"You"ve got to, haven"t you?" asked Duane.
"Oh! Is that it? A sort of moral formality?"
"It"s conventional; yes. It"s expected."
"By whom?"
"All the mess that goes to make up this compost heap we call society....
I think she also would expect it."
Dysart nodded.
"If you could make her happy it would square a great many things, Dysart."
The other looked up: "You?"
"I--don"t know. Yes, in many ways; in that way at all events--if you made her happy."
Dysart stepped forward: "Would you be nice to her if I did? No other soul in the world knows except you. Other people would be nice to her.
Would _you_? And would you have the woman you marry receive her?"
"Yes."
"That is square of you, Mallett.... I meant to do it, anyway.... Thank you.... Good-night."
"Good-night," said Duane in a low voice.
He returned to the house late that night, and found a letter from Geraldine awaiting him; the first in three days. Seated at the library table he opened the letter and saw at once that the red-pencilled cross at the top was missing.
Minutes pa.s.sed; the first line blurred under his vacant gaze, for his eyes travelled no farther. Then the letter fell to the table; he dropped his head in his arms.
It was a curiously calm letter when he found courage to read it:
"I"ve lost a battle after many victories. It went against me after a hard fight here alone at Roya-Neh. I think you had better come up.
The fight was on again the next night--that is, night before last, but I"ve held fast so far and expect to. Only I wish you"d come.
"It is no reproach to you if I say that, had you been here, I might have made a better fight. You couldn"t be here; the shame of defeat is all my own.
"Duane, it was not a disastrous defeat in one way. I held out for four days, and thought I had won out. I was stupefied by loss of sleep, I think; this is not in excuse, only the facts which I lay bare for your consideration.
"The defeat was in a way a concession--a half-dazed compromise--merely a parody on a real victory for the enemy; because it roused in me a horror that left the enemy almost no consolation, no comfort, even no physical relief. The enemy is I myself, you understand--that other self we know about.
"She was perfectly furious, Duane; she wrestled with me, fought to make me yield more than I had--which was almost nothing--begged me, brutalised me, pleaded, tormented, cajoled. I was nearly dead when the sun rose; but I had gone through it.
"I wish you could come. She is still watching me. It"s an armed truce, but I know she"ll break it if the chance comes. There is no honour in her, Duane, no faith, no reason, no mercy. I know her.
"Can you not come? I won"t ask it if your father needs you. Only if he does not, I think you had better come very soon.
"When may I restore the red cross to the top of my letters to you? I suppose I had better place it on the next letter, because if I do not you might think that another battle had gone against me.
"Don"t reproach me. I couldn"t stand it just now. Because I am a very tired girl, Duane, and what has happened is heavy in my heart--heavy on my head and shoulders like that monster Sindbad bore.
"Can you come and free me? One word--your arms around me--and I am safe.
"G.S."
As he finished, a maid came bearing a telegram on a salver.
"Tell him to wait," said Duane, tearing open the white night-message:
"Your father is ill at San Antonio and wishes you to come at once.
Notify your mother but do not alarm her. Your father"s condition is favorable, but the outcome is uncertain.
"WELLS, _Secretary_."
Duane took three telegram blanks from the note-paper rack and wrote:
"My father is ill at San Antonio. They have just wired me, and I shall take the first train. Stand by me now. Win out for my sake. I put you on your honour until I can reach you."
And to his father:
"I leave on first train for San Antonio. It"s going to be all right, father."
And to his mother:
"Am leaving for San Antonio because I don"t think father is well enough to I"ll write you and wire you. Love to you and Nada."
He gave the maid the money, turned, and unhooking the receiver of the telephone, called up the Grand Central Station.
CHAPTER XVI
THROUGH THE WOODS
The autumn quiet at Roya-Neh was intensely agreeable to Scott Seagrave.
No social demands interfered with a calm and dignified contemplation of the Rose-beetle, _Melolontha subspinosa_, and his scandalous "Life History"; there was no chatter of girls from hall and stairway to distract the loftier inspirations that possessed him, no intermittent soprano noises emitted by fluttering feminine fashion, no calflike barytones from masculine adolescence to drive him to the woods, where it was always rather difficult for him to focus his attention on printed pages. The balm of heavenly silence pervaded the house, and in its beneficent atmosphere he worked in his undershirt, inhaling inspiration and the aroma of whale-oil, soap, and carbolic solutions.
Neither Kathleen nor his sister being present to limit his operations, the entire house was becoming a vast mess. Living-rooms, library, halls, billiard-room, were obstructed with "scientific" paraphernalia; hundreds of gla.s.s fruit jars, filled with earth containing the whitish, globular eggs of the Rose-beetle, enc.u.mbered mantel and furniture; gla.s.s aquariums half full of earth, sod, and youthful larvae of the same sinful beetle lent pleasing variety to the monotony of Scott"s interior decorative effects. Microscopes, phials, shallow trays bristling with sprouting seeds, watering-cans, note-books, buckets of tepid water, jars br.i.m.m.i.n.g with chemical solutions, blockaded the legitimate and natural runways of chamber-maid, parlour-maid, and housekeeper; a loud scream now and then punctured the scientific silence, recording the Hibernian discovery of some large, green caterpillar travelling casually somewhere in the house.
"Mr. Seagrave, sir," stammered Lang, the second man, perspiring horror, "your bedroom is full of humming birds and bats, sir, and I can"t stand it no more!"
But it was only a wholesale hatching of huge hawk-moths that came whizzing around Lang when he turned on the electric lights; and which, escaping, swarmed throughout the house, filling it with their loud, feathery humming, and the shrieks of Milesian domestics.
And it was into these lively household conditions that Kathleen and Geraldine unexpectedly arrived from the Berkshires, worn out with their round of fashionable visits, anxious for the quiet and comfort that is supposed to be found only under one"s own roof-tree. This is what they found: