to the door, but Viviette sprang from her chair and planted herself in his path—a transfigured woman.
“No. You shan't go. Do you think I have nothing to say?”
“Say what you like,” said Dick sadly. “Nothing is too black for me. Curse me if you will.”
She laughed, and shook her head.
“Do you think a woman curses the man who would commit murder for the love of her?” she cried, with a strange exultation in her voice. “If I loved you before—don't you think I love you now a million times more?”
Dick fell back, thrilled with amazement.
“You love me still,” he gasped. “You don't shrink”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Banstead, crossing the room. “Does this mean that you chuck me, Miss Hastings?”
“You must release me from my promise, Lord Banstead,” she said gently. “I scarcely knew what I was doing. I'm very sorry. I've not behaved well to you.”
“You've treated me damned badly,” said Banstead, turning on his heel. “Good-by, everybody.”
Austin, moved by compunction, tried to conciliate the angry youth; but he refused comfort. He had been made a fool of and would stand that treatment from nobody. He would not stay for dinner and would not put his foot inside the house again.
“At any rate,” said Austin, bidding him good-by, “I can rely on you not to breathe a word to any what you've heard this evening?”
Banstead fingered his underfed mustache.
“I may be pretty rotten, but I'm not that kind of cad,” said he. And he went, not without a certain dignity.
Dick took Viviette's hand and kissed it tenderly.
“God bless you, dear. I'll remember what you've said all my life. I can go away almost happy.”
“You can go away quite happy, if you like,” said Viviette. “Take me with you.”
“To Vancouver?”
Austin joined them. “It is impossible, dear,” said he.
“I go with him to Vancouver,” she said.
Dick wrung his hands.
“But I daren't marry you, Viviette. I daren't, I daren't!”
“Don't you see that it's impossible, Viviette?” said Austin.
“Why?”
“I've explained it to Dick—he has hinted it to you. You're scarcely old enough to understand, my dear. It is the risk you run.”
“Such men as I can't marry,” said Dick loyally. “You don't understand Austin is right. The risk is too great.”
She laughed in superb contempt.
“The risk? Do you think I'm such a fool as not to understand? Do you think, after what I've said, that I'm a child? Risk? What is life or love worth without risk? When a woman loves a fierce man she takes the risk of his fierceness. It's her joy. I'll take the risk, and it will be a bond between us.”
Austin implored her to listen to reason. She swept his arguments aside.
“God forbid! I'll listen to love,” she cried. “And if ever a man wanted love, it's Dick. Reason! Come, Dick, let us leave this god and goddess of reason alone. I've got something to say which only you can hear.”
She dragged him in a bewildered state of mind to the door, which she held open. She was absolute mistress of the situation. She motioned to Dick to precede her, and he obeyed like a man in a dream. On the threshold she paused, and flashed defiance at Austin, who appeared to her splendid scorn but a small, narrow-natured man.
“You can say and think what you like, you two. You are civilized people—and I suppose you love in a civilized way according to reason. I'm a primitive woman, and Dick's a primitive man—and, thank God, we understand each other, and love each other as primitive people do.”
She slammed the door, and in another moment was caught in Dick's great arms.
“What do you want to say that I only can hear?” he asked, after a while.
“This,” she said. “I want you to love me strongly and fiercely forever and ever—and I'll be a great wife to you—and if I fail—if I am ever wanton as I have been to-day—for I have been wanton—and all that has happened has been my fault—if ever I play fast and loose with your love again—I want you to kill me. Promise!”
She looked at him with glowing eyes.
All the big man's heart melted into adoring pity. He took her face in both his hands as tenderly as he would have touched a prize rose bloom.
“Thank God, you're still a child, dear,” he said.
“But will you kill me?” she insisted.
“I surely hope not,” said Mrs. Ware, suddenly appearing. “I've told them to bring in dinner. I really can't have the household arrangements upset any further.”
THE END.