"He is a quack--dropped from the hospital staff for addiction to drugs, and expelled from his club for cheating at cards."
"He"s down and out," said Hugh sullenly, "and any cur can bite him. He never cheated me, and I find him better company than your sanctimonious, psalm-singing sort. I"m not going to give him the cold shoulder because everybody else does. I never went back on a friend yet. I"m not that sort!"
A steely look had come to Harry Sanderson"s eyes; he was thinking of the house in the aspens. While he talked, shooting pictures had been flashing through his mind. Now, at the boast of this eager protester of loyalty, this recreant who "never went back on a friend," his face set like a flint.
"You never had a friend, Hugh," he said steadily. "You never really loved anybody or anything but yourself. You are utterly selfish. You are deliberately lying, every hour you live, to those who love you. You are playing a part--for your own ends! You were only a good imitation of a good fellow at college. You are a poor imitation of a man of honor now."
Hugh rose to his feet, as he answered hotly: "And what are you, I"d like to know? Just because I take my pleasure as I please, while you choose to make a stained-gla.s.s cherub of yourself, is no reason why I"m not just as good as you! I knew you well enough before you set up for such a pattern. You didn"t go in much then for a theological diet. Pshaw!" he went on, snapping his fingers toward the well-stocked book-shelves. "I wonder how much of all that you really believe!"
Harry pa.s.sed the insolence of the remark. He flecked a bit of dust from his sleeve before he answered, smiling a little disdainfully:
"And how much do _you_ believe, Hugh?"
"I believe in running my own affairs, and letting other people run theirs! I don"t believe in talking cant, and posing as a little-tin-G.o.d-on-wheels! If I lived in a gla.s.s-house, I"d be precious careful not to throw stones!"
Harry Sanderson was staring at him curiously now--a stare of singular inquiry. This shallow witness of his youthful misconduct, then, judged him by himself; deemed him a mere masquerader in the domino of decorous life, carrying the reckless and vicious humors of his nonage into the wider issues of living, and clothing an arrant hypocrisy under the habit of one of G.o.d"s ministers!
The elastic weight of air in the study seemed suddenly grown suffocating. He reached and flung open the chapel door, and stood looking across the choir, through the mellow light of the duskily tinted nave, solemn as with the hush of past prayer. On this interior had been lavished the special love of the invalid, who had given of his riches that this place for the comfort of souls might be. It was an expanse of dim colors and dark woodwork. At its eastern end was the high altar, with tall flowers in stately gilt vases on either side, and a bra.s.s lectern glimmered near-by. In the western wall was set a great rose-window of rich stained gla.s.s--a picture of the eternal tragedy of Calvary. As Harry stood gazing into the mellow light, Hugh paced moodily up and down behind him. Suddenly he caught Harry"s arm and pointed.
Harry turned and looked.
Above the mantel was set a mirror, and from where they stood, this reflected Hugh"s face. It startled Harry, for some trick of the atmosphere, or the sunlight falling through the painted gla.s.s, lightening the sallow face and leaving the hair in deeper shade--as a cunning painter by a single line will alter a whole physiognomy--had for the instant wiped out all superficial unresemblance and left a weird likeness. As Hugh"s mocking countenance looked from the oval frame, Harry had a queer sensation as if he were looking at his own face, with some indefinable smear of attaint upon it--the trail of evil. As he drew away from the other"s touch, his eye followed the bar of amber light to the rose-window in the chapel; it was falling through the face of the unrepentant thief.
The movement broke the spell. When he looked again the eerie impression of ident.i.ty was gone.
Hugh had felt the recoil. "Not complimented, eh?" he said with a half-sneer. "Too bad the prodigal should resemble Satan Sanderson, the fashionable parish rector who waves his arms so gracefully in the pulpit, and preaches such nice little sermons! You didn"t mind it so much in the old days! Pardon me," he added with malice, "I forgot. It"s the "Reverend Henry" at present, of course! I imagine your friends don"t call you "Satan" now."
"No," returned Harry quietly. "They don"t call me "Satan" now!"
He went back to the safe.
The movement set Hugh instantly to regretting his hasty tongue. If he had only a.s.sumed penitence, instead of flying into a pa.s.sion, he might have had the money he wanted just as well as not!
"There"s no sense in us two quarrelling," he said hastily. "We"ve been friends a long time. I"m sure I didn"t intend to when I came in. I suppose you"re right about some things, and probably dropping Moreau wouldn"t hurt me any. I"m sorry I said all I did. Only--the money seemed such a little thing, and I--I needed it."
Harry stood an instant with his hand on the k.n.o.b, then instead of closing the door, he drew out a little drawer. He lifted a packet of crisp yellow-backs and slowly counted out one hundred dollars. "I"m trying to believe you mean what you say, Hugh," he said.
Hugh"s fingers closed eagerly over the crackling notes. "Now that"s white of you, after everything I said! You"re a good fellow, Harry, after all, and I"ll always say so. I wish Old Gooseberry was half as decent in a money way. He seems to think fifty dollars a week is plenty till I marry and settle down. He talks of retiring then, and I suppose he"ll come down handsomely, and give me a chance to look my debts in the face." He pocketed the money with an air of relief and picked up his hat and cane.
Just then from the dusty street came the sound of carriage-wheels and the click of the gate-latch.
"It"s Bishop Ludlow," he said, glancing through the window. "He"s coming in. I think I"ll slip out the side way. Thanks for the loan and--I"ll think over what you"ve said!"
Avoiding the bishop, Hugh stepped toward the gate. The money was in his pocket. Well, one of these days he would not have to grovel for a paltry fifty dollars! He would be his own master, and could afford to let Harry Sanderson and everybody else think what they liked.
"So I"m playing a part, am I!" he said to himself. "Why should your Holiness trouble yourself over it, if I am! Not because you"re so careful of the Governor"s feelings; not by a long shot! It"s because you choose to think Jessica Holme is too good for me! That"s where the shoe pinches! Perhaps you"d like to play at that game yourself, eh?"
He walked jauntily up the street--toward the door with the little barred window.
"The old man is fond of her. He thinks I mean to settle down and let the moss grow over my ears, and he"ll do the proper thing. It"ll be a good way to put my head above water and keep it there. It must be soon, though!" A smile came to his face, a pretentious, boastful smile, and his shining patent-leathers stepped more confidently. "She"s the finest-looking girl in this town, even without her eyes. She may get back her sight sometime. But even if she doesn"t, blindness in a wife might not be such a bad thing, after all!"
CHAPTER V
THE BISHOP SPEAKS
Inside the study, meanwhile, the bishop was greeting Harry Sanderson. He had officiated at his ordination and liked him. His eyes took in the simple order of the room, lingering with a light tinge of disapproval upon the violin case in the corner, and with a deeper shade of question upon the jewel on the other"s finger--a pigeon-blood ruby in a setting curiously twisted of the two initial letters of his name.
There came to his mind for an instant a whisper of early prodigalities and wildnesses which he had heard. For the lawyer who had listened to Harry Sanderson"s recital on the night of the making of the will had not considered it a professional disclosure. He had thought it a "good story," and had told it at his club, whence it had percolated at leisure through the heavier strata of town-talk. The tale, however, had seemed rather to increase than to discourage popular interest in Harry Sanderson. The bishop knew that those whose approval had been withheld were in the hopeless minority, and that even these could not have denied that he possessed desirable qualities--a manner by turns sparkling and grave, picturesqueness in the pulpit, and the unteachable tone of blood--and had infused new life into a generally sleepy parish. He had dismissed the whisper with a smile, but oddly enough it recurred to him now at sight of the ruby ring.
"I looked in to tell you a bit of news," said the bishop. "I"ve just come from David Stires--he has a letter from Van Lennap, the great eye-surgeon of Vienna. He disagrees with the rest of them--thinks Jessica"s case may not be hopeless."
The cloud that Hugh"s call had left on Harry"s countenance lifted.
"Thank G.o.d!" he said. "Will she go to him?"
The bishop looked at him curiously, for the exclamation seemed to hold more than a conventional relief.
"He is to be in America next month. He will come here then to examine, and perhaps to operate. An exceptional girl," went on the bishop, "with a remarkable talent! The angel in the chapel porch, I suppose you know, is her modelling, though that isn"t just masculine enough in feature to suit me. The Scriptures are silent on the subject of woman-angels in Heaven; though, mind you, I don"t say they"re not common on earth!" The bishop chuckled mildly at his own epigram.
"Poor child!" he continued more soberly. "It will be a terrible thing for her if this last hope fails her, too! Especially now, when she and Hugh are to make a match of it."
Harry"s face was turned away, or the bishop would have seen it suddenly startled. "To make a match of it!" To hide the flush he felt staining his cheek, Harry bent to close the safe. A something that had darkled in some obscure depth of his being, whose existence he had not guessed, was throbbing now to a painful resentment. Jessica was to marry Hugh!
"A handsome fellow--Hugh!" said the bishop. "He seems to have returned with a new heart--a brand plucked from the burning. You had the same _alma mater_, I think you told me. Your influence has done the boy good, Sanderson!" He laid his hand kindly on the other"s shoulder. "The fact that you were in college together makes him look up to you--as the whole parish does," he added.
Harry was setting the combination, and did not answer. But through the turmoil in his brain a satiric voice kept repeating:
"No, they don"t call me "Satan" now!"
CHAPTER VI
WHAT CAME OF A WEDDING
The white house in the aspens was in gala attire. Flowers--great banks of bloom--were ma.s.sed in the hall, along the stairway and in the window-seats, and wreaths of delicate fern trembled on the prim-hung chandeliers. Over all breathed the sweet fragrance of jasmin. Musicians sat behind a screen of palms in a corridor, and a long scarlet carpet strip ran down the front steps to the driveway, up which pa.s.sed bravely dressed folk, arriving in carriages and on foot, to witness the completion of a much-booted romance.
For a fortnight this afternoon"s event had been the chat of the town, for David Stires, who to-day retired from active business, was its magnate, the owner of its finest single estate and of its most important bank. From his scapegrace boyhood Hugh Stires had made himself the subject of uncomfortable discussion. His sudden disappearance after the rumored quarrel with his father, and the advent of Jessica Holme, had furnished the community sufficient material for gossip. The wedding had capped this gossip with an appropriate climax. Tongues had wagged over its pros and cons--for Hugh"s past had induced a wholesome skepticism of his future. But the carping were willing to let bygones be bygones, and the wiseacres, to whose experience marriage stood as a sedative for the harum-scarum, augured well.
There was an additional element of romance, too, in the situation; for Jessica, who had never yet seen her lover, would see her husband. The great surgeon on whose prognostication she had built so much, had arrived and had operated. He was not alone an eminent consultant in diagnosis, but an operator of masterly precision, whose daring of scalpel had made him well-nigh a last resort in the delicate adventurings of eye surgery. The experiment had been completely successful, and Jessica"s hope of vision had become a sure and certain promise.
To see once again! To walk free and careless! To mold the plastic clay into the shapes that thronged her brain! To finish the statue which she had never yet shown to any one, in the great sky-lighted attic! To see flowers, and the sunset, the new green of the trees in spring, and the sparkle of the snow in winter, and people"s faces!--to see Hugh! That had been at the core of her thought when it reeled dizzily back from the merciful oblivion of the anesthetic, to touch the strange gauze wrappings on her eyes--the tight bandage that must stay for so long, while nature plied her silent medicaments of healing.