I could see her pale under the lights.
"Oh, Hugo! don"t be so ungenerous," she said. "Don"t be so--so----"
She hesitated, apparently unable to continue.
"Ungenerous or not," I said, "d.a.m.n the words, Teresa, this isn"t a time to weigh words. It isn"t in flesh and blood to come back. I can"t come back. Put yourself in my place."
"Some day you"ll thank me," she said.
"Very possibly," I returned. "n.o.body knows what may not happen.
It"s conceivable, of course, I might go down on my bended knees, but really, from the way I feel at this moment, I do not think it"s likely."
"You want to punish me for liking you," she said.
"Teresa," I said, "I have told you already that you are right. You insist on saving me from a humiliating position. I respect your courage and your straightforwardness. You remind me of an ancient Spartan having it out with a silly a.s.s of a stranger who took advantage of her parents" good-nature. I am as little vain, I think, as any man, and as free from pettiness and idiotic pride-- but you mustn"t ask the impossible. You mustn"t expect the whipped dog to come back. When I go it will be for ever."
"Then go," she said, and looked me straight in the eyes.
"I have only one thing to ask," I said. "Smooth it over to your father and mother. I am very fond of your father and mother, Teresa; I don"t want them to think I"ve acted badly, or that I have ceased to care for them. Tell them the necessary lies, you know."
"I will tell them," she said.
"Then good-bye," I said, rising. "I suppose I am acting like a baby to feel so sore. But I am hurt."
"Good-bye, Hugo," she said.
I went to the door and down the stairs. She followed and stood looking after me the length of the hall as I slowly put on my hat and coat. That was the last I saw of her, in the shadow of a palm, her girlish figure outlined against the black behind. I walked into the street with a heart like lead, and for the first time in my life I began to feel I was growing old.
I have been from my youth up an easy-going man, a drifter, a dawdler, always willing to put off work for play. But for once I pulled myself together, looked things in the face, and put my back to the wheel. I was determined to repay that nine hundred dollars, if I had to cut every dinner-party for the rest of the season. I was determined to repay it, if I had to work as I had never worked before. My first move was to change my address. I didn"t want Uncle Gingersnaps ferreting me out, and Mrs. Grossensteck weeping on my shoulder. My next was to cancel my whole engagement book. My third, to turn over my wares and to rack my head for new ideas.
I had had a long-standing order from Granger"s Weekly for a novelette. I had always hated novelettes, as one had to wait so long for one"s money and then get so little; but in the humour I then found myself I plunged into the fray, if not with enthusiasm, at least with a dogged perseverance that was almost as good.
Granger"s Weekly liked triviality and dialogue, a lot of fuss about nothing and a happy ending. I gave it to them in a heaping measure. Dixie"s Monthly, from which I had a short-story order, set dialect above rubies. I didn"t know any dialect, but I borrowed a year"s file and learned it like a lesson. They wrote and asked me for another on the strength of "The Courting of Amandar Jane." The Permeator was keen on Kipling and water, and I gave it to them--especially the water. Like all Southern families the Dundonalds had once had their day. I had travelled everywhere when I was a boy, and so I accordingly refreshed my dim memories with some modern travellers and wrote a short series for The Little Gentleman; "The Boy in the Carpathians," "The Boy in Old Louisiana," "A Boy in the Tyrol," "A Boy in London," "A Boy in Paris," "A Boy at the Louvre," "A Boy in Corsica," "A Boy in the Reconstruction." I reeled off about twenty of them and sold them to advantage.
It was a terribly dreary task, and I had moments of revolt when I stamped up and down my little flat and felt like throwing my resolution to the winds. But I stuck tight to the ink-bottle and fought the thing through. My novelette, strange to say, was good.
Written against time and against inclination, it has always been regarded since as the best thing I ever did, and when published in book form outran three editions.
I made a thundering lot of money--for me, I mean, and in comparison to my usual income--seldom under five hundred dollars a month and often more. In eleven weeks I had repaid Grossensteck and had a credit in the bank. Nine hundred dollars has always remained to me as a unit of value, a sum of agonising significance not lightly to be spoken of, the fruits of h.e.l.lish industry and self-denial. All this while I had had never a word from the Grossenstecks. At least they wrote to me often--telephoned-- telegraphed--and my box at the club was choked with their letters.
But I did not open a single one of them, though I found a pleasure in turning them over and over, and wondering as to what was within them. There were several in Teresa"s fine hand, and these interested me most of all and tantalised me unspeakably. There was one of hers, cunningly addressed to me in a stranger"s writing that I opened inadvertently; but I at once perceived the trick and had the strength of mind to throw it in the fire unread.
Perhaps you will wonder at my childishness. Sometimes I wondered at it myself. But the wound still smarted, and something stronger than I seemed to withhold me from again breaking the ice. Besides, those long lonely days, and those nights, almost as long in the retrospect, when I lay sleepless on my bed, had shown me I had been drifting into another peril no less dangerous than dependence. I had been thinking too much of the girl for my own good, and our separation had brought me to a sudden realisation of how deeply I was beginning to care for her. I hated her, too, the pitiless wretch, so there was a double reason for me not to go back.
One night as I had dressed to dine out and stepped into the street, looking up at the snow that hid the stars and silenced one"s footsteps on the pavement, a woman emerged from the gloom, and before I knew what she was doing, had caught my arm. I shook her off, thinking her a beggar or something worse, and would have pa.s.sed on my way had she not again struggled to detain me. I stopped, and was on the point of roughly ordering her to let me go, when I looked down into her veiled face and saw that it was Teresa Grossensteck.
"Hugo!" she said. "Hugo!"
I could only repeat her name and regard her helplessly.
"Hugo," she said, "I am cold. Take me upstairs. I am chilled through and through."
"Oh, but Teresa," I expostulated, "it wouldn"t be right. You know it wouldn"t be right. You might be seen."
She laid her hand, her ungloved, icy hand, against my cheek.
"I have been here an hour," she said. "Take me to your rooms. I am freezing."
I led her up the stairs and to my little apartment. I seated her before the fire, turned up the lights, and stood and looked at her.
"What have you come here for?" I said. "I"ve paid your father-- paid him a month ago."
She made no answer, but spread her hands before the fire and shivered in the glow. She kept her eyes fixed on the coals in front of her and put out the tips of her little slippered feet.
Then I perceived that she was in a ball gown and that her arms were bare under her opera cloak.
At last she broke the silence.
"How cheerless your room is," she said, looking about. "Oh, how cheerless!"
"Did you come here to tell me that?" I said.
"No," she said. "I don"t know why I came. Because I was a fool, I suppose--a fool to think you"d want to see me. Take me home, Hugo." She rose as she said this and looked towards the door. I pressed her to take a little whiskey, for she was still as cold as death and as white as the snow queen in Hans Andersen"s tale, but she refused to let me give her any.
"Take me home, please," she repeated.
Her carriage was waiting a block away. Hendricks, the footman, received my order with impa.s.sivity and shut us in together with the unconcern of a good servant. It was dark in the carriage, and neither of us spoke as we whirled through the snowy streets. Once the lights of a pa.s.sing hansom illumined my companion"s face and I saw that she was crying. It pleased me to see her suffer; she had cost me eleven weeks of misery; why should she escape scot-free!
"Hugo," she said, "are you coming back to us, Hugo?"
"I don"t know," I said.
"Why don"t you know?" she asked.
"Oh, because!" I said.
"That"s no answer," she said.
There was a pause.
"I was beginning to care too much about you," I said. "I think I was beginning to fall in love with you. I"ve got out of one false position. Why should I blunder into another?"
"Would it be a false position to love me?" she said.
"Of course that would a good deal depend on you," I said.
"Suppose I wanted you to," she said.
"Oh, but you couldn"t!" I said.
"Why couldn"t I?" she said.
"But forty," I objected; "n.o.body loves anybody who"s forty, you know."