Van Cleve and His Friends

CHAPTER XXIV

IN WHICH WE CALL AT THE GILBERTS’

ROBERT was indeed very sick. The attack might have been attributed to the shock of the sudden encounter with his wife, but the family doctor, hearing of it, shook his head. It was a coincidence, he said, nothing more; the machinery was worn out, and must have been upon the verge of breaking down this long while. Of course, it was impossible to say — sometimes these cases contradict all previous experience — Bob might live for several months, even for a year — or he might drop off to-morrow. The doctor would look in occasionally, but, frankly, there was nothing he could do — nothing anybody could do. He looked at Lorrie and her mother standing, each with her cold hands clasped tight together, listening to him as if he had been, what surely all good doctors are, a kind of deputy-Deity — the doctor looked at the women gravely and kindly, and got into his buggy and drove away.

This sad news being presently spread abroad, all the friends of the family — and the Gilberts had made a great many warm and devoted and steadfast friendships — were quick to show their sympathy, though nearly every one privately was of the opinion that Bob’s death would be a merciful release. The poor fellow never would have reformed, probably could not, and there was nobody who could be better spared; he had never been anything but a care and a disgrace to his people, to everybody that ever had anything to do with him. But all that ought to be forgotten now. Persons who had long ago stopped asking after him, or recognizing him on the street, now called at the house, bringing kind-hearted offerings of books and fruit and jellies and bottles of wine and air-pillows. They came and insisted on taking Lorrie out in their motorcars, whenever she could leave the invalid. Sometimes they saw him, for a few minutes; he had his days of feeling better or worse. Girls he had gone to school with, married women now with boys of their own, came to visit him, putting aside the fact that they had not spoken to him in years; but they always had liked Bob Gilbert, they said, he was so nice when — when he was all right. Even little old Miss Harriet Peck, the primmest mortal on earth, who would have run from the mere sight of Robert (even sober) a while ago, now ventured to the house and sent in her maidenly card with a tidy little nosegay of heliotrope and lemon-verbena. She had been his Sunday-school teacher twenty-five years before.

‘As soon as I’m well enough, I’ll go around and see the old girl. It was very kind of her to come,’ Robert declared. ‘Everybody’s kind, seems to me. I’ll have lots of calls to make. You come with me, will you, Lorrie?’

‘Why, of course, I’d love to,’ said Lorrie, smiling bravely.

It was in the first week of Bob’s sickness that they had one visitor whom it never would have occurred to them to expect. Robert, as the doctor had prophesied, rallied with uncanny swiftness, and already they had conveyed him to a cot on the side-porch, and his mother and sister were sitting there with him, in the mild sunshine,— it was in September, — Lorrie reading aloud from the morning paper, and Mrs. Gilbert constructing the first of a series of fine outing-flannel nightshirts which she was confident she could make better and infinitely cheaper than the men’s haberdashers. It was strange how quickly the household had adjusted itself to the idea of illness. Bob lay there quietly, comfortably, not looking so very sick. I am not sure that there was not an obscure content somewhere in the depths of his mother’s heart to have him at home at last and secure; it was hard to believe that he could not go on forever in this state, being cared for, petted, watched over; she was almost happy as she planned his nightshirts.

As they sat there, they heard the bell ring, and heard the servant’s footsteps going through the hall and some low-voiced talk at the front door. ‘There’s the postman,’ Bob said. But some one came, apparently with an anxious caution, into the sitting-room, which opened with a long window on the porch; and directly their maid spoke from the door. ‘ It’s a lady to see you, Miss Lorrie. She did n’t give any card. She just said she wanted to see you,’ said the girl.

Lorrie put down the newspaper, and rose with a faint grimace. ‘They’re always coming in like that, on tiptoe and holding their breath, as if — as if— Can’t, they see that, the real kindness would be to behave as if nothing were the matter?’ she said to herself impatiently. She went into the room, which was darkened by the vines and roof outside, and, making out only a silhouette of the visitor standing in an uncertain attitude by the door, spoke with a cheerfulness that, had she known if, was almost as artificial as the other’s labored solicitude. ’How do you do? I can’t see who it is; everything looks all black and green, coming in here out of the light, — but how do you do, anyhow!’ said Lorrie, gayly. ’Is it Mrs. — ?” Her lips stiffened on the words; she had gone up quite close to the other, but stopped stock-still with her hand yet outstretched.

“ I guess you were n’t expecting to see me,” said Paula. She looked at Lorrie’s hand, advanced her own awkwardly, then withdrew it and began to fumble with the clasps and chains of two or three silver trifles that dangled from her wrist — a purse, lorgnette, and what not. She shifted her parasol to the curve of her other arm, and pulled at the edge of her veil, glancing around the room with a kind of cringing resolution. ‘I knew you’d be surprised to see me,’ she repeated; ‘I did n’t suppose you’d want to, but I — I came, anyhow, Lorrie.’

‘Don’t speak so loud,’ said Lorrie.

‘I won’t— I didn’t mean to—' said Paula, faltering and shrinking.

‘My brother is just outside the window. I don’t want him to hear you suddenly. He’s very sick,’ said Lorrie, more gently.

‘I know. I knew he was sick. I don’t want to see him. I did n’t come to see him,’ Paula whispered hastily and urgently; she even retreated a step in visible fright. ‘ I don’t want to see him. I came to see you, Lorrie.’

On a common impulse, they moved a yard or so farther away, into the hall. In the stronger light Paula examined the other half furtively, half openly, with a strangely mixed expression combining fear, curiosity, bravado, and something that might almost have been construed as regard. Her accurately fashionable dress, her little groomed and petted body with all its good points so carefully cherished and exhibited, noticeable enough elsewhere, somehow lost all distinction and significance in Lorrie’s presence, and she herself seemed dimly to realize it, but without envy.

‘ Lorrie Gilbert, you have n’t changed a bit — not a speck!’ she declared; ‘my, I wish I had your complexion! It’s the way you live, I suppose. Tell you, N’Yawk ’ll get away with anybody’s looks, no matter how careful they are.’

‘Hush! Bob will hear you,’ Lorrie warned her again, and drew the door shut.

‘Oh, you don’t think he could, do you? I hope not. I — I don’t want to see him, Lorrie,’ said Paula, in a panic. ‘I heard he was going to die — I don’t want to see him. It’s true, is n’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s true,’ Lorrie said. As she surveyed Paula, she found herself on a sudden thinking of her with all the old tolerance and pity. Poor Paula, poor dull creature with her vanity, her petty shrewdness, her unconscious brutality, her woefully cheap morals, poor Paula! It was like her to be afraid of Bob because he was dying, like her to come here to this house that was associated with an experience so shameful that no other woman could have even thought of it, much less seen it, without an invincible shrinking. Merciful Heaven! she had not entered it thus since that day, nearly ten years before, when Lorrie had taken her, sick and sorry, back to the hotel; she had not even seen Lorrie since the marriage. Here she stood, uneasy, ingratiating, not really callous, not really coarse, only immutably self-absorbed.

‘Can’t we go somewhere and talk, where he can’t hear us?’ Paula questioned ; ‘I’d love to have a good long talk with you, Lorrie. I came because I wanted to talk to you.’

‘We can go upstairs to my room —’

‘Well, are you sure he won’t hear us? I don’t want him to know I’m here,’ said Paula, a little timorously. ‘He looked awfully badly the other day. Did he tell you he had seen me? Did he say anything about me?’

‘Yes, he said you were at the hotel. He said you were traveling for a firm of ladies’ tailors,’ said Lorrie, leading the way.

‘Well, he did n’t get it quite right, but that was near enough, for a man, I guess. Hello, it’s your same old room!’

Lorrie silently brought forward a couple of chairs, but the other did not at once sit down. Instead, she flitted lightly about the room, inspecting and commenting on the pictures and bits of ornaments, new and old, the wallpaper, the curtains, the pincushion — ’I see you’re doing that eyelet-work; that’s your own work, is n’t it? I’ve got a friend that does the most simply gorgeous Irish crochet. She’s got her bureau-scarfs all made of it, and a handkerchief-bedspread, the squares all put together with Irish insertion, and pink China-silk lining showing through — perfectly elegant. The same thing would have cost forty-five dollars at McCutcheon’s; I priced one. Say, you’ve changed your desk, have n’t you? Did n’t it use to be over there by the mantelpiece? Oh!’ She paused by the desk, picking up a photograph in a silver frame that Lorrie always kept standing in the middle of the little shelf; her voice changed slightly as she said, ‘That’s him, is n’t it, Lorrie? Is n’t it Mr. Cortwright?’

‘Yes.’

Paula carefully relaxed her smart, tightly drawn, dotted white veil, and pushed it up, and studied the picture for a long while. ‘It’s in that Rough Riders’ uniform. He must have had it taken just before he went to the war.’ She turned it over and read aloud, “‘Dearest, from Phil.” ’ Her face twitched momentarily. Then she set the frame down again. ‘Law me, what fools everybody is when they’re real young!’ she said musingly. And there was a silence in the little room for half a minute.

Paula went to the glass and readjusted her veil with care. She sat down deliberately, facing Lorrie; and when she spoke, Lorrie noticed a certain assurance and maturity in her manner that had been lacking at the first. Nobody would conceive of a New York corsetière’s establishment as a school for the development of character; yet one cannot become Madame Clarice, head saleswoman of a fashionable importing house, without having acquired some poise, initiative, and understanding of one’s neighbor.

‘Lorrie,’ Paula went on, ‘I suppose you may think it’s funny my coming to see you this way, after everything that’s happened. But I wanted to see you. I always liked you, Lorrie. I liked you even when I hated you — if you know what I mean. Girls are so funny.

Lorrie had no declaration or confession to make in return; she sat without answering, scarcely even surprised.

‘You don’t hold it up against me, about Bob, do you? You don’t hold that against me?’ said Paula, with unexpected earnestness.

‘You mean your being married to him? Why no, Paula. How could I dislike you, or feel any resentment against you about that?’ said Lorrie, startled and distressed. ‘Bob did you a dreadful wrong. The first thing we all thought of was that he must set it right. It does n’t make any difference that he’s my brother. We — I ’ve never thought of such a thing as blaming you for it.’

‘Well, I’d have hated it, if I’d been in your place,’ said Paula, honestly. ‘Why, I even hated the whole thing at the time, but I could n’t help myself.’ She leaned forward and spoke with emphasis. ‘You know, Lorrie, there’s one thing I’ve always wanted you to know, only I never had a chance to tell you, and somehow I could n’t write it.

I never was good at writing; and I was afraid I could n’t say it so you’d believe me. But it’s just this: if I’d been left to myself, I’d never have hooked on to Bob Gilbert that way. I’d never have done it in this wide world. It was Momma that did it. I told her afterwards, often and often, that it did n’t need to have been done at all. If I could have known beforehand that the baby was going to die — you knew it was born dead—?’

Lorrie uttered a sound of assent. She could not have spoken articulately.

‘If I could only have known that beforehand, I would n’t ever have hooked on to Bob. There would n’t have been any particular use, you see. Momma and I could just have gone away from here and come back again, and nobody would have been one bit wiser. I kept thinking: What am I going to do with that baby? And as it turned out, I did n’t need to bother at all!’

Lorrie gazed at her, dumb. She was conscious with horror of a desire to laugh, yet there was a sob in her throat. Oh, it was too grotesque, it was too pitiable! About Paula’s intention there was a crooked fairness immeasurably pathetic; yet by every word she said Lorrie felt all womankind to be humiliated and debased.

‘If I could only have known, I would n’t have let Momma rope him into getting married. But I did n’t know. I could n’t tell the baby was going to die,’ Paula said over again; ‘you believe me, don’t you, Lorrie?’ she asked, in earnest apology.

‘Of course I believe you, Paula,’ said Lorrie, with difficulty. The tears stood in her eyes.

Paula sat back with a long breath. ‘I always wanted you to know. When the baby was born, and they found it was dead, that was the first thing I thought of. I thought: There now, all the fuss was for nothing! Well, I did the best I could. I went to a lawyer, and got him to tell me what was the best way to get a divorce without having any talk, or having to tell anything. I had to pay him a lot, too. So I took his advice and waited three years, and then got it, you know; and I told the other lawyers that I wanted it fixed so that your brother could marry again if he wanted to, same as myself. I don’t know whether they did it or not, but that’s what I told ’em, anyway. And I want to say, Lorrie, that your brother’s always been as nice a little gentleman as anybody’d want to know. He’s all right, and I want you to know I think so.’

Lorrie had a sensation as of a person groping vainly in some unlit labyrinth. She had reached a point where she could not follow the processes of Paula’s mind; at every turn some stone wall of complete incomprehensibility baffled her. Surely any other woman in Paula’s position would have either hated Bob or loved him; it was incredible that she could pronounce him, with this obvious friendly conviction, ’all right.’ It was incredible, but it was so!

‘Now you tell me something about yourself,’ said Paula, shifting her ground with surprising suddenness. ’I thought you’d be married by this time. Why did n’t you, Lorrie?’ She spoke with energy; it had the effect of an accusation, rather than an inquiry.

‘I did n’t want to. I don’t want to,’ Lorrie answered, gathering herself together after a moment’s effort.

The other eyed her sharply. ‘ You ’ve had some more offers, have n’t, you? she demanded; ’I guess they don’t come along so thick as they used to; but you’ve held your looks pretty well, Lorrie. I bet you’ve had some more offers. Don’t that Mr. Kendrick want to marry you still? He used to.'

‘Why — I — he — he —’

‘ I knew he did,’ said Paula, triumphantly. ‘Why don’t you take him? He’s always been crazy about you, and he must be pretty well fixed now. Of course, it’s all right to keep a man hanging around for a while, so’s he won’t ever get to feeling sure of you,’ she interpolated liberally; ‘but you don’t want, to take too long about it. Men are kind of queer, and he might get tired of waiting, and go off to somebody else.’

‘You don’t understand. I don’t want to marry any one. I shall never marry any one. And I will ask you not to talk to me any more about it, Paula. You know I don’t like you to,’ said Lorrie, fairly incensed.

Paula, however, looked at her flushed and mortified face quite unmoved.

‘ I guess you think I’ve got my nerve,’ she commented dispassionately. ‘Suppose I told you that was one of the things I came here to see you about? To ask about you and Kendrick, I mean. Suppose I told you that, what’d you say?’

‘ I would tell you that it was a great piece of impertinence!’ said Lorrie, at the end of her self-command. She tried to steady herself. ‘It seems as if you can’t be made to understand that this is n’t a mere pretence with me. I mean it when I tell you I don’t like it. It’s an insult to Mr. Kendrick and myself both. He—’ She choked; all at once she found herself angered to the point of tears on Van Cleve’s account. He was above being gabbled about this way; above all this contemptible gossip about getting tired of waiting, and going off to some one else!

Paula, on the other hand kept her temper admirably; she had always been of an equable disposition, and doubtless the years she had spent catering to M. Levi Bloch’s customers had taught her the value of a surface amiability, at any rate. ‘ Maybe it is an impertinence. Maybe who you marry or don’t marry is none of my business,’ she said tranquilly; and rose with wellcontrolled movements. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing, Lorrie Gilbert, if you’re holding off and meaning to die an old maid because of him —’ she pointed with a negligent gesture of her parasol to the photograph of Lorrie’s dead lover which was impassively witnessing this scene, from its stand on the desk — ‘if it’s because of him, you’re making the mistake of your life. Would he have done it for you? Not much! Not much; he would n’t have! Why, you were only one of a dozen with him. If you’d been married, you’d have found out about Phil Cortwright. He’d have got tired of you in a month —’

‘Paula, stop! How dare — how can — how—’ Lorrie’s voice failed in stark anger. She could not get out another word; her whole frame trembled. She darted to the desk and snatched the photograph up, holding it against her breast with a fierce movement. She hardly knew what she was doing, save defending her most sacred memories against this sacrilegious voice and presence.

‘If you scream out that way, your brother or somebody will hear,’ said Paula, disturbed for the first time. She lowered her voice, glancing towards the door. ‘He would n’t want, me to tell you, anyhow. He made me promise not to. But what does a promise like that, amount to? I was in such a fix I’d have sworn black was white!’

She went closer to Lorrie and whispered something with a sort of cold vehemence.

Although she heard, Lorrie for a second did not understand; the words beat idly about her ears like the fluttering of a bat’s wings at night. Paula spoke again; and then Lorrie gave a wild and inarticulate sound of denial. ‘No, no!' — she gasped; and stared speechlessly at the other, her color slowly fading.

‘It’s the truth. My God, Lorrie, don’t look that way! I can’t help it now. It’s the truth.' Paula’s own face showed ashen-gray through all her paint; the effort she was making taxed all her meagre reserves of character; but she spoke with a force of voice and manner that vanquished doubt.

‘What call would I have to come here and lie to you? It’s the truth. I can prove it. I’ve got letters from him. I can prove it if you don’t believe me. Or you can go and ask your brother. Ask your brother, and see what he says.’

Lorrie made a negative motion with her head; she tried to speak with lips that moved as if of lead. The picture slid out of her hands to the floor. Paula seized her arm with an exclamation.

‘Goodness, Lorrie, don’t faint, whatever you do! For mercy’s sake, don’t faint! Somebody will come up here to see what’s the matter, and then we’ll have a time. Here, what do you take when you feel sick? Have n’t you got any whiskey? What’s that on the wash-stand? If it was ammonia, it might do. Gracious, I don’t know what to do!’ She held to Lorrie’s elbow, gazing about in utter perplexity and helplessness. ‘I never could do anything for any person that was sick. Would you like some water? I can get some if you’ll tell me where it is,’ she suggested uncertainly, as Lorrie slowly lapsed into a chair.

‘No. Never mind.’ Lorrie put up her hand to her forehead, and felt the chilly moisture beading there, with dull wonder. She drew herself upright, with an inconceivable effort, clutching at the ledge of the desk. Paula sat down opposite, surveying her uneasily.

‘It’s the truth — ’she was reiterating, when Lorrie unsteadily raised one hand.

‘I believe you,’ she said.

For an instant, Paula seemed almost frightened at the ease of her victory; then she began volubly and eagerly. ‘I expect you think it’s funny about your brother. Well, it is funny. Because he never touched me. Bob Gilbert never touched me, he never had anything to do with me. I’m telling you God’s truth, Lorrie. It was the other all the time. I was a fool, of course. I thought it was because of me he was coming here all the time, making out he was calling on you. I thought it was to get a chance to see me outside the hotel, you know. And don’t you remember how he used always to take me home? I believed everything he told me. I guess you know how that was yourself. You believed him, too. We used to meet other places. I did n’t know he was engaged to you, or thinking of it, till — till after everything had happened, and I —I was in that awful fix. Oh, I was a fool all right! I bet I was n’t the first one he’d fooled either — ’

‘Don’t!’ said Lorrie, faintly. And Paula, looking into her face, was obediently silent. After some time, Lorrie said: ‘ Bob —?’

’I never put it on him. Lorrie, I would n’t have thought of him — why — why — I just would n’t have thought of him!’ cried out the other, violently earnest. ‘ I tell you Bob never came near me that way, and I never said he did. It was Momma. When I owned up to her what was the matter with me, she acted clean crazy. She kept tormenting me to know who the man was, and when I would n’t tell her, she kept asking, “Is it him?” “Is it him?” one man’s name after another, till she’d gone over all the men we knew. I kept saying, “No, it ain’t. I’m not going to tell you who it was!” And then something in the way I said it made her think it was your brother, and she got up and went off like a flash to your house and I could n’t stop her.’

‘She told us it was Bob. We believed it,’ said Lorrie, her face contracting. ‘We ought n’t to have been so quick to believe it about him. I can see that now. But afterwards, why did he —?’ She looked at the other mutely questioning.

‘That’s what I could n’t make out, when you wrote you’d got hold of him down there in Cuba, and he was going to come home with you and marry me. I could n’t make it out; I could n’t think why he did it! It looked like he was crazy too!' said Paula, sincerely; ‘ I had been expecting the real truth would come out when you got hold of your brother. At least you ’d know it was n’t him. But I did n’t care much. I was feeling too awfully. There was n’t any use my telling. He — the other one — the real one, you know—’ for some reason she shrank from pronouncing Cortwright’s name again — ' he would n’t come back here and marry me. I’d written to him. Oh, yes, he knew. I’d told him — I’d written him over and over again. But he was through with me, that was all. He did n’t care what became of me. He knew I would n’t ever tell; he knew I’d be afraid to. And then he got shot, so that settled it anyhow. Then your brother came home, and your father brought him down to Clarksburg, that little place in Indiana where Momma and I were. I was glad it was just your father and mother that came; I did n’t want to see you. They got a minister and a license right off. Before we were married, though, everybody went away and left your brother and I alone together — I suppose they thought we’d want to do some love-making,’ said Paula, dully ironical; ‘anyway they left us alone in the room. I said to him, “What are you doing it for?” Just like that. I could n’t think of anything else. He knew what I meant, of course. He said, “I found out about you and Cort. It was an accident — I did n’t mean to — but I found out. I’ve got all those letters you wrote him. Here they are. You better burn ’em up.”

‘Then I said again: “But what are you doing it for?” He said: “I don’t want my sister ever to know. It would kill Lorrie. You must promise me you won’t ever tell Lorrie.” He said more, but I forget what it was now; it was about the same, I guess. He was afraid for you to know. So I promised him, and we were married.’

Lorrie heard her with a sharp pang of contrition. She really had no cause for self-reproach; her affection for her brother, her kindness, her forbearance, had been as constant as the sunlight. And about Bob’s own self-sacrifice there had been nothing commendable, nothing heroic; it was merely foolish. Lorrie recognized that. Nevertheless it was with an aching regret that she cast back over all the years that they had condemned and misjudged him. ‘Oh, poor, poor Bob! I would n’t have died of it. People don’t die of things like that,’ she said. The idol she had served and cherished lay in fragments at her feet; but strangely enough, Lorrie faced the spectacle with far less pain than that with which she thought of Robert and his generous folly. How could they ever have believed it of him in the first place? It was clean out of his character, could n’t they have seen that? she asked herself in futile sorrow and impatience. She wanted to go and get down on her knees and beg Bob to forgive her.

‘Well, anyway, he did n’t want you to know,’ Paula said, answering her last words. ‘After we were married he stayed around about a month, just for the looks of the thing, you know. But nobody ever suspected, even Momma, though she was right with us. I guess you remember about his being taken with his lungs, and having to go to Colorado — you remember when that was? We’ve scarcely ever seen each other since. But he was always a perfect gentleman, Lorrie. He never said another word to me about him, nor threw it at me what I’d done, nor anything, not even when he was drunk.’

There was another long silence. Paula began arranging her gloves and veil preparatory to departure, and at last rose, shaking out her skirts with careful, preening fingers.

‘Well, that’s all. I guess I’ll be moving,’ she announced; and as Lorrie did not speak, paused, looking at her with renewed uneasiness and suspicion. ‘Of course I have n’t got any of the letters he wrote with me. I don’t take ’em around when I’m on the road. But I can send and have ’em sent to you. They’re all in my desk in the flat in N’Yawk. I’ll send for ’em if you don’t believe me, Lorrie.’

‘I don’t want to see them,’ said Lorrie.

‘You really don’t need to, anyhow. You can just ask your brother,’ Paula advised practically; ‘it can’t harm him now to know that you know all about it. He’s too far gone. When I saw him the other day, I don’t know how it was, but it just came over me that I ought to tell you. He’s going to die, and I could n’t help hating to think of Bob Gilbert dying and his folks still thinking that, about him. I don’t know why, but I just could n’t bear the idea,’ said Paula, stopping a moment to consider this phenomenon. ‘And besides, I heard you were n’t married yet, and I thought to myself, “ I bet I know why!” And you know, Lorrie, it did seem to me too silly for you to give up that way, because of him. It seemed like you ought to know about him. Well, good-bye. Oh my, excuse me! I’ve stepped right square on it! Is the frame broken? Why, is n’t that awful! Do excuse me! I did n’t see it.’

‘It’s no matter,’ Lorrie said in an expressionless voice. After Paula had gone, she went with slow steps back to the room and picked up the broken photograph and the glass which the other’s high French heel had ground to crumbs, and sat awhile, thinking of her destroyed illusions with a kind of compassion. Suddenly she felt that what she had just heard was no revelation; it was something she had always dimly known and tried with a pitiful defiance to keep herself from knowing. She viewed herself in a strange detachment. That girl who had been engaged to Philip Cortwright, that poor thing who had had to learn of his death in so cruel a way, who had kept faith with him all these years, who had resolutely turned away from other devotion — that woman had loved her hero; but she had never trusted him. There was a side of his life, a side of his character, she had steadily refused to see; yet she knew it was there all the time — oh, she knew it! Lorrie remembered with ineffable shrinking, having recited to herself the common, petty bit of feminine cynicism that all men — How could she ever have pretended to believe that? Why, their poor Bob, poor dull, weak, self-indulgent, characterless Bob, was too strong, too decent for that!

Hot humiliation suffused her anew. She got up with a violent movement, and went to her desk.

A while later, Mrs. Gilbert came upstairs to answer the telephone; she paused at the threshold, and, glancing in, exclaimed aloud, ‘Lorrie! You’re not building a fire? It’s not cool enough yet for that! ’

‘No, I’m only burning some things,’ said Lorrie. She was sitting before the hearth with her chin in her hand, staring at the dying embers.

Mrs. Gilbert came farther in, eyeing the dismantled desk.

‘Old letters?’ she queried innocently. ‘ It looks as if you had rummaged all the drawers, and cleaned out everything. I thought I smelled smoke. Photographs are slow to burn, are n’t they? Why, your mantelpiece is almost bare! You’ve changed everything— no, here’s Van Cleve’s picture in the same place. You’re not going to burn that up, I hope, Lorrie.’

Lorrie looked up. Van Cleve’s photograph, one of the few he had ever had taken, had always stood in the middle of her mantelshelf, and stood there now, its harsh features and direct gaze facing her — a homely picture of a homely man. Lorrie’s eyes suddenly filled up; to her mother’s surprise and alarm, she began to sob heavily. ‘No, no, I sha’n’t change Van Cleve, Mother — nobody can change Van Cleve. He’ll always be the same — always, always.’

CHAPTER XXV

THE END OF THE TETHER

Of all the family, Robert himself was the least moved when it was made known that Paula had been there at the house, and the object of her visit revealed. He was surprised and disconcerted, and swore once or twice amiably, under his breath. ‘Well, that’s the last, thing in the world I would have expected! What the mischief did she want to do that for? Oh, yes — yes, it’s true. She’s gone to work and told the whole thing, so there’s no use my talking. But what possessed her?' he ejaculated in futile inquiry. His strongest emotion appeared to be a vexed embarrassment, which, however, gave way instantly to concern on seeing his mother’s face.

‘Why, Moms, why, what’s the matter? Don’t cry that way!’ he said in distress; ‘you could n’t help believing it. What else could you think? Wronged? Wronged who? Wronged me? Bosh, you did n’t do anything of the kind! It’s all right. It did n’t make any difference about me. I’m a little glad now it’s all over to have you know that I’m not that sort of a fellow. I would n’t ever have treated any girl that way,’ said Bob, earnestly, apparently thinking it necessary to clear up this point. ‘ I — why, I just would n’t have wanted to, you know. I would n’t ever have wanted to, that’s all! I hoped it would never be known how it really was, on Lorrie’s account. Seemed to me that was the least I could do for Lorrie. And I always liked Cort. And he was dead, you know — and you all thought it was me, anyhow —’

‘Don’t, Bob! And don’t say anything more about that man!’ Mrs. Gilbert cried indignantly through her tears. ‘He was the one that took you away from us in the beginning, and — and led you into doing things you would n’t have done by yourself. You know he did. He was a bad man, Bob, I always felt he was, only Lorrie cared for him, and so — But he was a bad man —’

‘I liked him, anyhow, Mother. You must n’t talk to me about Cort,’ Bob interposed with so unwonted a gravity that she broke off, rather frightened. All the doctor’s cautions crowded into her mind.

‘I don’t mean — that is, I—’ she stammered, with a sob.

‘ I know,’ said Bob, and took her hand affectionately into his own thin, hot grasp. ‘You don’t understand how men are sometimes, I believe. Cort and I were pretty good friends, that’s all.

I think perhaps women are n’t ever friends the same way men are. A fellow that knows all about you, and likes you in spite of it — that’s a friend. Like old Van, you know. He’s the best friend I’ve got — and he knows me like a book!’

‘Why, of course, Bob — of course Van Cleve likes you! But that’s different. It’s not the same thing at all!’ cried his mother, puzzled, and resentful of this classification; ‘you talk about yourself as if you were — as if you were —’

‘No good? Well, I’m not!’ Bob said easily; ‘at least I have n’t been up to now. But thank the Lord it is n’t too late! This last attack has been a good lesson to me, Moms. I mean to brace up. When I get well and get out of this bed, you ’re all going to see a big change in me. There’s room for it. I’m going to brace up and work and — and make something of myself!’ The face he turned towards her was full of enthusiasm; he looked, for a fugitive instant, like a boy again.

‘Lorrie says Van Cleve ought to know about this, too,’ Mrs. Gilbert said after a while; ‘she wanted you to tell him.’

‘Van? Oh, I don’t know. He does n’t mind. I don’t see why he need be told,’ said Robert with indifference; ‘ however, if Lorrie wants me to — And, after all, Van took a deal of trouble going down there to Cuba to get me, and I suppose he has a right to know about it; it can’t make any difference to Paula now. She knows that he knew all about her at the time — as much as any of you knew, that is.’

It was, nevertheless, with a certain constraint that they all welcomed Van Cleve when he came, as usual, that evening. Lorrie was not there; she had a headache — she was not well — she had been very much upset by something that had happened in the morning, he was told. Mr. Kendrick’s face fell noticeably at the news. He came to see Bob, it was true; Van would not have considered his day ended without looking in on Bob; the people who called him a skinflint — and he may have become something of a skinflint by this time — would have been dumbfounded could they have seen him in this environment, at the side of this broken-down wreck of a friend. But even with Bob there, the house was empty for Van Cleve without Lorrie, and he could not help showing it. ‘She’s not going to be sick?’ he asked anxiously; ‘I mean she’ll be all right to-morrow, won’t she?’ And, though reassured on this point, he was still frowningly occupied with the state of Lorrie’s health when the Professor and Mrs. Gilbert, with an unnatural awkwardness of which Van was quite unconscious, got themselves out of the room. Suddenly he found himself alone with Bob, who looked at him apprehensively from the couch.

‘You would never guess who was here to-day, Van,’ he said hesitatingly. ‘It was — well, it was Paula.’

‘Paula? You don’t mean—? Paula! Is she here? Here at the house?’

‘No, she’s at the hotel still. But she came out this morning.’

‘To see you? ’ Van Cleve asked rather blankly. His first thought was that Bob’s wife must have wanted to patch up a reconciliation with him, before he died; and he wondered uncomfortably if he himself would be obliged to meet her.

‘No, no, I did n’t see her. She did n’t come to see me. It was Lorrie she wanted to see. She wanted to tell Lorrie something — ’ Bob went on with the tale haltingly, and not very clearly, as could be judged by the perplexity in his friend’s eyes.

Van did not interrupt; he had the gift of not interrupting; but at one stage of the narrative, as Bob paused, he said not without satisfaction, —

‘I always thought that girl was a bad lot. Now she tells you the child was n’t yours at all, hey? If you’ll remember, Bob, I suggested that to you once, but you would n’t pay any attention to me. I dare say she had no idea who its father was —’

‘No, no, Van Cleve! It was n’t that! Don’t think that!’ Bob cried out with tragic earnestness, raising himself painfully. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. Don’t think a thing like that. You — she — I —’ he began to cough pitifully.

‘Here, lie down. You know the doctor said you were n’t to bear your weight on that side,’ said Van Cleve, alarmed. ‘Lie down, Bob. Where’s that stuff you take? I’ll get you some of it. Never mind, you can tell me the rest after a while. You keep quiet now, old man.’

Bob dropped back on the pillows, exhausted, eyeing the other with affection and a certain wonder and confusion of mind, as Van Cleve carefully measured out and administered the medicine, using his big, strong, steady hands with surprising delicacy.

‘I can’t always make you out, Van,’ he said. ‘You’re so hard sometimes I feel as if talking to you was like dashing myself against a rock. And then again you ’re — you ’re so solidly good ! I can’t make you out.’

‘Oh, I think I must be about like everybody else,’ said Van Cleve, embarrassed. ‘You’d better not try to talk any more to-night. It’ll keep till next time, won’t it?’

But no, it would n’t keep, Bob strenuously assured him; so Van Cleve, anxious not to let him excite himself further, sat down again with folded arms, and at last heard the whole.

He sat so long in silence afterwards that Robert, gazing at his overcast face, began to plead with a childish fearfulness. ‘Look here, you — you don’t think I did wrong, do you, Van?

After all, it was — well, it was worse for me than for anybody else. I was going to tell you the whole truth down there at Siboney, on the boat that morning, you know. I had just found it out from those letters I took off of poor Cort’s dead body. I was starting to tell you when it came out that you and all the rest, Lorrie and everybody, thought — thought I was the one. I did n’t know why Paula fastened it on me; but all at once I saw that I — that — well, that I could take the blame perfectly well —’

‘ I don’t see why you should. I don’t see what good you expected to do by that,' said Van Cleve.

Bob looked at him in helpless appeal. ‘I wanted to make it easier for Lorrie, Van. I did it to save Lorrie.’

‘To save her from what?’ said Van Cleve.

‘Why, Van Cleve, you know what I mean. Why, you gave me the most awful roast at the very time for the way I’d treated Lorrie — what I’d made her go through — what she’d had to stand for me. And I knew it was all true; you did n’t put it one bit too strong, I knew that. I deserved every word of it. I just thought of Lorrie worrying around over a dead beat like me—poor Lorrie sitting there all alone in Tampa, crying her heart out—and Phil in his grave! I thought I could afford to do that much for Lorrie, after all she’d done for me. I thought I could save her that anyhow.’

‘Save her what?’ said Van Cleve again. He got up and walked twice or thrice up and down the room, while the other’s troubled gaze followed him. ‘Do you know you’ve let Lorrie waste nearly ten years of her life — ten of her best years in devotion to the memory of that cheap seducer — that mean, flimsy, sensual —’ He caught sight of Bob’s face, and stopped. ‘Very well, I won’t say anything more about him, only that you yourself must know in your heart, Bob, that he was n’t worth a minute of it. She’d have wasted all the rest of her time, if this Jameson woman had n’t come here and let her know the truth about him at last. You call that saving Lorrie? I don’t, Bob.’

‘ I know — I know — I’ve sometimes felt it was n’t all right somehow — when I saw the way she felt,’ said Bob, tremulously; ‘but I could n’t possibly know it was going to turn out that way. I could n’t tell what was going to happen . I did n’t stop to think that far ahead — I did n’t have time to.’ He paused, collected himself, and went on in a firmer and more assured voice: ‘And anyhow, Van Cleve, I want to ask you this: if you had known about it — about Cortwright and Paula — what would you have done? Would you have told Lorrie?’

Van Cleve halted abruptly in his tramping. ‘Me? It’s not a question of me, or what I’d have done, or not have done,’ he said angrily, defiantly, uneasily.

‘But would you ? ’ persisted the other.

‘I — I — well then, no, I would n’t have!’ shouted Van Cleve; ‘it’s not my habit to go running around, telling stories about dead men, or blabbing other peoples’ secrets. I’d take somebody that could talk back. But you’re different — I mean you were in a different position — I mean — ’ He halted again, floundering.

‘Well, then, you see how it was — you see how I felt?’ Robert said hopefully. And he went on explaining, piteously earnest. ‘Of course I know it would n’t have been exactly the same for you as it was for me, Van. You’re in a different position, as you say. That’s the only thing that has worried me. I sometimes felt as if it was n’t right when — when I saw how Lorrie felt. And I’ve always been hoping that Lorrie would get over it, and then you and she —’

‘I was n’t thinking about that,’ said Van Cleve, fiercely. Even as he uttered the words, he became suddenly aware that that was precisely what he had been thinking in some inner recess of his mind. His face flushed darkly; he went and sat down by Bob’s cot again.

‘ I suppose that was really at the bottom of what I said just now,’ he said, humiliated. ‘Not that Lorrie would marry me, anyhow, you know, Bob. But I might have had a better chance. I did n’t mean to be rough with you. I know you were doing it for the best. I think now we ought all to be ashamed of ourselves because we were so ready to be deceived — so ready to think evil of you. It must have been hard for you to stand, Bob. There are people that don’t think any too well of me; I know how you must have felt.’

‘No, you don’t, because you are n’t like me,’ Bob retorted with a curious and touching lightness. ‘It never did make much difference to me, Van— just once in a while, you know. It would have been hard for a man like you — I can understand that. But me — why, it did n’t matter so much. Sometimes I’ve thought I’d like to have all of you know how it really happened. But you see I’d given all of Paula’s letters back to her, so I could n’t prove anything. And I was n’t going to call on her for proof; and none of you would have believed me, if I’d sworn to the truth up and down. So I had to let things go as they were.’

He offered this explanation with a simplicity that cut the other to the quick; yet Van Cleve knew that none of them had ever been consciously unjust or merciless to Bob. They had all tried their best to do what was right, and the result was a miserable muddle, wherein everybody was somehow more or less in the wrong! ‘Why, I would have believed you, Bob,’ he said huskily; ‘we would all have believed you. Your bare word would have been enough at any time. What put that notion into your head?’

‘Would you, Van Cleve?’ said Bob, pleased; ‘well, that’s good to hear. People generally have n’t got very much use for me, you know, and what I say does n’t go very far with them.’

Van Cleve went away from the house, feeling oddly as if one important chapter in the lives of every one of them must be closed; indeed, it was not a chapter of Bob’s life, it was the whole book that was nearing the end. ‘ If there is a Judge anywhere, He must be hard put to it to know what to do with a soul like Bob’s. But you might say that of all of us — all of us,’ Van mused, with no irreverence, in spite of the everyday words in which he clothed his thought. He began to recall the first days of their friendship — oh, those two lads with their dreams, their foolish, splendid dreams! And now Bob was dying, and Van was on the highroad to forty, and the hair was graying on his temples; his pockets, that had been so empty, were full nowadays, but his heart — perhaps best not talk about that. Then he found himself thinking of Cortwright, thinking, as he realized with a sort of passive wonder, without enmity. He could not cherish rancor now; Lorrie knew. She knew him now, with all his shabby sins and follies; it seemed to Van the most bitter and complete of punishments for Cortwright, alive or dead. Alive or dead, Van could wish him nothing worse. If he had been of a fanciful turn of mind, Van Cleve might, have pictured Cortwright’s wraith, that had walked by Lorrie’s side, and beckoned her with its chill, shadowless hand, and interposed reproachfully between himself and her, all these long years — I say Van Cleve might have made a fine picture of that wretched presence going shuddering off into darkness and oblivion and its own dismal hell of memories. But as it was, he only hoped in honest and prosaic terms that she would get over the shock of the revelation soon, and that it would n’t pain her too much, and — and that she would begin to think of him a little now.

During the succeeding weeks Bob’s case progressed as had been foretold, with faint rallies, alternating with imperceptibly accelerated declines. The family could not hide it from themselves; yet Mrs. Gilbert still worked away at coverlids and bed-shoes and little sick-room conveniences; they still talked of next spring, next month, next week. It was habit. Robert had been a care to them so long, in one way or another, that they could not envisage a future without him, a time when he would no longer be on their minds to be loved, excused, petted, shielded. He himself was never plaintive, never fretful; and the end, when it came, was mercifully quick and quiet.

Van Cleve, at his office, was called to the telephone one morning, towards the end of the winter; he had been at the house the night before and had left Bob feeling better than for days, quite gay, and laughing over the comic papers some one had sent him. It was an instant before Van recognized Lorrie’s voice, begging him to come out, in a hurried and frightened tone; Bob had had a good night; but somehow they did not think he looked so well this morning; he had been wishing Van Cleve would come; he seemed not to realize that it was daytime — early in the day; they had sent for the doctor —

Van Cleve got into his overcoat and hurried out ; the winter day was dingily thawing, with a wan sky overhead, and the streets in a discolored slush. Van met the doctor picking his way down the Gilberts’ unswept steps, between the treacherous, sliding lumps of ice and snow; they spoke together for a moment. Lorrie was waiting, and drew him into the hall. She was not crying, but her face trembled as she began to speak in a guarded voice. ‘The doctor told you, did n’t he? He has just seen Bob — he says it may be any time now. It’s so strange—we thought Bob was better for a little while this morning. And then all at once — no, he’s quite right in his head, he’ll know you, it’s nothing of that kind. He’s just like himself, and does n’t seem to be in any pain either. But, oh, Van Cleve, poor Bob — it’s such a pity — it’s always been such a pity!’ She stifled a sob against the front of his rough ulster which he had got half off; Van stroked her shoulder in an awkward, comforting caress.

He followed her into the sick-room.

Bob was lying there, propped on his pillows in the bright, fresh, pretty place they managed always to keep about him, looking somehow a little different from the way he had last night, as Van swiftly noted, but certainly no worse. Van Cleve went up to the bed, where the father and mother drew aside for him, and sat down close beside it, taking the other’s hand; he said with that false heartiness that seems as if it never should deceive anybody, least of all the person for whom it is intended— Van said, ‘Well, Bob, how are you coming on, hey?’

Bob raised his head a little and looked at him with his old, sweet, boyish smile, confiding and gay. ‘Why, I’m about even, Van, old fellow!’ he said. His head dropped back with so gentle and natural a movement, it was a full minute before any of them saw that he was dead.

(The End.)