Chapter VI.
As I pa.s.sed through my office a few minutes later I heard Bob"s voice in Beulah Sands"s office. It was raised in pa.s.sionate eloquence.
"Yes, Beulah, I have done it single-handed. I have crucified Camemeyer, "Standard Oil," and the "System" that spiked me to the cross a few weeks ago. You have three millions, and I have seven. Now there is nothing more but for you to go home to your father, and then come back to me. Back to me, Beulah, back to me to be my wife!"
He stopped. There was no sound. I waited; then, frightened, I stepped to the door of Beulah Sands"s office. Bob was standing just inside the threshold, where he had halted to give her the glad tidings. She had risen from her desk and was looking at him with an agonised stare. He seemed to be transfixed by her look, the wild ecstasy of the outburst of love yet mirrored in his eyes. She was just saying as I reached the door:
"Bob, in mercy"s name tell me you got this money fairly, honourably."
Bob must have realised for the first time what he had done. He did not speak. He only stared into her eyes. She was now at his side.
"Bob, you are unnerved," she said; "you have been through a terrible ordeal. For an hour I have been reading in the bulletins of the banks and trust companies that have failed, of the banking-houses that have been ruined. I have been reading that you did it; that you have made millions--and I knew it was for me, for father, but in the midst of my joy, my grat.i.tude, my love--for, oh, Bob, I love you," she interrupted herself pa.s.sionately; "it seems as though I love you beyond the capacity of a human heart to love. I think that for the right to be yours for one single moment of this life I would smilingly endure all the pains and miseries of eternal torture. Yes, Bob, for the right to have you call me yours for only while I heard the word, I would do anything, Bob, anything that was honourable."
She had drawn his head down close to her face, and her great blue eyes searched his as though they would go to his very soul. She was a child in her simple appeal for him to allow her to see his heart, to see that there was nothing black there.
As she gazed, her beautiful hands played through his hair as do a mother"s through that of the child she is soothing in sickness.
"Bob, speak to me, speak to me," she begged, "tell me there was no dishonour in the getting of those millions. Tell me no one was made to suffer as my father and I have suffered. Tell me that the suicides and the convicts, the daughters dragged to shame and the mothers driven to the madhouse as a result of this panic, cannot be charged to anything unfair or dishonourable that you have done. Bob, oh, Bob, answer! Answer no, or my heart will break; or if, Bob, you have made a mistake, if you have done that which in your great desire to aid me and my father seemed justifiable, but which you now see was wrong, tell it to me, Bob dear, and together we will try to undo it. We will try to find a way to atone. We will give the millions to the last, last penny to those upon whom you have brought misery. Father"s loss will not matter. Together we will go to him and tell him what we have done, what we have lived through, tell him of our mistake, and in our agony he will forget his own. For such a horror has my father of anything dishonourable that he will embrace his misery as happiness when he knows that his teachings have enabled his daughter to undo this great wrong. And then, Bob, we will be married, and you and I and father and mother will be together, and be, oh, so happy, and we will begin all over again."
"Beulah, stop; in the name of G.o.d, in the name of your love for me, don"t say another word. There is a limit to the capacity of a man to suffer, even if he be a great, strong brute like myself, and, Beulah, I have reached that limit. The day has been a hard one."
His voice softened and became as a tired child"s.
"I must go out into the hustle of the street, into the din and sound, and get down my nerves and get back my head. Then I shall be able to think clear and true, and I will come back to you, and together we will see if I have done anything that makes me unfit to touch the cheek and the hands and the lips of the best and most beautiful woman G.o.d ever put upon earth.
Beulah, you know I would not deceive you to save my body from the fires of this world, and my soul from the torture of the d.a.m.ned, and I promise you that if I find that I have done wrong, what you call wrong, what your father would call wrong, I will do what you say to atone."
He took her head between his hands, gently, reverently, and touching his lips to her glorious golden hair, he went away.
Beulah Sands turned to me. "Please, Mr. Randolph, go with him. He is soul-dazed. One can never tell what a heart sorely perplexed will prompt its owner to do. Often in the night when I have got myself into a fever from thinking of my father"s situation, I have had awful temptations. The agents of the devil seek the wretched when none of those they love are by.
I have often thought some of the blackest tragedies of the earth might have been averted if there had been a true friend to stand at the wrung one"s elbow at the fatal minute of decision and point to the sun behind, just when the black ahead grew unendurable. Please follow Mr. Brownley that you may be ready, should his awakening to what he has done become unbearable. Tell him the dreaded morrows are never as terrible actually as they seem in antic.i.p.ation."
I overtook Bob just outside the office. I did not speak to him, for I realised that he was in no mood for company. I dropped in behind, determined that I would not lose sight of him. It was almost one o"clock.
Wall Street was at its meridian of frenzy, every one on a wild rush. The day"s doing had packed the always-crowded money lane. The newsboys were shouting afternoon editions. "Terrible panic in Wall Street. One man against millions. Robert Brownley broke "the Street." Made twenty millions in an hour. Banks failed. Wreck and ruin everywhere. President Snow of Asterfield National a suicide." Bob gave no sign of hearing. He strode with a slow, measured gait, his head erect, his eyes staring ahead at s.p.a.ce, a man thinking, thinking, thinking for his salvation. Many hurrying men looked at him, some with an expression of unutterable hatred, as though they wanted to attack him. Then again there were those who called him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those who shared in his victory, and from those who knew the frenzied finance buzz-saw only by its buzz. Bob saw none. Where could he be going? He came to the head of the street of coin and crime and crossed Broadway. His path was blocked by the fence surrounding old Trinity"s churchyard. Grasping the pickets in either hand he stared at the crumbling headstones of those guardsmen of Mammon who once walked the earth and fought their heart battles, as he was walking and fighting, but who now knew no ten o"clock, no three, who looked upon the stock-gamblers and dollar-trailers as they looked upon the worms that honeycombed their headstones" bases. What thoughts went through Bob Brownley"s mind only his Maker knew. For minutes he stood motionless, then he walked on down Broadway. He went into the Battery. The benches were crowded with that jetsam and flotsam of humanity that New York"s mighty sewers throw in armies upon her inland beaches at every sunrise: Here a sodden brute sleeping off a prolonged debauch, there a lad whose frankness of face and homespun clothes and bewildered eyes spelt, "from the farm and mother"s watchful love." On another bench an Italian woman who had a half-dozen future dollar kings and social queens about her, and whose clothes told of the immigrant ship just into port. Bob Brownley apparently saw none. But suddenly he stopped. Upon a bench sat a sweet-faced mother holding a sleeping babe in her arms, while a curly-pated boy nestled his head in her lap and slept through the magic lanes and fairy woods of dreamland. The woman"s face was one of those that blend the confidence of girlhood with the uncertainty of womanhood. "Twas a pretty face, which had been plainly tagged by its Maker for a light-hearted trip through this world, but it had been seared by the iron of the city.
"Mr. Brownley--" She started to rise.
He gently pushed her back with a "hush," unwilling to rob the sleepers of their heaven.
"What are you doing here, Mrs.----?" He halted.
"Mrs. Chase. Mr. Brownley, when I went away from Randolph & Randolph"s office I married John Chase; you may remember him as delivery clerk. I had such a happy home and my husband was so good; I did not have to typewrite any longer. These are our two children."
"What are you doing here?"
The tears sprang to her eyes; she dropped them, but did not answer.
"Don"t mind me, woman. I, too, have hidden h.e.l.ls I don"t want the world to see. Don"t mind me; tell me your story. It may do you good; it may do me good; yes, it may do me good."
I had dropped into a seat a few feet away. Both were too much occupied with their own thoughts to notice me or any one else. I could not overhear their conversation, but long afterward, when I mentioned our old stenographer, Bessie Brown, to Bob, he told me of the incident at the Battery. Her husband, after their marriage, had become infected with the stock-gambling microbe, the microbe that gnaws into its victim"s mind and heart day and night, while ever fiercer grows the "get rich, get rich"
fever. He had plunged with their savings and had drawn a blank. He had lost his position in disgrace and had landed in the bucket-shop, the sub-cellar pit of the big Stock Exchange h.e.l.l. From there a week before he had been sent to prison for theft, and that morning she had been turned into the street by her landlord. I saw Bob take from his pocket his memorandum-book, write something upon a leaf, tear it out and hand it to the woman, touch his hat, and before she could stop him, stride away. I saw her look at the paper, clap her hands to her forehead, look at the paper again and at the retreating form of Bob Brownley. Then I saw her, yes, there in the old Battery Park, in the drizzling rain and under the eyes of all, drop upon her knees in prayer. How long she prayed I do not know. I only know that as I followed Bob I looked back and the woman was still upon her knees. I thought at the time how queer and unnatural the whole thing seemed. Later, I learned to know that nothing is queer and unnatural in the world of human suffering; that great human suffering turns all that is queer and unnatural into commonplace. Next day Bessie Brown came to our office to see Bob. Not being able to get at him she asked for me.
"Mr. Randolph, tell me, please, what shall I do with this paper?" she said. "I met Mr. Brownley in the Battery yesterday. He saw I was in distress and he gave me this, but I cannot believe he meant it," and she showed me an order on Randolph & Randolph for a thousand dollars. I cashed her check and she went away.
From the Battery Bob sought the wharves, the Bowery, Five Points, the hothouses of the under-worldlings of America. He seemed bent on picking out the haunts of misery in the misery-infested metropolis of the new world. For two hours he tramped and I followed. A number of times I thought to speak to him and try to win him from his mood, but I refrained.
I could see there was a soul battle waging and I realised that upon its outcome might depend Bob"s salvation. Some seek the quiet of the woods, the soothing rustle of the leaves, the peaceful ripple of the brook when battling for their soul, but Bob"s woods appeared to be the shadowy places of misery, his rustling leaves the hoa.r.s.e din of the mult.i.tude, and his brook"s ripple the tears and tales of the man-d.a.m.ned of the great city, for he stopped and conversed with many human derelicts that he met on his course. The hand of the clock on Trinity"s steeple pointed to four as we again approached the office of Randolph & Randolph. Bob was now moving with a long, hurried stride, as though consumed with a fever of desire to get to Beulah Sands. For the last fifteen minutes I had with difficulty kept him in sight. Had he arrived at a decision, and if so, what was it? I asked myself over and over again as I plowed through the crowds.
Bob went straight to Beulah Sands"s office, I to mine. I had been there but a moment when I heard deep, guttural groans. I listened. The sound came louder than before. It came from Beulah Sands"s office. With a bound I was at the open door. My G.o.d, the sight that met my gaze! It haunts me even now when years have dulled its vividness. The beautiful, quiet, gray figure that had grown to be such a familiar picture to Bob and me of late, sat at the flat desk in the centre of the room. She faced the door. Her elbows rested on the desk; in her hand was an afternoon paper that she had evidently been reading when Bob entered. G.o.d knows how long she had been reading it before he came. Bob was kneeling at the side of her chair, his hands clasped and uplifted in an agony of appeal that was supplemented by the awful groans. His face showed unspeakable terror and entreaty; the eyes were bursting from their sockets and were riveted on hers as those of a man in a dungeon might be fixed upon an approaching spectre of one whom he had murdered. His chest rose and fell, as though trying to burst some unseen bonds that were crushing out his life. With every breath would come the awful groan that had first brought me to him. Beulah Sands had half turned her face until her eyes gazed into Bob"s with a sweet, childish perplexity. I looked at her, surprised that one whom I had always seen so intelligently masterful should be pa.s.sive in the face of such anguish.
Then, horror of horrors! I saw that there was something missing from her great blue eyes. I looked; gasped. Could it possibly be? With a bound I was at her side. I gazed again into those eyes which that morning had been all that was intelligent, all that was G.o.dlike, all that was human. Their soul, their life was gone. Beulah Sands was a dead woman; not dead in body, but in soul; the magic spark had fled. She was but an empty sh.e.l.l--a woman of living flesh and blood; but the citadel of life was empty, the mind was gone. What had been a woman was but a child. I pa.s.sed my hand across my now damp forehead. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Bob"s figure, with clasped, uplifted hands, and bursting eyes, was still there.
There still resounded through the room the awful guttural groans. Beulah Sands smiled, the smile of an infant in the cradle. She took one beautiful hand from the paper and pa.s.sed it over Bob"s bronzed cheek, just as the infant touches its mother"s face with its chubby fingers. In my horror I almost expected to hear the purling of a babe. My eyes in their perplexity must have wandered from her face, for I suddenly became aware of a great black head-line spread across the top of the paper that she had been reading:
"FRIDAY, THE 13TH."
And beneath in one of the columns:
"TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA"
"THE MOST PROMINENT CITIZEN OF THE STATE, EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR AND EX-GOVERNOR, JUDGE LEE SANDS OF SANDS LANDING, WHILE TEMPORARILY INSANE FROM THE LOSS OF HIS FORTUNE AND MILLIONS OF THE FUNDS FOR WHICH HE WAS TRUSTEE, CUT THE THROAT OF HIS INVALID WIFE, HIS DAUGHTER"S, AND THEN HIS OWN. ALL THREE DIED INSTANTLY."
In another column:
"ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST DISASTROUS PANIC IN THE HISTORY OF WALL STREET AND SPREADS WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY."
A hideous picture seared its every light and shade on my mind, through my heart, into all my soul. A frenzied-finance harvest scene with its gory crop; in the centre one living-dead, part of the picture, yet the ghost left to haunt the painters, one of whom was already cowering before the black and b.l.o.o.d.y canvas.
Well did the word-artist who wrote over the door of the madhouse, "Man can suffer only to the limit, then he shall know peace," understand the wondrous wisdom of his G.o.d. Beulah Sands had gone beyond her limit and was at peace.
The awful groaning stopped and an ashen pallor spread over Bob Brownley"s face. Before I could catch him he rolled backward upon the floor as dead.
Bob Brownley, too, had gone beyond his limit. I bent over him and lifted his head, while the sweet woman-child knelt and covered his face with kisses, calling in a voice like that of a tiny girl speaking to her doll, "Bob, my Bob, wake up, wake up; your Beulah wants you." As I placed my hand upon Bob"s heart and felt its beats grow stronger, as I listened to Beulah Sands"s childish voice, joyously confident, as it called upon the one thing left of her old world, some of my terror pa.s.sed. In its place came a great mellowing sense of G.o.d"s marvellous wisdom. I thought gratefully of my mother"s always ready argument that the law of all laws, of G.o.d and nature, is that of compensation. I had allowed Bob"s head to sink until it rested in Beulah"s lap, and from his calm and steady breathing I could see that he had safely pa.s.sed a crisis, that at least he was not in the clutches of death, as I had at first feared.
Bob slept. Beulah Sands ceased her calling and with a smile raised her fingers to her lips and softly said, "Hush, my Bob"s asleep." Together we held vigil over our sleeping lover and friend, she with the happiness of a child who had no fear of the awakening, I with a silent terror of what should come next. I had seen one mind wafted to the unknown that day. Was it to have a companion to cheer and solace it on its far journey to the great beyond? How long we waited Bob"s awakening I could not tell. The clock"s hands said an hour; it seemed to me an age. At last his magnificent physique, his unpoisoned blood and splendid brain pulled him through to his new world of mind and heart torture. His eyelids lifted. He looked at me, then at Beulah Sands, with eyes so sad, so awful in their perplexed mournfulness, that I almost wished they had never opened, or had opened to let me see the childlike look that now shone from the girl"s.
His gaze finally rested on her and his lips murmured "Beulah."
"There, Bob, I thought you would know it was time to wake up." She bent over and kissed him on the eyes again and again with the loving ardour a child bestows upon its pets.
He slowly rose to his feet. I could see from his eyes and the shudder that went over him as he caught sight of the paper on the desk that he was himself; that memory of the happenings of the day had not fled in his sleep. He rose to his full height, his head went up, and his shoulders back, but only from habit and for an instant. Then he folded Beulah Sands to his breast and dropped his head upon her shoulder. He sobbed like a father with the corpse of his child.
"Why, Bob, my Bob, is this the way you treat your Beulah when she"s let you sleep so your beautiful eyes would be pretty for the wedding? Is this the way to act before this kind man who has come to take us to the church?
Naughty, naughty Bob."
I looked at her, at Bob, in horror. I was beginning to realise the absolute deadness of this woman. From the first look I had known that her mind had fled, but knowledge is not always realisation. She did not even know who I was. Her mind was dead to all but the man she loved, the man who through all those long days of her suffering she had silently worshiped. To all but him she was new-born.
At the sound of "wedding," "church," Bob"s head slowly rose from her shoulder. I saw his decision the instant I caught his eye; I realised the uselessness of opposing it, and, sick at heart and horrified, I listened as he said in a voice now calm and soothing as that of a father to his child, "Yes, Beulah, my darling, I have slept too long. Bob has been naughty, but we will make up for lost time. Get your hat and cloak and we"ll hurry to the church or we will be late."
With a laugh of joy she followed him to the closet where hung the little gray turban and the pretty gray jacket. He took them from their peg and gave them to her.