Short Fiction · Part I (12/13) (2/2)

As she said this she made no visible movement; yet something in her attitude, the manner in which she held herself, seemed to bid him hold his peace, and this he noticed, and in noticing resented. “There,” he muttered; “drop the Grand Duchess, will you? The brat is Thorold’s; you know it, and so do I.”

For a little space she stared as though uncertain she had heard aright, but the speech must have reechoed in her ears; she had been sitting up, yet now as the echo reached her she drooped on the pillow and let her head fall back. In her arms the child still drowsed. And presently a tear rolled down her face, then another.

“Roland Mistrial, you have broken my heart at last.”

That was all; the ultimate words even were scarcely audible; but the tears continued⁠—the first succeeded by others, unstanched and undetained. Grief had claimed her as its own. She made no effort to rebel; she lay as though an agony had come from which no surcease can be. And as one tear after the other passed down and seared her face there was a silence so deathly, so tangible, and so convincing, that he needed no further sign from her to tell him that the charge was false. In all his intercourse with her, whatever cause of complaint there had been, never had he seen her weep before; and now at this unawaited evidence of the injustice and ignominy of his reproach he wished she would be defiant again, that he might argue and confute. But no word came from her⁠—barely a sob; nothing, in fact, save these tears, which he had never seen before. And while he stood there, visited by the perplexity of him to whom the unawaited comes, unconsciously he went back to the wooing of her: he saw her clear eyes lifted in confidence to his own, he heard again the sweet confession of her love, he recalled the marks and tokens of her trust, and when for him she had left her father’s house; he saw her ever, sweet by nature, tenderhearted, striving at each misdeed of his to show him that in her arms there was forgiveness still. And he recalled too the affronts he had put upon her, the baseness of his calculations, the selfishness of his life; he saw the misery he had inflicted, the affection he had beguiled, the hope he had tricked, and for climax there was this supreme reproach, of which he knew now no woman in all the world was less deserving than was she. And still the tears unstanched and undetained passed down and seared her cheeks; in the mortal wound he had aimed at her womanhood all else seemingly was forgot. She did not even move, and lay, her child tight clasped, the image of Maternity inhabited by Regret.

And such regret! Mistrial, unprompted, could divine it all. The regret of love misplaced, of illusions spent, the regret of harboring a ruffian and thinking him a knight. Yes, he could divine it all; and then, as such things can be, he grieved a moment for himself.

But soon the present returned. Justine still was weeping; he no longer saw her tears, he heard them. Surely she would forgive again. It could not be that everything had gone for naught. He would speak to her, plead if need were, and in the end she would yield. She must do that, he told himself, and he groped after some falsity that should palliate the offence. He would tell her that he had been drinking again; he would deny his own words, or, if necessary, he would insist she had not heard them aright. Indeed, there was nothing that might have weight with her which he was not ready and anxious to affirm. If she would but begin, if in some splendor of indignation such as he had beheld before she would rise up and upbraid him, his task would be diminished by half. Anything, indeed, would be better than this, and nothing could be worse; it was not Justine alone that the tears were carrying from him, it was the Dunellen millions as well. Oh, abysses of the human heart! As he queried with himself, at the very moment he was experiencing his first remorse, the old self returned, and it was less of the injury he had inflicted that he thought than of the counter-effect that injury might have on him. In the attempt to throttle the child he had been balked, yet of that attempt he believed Justine to be suspicionless. Other opportunities he would have in plenty; and even were it otherwise, the child was weakly, and croup might do its work. With the future for which he had striven, there, in the very palm of his hand, how was it possible that he should have made this misstep? But he could retrieve it, he told himself; he was a good actor, it was not too late. For a little while yet he could still support the mask, and, recalling the sentimental reveries of a moment before, the forerunner of a sneer came and loitered beneath the fringes of his mustache.

“Justine!” He moved a step or two to where she lay. “Justine⁠—”

His voice was very low and penitent, but at the sound of it she seemed to shrink. “Could she know?” he wondered.

Then immediately, through the scantness of the apartment, he heard the outer bell resound. Enervated as he was, the interruption affected him like a barb. There was someone there whom he could vent his irritation on. He hurried to the hall, but a servant had preceded him. The door was open, and on the threshold Thorold stood.

Mistrial nodded⁠—the nod of one who is about to throw his coat aside and roll his shirtsleeves up. “Is it for your bill you come?” he asked.

Thorold hesitated, and his face grew very black. He affected, however, to ignore the taunt. He turned to the servant that still was waiting there. “Is my cousin at home?” he asked.

“She is,” Mistrial announced, “but not to you.”

“In that case,” Thorold answered, “I must speak to someone in her stead.”

Mistrial made a gesture, and the servant withdrew.

“I have to inform my cousin,” Thorold continued, “that Mr. Metuchen came to me this evening and said that when my uncle died he was in debt⁠—”

“Stuff and nonsense!”

“He asked me to come and acquaint Justine with the facts. They are here.” With this Thorold produced a roll of papers. “Be good enough to explain to her,” he added, “that this is the inventory of the estate.” And, extending the documents to his host, he turned and disappeared.

In the cataleptic attitude of one standing to be photographed Mistrial listened to the retreating steps; he heard Thorold descend the stairs, cross the vestibule, and pass from the house. It seemed to him even that he caught the sound of his footfall on the pavement without. But presently that, too, had gone. He turned and looked down the hall. Justine’s door was closed. Then at once, without seeking a seat, he fumbled through the papers that he held. The gas-jet above his head fell on the rigid lines. In the absence of collusion⁠—and from whence should such a thing come?⁠—in the absence of that, they were crystal in their clarity.

There were the assets. Shares in mines that did not exist, bonds of railways that were bankrupt, loans on Western swamps, the house on Madison Avenue, mortgaged to its utmost value, property on the Riverside, ditto. And so on and so forth till the eye wearied and the heart sickened of the catalogue. Then came the debit account. Amounts due to this estate, to that, and to the other, a list of items extending down an entire page of foolscap and extending over onto the next. There a balance had been struck. Instead of millions Honest Paul had left dishonor. Swindled by the living, he had swindled the dead.

“So much for trusting a man that bawls Amen in church,” mused Mistrial.

As yet the completeness and amplitude of the disaster had not reached him. While he ran the papers over he feigned to himself that it was all some trick of Thorold’s, one that he would presently see through and understand; and even as he grasped the fact that it was not a trick at all, that it was truth duly signed and attested, even then the disaster seemed remote, affecting him only after the manner of that wound which, received in the heat of battle, is unnoticed by the victim until its gravity makes him reel. Then at once in the distance the future on which he had counted faded and grew blank. Where it had been brilliant it was obscure, and that obscurity, increasing, walled back the horizon and reached up and extended from earth to sky. The papers fell from his nerveless hand, fright had visited him, and he wheeled like a rat surprised. Surely, he reflected, if safety there were or could be, that safety was with Justine.

In a moment he was at her door. He tried it. It was locked. He beat upon it and called aloud, “Justine.”

No answer came. He bent his head and listened. Through the woodwork he could hear but the faintest rustle, and he called again, “Justine.”

Then from within came the melody of her voice: “Who is it?”

“It is I,” he answered, and straightened himself. It seemed odd to him she did not open the door at once. “I want a word with you,” he added, after a pause. But still the door was locked.

“Justine,” he called again, “do you not hear me? I want to speak to you.”

Then through the slender woodwork at his side a whisper filtered, the dumb voice of one whom madness may have in charge.

“It is not to speak you come, it is to kill.”

“Justine!” he cried. All the agony of his life he distilled into her name, “Justine!”

“You killed your child before, you shall not kill another now.”