THE BLOW

The name that signed the telegram was that of Mrs. Doran's lawyer and man of business. It was that also of Max Doran's old-time chum, Grant Reeves, Edwin Reeves' son. And when Max stepped out of the limited in the Grand Central Station of New York, among the first faces he saw were those of the two Reeveses, who had come to meet him. He shook hands with both, warmly and gratefully with Grant. He had never been able really to like his friend's father. But it was to him he turned with the question: "How is she?"

The elder, tall, thin, clean-shaven, with carrot-red hair turning gray, had prominent red eyebrows over pale, intelligent eyes that winked often, owing to some weakness of the lids, which had lost most of their lashes. This disfigurement he concealed as well as he could with rimless pince-nez, which some people said were not necessary as an aid to eyesight. They were an aid to vanity, however; and the care Edwin Reeves bestowed on his clothes suggested that he was a vain as well as a clever man.

The son was a young and notably good-looking copy of his father, whose partner in business he had lately become. They were singularly alike except in colouring, for Grant was brown-haired and brown-eyed, with plenty of curled-back lashes which gave him an alert look.

Both men started forward at the sight of Max, Grant striding ahead of Edwin and grasping Max's hand, "I had to come, old chap," he said, with a pleasant though slightly affected accent meant to be English. "I wanted just to shake hands and tell you how I felt."

"Thank you, Grant," said Max. "Is she—is there hope?"

"Oh, there's always hope, you know; isn't there, governor?"

Grant Reeves appealed to his father, who had joined them. "Who can tell? She's wonderful."

Edwin Reeves took the hand Max held out, and then did nothing with it, in the aloof, impersonal way that had always irritated Max, and made him want to fling away the unresponsive fingers. Now, however, for the first time in his life he did not notice. He was lost in his desire for and fear of the verdict.

"It would only be cruel to raise his hopes," the father answered the son. "The doctors (there are four) say it's a miracle she's kept alive till now. Sheer will-power. She's living to see you."

Max was dumb, his throat constricted. And then, there was nothing to say. Something deep down in him—something he could not bear to hear—was asking why she should suddenly care so much? She had never cared before, never really cared, though in his intense admiration of her, almost amounting to worship, he had fought to make himself believe that she did love him as other mothers loved their sons. Yet his heart knew the truth: that she had become more and more indifferent as he grew up from a small boy into a young man. Since he went to West Point they had spent very little time together, though they were always on affectionate terms. She had never spoken a disagreeable word to him, never given him a cross look. Only—there had been nothing of the mother about her. She had treated him like a nice visiting boy who must be entertained, even fascinated, and then gently got rid of when he began to be a bore. In his first term at West Point she had sailed for Europe, and stopped there for two years. When he was graduated she had gone again, and stayed another year. They had met only once since he had been stationed at Fort Ellsworth: last Christmas, when he had run on to New York and surprised her. She had been in great beauty, looking not a day over thirty. And now—Max could not make it seem true. But, at least, she wanted him. Max clutched at the thought with passion, and scarcely heard Grant saying that he must hurry on to the office; he had come only for a word and a handshake: it was better that the governor alone should go with dear old Max to the house.

Mrs. Doran's town automobile was waiting with a solemn chauffeur and footman who bent their eyes reverently, not to look the stricken young soldier in the face. Max had a sick thrill as he saw the smart blue monster, with its row of glittering glass eyes; it had been his Christmas present to his mother by request. When the telegram told him briefly that she had been hurt in a motor accident, he had thought with agony that it might have been in the car he had given. He was thankful that it had not been so. That would have seemed too horrible—as if he had killed her. Now he would hear how it had really happened. Every nerve was tense as if he were awaiting an operation without anesthetics.

There were not many blocks to go from the Grand Central to the Fifth Avenue home of the Dorans, an old house which had been remodelled and made magnificent by Max's father to receive his bride. In less than ten minutes the blue automobile had slipped through all the traffic and reached its destination; but many questions can be asked and answered in eight minutes. Between the moment of starting, and the moment when Max's one hastily packed suitcase was being carried up to the door, he had heard the whole story. The fated car had been a friend's car. There had been a collision. The two automobiles had turned over. For half an hour she had lain crushed under the weight of the motor before she could be got out. Her back was broken, and she had been horribly burnt. Even if she could have lived—which was impossible—she would have been shockingly disfigured. Edwin Reeves had been with her once, for a few minutes: she had wanted to speak to him about certain things, matters of business, and the doctors, who never left her, had stopped giving her opiates on purpose. From the first she had said that she must be kept alive till Max could come, and that no matter what she had to suffer her mind must be clear for a talk with him. After that, nothing mattered. She wanted to die and be out of her misery. When Mr. Reeves had been taken into her room her face had been covered with a white veil, and Max must prepare himself to be received in the same way. It was better that he should know this beforehand and be spared a shock.

Never to see that beautiful face again in this world! Max felt like one dead and galvanized as he walked into the house and was received by a doctor—some great specialist whose name he had heard, but whom he had never chanced to meet. Not once did his thoughts rush back to Billie Brookton, and the night when he had meant to put on her finger the blue diamond in the platinum ring. Billie was in another world, a world a million miles away, as following the doctor Max walked softly into his mother's room.

There he had once more that insistent feeling of unreality. The gay room with its shell-pink melting into yellow and orange looked so unsuited to any condition but joy that it was impossible to believe tragedy had stalked in uninvited. Even with the morning light shut out by the drawn yellow curtains, and the electricity turned on in the flower or gauze-shaded lamps, it looked a place dedicated to the joy of life and beauty. But when, with a physical effort, Max turned his eyes to the bed, copied from one where Marie Antoinette had slept, he saw that which seemed to throw a pall of crape over the fantastic golden harmonies. A figure lay there, very straight, very flat and long under the coverlet pulled high over the breast. Even the hands were hidden: and over the face was spread a white veil of chiffon, folded double, so that no gleam of eye, no feature could even be guessed at.

Until that moment, Max had kept his self-control. But at sight of that piteous form, and remembering the radiant face framed with great bunches of red-gold hair, which he had kissed good-bye, in this very bed not three months ago, the dam which had held back the flood of anguish broke. It was as if his heart had turned to water. Tears sprang from his eyes, and the strength went out of his knees. It was all he could do not to fall at the side of the bed and to sob out his mother's name, telling her that he would give his life a hundred times for hers if that could be, or that he would go out of the world with her rather than she should go alone. But something came to his help and kept him outwardly calm save for a slight choking in the throat as he said softly, standing by the bedside, "Dearest, I am here."

"At last," came a faint murmur from under the double veil.

Max thought, with a sharp stab of pain, that he would not have recognized the voice if he had not known that it was his mother's. It sounded like the voice of a little, frail, very old woman; whereas Rose Doran had been a creature of glorious physique, looking and feeling at least fifteen years younger than her age.

"I started the minute I had the telegram," Max said, wanting to make sure that she realized his love, his frantic haste to reach her. "It has seemed a hundred years! Darling, if I could bear this for you. If——"

"Please, don't," the little whining voice under the veil fretfully cut him short. "I can't see very well. Has the doctor gone out?"

"Yes, dearest. We're alone."

"I'm glad. There isn't much time, and I've got a story to tell you. I ought to call it a confession."

That swept Max's forced calmness away. "A confession from you to me!" he cried out, horrified. "Never! Darling One, whatever it is I don't want to hear it—I don't need to hear it, I know—— Rest. Be at peace. Just let us love each other."

"You don't know what you are talking about." The veiled voice grew shrill. "You only do harm trying to stop me. You'll kill me if you do."

"Forgive me, dear." Max controlled himself again. "I'll not say another word. I——"

"Then don't—don't! I want to go on—to the end. I'd rather you sat down. I can see you standing there. It's like a black shadow between me and the light, accusing—no, don't speak! It needn't accuse. You wouldn't have had the life you've had, if—but I mustn't begin like that. Where are you now? Are you near enough to hear all I say? I can't raise my voice."

"I'm sitting down, close by the bed. I can hear the least whisper," Max assured her. He sat with his head bowed, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. This seemed unbearable, to spend the last minutes of her life hearing some confession! It was not right, from a mother to a son. But he must yield.

"I don't know how long I can stand it—the pain, I mean," she moaned. "So I can't try and break things gently to you, for fear—I have to stop in the midst. I'm not your mother, Max, and Jack wasn't your father. But he thought he was. He never knew. And he loved you. I didn't. I never could. You see—I did know. You must have wondered sometimes. I saw you wondered; I suppose you never guessed, even though I always told you to call me Rose, or anything you liked, except mother?"

She was waiting for him to answer; and he did answer, though it was as if she had thrown him over a precipice, and he were hanging by some branch which would let him crash down in an instant to the bottom of an unknown abyss.

"No, I never guessed." Queer how quiet, how utterly expressionless his voice was! He heard it in faraway surprise.

"I used to be afraid at first that Jack would guess, you were so unlike either of us, so dark, so—so Latin. But he said you were a throw-back to his Celtic ancestors. There were French and Irish ones hundreds of years ago, you know. He never suspected. Everything happened just as I hoped it would—just as I wanted it to. But I didn't realize how I should feel about it if I were going to die. The minute I came to myself after—the accident, it rushed over me. Not the very first thought. That was about myself. I wanted to know if my looks were gone. When they had to say yes, I was glad—thankful—I could die. I'd have poisoned or starved myself rather than live on. But no need of that. I think I could let myself slip away any minute now. I'm just—holding on. For something told me—I have a feeling that Jack himself came, and has been here ever since, knowing all I had done and willing me to tell the truth. I struggled a little against it, for why shouldn't you go on being happy? Nothing was your fault. But it was borne in on me that I must give you the chance to choose for yourself, and—another. That's why Jack has come, perhaps. She is his daughter."

"There was a girl, our child. But—you can't understand unless I tell you the story. I shall have strength. I feel I shall now—to get through with it. Perhaps Jack will help. He was the one human being I ever loved better than myself. That was real love! What I did was partly for his sake, I'm honestly sure of that. He wouldn't have let me do it. But it made him happy, not knowing——

"You've been told over and over how you were born in France, when Jack and I had the ChÂteau de la Tour, on the Loire. That was true—the one true thing. But you weren't born in the chÂteau. It wasn't for nothing that you learned French almost as easily as you breathed—and Latin, too. I suppose things like that are in people's blood. You are French. If I had left you where you were, you would have grown up Maxime Delatour. Delatour was your real father's name; he came originally of the de la Tours, but his branch of the family had gone down, somehow. Even the name was spelled differently, in the common way. But they lived in the same neighbourhood—that is how it all came about."

She paused, and gave a sigh like a faint moan. But Max was silent. He could spare her nothing. She must go on to the end—if the end were death. For there was somebody else, somewhere, who had to be put in his place—the place he had thought was his.

"It was really because I loved Jack—too much," the veiled woman still fretfully excused herself. "I should have been nobody, except for my looks. He married me for my looks, because I was strong and tall and fine, as a girl should be. He thought I could give him a splendid heir. You know how things are arranged in this family. The property goes from father to son, or a daughter, if there's no son. But they all pray for sons. The Dorans want to carry on the name they're so proud of—just as you have been proud! The wife of a Doran's important only if she's beautiful, or if she has a son. I wanted to be important for both reasons. Oh, how I wanted it!

"Jack took me to England for our honeymoon, and then to France. We hadn't been in Paris long before I knew I was going to have a child. Jack was so happy! He was sure it would be a boy—the most gorgeous boy ever born. How I remember the day I told him, and he said that! But all the time I had the presentiment it would be a girl. I felt guilty, miserable, when Jack talked about the baby.... The doctors said it would be safer for me not to have a sea voyage, so we decided to stop in France till after the child came. We stayed in Paris at first, and Jack and I used to go to the Louvre to see beautiful pictures and statues—for the 'sake of the boy.'

"When the Salon opened we went there, and I saw a painting every one was talking about—by a new artist. It was called 'Bella Donna,' just a woman's head and shoulders. Max, she was like me! But she was horrible, wicked—somehow deformed, though you couldn't see how. You only felt it. And besides being like me, she was like a lynx. There was one in the Zoo in London, with just her expression. Jack and I saw it together, and he laughed, and said now he knew who my first ancestress was. He didn't say anything about my looking like 'Bella Donna,' but I knew he must have thought it. He got me away from the picture as soon as he could, but I couldn't forget. The lynx-face, with the yellow eyes and red hair like mine, haunted me. I began to dream of my child being born like that—a girl, deformed in the horrid, mysterious way that you could only feel. I could never go to sleep again on a night after the dream. I suppose I looked pale; and he worried, and the doctors advised the country. We had some friends who'd just come back from the Loire, and they told us about a wonderful chÂteau there that was to be rented furnished. It belonged to an old family named de la Tour, who had lost their money. They had a romantic, tragic sort of history that interested us, especially Jack, so we went to see the place. There were vineyards badly cultivated, and a forest, and some shooting, too; and we took it for a few months. But we hadn't been there many weeks when a telegram came to Jack from Edwin Reeves. Edwin acted for him even then. It was important, on account of some business, for Jack to go home. He would have answered that it was impossible, but I said, why not go? I was safe, and he could be back in a month or five weeks. I had old Anne Wickham with me, and she'd been my nurse when I was a little girl, you know, and my maid afterward, till she died. You can remember her."

Max could. As a very tiny boy he had been almost afraid of old Anne Wickham, because his nurse was afraid of her: also because she had glared at him critically, mercilessly, with her great eyes in dark hollows, never smiling kindly, as other people did, but seeming to search for some fault in him. Now, suddenly, he understood this gloomy riddle of his childhood.

Rose Doran, beneath her veil, did not wait for any answer, or wish for one. She hurried on, only stopping now and then to sigh out her restlessness and pain, making Max bite his lip and quiver as if under the lash.

"We had a Paris doctor engaged, and a trained nurse," she said. "They were to come weeks before I expected my baby. I don't know how much Jack was to pay for the doctor—thousands of dollars; and Jack thought to be back in a month before, at latest. But one day I caught my foot going downstairs, and fell. We had to send for the village doctor in a hurry, and Anne had to remember all she knew about nursing. The child was a seven months' baby—a girl. And she had a face like mine, and like 'Bella Donna,' and like a lynx. There was just that look of deformity I had dreamed—mysterious and dreadful. I hated the creature. I couldn't feel she was mine and Jack's. She was like some changeling in an old witch tale. I couldn't bear it! I knew that I'd rather die than have Jack see that wicked elf after all his hopes. I told the doctor so. I threatened to kill myself. I don't know if I meant it. But he thought I did. He was a young man. I frightened him. While he was trying to comfort me an idea flashed into my head. It seemed to shoot in, like an arrow. I begged the doctor to find me a boy baby whose mother would take the girl and a lot of money. I said I would give him ten thousand dollars for himself, too, if he could manage it secretly, so no one but he and Anne Wickham and I need ever know. At first he kept exclaiming, and wouldn't listen. But I cried, and partly by working on his feelings and partly with the bribe that was a fortune to such a man, I persuaded him. Anne helped. She would have done anything for me. And she knew the Dorans. She knew Jack could never feel the same to me, as the mother of that impish girl.

"The doctor knew about a young woman who had just had a child—a boy. He'd helped bring it into the world a night or two before. She was the wife of a private soldier who'd been ordered off to Algeria somewhere. They'd been married secretly. If she had money she would have followed him. But they were very poor. The man was mixed up with the romance of the de la Tours; he belonged to the branch of the family that had gone down. They were called Delatour, but every one knew their history. The doctor thought the girl would do anything for the money I'd offer—and to get to Algeria. He managed the whole thing for me, and certified that my child was a boy. He even went to Paris and sold my pearls and a diamond tiara and necklace, and lots of other things, worth ever so many thousands more than I'd promised to pay him and Madame Delatour. You see, I hadn't any great sums of money by me, so I was forced to sell things. And afterward I had to pretend that my jewels were stolen from a train while we were in the dining-car; otherwise Jack would have wondered why I never wore them. I was thankful the night you were brought to me. I hadn't any remorse then, about sending the other baby away. I told you she didn't seem mine. She seemed hardly human. But I was frightened because you were so dark. You had quantities of black hair. I didn't even try to love you. Only I felt you were very valuable. So did Anne. And when Jack came hurrying back to me on the doctor's telegram, he was pleased with you. He called you in joke his 'little Frenchman.' He didn't dream it was all truth! And he didn't mind your being called Max. You'd already been baptized Maxime, after the soldier; and his wife made just that one condition: that the name should be kept.

"I told Jack I'd always loved the name of Max, so he loved it, too; and though you had other names given to you—the ones we planned beforehand—nothing fitted the 'little Frenchman' so well as Max. That's all the story. At first Anne and I used to be afraid of blackmail, either from the Delatour woman (who went off at once, before she was really strong enough to travel) or from the doctor, who hurried her away as much for his sake as for hers, lest it should be found out by some neighbour that her boy had been changed for a girl. Luckily for us, though, people avoided her. They didn't believe she was really married. But the doctor said she was. And he turned out to be honest. He never tried to get more money out of me. Neither did the woman. His name was Paul Lefebre, and the village was Latour. I've never heard anything from them or about them since Jack and I and you and Anne left the ChÂteau de la Tour, when you were six weeks old. I didn't wish to hear. I wanted to forget, as if it had all been a bad dream. Only Anne's eyes wouldn't let me. They seemed to know too much. I couldn't help being glad when she was dead, though she'd been so faithful. But when Jack died in that dreadful, sudden way, then for the first time I felt remorse—horrible remorse, for a while.... I thought he was taken from me by God as a punishment—the one human being I'd ever loved dearly! And I got insomnia, because his spirit seemed to be near, looking at me, knowing everything. But the feeling passed. I suppose I'm not deep enough to feel anything for long. I lived down the remorse. And it was fortunate for me I had a child; otherwise all but a little money would have gone to the Reynold Dorans. You've been good to me, Max, and I've liked you very well. I've tried not to think about the past. But when I did think, I said to myself that you had nothing to complain of. What a different life it would have been for you, with your own people. And even as it is, you needn't give up anything unless you choose. If Jack were alive I'd never have told, even dying. But he's gone, and I shall be—soon. So far as I'm concerned I don't care which way you choose: whether you write to Doctor Lefebre or not. Only for the sake of the name—Jack's name—don't let there be a scandal if you decide to try and find the girl. Maybe you can't find her. She may be dead. Then it needn't go against your conscience to let things stay as they are. The Reynold Dorans have heaps of money."

"That isn't the question exactly," said Max. "Whatever happens, I haven't the right—but never mind.... I don't want to trouble you, God knows. I can see partly how you must have felt about the baby, and about fath—I mean, about the whole thing. It isn't for me to blame—I—thank you for telling me. Somehow I must manage—to make things straight, without injuring fath—without injuring the name." His voice broke a little. John Doran had died under an operation when Max was ten, but he had adored his father, and still adored his memory. There had been great love between the big, quiet sportsman and the mercurial, hot-headed, enthusiastic little boy whom Jack Doran had spoiled and called "Frenchy" for a pet name. After more than fourteen years, he could hear the kind voice now, clearly as ever. "Hullo, Frenchy! how are things with you to-day?" used to be the morning greeting.

How were things with him to-day?...

Max had heard the story with a stolidity which seemed to himself extraordinary; for excepting the shiver of physical pain which shook him at each sigh of suffering from under the veil, he had felt nothing, absolutely nothing, until the voice of dead Jack Doran seemed to call to him out of darkness.

"He wasn't my father," came the stabbing reminder; but the love which had been could never be taken away. "I must do what you would want me to do," Max answered the call. In his heart he knew what that thing was. He must give everything up. He ought to look for the girl and for his own parents, if they lived. The daughter of John Doran must have what was hers.

As he thought this, Rose spoke again, more slowly now, since the story was told, and there was no longer any haste. "Remember, nobody knows yet but you and me, Max," she said. "Not even Edwin Reeves. All he knows is that I had something to say to you. If he tried to guess what it was, he must have guessed something very different from this. Why not find out where she is, if you can, and somehow contrive to give her money or send it anonymously—enough to make her rich; and let the rest go as it is? I told you just now that I didn't care much either way, and I don't, for myself, because I shall be out of it all, and because I know you loved Jack too well not to be careful for his sake, what you do. But I care more for your sake than I thought I cared at first. You're so quiet, I know I've struck you hard. Almost—I wish I hadn't told."

"I don't," answered Max with an effort. "And you mustn't. It was the only thing."

And yet, even as he spoke, he was conscious of wishing that she had not told. Some women, having done what she had done for the love of a man and for their own vanity, would have gone out of the world in silence—still for the love of the man, and for their own vanity. Vanity had been the ruling passion of Rose Doran's life. Max had realized it before. Yet something in the end had been stronger than vanity, and had beaten it down. He wondered dimly what the thing was. Perhaps fear, lest soon, on the other side of the dark valley, she should have to meet reproach in the only eyes she had ever loved. And she needed help in crossing—Jack Doran's help. Maybe this was her way of reaching out for it. She had told the truth; and she seemed to think that was enough. She advised Max to leave things as they were, after all. And he was tempted to obey.

No longer was he stunned by the blow that had fallen. He felt the pain of it now, and faced the future consequences. He stood to lose everything: his career, for Max had his vanity, too; and without the Doran name and the Doran money he could not remain in the army.

If he resolved to hand over all that was his to the girl, he must go away, must leave the country.

He would have to think of some scheme by which the girl could get her rights, and the world could be left in ignorance of Rose Doran's fraud. To accomplish this, he must sacrifice himself utterly. He must disappear and be forgotten by his friends—a penniless man, without a country. And Billie Brookton would be lost to him.

Strange, this was his first conscious thought of her since he had stepped out of the train, almost his first since leaving her at Fort Ellsworth. He was half shocked at his forgetfulness of such a jewel, so nearly his, the jewel so many other men wanted. He wanted her, too, desperately, now that the clouds had parted for an instant to remind him of the bright world where she lived—the world of his past.

"You're so deadly still!" Rose murmured. "Are you thinking hard things of me?"

"No, never that," Max said.

"How are you going to decide? Shall you take my advice, keep your place in this world, and give her money, if you find her? And most likely you never can. It's such a long time ago." Rose's voice dragged. It was very small and weak, very tired.

"It's your advice for me to do that?" Max asked, almost incredulously. "And yet—she's your own child, his child."

"Not the child of our souls. You'll see what I mean, if you ever see her. Think it over—a few minutes, and then tell me. I feel—somehow I should like to know, before going. Wake me—in ten minutes. I think I could sleep—till then. Such a rest, since I told you! No pain."

"Oughtn't I to call the doctor?" Max half rose from his chair by the bedside.

"No, no. I want nothing—except to sleep—for ten minutes. Can you decide—in ten minutes?"

"Yes."

"You promise to wake me then?"

"Yes," Max said again.

For ten minutes there was silence in the room, save for a little sound of crackling wood in the open fire that Rose had always loved.

Max had decided, and the time had come to keep his promise. He must speak, to wake the sleeper. But he did not know what to call her. She said that she had never loved him as a son. She must always have felt irritated when he dared to address her as "Dearest"—he, the little French bourgeois. She would hate it now.

"Rose!" he whispered. Then a little louder, "Rose!"

She did not answer.

He would not have to tell her his decision. But perhaps she knew.