All this I said with much lofty arrogance, and a great a.s.sumption of knowing all, and of being a competent adviser of a friend in trouble, but, at heart, I knew that, in Harlson"s place, I should not have shown any particular degree of self-control. I have never felt the thing, but it must be grinding to occupy a position like that of this man I was addressing. The serving out of a society sentence must be a test of grit.
We dropped the discussion of the problem, and Harlson referred to it again but incidentally.
"The fact is," said he, "I had almost forgotten that I was not as free as other men. I have not regulated my course by my real condition.
I"ve drifted, and there have been happenings, as you know well.
There"s Mrs. Gorse. I"ve never concealed anything. Those who know me at all well know my relationships, but I imagine that I have been deceiving myself. I am not a free agent--though I will be. It"s not right as it is."
"And when am I to see this woman who has interested you, and restored the old colors to the rainbow? You will allow me to admire her, I suppose, if only from a distance?"
"Oh, yes! Come with me to the Laffins" to-morrow night. She"ll be there, I learned, and I said I was going to be there too. Come with me. Of course, you understand that if she smiles on you at all, or if you appear to have produced a favorable impression upon her, I shall a.s.sa.s.sinate you on our way home."
I told him that I thought my general appearance and style of conversation would preserve me from the danger, and that I would take the risk and accompany him.
The next night I met Jean Cornish. We were destined to become very well acquainted.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE WOMAN.
Only a little brown woman she.
Man of the world and profligate he, Hard and conscienceless, cynical, yet, Somehow, when he and the woman met, He learned what other there is in life Than pa.s.sion-feeding and careless strife.
There came resolve and a sense of shame, For she made as his motto but "Faith and fame."
The world is foolish: we cover truth; We"re barred by the gates that we built in youth.
Two were they surely, and two might stay, But she turned him into the better way; His thoughts were purified even when He chafed and raged at the might-have-been; He learned that living is not a whim, For the soul in her entered into him.
He fights, as others, to win or fall, And the spell of the Woman is over all.
Bravely they battle in their degree, For--"The woman I love shall be proud of me!"
And the man and woman, the one in heart, May be buried together or hurled apart, But the strong will battle in his degree, For--"The woman I love shall be proud of me!"
There were men and women, and music and flowers, and some of the people had intelligence, and I drifted about at the Laffins" party, and rather enjoyed myself. Of course I wanted to see the woman a fancy for whom had gripped Harlson so hardly. I had forgotten about her until, with a pleasant and clever person upon my arm, I had found something to eat and had come upstairs again, and released her to another. I wandered into an adjacent room, and there ran upon Harlson among a group. I was presented to Miss Cornish.
I do not know how to describe a woman. This one, whom I have known better than any other woman in the world, is most difficult of all for me to picture. She stood there, not uninterested altogether, for, no doubt, Harlson had been telling her already of his closest friend, his lieutenant in many things, and I had an opportunity to study her with all closeness as we exchanged the commonplaces. I understood, when I saw her, how it was that he had referred to her so absurdly as a little brown streak of a thing. Little she was, a.s.suredly, and brown, and so slender, that his simile was not bad, but the brownness and the slenderness were by no means all there was noticeable of her. She was not imposing, this woman, but she was not commonplace. Supple of figure she was, and there were the big eyes this stricken friend of mine had told me of, and rather p.r.o.nounced eyebrows, and her lips were full and red, and there was that fullness of the chin, or, rather, the vague dream or hint or vision of a daintily double chin at fifty, which means so much, but the forehead was what a woman"s should be, and the glance of the eyes was clean and pure, though, in a clever woman"s way, observant and comprehensive. It was a cultivated and fascinating woman whom I met.
We talked together, and Grant Harlson looked on gratified, and she seemed to like me. She made me feel, in her own way, that she liked me because she knew of me, and as we were talking I felt that she was paying, unconsciously, the greatest compliment she could to the man beside us. I knew it was because of the other, and of something that he had said of me, that she was so readily on terms of comradeship.
And I knew, in the same connection, and from the same reasoning, that she had already begun to care as much for him as he for her--the man who, the night before, had so comported himself with me. Of course, it appears absurd that I could reach such a conclusion upon so little basis, but to tell when people are interested in each other is not difficult sometimes, even for so dull a man as I.
"You have known Mr. Harlson many years, I believe," she said, and added smilingly: "What kind of a man is he?"
"A very bad man," I replied, gravely.
She turned to him in a charming, judicial way:
"If your friends so describe you, Mr. Harlson, what must your enemies say? And what have you to say in your own defense? What you yourself have owned to me in the past is recognition of the soundness of the authority."
"I haven"t a word to say. Of course, I had not expected this unfriendly villain to be what he has proved himself, but what he says is, no doubt, true. I"m going to reform, though. In fact, I"ve already begun."
"When was the revolution inaugurated?"
He looked at her so earnestly that there came a faint flush to her cheek. "Since my eyes were opened, and I saw the light," he answered.
She diverted the conversation by turning to me, and saying that, while the information I had given her was no doubt valuable, and that she should regulate her course accordingly, and advise all her friends to do the same, yet she felt it her duty to reprimand me for telling the truth so bluntly. She knew that I had done it for the best, but if there were really any hope for this wicked man, if he had really decided upon a new life, we ought to encourage him. Did I think him in earnest?
I told her that it hurt me to say it, but that I had no great confidence in Mr. Harlson"s protestations. He was of the earth, earthy. A friend, it was true, should bear a friend"s infirmities, but he should not ask other people to bear them, nor should he testify to anything but the truth. Mr. Harlson might or might not be in earnest in what he had declared, but, even if in earnest, there was the matter of persistency. I doubted seriously his ability to overcome the habits of a lifetime.
She was becoming really interested in the chaffing.
"What is the nature of Mr. Harlson"s great iniquity?"
"There, Miss Cornish, I am justified in drawing the line in my reply.
I have conscientiously explained that he was, in a general way, a villain of the deepest dye, but to make specifications would be unfriendly, and I know you wouldn"t have me that."
Harlson said that he was very much obliged for my toleration, or would be until he got me alone, and Miss Cornish showed a proper spirit, and so I left them. But I had no evidence that she believed what I had said.
As we walked home together in the early morning, Harlson told me more of the young lady. She was living with an aunt, he said, and was, otherwise, alone in the world. She had but a little income, barely enough to live on, but she had courage unlimited, and tact, and was not insignificant as a social factor. She had the st.u.r.diness of her ancestry, in which the name of Jean ran.
"I like it," Harlson said; "it fits her--"Jean Cornish"--little brown "Jean Cornish"--little leopardess, little, wise, good woman."
I told him that he was mixing his similes, and that in a broad, comprehensive way he had become a fool.
"I tell you I"m in love with her already," he blurted out, "and somehow, some day, I will have her, and wear her and care for her!"
"But, my dear boy, don"t be insane. There is the problem we were discussing last night. Have you a solution of it? And first catch your hare. Have you caught your pretty hare yet? I"ll admit it"s possible. Women are fools over such fellows as you when they should be adhesive to good, plodding members of society, like the friend who is now advising you, but Miss Cornish is not a fool, you see, and I don"t think you deserve her."
"For that matter, neither do I," he answered; "but I will deserve her yet. I must do more of many things, and cease to do many things. I believe I comprehend better now than I ever did the words in the service, "We have done those things and left undone," and all that.
But you"ll see a difference. I"ll make her proud of me. That"s the right way to become clean, isn"t it, old man?"
I said I thought it a wholesome and commendable resolution, on general principles, and, of course, the idol would gradually disintegrate. All idols were of clay. But it didn"t matter about the idol, so long as the effect was produced. He might count on me any time for good advice. He only glared at me, and called me hard names, and we dropped in at the club and finished our cigars, and separated.
CHAPTER XIX.
PURGATORY.
And Grant Harlson made love to Jean Cornish and won her heart.
But all the time, unconsciously, he was a man of false pretensions, one dishonorable and unworthy of her. His friends knew of his marriage and its sequel. He had never concealed nor thought of concealing his condition, and it never occurred to him that Jean Cornish was not aware of it. He had supposed her, if she cared for him as he hoped, to be somewhat troubled, but to understand that he would do no mean thing, and that all would be well in time. Then came the sorrow of it, for Jean Cornish learned, quite accidentally, that Grant Harlson was a man with a living wife.
She would not believe it at first, and, when convinced, was dazed and could not understand. No such shock had ever before come into her life. This man, of whom she had made a hero, a trickster and a liar!
It seemed as if the world were gone! There was a meeting and an explanation, and she learned how wrong she had been, in one way.
He put the case earnestly and desperately. He would not yield her. He knew she loved him, and he knew she was too good and wise to suffer forever herself or let him suffer because, in society, there were blunders. There was a way out--a clean, right way--and they must take it. He could get a divorce on grounds of mere desertion, and three people, at least, would be better off. It was pitiful, the scene, one afternoon. He had called to see her, and was pleading with her. It was in the drawing-room, and there were stained windows they both remembered in later years. He had talked of his bondage and of his hopes. She was not quite herself; she was suffering too much. I know what happened. Grant told me once of the wrench of him then, and of all the scene. There had been a fierce appeal from him. He had become almost enraged.
"And so," he said, "you would have a man"s marriage like the black biretta of Spain that is drawn over the prisoner"s head before they garrote him?"