"Ah," he could not help exclaiming, "that explains much."
She had looked at him again, through sudden tears, as though divining his reference to Mr. Bentley"s grief, when a step make them turn. Eldon Parr had entered the room. Never, not even in that last interview, had his hardness seemed so concretely apparent as now. Again, pity seemed never more out of place, yet pity was Hodder"s dominant feeling as he met the coldness, the relentlessness of the glance. The thing that struck him, that momentarily kept closed his lips, was the awful, unconscious timeliness of the man"s entrance, and his unpreparedness to meet the blow that was to crush him.
"May I ask, Mr. Hodder," he said, in an unemotional voice, "what you are doing in this house?"
Still Hodder hesitated, an unwilling executioner.
"Father," said Alison, "Mr. Hodder has come with a message."
Never, perhaps, had Eldon Parr given such complete proof of his lack of spiritual intuition. The atmosphere, charged with presage for him, gave him nothing.
"Mr. Hodder takes a strange way of delivering it," was his comment.
Mercy took precedence over her natural directness. She laid her hand gently on his arm. And she had, at that instant, no thought of the long years he had neglected her for her brother.
"It"s about--Preston," she said.
"Preston!" The name came sharply from Eldon Parr"s lips. "What about him? Speak, can"t you?"
"He died this evening," said Alison, simply.
Hodder plainly heard the ticking of the clock on the mantel.... And the drama that occurred was the more horrible because it was hidden; played, as it were, behind closed doors. For the spectators, there was only the black wall, and the silence. Eldon Parr literally did nothing,--made no gesture, uttered no cry. The death, they knew, was taking place in his soul, yet the man stood before them, naturally, for what seemed an interminable time....
"Where is he?" he asked.
"At Mr. Bentley"s, in Dalton Street." It was Alison who replied again.
Even then he gave no sign that he read retribution in the coincidence, betrayed no agitation at the mention of a name which, in such a connection, might well have struck the terror of judgment into his heart. They watched him while, with a firm step, he crossed the room and pressed a b.u.t.ton in the wall, and waited.
"I want the closed automobile, at once," he said, when the servant came.
"I beg pardon; sir, but I think Gratton has gone to bed. He had no orders."
"Then wake him," said Eldon Parr, "instantly. And send for my secretary."
With a glance which he perceived Alison comprehended, Hodder made his way out of the room. He had from Eldon Parr, as he pa.s.sed him, neither question, acknowledgment, nor recognition. Whatever the banker might have felt, or whether his body had now become a mere machine mechanically carrying on a life-long habit of action, the impression was one of the tremendousness of the man"s consistency. A great effort was demanded to summon up the now almost unimaginable experience of his confidence; of the evening when, almost on that very spot, he had revealed to Hodder the one weakness of his life. And yet the effort was not to be, presently, without startling results. In the darkness of the street the picture suddenly grew distinct on the screen of the rector"s mind, the face of the banker subtly drawn with pain as he had looked down on it in compa.s.sion; the voice with its undercurrent of agony:
"He never knew how much I cared--that what I was doing was all for him, building for him, that he might carry on my work."
V
So swift was the trolley that ten minutes had elapsed, after Hodder"s arrival, before the purr of an engine and the shriek of a brake broke the stillness of upper Dalton Street and announced the stopping of a heavy motor before the door. The rector had found Mr. Bentley in the library, alone, seated with bent head in front of the fire, and had simply announced the intention of Eldon Parr to come. From the chair Hodder had un.o.btrusively chosen, near the window, his eyes rested on the n.o.ble profile of his friend. What his thoughts were, Hodder could not surmise; for he seemed again, marvellously, to have regained the outward peace which was the symbol of banishment from the inner man of all thought of self.
"I have prepared her for Mr. Parr"s coming," he said to Hodder at length.
And yet he had left her there! Hodder recalled the words Mr. Bentley had spoken, "It is her place." Her place, the fallen woman"s, the place she had earned by a great love and a great renunciation, of which no earthly power might henceforth deprive her....
Then came the motor, the ring at the door, the entrance of Eldon Parr into the library. He paused, a perceptible moment, on the threshold as his look fell upon the man whom he had deprived of home and fortune,--yes and of the one woman in the world for them both. Mr.
Bentley had risen, and stood facing him. That shining, compa.s.sionate gaze should have been indeed a difficult one to meet. Vengeance was the Lord"s, in truth! What ordeal that Horace Bentley in anger and retribution might have devised could have equalled this!
And yet Eldon Parr did meet it--with an effort. Hodder, from his corner, detected the effort, though it were barely discernible, and would have pa.s.sed a scrutiny less rigid,--the first outward and visible sign of the lesion within. For a brief instant the banker"s eyes encountered Mr. Bentley"s look with a flash of the old defiance, and fell, and then swept the room.
"Will you come this way, Mr. Parr?" Mr. Bentley said, indicating the door of the bedroom.
Alison followed. Her eyes, wet with unheeded tears, had never left Mr.
Bentley"s face. She put out her hand to him....
Eldon Parr had halted abruptly. He knew from Alison the circ.u.mstances in which his son had died, and how he had been brought hither to this house, but the sight of the woman beside the bed fanned into flame his fury against a world which had cheated him, by such ignominious means, of his dearest wish. He grew white with sudden pa.s.sion.
"What is she doing here?" he demanded.
Kate Marcy, who had not seemed to hear his entrance, raised up to him a face from which all fear had fled, a face which, by its suggestive power, compelled him to realize the absolute despair clutching now at his own soul, and against which he was fighting wildly, hopelessly. It was lying in wait for him, With hideous patience, in the coming watches of the night. Perhaps he read in the face of this woman whom he had condemned to suffer all degradation, and over whom he was now powerless, something which would ultimately save her from the h.e.l.l now yawning for him; a redeeming element in her grief of which she herself were not as yet conscious, a light shining in the darkness of her soul which in eternity would become luminous. And he saw no light for him--He thrashed in darkness. He had nothing, now, to give, no power longer to deprive.
She had given all she possessed, the memorial of her kind which would outlast monuments.
It was Alison who crossed the room swiftly. She laid her hand protectingly on Kate Marcy"s shoulder, and stooped, and kissed her. She turned to her father.
"It is her right," she said. "He belonged to her, not to us. And we must take her home with us.
"No," answered Kate Marcy" "I don"t want to go. I wouldn"t live," she added with unexpected intensity, "with him."
"You would live with me," said Alison.
"I don"t want to live!" Kate Marcy got up from the chair with an energy they had not thought her to possess, a revival of the spirit which had upheld her when she had contended, singly, with a remorseless world. She addressed herself to Eldon Parr. "You took him from me, and I was a fool to let you. He might have saved me and saved himself. I listened to you when you told me lies as to how it would ruin him.... Well,--I had him you never did."
The sudden, intolerable sense of wrong done to her love, the swift anger which followed it, the justness of her claim of him who now lay in the dignity of death clothed her--who in life had been crushed and blotted out--with a dignity not to be gainsaid. In this moment of final self-a.s.sertion she became the dominating person in the room, knew for once the birthright of human worth. They watched her in silence as she turned and gave one last, lingering look at the features of the dead; stretched out her hand towards them, but did not touch them... and then went slowly towards the door. Beside Alison she stopped.
"You are his sister?" she said.
"Yes."
She searched Alison"s face, wistfully.
"I could have loved you."
"And can you not--still?"
Kate Mercy did not answer the question.
"It is because you understand," she said. "You"re like those I"ve come to know--here. And you"re like him.... I don"t mean in looks. He, too, was good--and square." She spoke the words a little defiantly, as though challenging the verdict of the world. "And he wouldn"t have been wild if he could have got going straight."
"I know," said Alison, in a low voice.
"Yes," said Kate Mercy, "you look as if you did. He thought a lot of you, he said he was only beginning to find out what you was. I"d like you to think as well of me as you can."
"I could not think better," Alison replied.
Kate Mercy shook her head.