Ross scowled at his sister, made a hesitating, reluctant movement toward the steps; just then Matilda and Ellen appeared. Adelaide saw that her mother had succeeded in getting through Matilda"s crust of sham and in touch with her heart. At sight of her son Mrs. Whitney"s softened countenance changed--hardened, Adelaide thought--and she said to him eagerly: "Any news, any letters?"
"This," answered Ross explosively. He jerked the letter from his pocket, gave it to his mother.
"You"ll excuse me--Ellen--Adelaide," said Matilda, as she unfolded the paper with ringers that trembled. "This is very important." Silence, as she read, her eager glance leaping along the lines. Her expression became terrible; she burst out in a voice that was both anger and despair: "No will! He wasn"t just trying to torment me when he said he hadn"t made one. No will! Nothing but the draft of a scheme to leave everything to Tec.u.mseh--there"s your Hiram"s work, Ellen!"
Adelaide"s gentle pressure on her mother"s arm was unnecessary; it was too evident that Matilda, beside herself, could not be held responsible for anything she said. There was no pretense, no "oversoul" in her emotion now. She was as different from the Matilda of the luncheon table as the swollen and guttered face of woe in real life is different from the graceful tragedy of the stage.
"No will; what of it?" said Ellen gently. "It won"t make the least difference. There"s just you and the children."
Adelaide, with clearer knowledge of certain dark phases of human nature and of the Whitney family, hastily interposed. "Yes, we must go," said she. "Good-by, Mrs. Whitney," and she put out her hand.
Mrs. Whitney neither saw nor heard. "Ellen!" she cried, her voice like her wild and haggard face. "What do you think of such a daughter as mine here? Her father--"
Janet, with eyes that dilated and contracted strangely, interrupted with a sweet, deprecating, "Good-by, Adelaide dear. As I told you, I am leaving to-night--"
There Ross laid his hand heavily on Janet"s shoulder. "You are going to stay, young lady," he said between his teeth, "and hear what your mother has to say about you." His voice made Adelaide shudder, even before she saw the black hate his eyes were hurling at his sister.
"Yes, we want you, Ellen, and you, Del, to know her as she is," Mrs.
Whitney now raged on. "When she married, her father gave her a dowry, bought that t.i.tle for her--paid as much as his whole fortune now amounts to. He did it solely because I begged him to. She knows the fight I had to win him over. And now that he"s gone, without making a will, she says she"ll have her _legal_ rights! Her _legal_ rights! She"ll take _one-third_ of what he left. She"ll rob her brother and her mother!"
Janet was plainly reminding herself that she must not forget that she was a lady and a marchioness. In a manner in which quiet dignity was mingled with a delicate soul"s shrinking from such brawling vulgarity as this that was being forced upon her, she said, looking at Adelaide: "Papa never intended that my dowry should be taken out of my share. It was a present." She looked calmly at her mother. "Just like your jewels, mamma." She turned her clear, luminous eyes upon Ross. "Just like the opportunities he gave you to get your independent fortune."
Mrs. Whitney, trembling so that she could scarcely articulate, retorted: "At the time he said, and I told you, it was to come out of your share.
And how you thanked me and kissed me and--" She stretched toward Ellen her shaking old woman"s hands, made repellent by the contrasting splendor of magnificent black pearl rings. "O Ellen, Ellen!" she quavered. "I think my heart will burst!"
"You did _say_ he said so," replied Janet softly, "but _he_ never told _me_."
"You--you--" stuttered Ross, flinging out his arms at her in a paroxysm of fury.
"I refuse to discuss this any further," said Janet, drawing herself up in the full majesty of her black-robed figure and turning her long shapely back on Ross. "Mrs. Ranger, I"m sure you and Del realize that mother and Ross are terribly upset, and not--"
"They"ll realize that you are a cheat, a vulture in the guise of woman!"
cried Mrs. Whitney. "Ellen, tell her what she is!"
Mrs. Ranger, her eyes down and her face expressing her agonized embarra.s.sment, contrived to say: "You mustn"t bring me in, Mattie.
Adelaide and I must go."
"No, you _shall_ hear!" shrieked Mrs. Whitney, barring the way. "All the world shall hear how this treacherous, ingrate daughter of mine--oh, the sting of that!--how she purposes to steal, yes, steal four times as much of her father"s estate as Ross or I get. Four times as much! I can"t believe the law allows it! But whether it does or not, Janet Whitney, _G.o.d_ won"t allow it! G.o.d will hear my cry, my curse on you."
"My conscience is clear," said Janet, and her gaze, spiritual, exalted, patient, showed that she spoke the truth, that her mother"s looks and words left her quite unscathed.
Ross vented a vicious, jeering laugh. His mother, overcome with the sense of helplessness, collapsed from rage to grief and tears. She turned to Mrs. Ranger. "Your Hiram was right," she wailed, "and my Charles said so just before he went. Look at my daughter, Ellen. Look at my son--for he, too, is robbing me. He has his own fortune that his dead father made for him; yet he, too, talks about his legal rights. He demands his full third!"
Adelaide did not look at Ross; yet she was seeing him inside and out, the inside through the outside.
"My heartless children!" sobbed Matilda. "I can"t believe that they are the same I brought into the world and watched over and saw that they had everything. G.o.d forgive them--and me. Your Hiram was right. Money has done it. Money has made monsters of them. And I--oh, how I am punished!"
All this time Ellen and Adelaide had been gradually retreating, the Whitneys following them. When Mrs. Whitney at last opened wide the casket of her woe and revealed Ross there, too, he wheeled on Adelaide with a protesting, appealing look. He was confident that he was in the right, that his case was different from Janet"s; confident also that Adelaide would feel that in defending his rights he was also defending hers that were to be. But before Del there had risen the scene after the reading of her own father"s will. She recalled her rebellious thoughts, saw again Arthur"s fine face distorted by evil pa.s.sions, heard again her mother"s terrible, just words: "Don"t trample on your father"s grave, Arthur Ranger! I"ll put you both out of the house! Go to the Whitneys, where you belong!" And then she saw Arthur as he now was, and herself the wife of Dory Hargrave. And she for the first time realized, as we realize things only when they have become an accepted and unshakable basic part of our lives, what her father had done, what her father was.
Hiram had won his daughter.
"We are going now," said Ellen, coming from the stupor of shame and horror into which this volcanic disgorging of the secret minds and hearts of the Whitneys had plunged her. And the expression she fixed first upon Janet, then upon Ross, then upon Matilda, killed any disposition they might have had to try to detain her. As she and Adelaide went toward her carriage, Ross followed. Walking beside Adelaide, he began to protest in a low tone and with pa.s.sionate appeal against the verdict he could not but read in her face. "It isn"t fair, it isn"t just!" he pleaded.
"Adelaide, hear me! Don"t misjudge me. You know what your--your good opinion means to me."
She took her mother"s arm, and so drew farther away from him.
"Forgive me," he begged. "Janet put me out of my mind. It drove me mad to have her rob--_us_."
At that "us" Adelaide fixed her gaze on his for an instant. And what he saw in her eyes silenced him--silenced him on one subject forever.
He left for Chicago without seeing either his sister or his mother again. His impulse was to renounce to his mother his share of his father"s estate. But one does not act hastily upon an impulse to give up nearly a million dollars. On reflection he decided against such expensive and futile generosity. If it would gain him Adelaide--then, yes. But when it would gain him nothing but the applause of people who in the same circ.u.mstances would not have had even the impulse to forego a million--"Mother"s proper share will give her as much of an income as a woman needs at her age and alone," reasoned he. "Besides, she may marry again. And I must not forget that but for her Janet would never have got that dowry. She brought this upon herself. Her folly has cost me dearly enough. If I go away to live abroad or in New York--anywhere to be free of the Howlands--why I"ll need all I"ve got properly to establish myself."
Janet and her baby left on a later train for the East. Before going she tried to see her mother. Her mother had wronged her in thought, had slandered her in word; but Janet forgave her and n.o.bly wished her to have the consolation of knowing it. Mrs. Whitney, however, prevented the execution of this exalted purpose by refusing to answer the gentle persistent knocking and gentle appealing calls of "Mother, mother dear!"
at her locked boudoir door.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DOOR AJAR
Judge Torrey succeeded Whitney as chairman of the overseers of Tec.u.mseh and in the vacant trusteeship of the Ranger bequest. Soon Dr. Hargrave, insisting that he was too old for the labors of the presidency of such a huge and varied inst.i.tution as the university had become, was made honorary president, and his son, still in Europe, was elected chairman of the faculty. Toward the middle of a fine afternoon in early September Dr.
Hargrave and his daughter-in-law drove to the railway station in the ancient and roomy phaeton which was to Saint X as much part of his personality as the aureole of glistening white hair that framed his majestic head, or as the great plaid shawl that had draped his big shoulders with their student stoop every winter day since anyone could remember. Despite his long exposure to the temptation to sink into the emasculate life of unapplied intellect, mere talker and writer, and to adopt that life"s flabby ideals, he had remained the man of ideas, the man of action. His learning was all but universal, yet he had the rugged, direct vigor of the man of affairs. His was not the knowledge that enfeebles, but the knowledge that empowers. As his son, the new executive of the university--with the figure of a Greek athlete, with positive character, will as well as intellect, stamped upon his young face--appeared in the crowd, the onlookers had the sense that a "somebody" had arrived. Dory"s always was the air an active mind never fails to give; as Judge Torrey once said: "You"ve only got to look at him to see he"s the kind that does things, not the kind that tells how they used to be done or how they oughtn"t to be done." Now there was in his face and bearing the subtly but surely distinguishing quality that comes only with the strength a man gets when his fellows acknowledge his leadership, when he has seen the creations of his brain materialize in work accomplished. Every successful man has this look, and shows it according to his nature--the arrogant arrogantly; the well-balanced with tranquil unconsciousness.
As he moved toward his father and Adelaide, her heart swelled with pride in him, with pride in her share in him. Ever since the sending of the cablegram to recall him, she had been wondering what she would feel at sight of him. Now she forgot all about her once-beloved self-a.n.a.lysis.
She was simply proud of him, enormously proud; other men seemed trivial beside this personage. Also she was a little afraid; for, as their eyes met, it seemed to her that his look of recognition and greeting was not so ardent as she was accustomed to a.s.sociate with his features when turned toward her. But before she could be daunted by her misgiving it vanished; for he impetuously caught her in his arms and, utterly forgetting the onlookers, kissed her until every nerve in her body was tingling in the sweeping flame of that pa.s.sion which his parting caress had stirred to vague but troublesome restlessness. And she, too, forgot the crowd, and shyly, proudly gave as well as received; so there began to vibrate between them the spark that clears brains and hearts of the fogs and vapors and keeps them clear. And it was not a problem in psychology that was revealed to those admiring and envying spectators in the brilliant September sunshine, but a man and a woman in love in the way that has been "the way of a man with a maid" from the beginning; in love, and each looking worthy of the other"s love--he handsome in his blue serge, she beautiful in a light-brown fall dress with pale-gold facings, and the fluffy, feathery boa close round her fair young face.
Civilization has changed methods, but not essentials; it is still not what goes on in the minds of a man and woman that counts, but what goes on in their hearts and nerves.
The old doctor did not in the least mind the momentary neglect of himself. He had always a.s.sumed that his son and Del loved each other, there being every reason why they should and no reason why they shouldn"t; he saw only the natural and the expected in this outburst which astonished and somewhat embarra.s.sed them with the partial return of the self-consciousness that had been their curse. He beamed on them from eyes undimmed by half a century of toil, as bright under his s.h.a.ggy white brows as the first spring flowers among the snows. As soon as he had Dory"s hand and his apparent attention, he said: "I hope you"ve been getting your address ready on the train, as I suggested in my telegram."
"I"ve got it in my bag," replied Dory.
In the phaeton Del sat between them and drove. Dory forgot the honors he had come home to receive; he had eyes and thoughts only for her, was impatient to be alone with her, to rea.s.sure himself of the meaning of the blushes that tinted her smooth white skin and the shy glances that stole toward him from the violet eyes under those long lashes of hers. Dr.
Hargrave resumed the subject that was to him paramount. "You see, Theodore, your steamer"s being nearly two days late brings you home just a day before the installation. You"ll be delivering, your address at eleven to-morrow morning."
"So I shall," said Dory absently.
"You say it"s ready. Hadn"t you better let me get it type-written for you?"
Dory opened the bag at his feet, gave his father a roll of paper. "Please look it over, and make any changes you like."
Dr. Hargrave began the reading then and there. He had not finished the first paragraph when Dory interrupted with, "Why, Del, you"re pa.s.sing our turning."
Del grew crimson. The doctor, without looking up or taking his mind off the address, said: "Adelaide gave up Mrs. Dorsey"s house several weeks ago. You are living with us."
Dory glanced at her quickly and away. She said nothing. "He"ll understand," thought she--and she was right.