Ellery H. Clark

“Truth is the highest thing that man may keep.”

Chaucer.

Once again the household at The Birches had settled down into its wonted routine of daily life. Yet with a difference, too, for over the whole place the shadow of the tragedy still hung. Henry Carleton, deeply affected at the loss of a faithful and valued servant, showed his sorrow by making no attempt to replace him, letting the motor lie idle, and promoting Saunders, the former groom, to the coachman’s vacant post. Mrs. Satterlee herself, very pretty and very sad in deepest black, continued to live alone at the cottage, going out but seldom and seemingly well-nigh inconsolable in her grief. Just once, Rose Carleton, feeling vaguely repulsed in the visit or two she had made to her one time nurse, had gone to her father’s study to question him in regard to the widow’s position. “Is it quite proper, father,” she had asked, “for her to live there now, all alone? Don’t you think people may begin to talk ill-naturedly about her?”

Henry Carleton had sat thoughtfully for a time before he had made answer, and then, “Poor woman,” he said, with deep feeling, “this has been a heavy blow for her. And but such a short time married, too. Really, I hardly know what to say, and yet, for the present, at least, I think I should allow her to remain. To me it would seem heartless to do otherwise. Too much as if, just because poor Satterlee were of no further use to me, I was anxious to cast off his widow also. I understand your feeling in the matter, Rose, and I appreciate the kindness you have shown in speaking of it, but in time of sorrow and affliction, the breath of scandal seems but a secondary consideration. Duty first, my child, come what may,” and Rose, ashamed of her prudishness, had risen and kissed him.

“You’re right, father,” she cried hastily, “as you always are. If there’s anything I can do to make things easier for her, you’ve only to tell me.” Henry Carleton, with a little smile, had thanked her, and the incident had been closed.

Across Jack Carleton’s path the shadow of Satterlee’s tragic death seemed to lie dark and unforgettable. For a day or two, indeed, morose and grave, he continued to make The Birches his home; then, suddenly, he took his departure, going back to his in-town lodgings, and The Birches knew him no more.

But of all the changes caused by the doings of the night, the most marked had taken place in Arthur Vaughan. With him, indeed, all else apart, things had been going badly enough to warrant discouragement. First of all, after a week or two of indulgence in ever strengthening hope, coming home one hot and breathless evening to his lodging house, he had found an envelope with Small and White’s name in the corner awaiting him on the table in the hall. With it there appeared no bulky parcel of type-written sheets, and on the instant his heart beat rapidly at twice its usual speed. Could it be at last the turning point in the long, straight path of disappointments? Somehow he could not bring himself to open the letter there, and in spite of weariness, of the almost overpowering heat of the day, he ran up the three flights of stairs, never stopping until he had reached the shelter of his own bare and simply furnished room.

Even then he still hesitated, scarcely even bringing himself to glance at the missive that burned in his hand. Once more he looked about him, at the familiar, friendly old arm-chair, at the battered desk in the window, with the manuscript sheets of his new story scattered over its surface, then out at the restful green of the big elm tree whose spreading branches almost touched his window, screening the whole room with their welcome shade. All of these he had come to know and hail as friends, and natural enough it seemed to him that now in the hour of his joy he should wish to take them into his confidence, and to bid them rejoice with him at last. With a final look from the window down into the quiet, deserted street below, he resolutely tore open the letter, and ran his eye over the first line or two of its contents—then, with a sharp intake of breath he raised his eyes, and stood silent and motionless, his face suddenly white, as though he had received some mortal blow. It was over, then. The first three lines were enough. He knew that stereotyped form so well. “We are returning to you to-day”—that was sufficient—he could have gone on and completed the letter, with scarcely the miscalling of a single word. Yet presently, with a self-contemptuous smile, he took up the letter again, and read it, slowly and deliberately, as a man might run a sword inch by inch into his body, stopping now and again to give it a little extra twist or turn stoically to watch himself twinge and wince with the pain, eyes closing, mouth contorted.

And anguish of soul, indeed, every whit as bitter Arthur Vaughan now knew. Hardly had he realized, after his friendly chat with Henry Carleton, and the words of encouragement he had received from that practised man of affairs, how thoroughly he had discounted the future. Down in the bottom of his heart he knew now that for a fortnight he had really cherished the belief that all would at last come right, that the book would be taken, that his name would be made, that his marriage with Rose would be but a question of a longer or shorter time; and now, hopes dashed, he was back again where he had started; nay, worse off, indeed, for another possible chance was lost to him, another publisher had set the seal of disapproval on his work—oh, it was all too bitter!

Mechanically he read and re-read the letter. All were there—all the little catch words, the honeyed phrases which said one thing, yet were made to say it so smoothly and courteously that at the end he half doubted that after all, his work had been refused;—all were there. “We are returning”—yes, that seemed enough, almost, but still they had to go on,—“manuscript you have been so kind as to submit,”—oh, of course, it had been such a kindness on his part,—“reading it has occasioned us much pleasure,”—pleasure! Of what sort, Vaughan wondered; “it has many obvious merits,”—why didn’t they take it, then?—“and some equally obvious defects.”—Ah, yes, the defects; that was it, of course, the defects; that phrase, he felt, at least was sincere.—“Only after careful deliberation—at last unwillingly compelled to come to the conclusion—present state of the public taste—certain practical considerations inevitably to be considered—on the whole—again thanking you—” More and more hastily, as he neared the end, Vaughan read, almost with a feeling of physical disgust. Then he tossed the letter on his desk, and stood, with folded arms, looking out once more into the silent street, where the shadows were beginning to fall deeper and deeper, merging gradually into the dusk of twilight. At last he spoke. “I wouldn’t care,” he said, “if it was bad work; if it was work that I’d slighted; if it was work I’d done in a hurry, letting a word and a phrase go when I knew that somewhere, if I hunted long enough, I could find the one that really fitted. But it isn’t like that. I can’t reproach myself. It’s been three years of the best I’ve got in me. Everything in the world I know of style, every bit of incident I wanted, every turn and twist of character. It isn’t vanity; it isn’t conceit; I don’t care who wrote the book; it’s good, and I know it’s good; and yet to have them, one after the other—”

Practical, prosaic, monotonous, boomed the supper gong. With a sorry laugh Vaughan turned from the window, and then paused, irresolute. Must he go down again, as he had done so many times before; to compare himself, as he knew that in his present mood he so inevitably must, to his fellow lodgers around the well-worn board. The clerk in the down-town bank, the dapper young shoe salesman, the would-be humorist who made no secret of the fact that he was “pulling down” fifty a week out of his “knock ’em silly” insect powder, the old graybeard who tottered away each morning to haunt the reading-room of the public library, staying there the livelong day until he tottered home again at night—look at it as he would, one fact remained: these men, all of them, however much he might see in them to criticize, were, each in his way, successful men. Each, in his turn, to do them full justice, had stepped up at the sound of the bell, had wrestled his fall with the practical world, and had come out on top. And he, as the world judges success, had failed and failed, and now had failed once more. A money getter, it seemed, he would never be. Never before had his inability to make and lay away the dollars struck him with such tantalizing force. What good was he in the world, he asked himself, and with a sudden envy for every plain, practical, plodding man who was doing his daily round in the treadmill for his appointed wage, he felt himself to be an idle dreamer, absolutely unfitted for battle with the sane and commonplace world in which he lived; and with a savage fluency of bitter self disgust of which he was for ever after ashamed, he cursed himself, and his art, tore the letter vengefully into little pieces, slammed the door behind him, and went grimly down to his waiting supper.

It was ten o’clock the next morning, when, no whit less discouraged and sick at heart, he contrived to gain an audience with Henry Carleton. Even the great man’s unfailing affability, this morning, it seemed, even kindlier and more pronounced than ever, for once failed to awaken in Vaughan’s downcast face any semblance of an answering gleam. “Bad news, Mr. Carleton,” he said, briefly, “it’s been rejected again.”

Carleton’s face clouded with ready sympathy.

“Why, my dear boy,” he cried, “I am sorry indeed. That is a shame. I had trusted so much that this time you would be successful. Indeed, I had almost in a way begun to feel as if your success were mine. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

Gloomily Vaughan nodded assent. “It does make things bad,” he said. “I hoped so much. And now I’m as far from Rose as ever.”

Carleton cleared his throat. “My dear Vaughan,” he said, “since you’ve chanced to mention the subject, I believe I ought to tell you that I’ve been thinking a great deal of late—as is only natural—about the position you and Rose are in. You know, of course, that I desire only her happiness, and yours, too. You know that. You believe that, I’m confident. Do you not, my boy?”

Vaughan, although not altogether without a vague feeling of uneasiness, hastened to assent to this self-evident proposition, and Carleton at once went on.

“Now then, my only feeling in the whole matter is this. You’re neither of you really happy now; not in the least. Long engagements, as a rule, never are provocative of much happiness. And of course, as we’ve said before, you wouldn’t want to get married, and have me support you. No, no, I’m sure you wouldn’t wish that; no, of course you wouldn’t—” he spoke a little hastily, himself answering the question he had appeared to ask—“and so,” he continued, “I have been wondering, wouldn’t it be better—fairer, perhaps, to Rose—not to see her so much for a while. She’s very young, you know. And if it gets to be understood that you two are practically engaged, she’s cut off from a great deal of pleasure which a young girl at her age ought rightfully to enjoy. So why won’t it be best for you to go back in earnest to your work—try as you’ve never tried before—and I know that ultimately you’ll succeed. I envy you your ability, Arthur; I envy you your choice of a profession; and I know that success is only a matter of time—only a matter of time—” he repeated a little dreamily. “But you can’t do it and have all this strain of a long love affair at the same time. I know how that distracts one; it would scarcely be worthy the name of love if it were otherwise. I remember—”

He sat silent for a moment, as if lost in the contemplation of the past; and then suddenly coming to the present again, continued, in a far brisker and more practical tone, “And so, about Rose—remember, I’m not attempting to dictate, I’m not urging it, even; I’m only suggesting to your own sense of what is fairest and in the end best for both of you, how it would be if perhaps you didn’t see her for a time. How does it seem to you, Arthur? I want you to be perfectly frank with me, of course, just as I have been with you.”

To some men, possessing the defects of their virtues, any appeal to their spirit of fairness transforms their strongest into their weakest side. Vaughan nodded miserably. “Perhaps,” he said, a little faintly, “you’re right. I hadn’t thought of it in just that way before. But I want to do what’s best for Rose, of course. And I’ll own up that having the book rejected this last time has taken all the confidence out of me. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’m not being fair to her.”

“I’m very glad,” Carleton said cordially, “that you take such a sensible view of it. It isn’t the easiest thing for a man in your position to do; I appreciate that. And of course we have one other thing to consider. It’s hardly probable that Rose is going to take the same view of all this that we do—at least, not with any great enthusiasm. She’s very fond of you, Vaughan, as is only right and natural. But all women in the world, where their lovers are concerned, are hopelessly and by nature entirely selfish and jealous, to a degree, of anything that keeps the man in the case away from them, jealous even of so worthy a thing as a man’s life work; and a man’s life work, after all, as you must realize now as perhaps never before, is a terribly important thing. So you will have to do your best to try to make her see the common sense side of all this. And that you’ll do, I’m sure.”To Vaughan it appeared as if he found himself suddenly involved, really against his will; arrayed on the same side with Henry Carleton to fight the battle of stern common sense, without having any very clear idea of how he had happened to get there. “Do you mean,” he asked, “that you think I ought not to see her at all?”

Henry Carleton’s success had been too great to permit of the slightest risk of endangering it. “Oh, by no means,” he made haste to answer. “Run out and see her whenever you feel like it—say once a month or so. But to come as an ordinary friend, and not as an accepted suitor, I think perhaps would be the wiser way. That commends itself to you also, I have no doubt.”

Vaughan’s expression was that of a man to whom nothing now mattered. “Oh, yes,” he answered wearily, “that commends itself to me. That strikes me as very sensible indeed.”

The complete discouragement in his tone caused Carleton to eye him keenly. “One other thing,” he said, hastening to shift the topic with unusual abruptness, “about the book. I don’t want you to feel in the least cast down. We’ll find a publisher yet; I’m confident of it. And this next time, let’s start fair and square. Give me the manuscript, and let me try negotiations in my own way. I think I may almost promise that you’ll not find yourself disappointed.”

The expression on Vaughan’s face did not seem to indicate that he by any means shared Carleton’s confidence. “We can’t do worse,” he said, perhaps a little ungraciously. “If you think there’s any good in going ahead, why, all right. My confidence is gone. I’ll send the great work over to you to-morrow; and you can send it off on its travels again, or burn it. I don’t know which would be the more sensible of the two.”

Henry Carleton shook his head reprovingly. “Oh, come now,” he protested, “don’t insult yourself that way. We’ll show them yet.” He extended a benevolent hand as he spoke. Some one had once described Carleton’s method of getting rid of his callers as imperceptible, but inevitable. “And run out and see Rose soon,” he added kindly, “have a good long talk with her, and fully explain your side of the case. She won’t fail to grasp it, I’m sure. She’s nobody’s fool, if her own father does say so.”

Somehow Vaughan found himself outside the office, outside the building itself, walking along the street in a kind of maze, before his ordinary powers of intellect again asserted themselves. Curiously enough, for one who had agreed so readily and so entirely with everything that Henry Carleton had proposed, he now appeared to be actuated by a certain feeling of resentment against that worthiest of men. “Confound him,” he muttered disrespectfully. “How on earth does he manage it? He can turn me around like a weathercock. I never make such a fool of myself as I do when I talk with him. I never saw such a man. I can think of twenty things now that I might have said, but when I needed them, I’ll be hanged if I could lay a finger on one. And if I had, I don’t doubt but what the next minute he’d have shown me where I was wrong. He’s always right. That’s the puzzle about him. He’s so fair and just about things; you can’t dispute him; and yet, for all it seems like such an idiotic thing to say, he’s right, and you know all the time he’s wrong. Confound the man. He’s one too many for me.”

His talk with Rose came an evening or so later on the broad piazza at The Birches. For half an hour Vaughan had sought vainly to bring himself to make a beginning, with his attention in the meantime miserably distracted from all that Rose Carleton had to say, finding it indeed hard to assent with any great degree of pleasure to plans for a future which he now felt was for ever barred to him. So noticeable and so unlike himself did his inattention finally become that the girl stopped short in something she was saying to turn his face toward hers, scrutinizing it as though she sought to read the trouble there. “What’s gone wrong, Arthur?” she asked, “nothing that I’ve done to displease you?”

Vaughan’s answer to the latter part of the question was not made in words. And then, as he again raised his head, at last he made his explanation. “It’s this, dear,” he said. “I happened to go in to see your father the other day about the book—to bother him with more bad news—and he began to talk, apropos of that, about ourselves. He was very pleasant—very fair—I must acknowledge that—but—he thinks that for a man with no more prospects than I have, that I have no right to hold you to anything like an engagement; that it isn’t fair to you; and all that. I suppose, though he was too polite to put it in just that way, the implication would be that I ought never to have spoken to you at all. And so—I didn’t see, for the life of me, just what there was for me to say. He asked me if I didn’t agree with him—it was an awkward question, sort of a ‘you’ll be damned if you don’t; you’ll be damned if you do’ sort of affair—and between being a fool or appearing to be a knave, I chose the rÔle that seems to come so easily to me always; I chose to be the fool, and stammered out that I supposed I did. And now I don’t know what to do; in a way I’ve given him my word not to visit you as if we were engaged; in a way it seems as if he were right, too; and yet—” the unfinished sentence was eloquent of all his doubt and misery.

He might have been prepared for almost any answer other than the girl’s laugh of real amusement. And on the instant, wrought up and perplexed as he was, the surprise of it made him draw himself up with offended dignity. Reading his mood with all a woman’s skill, the girl drew closer to him, and raised her face to his. “Kiss me,” she cried imperiously, and when, with a rather ill-grace, he had complied, “There,” she said, “that’s better; don’t imagine you can get rid of me as easily as you think. My affections aren’t to be trifled with like that, I’ll have you know.”

Half vexed still, yet with a feeling of immense relief, he gazed at her with a certain pathos of indecision. “Then you don’t think—” he began.

She broke in upon him. “My dear,” she said, “I’m going to lecture you. I might tell you, of course, if I wanted to, that you were perfection, possessing no faults whatever; but it wouldn’t be true. You’ve got them, just as everybody else in the world has. And your greatest fault of all is lack of confidence in yourself. You’re too willing to take everybody else’s opinion in place of your own. That’s what you’ve done now. And on the other hand, my father, who’s one of the best men that ever lived, I believe—every daughter has that privilege of belief about her father—my father isn’t without his faults, either. And his besetting one is to think that because he’s made a success of so many things, that that gives him a sort of divine right to run everybody else’s affairs for them, too. In just one word, speaking of course with the greatest respect, he’s a good deal of an autocrat. And so, when I laughed just now, it was because I was thinking, when it came to an argument, what possible chance you, with your modesty, could have had against him, with all his certainty of being right. And the funny thing—the thing neither of you seemed to think of—” she added audaciously, “is that I’ve got very distinct ideas of my own on most subjects, and especially about the merits of the man I’m going to marry. Oh, Arthur, please—now it’s all rumpled—well, anything’s better than having you with that ‘farewell-for-ever’ look on your face. So, you see, I refuse to release you; with the greatest respect, as I say, for my father’s judgment on almost every other subject under the sun.”

Vaughan, as he properly should have been, appeared vastly cheered. He drew a long breath; then as quickly again looked troubled. “But about coming out here,” he objected. “I don’t want to be a sneak. And I’ve agreed not to come; only once a month, that is, and I believe,” he added a little ruefully, “I undertook the contract of persuading you to assent to the change of program. So now there are new difficulties. If I report your insubordination, not to say rebellion, to your father, there’ll be trouble all around, and if I lie about it, and report entire success, your father will be delighted, but he’ll be the only one. You’re so clever, I guess I’ll have to leave things to you. You’re bound to get me into trouble; you’ve got to get me out again.”

“Now,” the girl returned, “you’re showing your true brilliancy. And from what I know of my father, I think we will—what’s the word they use in the melodramas—dissemble. That’s it. We’ll dissemble. You just tell my father that you talked with me, and that I very sensibly agreed with him. That will put his mind at rest. Poor father. He has so many things he’s busy about I should never forgive myself if I caused him one worry more. Yes, I think that will be very satisfactory. The best way for every one.”

Vaughan did not appear greatly to relish her plans. “Satisfactory,” he echoed. “Seeing you once a month. Well, if you think that’s clever, I must say—”

“Seeing you here,” the girl interrupted. “There’s a vast difference in that. This isn’t the only place in the world. Really, Arthur, for a young man of your inventiveness—”

She paused, her eyes alight with tender merriment. At last he seemed to comprehend. “Oh, yes,” he nodded, “I see. In town, I suppose, but then there’s always somebody sees you, and then your father hears about it—”

“Stupid,” she flashed at him. “Aren’t there better places than walking down the Avenue, or going around to picture galleries? What’s the fun in that? Isn’t there a river not so far away? Aren’t there woods all about us romantic enough even for you? That’s all easy to arrange. It’ll be quite fun working it all out. But the main thing to manage, Arthur—” her tone suddenly altered—“is that nothing shall ever come between us. To try to keep apart two people who really love each other as we do, just because of anything like money, or fame, why, really, my dear, that’s nothing short of a crime.”

He nodded, yet a little grimly. “In theory, dear, you’re quite right,” he answered. “But how about the practice? Money! Fame! We can talk about them all we choose as little things, when we haven’t them, and the grapes, perhaps, are a little sour, but how they count, after all. Poor Love! Love wasn’t made for a practical world. His bow and arrow is effectual enough, when there’s no fiercer game abroad than the hearts of girls and boys, but how can he fight against real warriors—shields of gold and trumpets of brass. Poor Love! Who could blame him for running away?”

She took his hand with a gesture almost maternal. “My dear, my dear,” she said, “you mustn’t talk like that. It’s sacrilege, almost. If he were the true god of love, he wouldn’t fly. And his darts would pierce the golden shield, and put the trumpets to rout. You, Arthur, a lover of all things beautiful, to dream of deserting, of arraying yourself on the side of Mammon.”

She spoke lightly, but with a real meaning behind her words. He seemed, however, to be unconvinced, for when he replied it was with a bitterness that startled her. “I don’t care,” he said, “I’ve missed it somehow. I’ve made an awful failure of things. Look at me! Making no bluffs, as lots of men do, keeping back nothing, I’m earning a little over a thousand dollars a year. And other men—classmates—yes, confound it, and men who came out of college five years later than I did—and worse than that, men who never went to college at all—they can make money; good money, lots of them; a few, big money, even; and here I am, trying to publish a book that never will be published; and which, if it should be, nobody’d ever read. Oh, the world’s pretty near right, after all; nearer right than we think; I’m labeled at just about my face value: a thousand dollars a year.”

She laid her hand lightly on his lips. “No, no,” she cried, “you don’t understand. You’ve been brooding over this so long you’ve lost all sense of proportion between money and other things. I’ll tell you what I think. I think making money’s only a knack. I believe some men are born with it, and others aren’t. Look at the men who start with a pack of rags on their back, and die worth millions. It’s in them; it’s no credit to them; maybe the reverse. No one man can be everything. Some men can build railroads, but I couldn’t imagine you doing anything like that if you tried your honest best for a hundred years. No, my dear, because money seems to you to be the thing you need the most just now, you’ve been so envious of the men who are able to make it quickly that you’ve forgotten all that you have to be thankful for; something that very few men have granted to them at all, even a hundredth part of what you possess—and that’s the precious perception of the artist; the power to see things which the ordinary man can never see. You’ll succeed, I know you will, but even if you never should—by the world’s standards, I mean—you ought never to repine. Read your Browning again, dear; even I can appreciate that. ‘One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, never doubted clouds would break’—how can any man turn faint heart after that? The truth, dear, that’s everything, after all.”

Very humbly and very reverently he stooped and kissed her. “You’re right, Rose,” he said, “and I’ve been wrong. Forgive me. But you know yourself—sometimes it’s hard; sometimes the world’s standards grip you so that you can’t keep to your own. But I’ve been wrong, and I admit it most humbly. You’ve a very wise little head on your shoulders, dear, and I thank you for setting me right. I won’t go backsliding again in a hurry, I’ll promise you.”

There was a long silence. Then at last abruptly Vaughan spoke, “Rose,” he said, “what you’ve just been saying has reminded me of something I wanted to ask you about. It’s a hypothetical case, that a friend of mine put to me; simple enough, seemingly, yet hard for me to decide. What would you say to this? Suppose some friend of yours had done something for which there was no possible excuse; committed a crime, we’ll say. Suppose you had it in your power to condemn him, by telling something that you knew, or, by keeping silent, could clear him for ever. What is your duty?”

The girl did not hesitate. “To tell what I know, friend or no friend,” she answered.

Vaughan nodded. “That’s what I supposed you’d say,” he rejoined. “Now go a step further. Suppose it were I that had done the wrong. Would you tell then?”

The girl’s answer came as direct as before. “You,” she cried, “never; never in the world. I couldn’t. Any one but you.”

Vaughan’s laugh had little of mirth in it. “And yet,” he said, “if we are worshippers of the truth, which it is so easy to prate of and so hard to live, where is the logical distinction? Why should a little matter of personal liking for anybody stand in your way?”

The girl was silent. Then, unwillingly enough, “No, I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But it wouldn’t be logic that would decide me. I couldn’t expose you, that would be all. I’d acknowledge to myself the wrong I was doing, but I’d go ahead with it just the same. Perhaps that’s because I’m a woman, and trust too much to intuition. If I were a man, I don’t know. As you say, there’s no question of the real right and wrong of it. One should speak, regardless of everything else. And making it a question of degree does put the whole thing in a terribly unsatisfactory light. A stranger I wouldn’t hesitate about. You, I could never betray, though I knew I was doing wrong. Midway between, all grades of hatred, liking, love. No, it isn’t satisfactory, is it? Oh, I don’t know how to answer, Arthur. But we’ve only a few minutes left, dear. Let’s not spoil it by being too grave. I’m glad that it’s only a hypothetical question, at any rate. Not an actual one.”

“Yes,” Vaughan answered, “I’m glad too.”