The Silent Battle

She examined his face with a new interest. There was something here she could not understand. She had known Phil Gallatin since his boyhood and had always believed in him. She had watched his development with the eyes of an elder sister, and had never given up the hope that he might carry on the traditions of his blood in all things save the one to be dreaded. She had never talked with him before. Indeed, she would not have done so to-night had it not been that a strong friendly impulse had urged her. She made it a practice never to interfere in the lives of others, if interference meant the cost of needless pain; but as she had said to him, Phil Gallatin was worth helping. She was thankful, too, that he had taken her advice kindly.

What was this he was saying about letting go purposely. What—but she had reached the ends of friendliness and the beginnings of curiosity.

“No, you’re not a fool, Phil. You sha’n’t call yourself names.” And then, “You say you weren’t bothered—much?”

“No. Things had got a good deal easier for me. I was beginning to feel hopeful for the future. It had cost me something, but I had got my grip. I had started in at the office again, and Kenyon had given me some important work to do. Good old Uncle John! He seemed to know that I was trying.”

He stopped a moment and then went on rapidly. “He turned me loose on a big corporation case the firm was preparing for trial. I threw myself into the thing, body and soul. I worked like a dog—night and day, and every hour that I worked my grip on myself grew stronger. I was awake then, Nellie, full of enthusiasm, my old love of my profession glowing at a white heat that absorbed and swallowed all other fires. It seemed that I found out some things the other fellows had overlooked, and a few days before the big case was to be called, Kenyon asked me if I didn’t want to take charge. I don’t believe he knew how good that made me feel. I seemed to have come into my own again. I knew I could win and I told him so. So he and Hood dropped out and turned the whole thing over to me. I had it all at my fingers’ ends. You know, I once learned a little law, Nellie, and I was figuring on a great victory.”

As Gallatin spoke, his long frame slowly straightened, his head drew well back on his shoulders and a new fire glowed in his eyes.

“It was great!” he went on. “I don’t believe any man alive ever felt more sure of himself than I did when I wound up that case and shut up my desk for the day. If I won, and win I should, it would give Kenyon, Hood and Gallatin a lot of prestige. Things looked pretty bright that night. I began to see the possibilities of a career, Nellie, a real career that even a Gallatin might be proud of.”

He came to a sudden pause, his figure crumpled, and the glow in his eyes faded as though a film had fallen across them.

“And then?” asked Nellie Pennington.

“And then,” he muttered haltingly, “something happened to me—I had a—a disappointment—and things went all wrong inside of me—I didn’t care what happened. I went to the bad, Nellie, clean—clean to the bad–”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pennington softly, “I heard. That’s why I spoke to you to-night. You haven’t been–”

“No, thank God, I’m keeping straight now, but it did hurt to have done so well and then to have failed so utterly. You see the case I was speaking of—Kenyon, Hood and Gallatin had turned the whole business over to me, and I wasn’t there to plead. They couldn’t find me. There was a postponement, of course, but my opportunity had passed and it won’t come again.”

He stopped, glanced at her face and then turned away. “I don’t know why I’ve told you these things,” he finished soberly, “for sympathy is hardly the kind of thing a man in my position can stand for.”

Nellie Pennington remained silent. Her interest was deep and her wonder uncontrollable. Therefore, being a woman, she did not question. She only waited. Her woman’s eyes to-night had been wide open, and she had already made a rapid diagnosis of which her curiosity compelled a confirmation.

They were alone at their end of the room. Miss Loring and Mr. Van Duyn had gone in to the bridge tables and Egerton Savage was conversing in a low tone with Betty Tremaine, whose fingers straying over the piano, were running softly through an aria from “La Bohème.”

“You know, Nellie,” he went on presently, “I’m not in the habit of talking about my own affairs, even with my friends, but I believe it’s done me a lot of good to talk to you. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

She nodded and then went on quickly. “The trouble with you is that you don’t talk enough about yourself, Phil. You’re a seething mass of introspection. It isn’t healthy. Friends are only conversational chopping-blocks after all. Why don’t you use them? Me—for instance. I’m safe, sane, and I confess a trifle curious.” She paused a moment, and then said keenly:

“It’s a girl, of course.”

He raised his head quickly, and then lowered it as quickly again.

“No, there isn’t any girl.”

“Oh, yes, there is. I’ve known it for quite two hours.”

“How?” he asked in alarm.

She waved her fan with a graceful gesture. “Second sight, a sixth sense, an appreciation for the fourth dimension—in short—the instinct of a woman.”

“You mean that you guessed?”

“No, that I perceived.”

“It takes a woman to perceive something which doesn’t exist,” he said easily.

She turned and examined him with level brows. “Then why did you admit it?”

“I didn’t.”

She leaned back among her pillows and laughed at him mockingly. “Oh, Phil! Must I be brutal?”

“What do you mean?”

“That the girl—is here—to-night.”

“That is not true,” he stammered. “She is not here.”

Mrs. Pennington did not spare him.

“A moment ago—you denied that there was a girl. Now you’re willing to admit that she’s only absent. Please don’t doubt the accuracy of my feminine deductions, Phil. Nothing provokes me more. You may drive me to the extreme of mentioning her name.”

Gallatin stopped fencing. It was an art he was obliged reluctantly to confess, in which he was far from a match for this tantalizing adversary. So he relapsed into silence, aware that the longer the conversation continued the more vulnerable he became.

But she reassured him in a moment.

“Oh, why won’t you trust me?” she whispered, her eyes dark with interest. “I do want to help you if you’ll let me. It was only a guess, Phil, a guess founded on the most intangible evidence, but I couldn’t help seeing (you know a heaven-born hostess is Midas-eared and Argus-eyed) what passed between you and Jane Loring.”

“Nothing that I’m aware of passed between us,” he said quietly. “She was very civil.”

“As civil as a cucumber—no more—no less. How could I know that she didn’t want to go in to dinner with you?”

“You heard?”

“Yes, from the back of my head. Besides, Phil, I’ve always told you that your eyes were too expressive.” His look of dismay was so genuine that she stopped and laid her hand along his arm. “I was watching you, Phil. That’s why I know. I shouldn’t have noticed, if I hadn’t been.”

“Yes,” he slowly admitted at last. “Miss Loring and I had met before.”

At that he stopped and would say no more. Instinct warned her that curiosity had drawn her to the verge of intrusiveness, and so she, too, remained silent while through her head a hundred thoughts were racing—benevolent, romantic, speculative, concerning these two young people whom she liked—and one of whom was unhappy. They had met before, on terms of intimacy, but where?

Intimacies worth quarreling over were scarcely to be made in the brief season during which Jane Loring had been in New York, for unlike Mr. Worthington, Phil Gallatin was no cultivator of social squabs. Obviously they had met elsewhere. Last summer? Phil Gallatin was fishing in Canada—Canada! So was Jane! Mrs. Pennington straightened and examined her companion curiously. She had heard the story of Phil Gallatin’s wood-nymph and was now thoroughly awake to the reasons for his reticence, so she sank back among her cushions, her eyes downcast, a smile wreathing her lips, the smile of the collector of objects of art and virtue who has stumbled upon a hidden rarity. It was a smile, too, of self-appreciation and approval, for her premises had been negligible and her conclusion only arrived at after a process of induction which surprised her by the completeness of its success. She was already wondering how her information could best serve her purposes as mediator when Gallatin spoke again.

“We had met before, Nellie, under unusual and—and—er—trying conditions. There was a—misunderstanding—something happened—which you need not know—a damage to—to her pride which I would give my right hand to repair.”

“Perhaps, if you could see her alone–”

“Yes, I was hoping for that—but it hardly seems possible here.”

Mrs. Pennington was leaning forward now, slightly away from him, thinking deeply, thoroughly alive to her responsibilities—her responsibilities to Jane Loring as well as to the man beside her. It was the judgment of the world that Phil was a failure—her own judgment, too, in spite of her affection for him; and yet in her breast there still lived a belief that he still had a chance for regeneration. She had seen the spark of it in his eyes, heard the echo of it in tones of his voice when he had spoken of his last failures. She hesitated long before replying, her eyes looking into space, like a seer of visions, as though she were trying to read the riddle of the future. And when she spoke it was with tones of resolution.

“I think it might be managed. Will you leave it to me?”

She gave him her hand in a warm clasp. “I believe in you, Phil, and I understand,” she finished softly.

Gallatin followed her to the door of the library, unquiet of mind and sober of demeanor. He had long known Nellie Pennington to be a wonderful woman and the tangible evidences of her cleverness still lingered as the result of his interview. There seemed to be nothing a woman of her equipment could not accomplish, nothing she could not learn if she made up her mind to it. In twenty minutes of talk she had succeeded in extracting from Gallatin, without unseemly effort, his most carefully treasured secret, and indeed he half suspected that her intuition had already supplied the missing links in the chain of gossip that was going the rounds about him. But he did not question her loyalty or her tact and, happy to trust his fortunes entirely into her hands, he approached the bridge-tables aware that the task which his hostess had assumed so lightly was one that would tax her ingenuity to the utmost.

Her last whispered admonition as she left him in the hall had been “Wait, and don’t play bridge!” and so he followed her injunction implicitly, wondering how the miracle was to be accomplished. Miss Loring did not raise her head at his approach, and even when the others at the table nodded greetings she bent her head upon her cards and made her bids, carelessly oblivious of his presence.

Miss Jaffray hardly improved his situation when she flashed a mocking glance up at him and laughed. “Satyr!” she said. “I could never have believed it of you, Phil. You were such a nice little boy, too, though you would pull my pig-tail!”

“Don’t mind Nina, Phil,” said Worthington gayly. “Satyrical remarks are her long suit, especially when she’s losing.”

Nina regarded him reproachfully. “There was a time, Bibby, when you wouldn’t have spoken so unkindly of me. Is this the way you repay your debt of gratitude?”

“Gratitude!”

“Yes, I might have married you, you know.”

“Oh, Nina! I’d forgotten.”

“Think of the peril you escaped and be thankful!”

“I am,” he said devoutly.

“You ought to be.” And then to Miss Loring, “Bibby hasn’t proposed to you yet, has he, Jane,” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Jane laughing. “Have you, Mr. Worthington?”

He flushed painfully and gnawed at his small mustache. Nina had scored heavily.

“I hope he does,” Jane went on with a sense of throwing a buoy to a drowning man, “because I’m sure I’d accept him.”

Worthington smiled gratefully and adored her in fervent silence.

“Men have stopped asking me to marry them lately,” sighed Nina. “It annoys me dreadfully.” She spoke of this misfortune with the same careless tone one would use with reference to a distasteful pattern in wall-paper.

“But think of the hearts you’ve broken,” said Gallatin.

“Or of the hearts I wanted to break but couldn’t,” she replied. “Yours, for instance, Phil.”

“You couldn’t have tried very hard,” he laughed.

“I didn’t know you were a satyr then,” she said, pushing her chair back from the table. “Your rubber, I think, Bibby. I’m sure we’d better stop, Dick, or you’ll never ask me here again.”

XIII

MRS. PENNINGTON’S BROUGHAM

There was a general movement of dispersal, and Philip Gallatin, who had now given up all hope of the opportunity Nellie Pennington had promised him, followed the party into the hall, his eyes following Jane, who had found her hostess and was making her adieux. He watched her slender figure as she made her way up the stairs, and turned to Mrs. Pennington reproachfully.

“Don’t speak, Phil,” his hostess whispered. “It’s all arranged. Go at once and get your things.”

Gallatin obeyed quickly and when he came down he heard Mrs. Pennington saying, “So sorry, Jane. Your machine came, but the butler sent it home again. There was some mistake in the orders, it seems. But I’ve ordered my brougham, and it’s waiting at the door for you. You don’t mind, do you? I’ve asked Mr. Gallatin to see that you get home safely.”

“Of course, it’s very kind of you, dear.” She hesitated. “But it seems too bad to trouble Mr. Gallatin.”

“I’m sure—I’m delighted,” he said, and it was evident that he meant it.

Jane Loring glanced around her quickly, helplessly it seemed to Gallatin, but the sight of Coleman Van Duyn, waiting hat in hand, helped her to a decision.

“It’s so kind of you, Mr. Gallatin,” she said gratefully, and then, in a whisper as she kissed her hostess, “Nellie, you’re simply odious!” and made her way out of the door.

Gallatin followed quickly, but Miss Loring reached the curb before him and giving her number to the coachman, got in without the proffered hand of her escort.

Angry though she was, Jane Loring kept her composure admirably. All the world, it seemed, was conspiring to throw her with this man whom she now knew she must detest. If fate, blind and unthinking, had made him her dinner partner, only design, malicious and uncivil, could be blamed for his presence now. She sat in her corner, her figure tense, her head averted, her wraps carefully drawn about her, a dark and forbidding wraith of outraged dignity, waiting only for him to speak that she might crush him.

Gallatin sat immovable for a moment, conscious of all the feminine forces arrayed against him.

“I make no apologies,” he began with an assurance which surprised her. “I wanted to see you alone and no other chance offered. I suppose I might say I’m sorry, but that wouldn’t be true. I’m not sorry and I don’t want any misunderstandings. I asked Mrs. Pennington–”

“Oh!” she broke in wrathfully. “Many people, it seems, enjoy your confidences, Mr. Gallatin.”

“No,” he went on, steadily. “I’m not given to confidences, Miss Loring. Mrs. Pennington is one of my oldest and best friends. I told her it was necessary for me to see you alone for a moment and she took pity on me.”

“Mrs. Pennington has taken an unpardonable liberty and I shall tell her so,” said Jane decisively.

“I hope you won’t do that.”

“Have matters reached such a point in New York that a girl can’t drive out alone without being open to the importunity of any stranger?”

“I am not a stranger,” he put in firmly, and his voice dominated hers. “We met within the Gates of Chance, Miss Loring, on equal terms. I have the right of any man to plead–”

“You’ve already pleaded.”

“You were prejudiced. I’ve appealed—to a higher tribunal—your sense of justice.”

“I know no law but my own instinct.”

“You are not true to your own instincts then, or they are not true to you.”

It was sophistry, of course, but she was a trifle startled at the accuracy of his deduction, for she realized that it was her judgment only that rejected him and that her instincts advised her of the pleasure she took in his company. Her instincts then being unreliable, she followed her judgment blindly, uncomfortably conscious that she did it against her will, and angry with herself that it was so.

“I only know, Mr. Gallatin,” she said coldly, “that both judgment and instinct warn me against you. Whatever there is left in you of honor—of decency, must surely respond to my distaste for this intrusion.”

“If I admit that I’m neither honorable nor decent, will you give me the credit for speaking the truth?” he asked slowly.

“With reference to what?” scornfully.

“To this story they’re telling.”

“You brought it here, of course.”

“Will you believe me if I say that I didn’t?”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Simply because I ask you to.”

She looked out of the carriage window away from him.

“I believed in you once, Mr. Gallatin.”

He bowed his head.

“Even that is something,” he said. “You wouldn’t have believed in me then if instinct had forbidden it. I am the same person you once believed in.”

“My judgment was at fault. I dislike you intensely.”

“I won’t believe it.”

“You must. You did me an injury that nothing can repair.”

“An injury to your dignity, to your womanhood and sensibility–”

“Hardly,” she said scornfully, “or even to my pride. It was only my body—you hurt, Mr. Gallatin—your kisses—they soiled me–”

“My God, Jane! Don’t! Haven’t you punished me enough? I was mad, I tell you. There was a devil in me, that owned me body and soul, that stole my reason, killed what was good, and made a monster of the love I had cherished—an insensate enemy that perverted and brutalized every decent instinct, a Thing unfamiliar to you which frightened and drove you away in fear and loathing. It was not me you feared, Jane, for you trusted me. It was the Thing you feared, as I fear it, the Enemy that had pursued me into the woods where I had fled from it.”

Jane Loring sat in her corner apparently unconcerned, but her heart was throbbing and the hands beneath the wide sleeves of her opera kimono were nervously clutched. The sound of his voice, its deep sonorous tones when aroused were familiar to her. As he paused she stole a glance at him, for as he spoke of his Enemy he had turned away from her, his eyes peering out into the dimly lighted street, as if the mention of his weakness shamed him.

“I’m not asking you for your pity,” he went on more steadily. “I only want your pardon. I don’t think it’s too much to ask. It wasn’t the real Phil Gallatin who brought that shame on you.”

“The real Phil Gallatin! Which is the real Phil Gallatin?” she asked cruelly.

“What you make him—to-night,” he replied quickly. “I’ve done what I can without you—lived like an outcast on the memories of happiness, but I can’t subsist on that. Memory is poor food for a starving man.”

“I can’t see how I can be held accountable. I did not make you, Mr. Gallatin.”

“But you can mar me. I’ve come,” he remembered the words of Mrs. Pennington, “I’ve come to the parting of the ways. Up there—I gained my self-respect—and lost it. The best of me you saw and the worst of me. You knew me only for five days and yet no one in the world can know me exactly as you do.”

“The pity of it–”

“The best of me and the worst of me, the man in me and the beast in me, my sanity and my madness. All these you saw. The record is at least complete.”

“I hope so.”

“I could not lie to you nor cheat you with false sentiment. I played the game fairly until—until then.”

“Yes—until then.”

“You cared for me, there in the woods. I earned your friendship. And I hoped that the time had come when I could prove—to you, at least, that I was not to be found wanting.”

“And yet—you failed,” she said.

“Yes, I failed. Oh, I don’t try to make my sin any the less. I only want you to remember the circumstances—to acquit me of any intention to do you harm. I am no despoiler of women, even my enemies will tell you so. That, thank God, was not a part of my heritage. I have always looked on women of your sort with a kind of wonder. I have never understood them—nor they me. I thought of them as I thought of pictures or of children, things set apart from the grubby struggle for material and moral existence. I liked to be with them because their ways fell in pleasant places and because, in respecting them, I could better learn to respect myself. God knows, I respected you—honored you! Don’t say you don’t believe that!”

“I—I think you did–” she stammered.

“I tried to show you how much. You knew what was in my heart. I would have died for you—or lived for you, if you could have wished it so.”

He paused a moment, his brows tangled in thought.

“I learned many things up there—things that neither men nor women nor books had taught me, something of the directness and persistence of the forces of nature, the binding contract of a man’s body with his soul, the glorification of labor and the meaning of responsibility. I was happy there—happy as I had never been before. I wanted the days to be longer so that I could work harder for you, and my pride in your comfort was the greatest pride I have ever known. You were my fetich—the symbol of Intention. You made me believe in myself, and defied the Enemy that was plucking at my elbow. I could have lived there always and I prayed in secret that we might never be found. I wanted you to believe in me as I was already beginning to believe in myself. Whatever I had been—here in the world—up there at least I was a success. I wanted to prove it thoroughly—to kill, that you might eat and be warm—to hew and build, that you might be comfortable. I wanted a shrine for you, that I might put you there and keep you—always. I worshiped you, Jane, God help me, as I worship you now.”

His voice trembled and broke as he paused.

“I—I must not listen to you, Mr. Gallatin,” she said hurriedly, for her heart was beating wildly.

“I worship you, Jane,” he repeated, “and I ask for nothing but your pardon.”

“I—I forgive you,” she gasped.

“I’m glad of that. I’ll try to deserve your indulgence,” he said slowly. He stopped again, and it was a long time before he went on. The brougham was moving rapidly up the Avenue and the turmoil of night sounds was fading into silence. Forty-second Street was already behind them, and the fashionable restaurants were gay with lights. He seemed to realize then that Jane would soon reach her destination, and he went on quickly, as though there were still much that he must say in the little time left to him to say it in. “I suppose it would be too much if I asked you to let me see you once in a while,” he said quickly, as though he feared her refusal.

“I—I’ve no doubt that we’ll meet, Mr. Gallatin.”

“I don’t mean that,” he persisted. “I don’t think I’ll be—I don’t think I’ll go around much this winter. I want to talk to you, if you’ll let me. I—I can’t give you up—I need you. I need your belief in me, the incentive of your friendship, your spell to exorcise the—the Thing that came between us.”

“I am trying to forget that,” she murmured. “It would be easier if—if you hadn’t said what you did.”

“What did I say? I don’t know,” he said passionately.

“That you—you loved me. It was the brute in you that spoke—not the man, the beast that kissed— Oh!” She brushed the back of her hand across her eyes. “It was not you! The memory of it will never go.”

He hung his head in shame.

“No, no, don’t!” he muttered. “You’re crucifying me!”

“If you had not said that–”

“It was monstrous. It was madness, but it was sweet.”

“Love is not brutal—does not shame—nor frighten,” she said slowly. “You had been so—so clean—so calm–”

“It was Arcadia, Jane,” he whispered, “your Arcadia and mine. It was the love in me that spoke, whatever I said—the love of a man, or of a beast, if you like. But it spoke truly. There were no conventions there but those of the forest, no laws but those of the heart. I had known you less than a week, and I had known you always. And you—up there—you loved me. Yes, it’s true. Do you think I couldn’t read in your eyes?”