The Barrier: A Novel

"Yes," Beth answered. " – Hush, what was that?"

"I heard nothing," Judith said.

Beth's eyes grew larger as she sat rigid. "It was a groan," she whispered. "Listen!"

Then they both heard it, unmistakable, coming from the floor above. They started up, but stood in fear, questioning each other with their eyes. Again it came, but feebler, like a deep sigh.

"Father!" cried Judith, and hastened to the stairs. Up they hurried; they were breathless when they reached the study door. There they halted, transfixed.

The Colonel had finished his letter; it lay on the desk by his side. He reclined in the easy-chair as if asleep, but from his breast stood out the handle of the Japanese knife.

CHAPTER XXVI

In Which Judge Harmon Enters the Story

Judith stood waiting at the telephone; at the Club the waiter had gone to fetch Mather. How slow he was in coming! How tired she felt! The wires sang in her ears; she heard faint voices speaking indistinctly; she had a dull consciousness of surrounding space, of connection with far-off spheres, out of which those voices rose, whispered, almost became articulate, then died away to let the humming of the spheres begin again. Then some man said loud and briskly: "Hello!"

"I am using the line," said Judith.

The man begged her pardon and drifted across the Styx, from whose dim territory a tinkling voice spoke complainingly for a while, then faded away. The buzzing in the wires increased the confusion in her head, and Judith, very, very weary, found herself clinging to the instrument lest she should fall. With a strong effort she regained her self-control.

Then she heard in the telephone sounds as of distant heavy strokes of metal; they grew louder, then the wire clicked. Mather spoke: "Hello!"

"Oh, George!" she gasped. His voice was calm, quiet, perfectly modulated, as if he stood there at her side. She released her hold on the instrument; with him talking so to her she could stand alone.

"That is you, Judith? Jim is there?"

"Jim?" She had forgotten him. "Oh, no."

"Then can I do anything for you?"

"Something has happened here," she said, "to – to father. He left a letter addressed to you and Mr. Pease."

"Left a letter?" She heard the change in his voice.

"Tell no one, please," she begged. "We telephoned for Mr. Pease and learned that he is at Judge Harmon's; Beth has gone there for him. Can you come? At once, George?"

"Instantly," he answered. "That is all?"

"All. Good-bye."

She heard him hang up his receiver. In her turn she left the telephone, and stronger in the knowledge that he was coming she began to pace the room. Pease too was coming; Beth would bring him soon.

But Pease, who had started for the Judge's, had turned aside at the foot of the steps when he saw Ellis waiting in the vestibule. Pease, telling himself that he could return, had gone away half an hour before, and all who had entered the Harmon house that evening were Ellis and Jim Wayne.

Jim had come first – a wild, dishevelled Jim. He had wandered a good deal that day, after first leaving Chebasset in the morning and next spending much time at a ticker. He had not been home; he had not eaten, he had given Mather the slip a couple of times, and his moods had varied from fear to bold resolution, and then to sullen despair. But since in the light fluids of his nature hope easily beat up its accustomed surface-froth, he arrived at the Harmons' in a more cheerful mood, looking for the coming of Ellis to relieve him of the consequences of his folly. When Mrs. Harmon had drawn the portieres, and had begun to tell him how untidy he was, he explained matters with a laugh.

"Been sitting over my accounts," he said. "Forgot to brush my hair, did I? Here's a mirror; just look away a moment, Mrs. Harmon, please, while I – " He began to arrange his hair with his fingers.

But she watched him. "I can't lose a chance to see a man prink," she said. "Tell me about the accounts, Mr. Wayne."

"Upon my word," he cried, "there's one item I forgot to put down! Just like me; and so important, too!"

"What is it?" she inquired.

"The item, or the cost?"

"Both. Tell me."

He set a condition. "One or the other, choose. Wait!" He went to his overcoat, which he had flung upon a chair, and drew a box from the pocket. "Now choose," he directed, holding up the box.

"Oh," she pouted, "that is one of Price's boxes. I can't know the cost if I am to see what you've bought. You'll show it to me, won't you?"

"You would like to see it?"

"Of course."

"Then open it," he said, giving her the box. "It's for you."

"For me?" and she opened the little case. "Oh, Mr. Wayne, a locket! What good taste you have – oh, and I didn't see the chain!" Then she regarded him reproachfully. "Now, Jim, you know you really mustn't."

"Always call me Jim!" he directed. "Why mustn't I?"

"Because you can't afford it."

"I can!" he asserted. "At least, I could when I bought it. I was three thousand to the good then."

"Indeed?" she thought, "and what happened later?" Deciding that possession was worth securing, she snapped the chain around her neck. "And so you have had a very lucky day?"

"Well," explained Jim, "there was a steady rise at first. But then there came a couple of flurries, and the bottom dropped out of everything I held."

"And you lost much?"

"No, no," he said quickly. "I was watching; I got out at once. I'm not so very badly off, and Ellis said he'd help me straighten matters. He's coming here this evening."

She was much relieved, but covered her feeling by coquetting. "So that is all you came here for?"

"That isn't fair," cried Jim. "Didn't I bring the locket? Now Mrs. Harmon!" He tried to take her hand. After some resistance on her part, he succeeded.

Holding that plump and somewhat large assembly of digits, from which no manicurist had as yet been able to remove the fresh bright pink reminding of its earlier uses (for Mrs. Harmon had once done her sewing and washed her own clothes) – holding that hand, Jim felt more agitation than when he first held Beth's. And though he looked into wide-open eyes, which met his without a tremor of their lids or a suggestion of a downward glance, Jim was more thrilled than by the sweet confusion Beth so oft discovered, even to her accepted lover. This was rare; it quickened his blood; he was preparing to taste the ruby of those lips, when into his consciousness came the clang of the door-bell, which was of the good old-fashioned kind. Before the noise had well begun, Mrs. Harmon had withdrawn her hand and placed a chair between herself and her admirer, whose ardent glance had proclaimed his intention with such distinctness that (combined with the door-bell) it had alarmed her modesty. And although Jim, calculating that the servant could not reach the door for half a minute, pursued and begged her not to be so cruel, she laughed at him and maintained her distance until in the hall were heard the rustle of the maid's skirts and then the opening of the front door. Jim was so disgusted that even the appearance of Ellis did not at first recall him to a willing obedience of the laws of propriety. But when Ellis, from an abrupt entrance, as abruptly halted and fixed him with a scowl, Jim came back to himself.

"Oh," said Ellis, "I had forgot you."

"I – I don't want to trouble you, Mr. Ellis," replied Jim.

"But you'd like some four, five, six thousand to help you out, hey? That's what you've been waiting here for?"

"You said you'd help me, sir."

Ellis turned his unchanged scowl on Mrs. Harmon. "Better drop him, Lydia," he said. "He's an eternal fool."

"Stephen," she cried indignantly, "have you lost money, too? More than he has, I'm sure." He sneered, and she added, "Something's gone wrong with you, then, to make you so rude."

His frown became blacker still; he had been walking the streets, and came here in the hope of distraction only to be reminded of Judith. "Hold your tongue, Lydia," he said roughly. Then he surveyed Jim once more. "You little fool, get out of your scrape by yourself!" Grasping his hat as if he would crush its brim, he turned to go.

"Don't come again, Stephen," she flung after him, "until you've found your temper."

Yet the last glimpse of Ellis, as he departed, gave distress to poor Jim. "Why," he said helplessly, as the outer door closed. "Why, Mrs. Harmon, he – he said he'd help me!"

But such common preoccupations as money-difficulties were, at this moment, foreign to Mrs. Harmon's mood. Jim had stirred her blood, she was glad that Ellis had gone. Now she moved nearer to the young man, so that the space between them was free. "Never mind," she said lightly.

"Never mind?" repeated Jim. "But Mrs. Harmon, I've – " No, he couldn't tell her. Yet what should he do?

"Leave business for the daytime," she said. "Forget the mill; forget the office." She came nearer still.

Jim hung his head. Mather was after him surely; and what could he say to his mother?

"Stephen will come round," said Mrs. Harmon. "Leave him to me."

"Oh," cried Jim, "you will help me? Just a little, Mrs. Harmon?"

"Why should I?" she asked archly. She was very close now, and was looking in his eyes.

"For our friendship," he answered.

"Friendship!" she repeated. Her tone roused him; he looked, and her glance kindled his. "Only friendship?" she asked softly.

"Oh!" he breathed, and caught her in his arms.

Again came the cursed interruption of the jangling door-bell. "You shall not go!" he said, holding her fast. She murmured, "I do not wish to." They stood motionless, and heard the servant pass through the hall and open the front door. They listened, ready to spring apart.

"The Judge?" the servant asked. "Yes, in his study. This way." Again the footsteps and the rustling skirt passed the door. The two in the parlour waited until the door of the Judge's study opened and shut. Then Jim lowered his head upon the one that nestled at his shoulder.

"At last!" he whispered. And their lips met.

But Beth was in the Judge's study. Behind his table sat the old man – no, not so very old, in years only sixty, but he carried them ill. A life of labour among books, a disappointment in his wife, made him seem ten years older than he was. The Judge never exercised, was sometimes short of breath and dizzy, but was at all times scornful of the wisdom of doctors. His face was naturally stern, yet a smile came on it when he saw Beth. He rose, adjusted a different pair of glasses, and then saw the distress on her countenance.

"Why, Beth!" he exclaimed. "Is anything wrong?"

"Is Mr. Pease not here?" she asked in return.

"Pease? No, he has not been here."

"His cousin said," explained Beth, "that he was coming here. And so I came at once, since you have no telephone. Father – oh, Judge Harmon, my father has killed himself!"

The Judge turned white. "Killed?" He put his hand to his breast. "My dear child! My poor Beth! Killed himself? Oh, I am so sorry!"

"There is nothing to do," said Beth with admirable calmness. "But he left a letter directed to Mr. Mather and Mr. Pease."

"Mr. Pease is not here," the Judge repeated, much distressed. "Let me bring you home again. – But your Mr. Wayne was here earlier. Perhaps he is still in the parlour with my wife."

"Jim here?" cried Beth, springing to the door. "Oh, I hope he is!" Hastily she left the study, sped along the hall, and parted the parlour curtains. There were Jim and Mrs. Harmon, in the growing fierceness of their first embrace. Beth saw how eagerly they strained together, and heard their panting breaths.

She stood still and made no sound, but her senses noted everything: Jim's hand that pressed on Mrs. Harmon's shoulder, her closed eyes, her hands linked behind his neck – and his sudden movement as he shifted his arm, only to press her closer. And still that clinging kiss continued, ecstatic, terrible. Beth could not move, could scarcely breathe, until behind her rose the Judge's cracked and horror-stricken voice.

"Lydia!"

Hurriedly they disengaged and stood apart – moist lips, hot cheeks, and burning eyes still giving evidence of their passion. Then Mrs. Harmon dropped her face into her hands and turned away, but Jim gazed with mounting shame into the eyes that met his – met while yet they showed Beth's detestation of him. And the Judge stood quiet, his hand pressed to his breast, his breath stopped, his head confused with the noises that roared in his ears.

At last Beth moved. Slowly she put her hands together; her eyes showed more of indignation, less of loathing. She drew her hands apart and held out to him the right – not with fingers upward, beckoning, but palm downward, fingers closed together. Then she opened them. The golden circlet fell, its diamond flashing; it bounded on the rug, and rolled; it stopped at Mrs. Harmon's feet. She, looking downward through her fingers, wondering at the silence, saw, and started away with a cry.

Then Beth turned her back on Jim, and went away. The old Judge followed, dazed, and the curtains fell behind them.

CHAPTER XXVII

In Which Judge Harmon Leaves the Story

The Judge opened the street-door for Beth, and seemed to be preparing to follow her out. In spite of all she had gone through, perhaps because of it, her mind was alive to little things, and she saw that he was dazed. "You're not coming with me, sir? And without your coat?"

"I was going with you, was I not?" he asked. "But I – I've forgotten. Can you find your way alone?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "You must not come. Go in, sir." As if mechanically, he obeyed her, and shut the door. Beth went down the steps.

But the Judge seemed still confused. Slowly, very slowly he entered the hall. He went to the great chair that stood opposite the parlour door, and sat in it. His breath still came with difficulty, his head was buzzing; he could not remember what had happened. Then, raising his head, he looked through the portieres, which he and Beth had parted slightly, into the parlour. He saw, he remembered, and his heart gave a great leap in his breast.

So long as they heard voices at the door, Mrs. Harmon and Jim had stood listening. But when the indistinct tones ceased, and the door shut, they looked at each other.

"They've both gone!" Jim said. But they listened a moment longer. The slow footsteps of the Judge, as he made his way over the heavy rugs, were inaudible. Jim held his hands out to her again, but she pointed to the ring upon the floor.

"Trouble for you!"

He picked up the ring. "Trouble for both of us," he responded gloomily.

"Worst for you," she replied. "What shall you do?"

"I don't know."

"Oh!" and she stamped her foot. "How stupid of us! It was all, at last, just as we wished it. It could have gone on, nobody knowing. Now – oh, I am furious!"

"You mean," he asked, "that you would have let it go on as we were?"

"Yes."

"Meeting only once in a while?"

"Of course!"

"And that would have satisfied you?"

"Satisfied? No, Jim. But that would be all we could have."

"Then I am glad we were seen!" he cried. "I couldn't have gone on that way. Now we shall have to act."

"Act? What do you mean?"

"This," answered Jim. "Everything has got to stop for me, anyway. I'm – I'm in trouble. Ellis – " and he stopped to curse.

"Don't, don't!" she begged him. "Explain; I don't understand."

"He led me into it," said Jim. "He suggested it all: how I could take the money they send to the mill every Saturday for the men's pay, how I could get my mother's power of attorney, and use her securities. I never should have thought of it but for him – never!"

"You mean," asked Mrs. Harmon, "that you have done those things?"

"Yes," he replied. "I wanted to please you, to give you things, and have money."

She turned partly away from him, and stood looking down. Jim came to her side. "But we don't care, do we, Lydia?" He put his hands on her shoulders.

She moved away quickly. "What do you mean?"

"Ellis won't help me. Mather is after me. I've got to go away – go away this very night. Lydia, come with me!"

"Mr. Wayne," she began slowly.

"No; call me Jim!"

"You poor Jim, then. I can't do this."

"Why?" he stammered. "I thought you loved me?"

"So I do. So I will, if you'll stay here and let things go on as they were."

"Haven't I shown you I can't?"

"It can be hushed up."

"No, no!" he cried in despair. "And I can't face people; everybody will know. Lydia, come with me!" He neared her again, stretching out his arms; as she sought to avoid him, he strode to her side and caught her. "Come, come! I can't give you up." He crushed her to him and began kissing her eagerly.

But she resisted with sudden energy. "Let me go! Shall I call the servants?" He released her in astonishment; angrily she moved away from him, smoothing her dress. "I believe you're a fool after all, as Mr. Ellis said."

"Lydia!"

"I am Mrs. Harmon," she returned. "If you won't make a fight for yourself, you're not the man I thought you. Go away, then, but not with me."

"Then you don't love me?"

"Boy!" she said, growing scornful. "Love? What is love but convenience?"

"Oh," he cried, "come! You must come with me. See, I have money. Seven, eight hundred, I think. That will last a long time. We can go somewhere; I can get work; no one will find us."

"And that," she asked, "is all you offer? Eight hundred dollars, and a life in hiding!"

He began to understand, this poor Jim, but it was too much to grasp all at once. "You're fooling me, aren't you? Don't; I can't bear it. Say you'll come with me!" Beseeching her with open arms, he went toward her so eagerly that to avoid him she slipped around the table and went to the door. Then as she looked back at him, awkwardly pursuing, she saw him as she had never seen him before. He had rumpled his hair again: none but a manly head looks well when mussed. His eyes were bloodshot, his mouth open; she turned away in disgust, and looked into the hallway to measure her retreat.

There she saw her husband sitting, upright in his chair. With a sudden movement she threw the curtains wide apart and revealed him to Jim. "See," she said. "I have a protector. Now will you leave me?"

A protector! Jim, at first startled, saw the open mouth, the glazing eyes. He pointed, gasping; she saw and was frightened. In three steps she was at her husband's side; she grasped his arm. He was dead! Then she recovered herself. The doctor had said this might happen.

"He is – is – " hesitated Jim. "Oh, come back here; shut it out!"

"I shall call the servants," she answered. "You had better go."

"Go? And you are free! Lydia," he cried in despair, "for the last time, come with me!"

Cold and steady, she returned the proper response. "And you ask me that in his dead presence! Free, when his death claims my duty to him? Go with you, when I should stay and mourn him?"

Had she opened her breast and shown him a heart of stone, she could not better have revealed her nature. It was to Jim as if the earth had yawned before his feet, showing rottenness beneath its flowers. That eye of ice, that hard mouth, those blasphemous words! Jim did not know, he never could remember, how he got himself from the house.

He fled by night from the pursuit that never was to be. Taking the New York train, he lay in his berth, thinking, dozing, thinking again, while the train sped through the darkness. He slept and dreamed of burning kisses; he woke to feel the swaying of the car, to hear the whistle scream, or, shutting out all other sounds, to strain his ears for noises close at hand – the rustling of the curtains or the soft footfall of the porter. He slept again, and from a nightmare in which a serpent coiled about him, he came to himself in a quiet station, where steam hissed steadily, where hurrying steps resounded, where trucks rumbled by, and voices were heard giving orders. He looked from his berth along the curtained aisle – what misery besides his own was hiding behind those hangings? Then he dozed again with the motion of the train, and saw Beth, far removed and wonderfully pure, looking down on him with horror; his dream changed and Mrs. Harmon stood at his side, leading a walking corpse. And then he started from sleep with a smothered shriek, and with his thoughts urged the train to go faster, faster away from Beth, from that temptress, from the friends he had betrayed and the mother whom he had robbed.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Judith Binds Herself

Judith was alone, waiting for Mather, and wrestling with the question which at the discovery of her father's body had rushed upon her. Was his death her fault?

Had she accepted Ellis, or had she recalled her refusal when her father begged her, the Colonel would now be living. She might have guessed the desperate resolve that he had taken. What would have been her duty, had she understood? Or what should she have done, had he appealed to her? And not understanding, not having foreseen, how much was her fault?

There was here a chance for speculation to drive a weaker woman wild. But Judith had not the nature to yield to such a danger. Essentially combative, naturally active, her habit was to put the past behind, accept the present, and look the future in the face. This instinct stood by her now, and even though her shuddering mind still dwelt upon the catastrophe, something within her called her to stand up, control herself, look forward. And one more mental trait, which was in some respects the great defect in her character – namely her almost masculine fashion of judging herself and others – here stood her in good stead, and served her by showing her father's action in the proper light.

Though she perceived that she had led him into this entanglement, she saw more. The Colonel had had not only his own but also his wife's fortune: where had the money gone? Strong as were Judith's grief and pity for him, abundantly as she acknowledged her part in his error, she could not fail to see how selfish had been his actions, how cowardly this desertion!

But remembering her own great error, she could not blame. How deeply they had both been at fault! She began to sympathise with the Colonel's mistakes, to understand him better, to wish that in their relations they had not been so aloof. He must have been many times in doubt, pain, the deepest of trouble, and she had never suspected. Judith began to be stirred by more daughterly feelings than since childhood; her grief and pity grew stronger, unavailing regret seized her, and when George Mather arrived he found her in tears.

He had never imagined such a sight, nor had he met such sweet dignity as that with which, controlling herself, she rose and welcomed him. She told him of her father's death. Mather had not admired the Colonel; he was not surprised at such a weak end; and while she spoke all his senses dwelt on her – on the wonderful fresh charm, which, springing from the new humility, made more of a woman of her. Stoically but stupidly he paced the room, remembering that he was not there to consider himself, but to do what he could for her. There were things which must be done; as gently as he could he reminded her of them, and going to the telephone called up the doctor and asked him to bring the medical examiner. And while Mather did this, cursing himself that he could not console her, all the time a new sensation was occupying her – the comfort of having, for the first time in her life, a man to depend on.

Then Beth arrived, with Pease who had met her in the street – Beth, wild of eye, the very foundations of her nature shocked, in one evening twice betrayed. The poor little thing still maintained a false composure, checked from time to time the tears that would spring, and fought with all her force against the thoughts which were ready to engulf her. She went straight to Judith and rested at her side, feeling that there was strength, and that with George in the house, and with Pease there, silent and steady, no more harm could come to her.

Judith sent the two men to her father's study, where they saw the evidence of his one resolute deed. They took the letter, the result of his only wise one. Again in the parlour, they opened and read the letter together; their brows clouded as they read, and at the end their eyes met in a look of inquiry.