Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

The place had seemed splendid to me as a boy, and I well remembered how all the beautiful wonders of the spring blossomed here as nowhere else. But now these grounds too seemed to have suffered a change: there was an air of neglect about the unpruned hedges, with straggling blossoms running riotously over fence and shrubbery; the beds of hyacinths and tulips were trampled, and as I neared the house I saw that the blinds swung carelessly and the old look of thrift and prosperity was quite absent. Still, I observed all this dreamily, wondering, as returned travellers are apt to do, if the change were in the things themselves or in my own eyes.

"Perhaps," thought I, "Jack and his wife live in New York," when, suddenly answering my doubt, Jack himself came down the avenue in his light wagon.

I stepped aside, standing still, and he regarded me at first absently, then with startled curiosity, and sharply drew his skittish mare back on her haunches. "Good God, Floyd!" said he, "how glad I am to see you!" We looked straight in each other's face for a time, and his features worked, as he regarded me, with some emotion. "You were going to the house?" said he. "Nobody could see you. I have been driving father to the factories to-day, and he is not so well after it, and my mother is with him. I have to be back at twelve, so jump in and come out with me."

I obeyed him. It was but two years since we had parted, but he had aged and seemed quite different from the Jack Holt of former times. He was roughly dressed, and, though scrupulously neat and shaven, looked, I am sure, fifteen years my senior. He touched his whip, and the mare plunged down the avenue at a pace too disconcerting to allow either of us to speak for a few moments, and we were at least a mile away before her swinging canter subsided into a trot.

"What is her name?" I asked, laughing. "It ought to be Mary Magdalen, for she has seven devils in her this morning."

"Don't you remember the Duchess?" he inquired with a flicker of something like a smile crossing his heavy face. "You christened her yourself."

I remembered the Duchess. The yearling colt had been given to him on his sixteenth birthday. He wanted to call her Georgy, but his mother forbade it: so we named her after that duchess of Devonshire who had made the name famous.

"You'll find I have forgotten nothing," I replied, "but my thoughts are such a medley that I can't settle them at once."

"When did you return?"

"Only four days ago: I have not seen my mother yet."

"And you have come to look me up? Floyd, that is kind."

Something in his cool, pleasant tones touched me powerfully. "I knew nothing about you," I blurted out. "Why, Jack, at this minute I'm not sure if you are married or not."

"I am not married," he said softly. He was not used to reply so quickly, and I waited for him to speak before I questioned him further. "I am well," he said presently, "and mother is in her usual health. Have you heard about my father?"

"Nothing. Both Harry and I have famished for news of you."

I could see a little trouble in his face: he would have preferred that somebody else should have broken his news to me. But he sighed, and went on without flinching. "My father had a paralytic stroke in December," he explained in his deliberate, gentle voice. "When once our eyes were opened we could easily comprehend that for months his mind had been failing. When the bad news came the accumulation of trouble was too much for him. We thought at first nothing could save him, but he rallied physically. His mind has quite gone, however," Jack added, his voice trembling: "his brain has softened."

I stared at him speechlessly: I knew by instinct that I had not heard the worst.

"The moment I saw you," pursued Jack, "my first thought was, 'I hope he knows the whole story.' You heard nothing of our failure?"

"Not a word."

"The firm of Holt & Strong suspended payment last December," said he with a deep flush rising to his temples. "There were two companies, you know: I was only in Holt & Co. Strong was in Europe. My poor father's weakness did not display itself openly, but took the form of mad secret speculations. It is a long story, Floyd. There were no bounds to his schemes, in which he involved not only himself, but others. He was president of the savings bank too, you may remember. The troubles began with the failure of a house in New York to which we owed something. He was pressed: there was a whisper of something wrong, and of course there came a run on the bank. I was not here. My father sent for me: when I came I found a riotous mob outside the closed doors, and he lay insensible in the bank parlor. He never recovered any real consciousness, and for weeks we worked in the dark. There was much to bear. I could have endured every loss without a murmur, had it not been for the cruelty of some of his smallest creditors."

He stopped for a few minutes, but when I would have spoken he motioned me to be silent, and presently went on: "There are men to-day who pretend to believe that my father's mental state is as perfect as ever—that he is merely shielding himself from punishment by shamming imbecility. Ah, well! let me continue. Just at this juncture one of our buildings was destroyed by fire. The insurance policy had lapsed, and he had failed to renew it. The factory was packed with goods ready for shipment. The loss to Holt & Strong was a quarter of a million of dollars." He stopped again, and I saw him moisten his dry lips. "The chief creditors," he resumed, "were honorable men. By the first of March we had agreed upon terms of adjustment. My mother gave up all she had. My sisters are angry with me that I allowed her to strip the house of everything that had possessed a moneyed value, and think it shameful that I despoiled her of her jewels. But such things did not count with my mother and me. I kept the Duchess—nothing else." He smiled sombrely as he pulled out his watch. It was the little silver one he had used when we played marbles together. "We paid fifty cents on the dollar," he said presently, "and by and by shall manage something of a dividend at the bank. It will give me plenty to do for years yet," he added with a peculiar smile.

"You have assumed your father's debts?" I exclaimed. "That seems a needless penalty, Jack."

"My father and I are as one," said he gently. "It was fortunate for me in every way that I was not my father's partner. When I entered Holt & Co. he gave up everything to me. I have the entire business now, and it leaves me little unoccupied time."

"You are doing well, I trust."

"Reasonably well." I knew the look on his heavy, sombre face—a patient but combative look, powerful as Fate itself.

"Do you mind telling me the rest, Jack?" I asked after a time. "If it hurts you don't open your lips."

The veins in his forehead swelled a little, yet he neither flinched nor reddened. "I suppose," he answered, his voice a little less clear and distinct, "you allude to my engagement to Miss Lenox. It was broken off when these troubles came. We were to have been married a year ago in June, but I was not quite free to take her travelling, and it seemed her wish to wait. The wedding-day was quite fixed for a fortnight after the date of my poor father's sickness. Of course I offered her her freedom at once when I realized my scanty prospects of ensuring her a luxurious future. Naturally, everything was broken off. I am hampered by circumstances. I shall never feel myself free to live even in ordinary comfort until my father's debts are paid to the last penny. My first duty is to my father and mother. My sisters are all married, have large families, and, above all, have lost the home feeling. We three are alone in the world in our reverses. When you see our home, Floyd, you won't wonder that I could not ask Georgy to come to it."

"But would she have come, Jack?" I stammered. "Was she faithful to you? would she not wait for you?"

"Georgy is not romantic," he said kindly, "and has not been brought up in a school which inspires the tenderest feelings. I should never have expected that sort of devotion from her, nor am I one to inspire it. I knew at once when the dark days came that everything was over. Blow after blow had struck me: just at that time that she should desert me was but one blow the more."

I threw my arm about him in the old way, but he did not turn now and smile into my face as when we were boys. This gloom was not so easily dispelled.

He himself ended the silence that I could not bring myself to break. "I have heard of a divided duty, but I can have no doubts, no dilemmas, as to mine. I believe that I am not fanciful—that I see realities just as they are. If ever man found work lying close to his hands, I have found it. If ever an entire and undivided responsibility rested upon human creature, it is mine. Every instinct of my heart, every decision of my intellect, alike shows me that my duty lies in the path which I am treading. Nobody on earth, nobody but God, knows just exactly what I have felt the few past months. I couldn't write to you and Harry. Life had always been a pleasant thing to me. My father was not a lovable man, nor was he in his home all that a son longs for in a father. Still, he was rich and respected; he represented a beneficent financial power; he controlled many interests, developed resources, carried out schemes which were useful alike to poor and rich. I used to be proud to hear it said, 'That is young Holt, son of Adam Holt of the – Mills.' Now I am obliged to bear with meekness, when he is called dishonest, when he is classed with those who have suffered the punishment of convicted felons, when his pitiful infirmity of body and mind is sneered at. We are living in our house as transient guests: as soon as it can be sold we shall seek some humbler shelter. The pleasant household ways are all gone: everything that used to gladden our eyes has been carried away. My mother's eyes rest nowhere save on my father's face or mine: she cannot look at the bare places in the house, for she thinks too much then of her great calamity. All these are troubles which cut me deep: you don't know, Floyd, how disgrace burns into the soul—worse than bereavement, worse than death. I have been bereaved of all, and I seem to have tasted the bitterness of a thousand deaths. Still"—he turned abruptly and looked me in the eyes with a stiff white face—"there are times when I feel but one loss. There is strength in me, and, please God, by and by I shall shape things to their right ends again; but this other loss! I don't need to tell you," he went on huskily, "how above and beyond all other objects on earth Georgy Lenox has been to me. At times, retrievement, success, unsullied honor, all seem to me as nothing, since she is not to be at the end of them."

We had reached the factories now, and he resumed his usual calmness, and I could see in a moment that he was a business-man again. He asked me to stay and drive back with him, and dine and spend the night, urging it on the plea that his mother would like to see me—that she had so few pleasures. I consented against my wish, almost against my will.

CHAPTER XIV

No one knows what change means, what frightful possibilities of sadness it covers, until one has such an experience as mine that night. In former times the Holt house had been a sort of fairyland to me: our own ménage was simple and inexpensive, and, in contrast, the profusion and splendor of Jack's home had impressed me powerfully. Their expenditure was not moderated by what we call good taste, and they did not possess that fine grace of compassing elegance without ostentation which is one of the last results of culture; but as a boy I had missed nothing that money could buy in their house, and I had often thought how my mother would shine there. Mr. Holt had been a man to look up to with respect, although somewhat arrogant and dictatorial, and Mrs. Holt—good, easy soul!—had enjoyed her prosperity with an equal pride and joy in her husband, her children, her silver plate, her heavy silks and her jewels, which, displayed in their satin cases, were the chief show in Belfield for the women, who used to tiptoe up the grand staircase to Mrs. Holt's dressing-room, and come down with awe in their faces.

Mrs. Holt at this later time I write of was a sad, soft-eyed little woman, with a patient smile: she was so much of a lady that her dress was neat and pleasing, although of the plainest. She kissed me when I went in with Jack, and I felt like going on my knees before her. She treated Jack as if he were older than herself, although with the utmost tenderness qualifying the respect she gave him; but I was a boy to her still, and she looked lovingly in my face and told me that she knew I was a comfort to my mother. I had been a good deal of a man in my own eyes in Europe, but in these familiar places I did not feel much older than I had done six years before, full-grown although I was, and so tall that I had to stoop very low to meet the little woman's kiss.

"Here is father," said Mrs. Holt in a tender, cooing voice; and she went up to a feeble old man in an arm-chair and began telling him that this was Floyd come back—Floyd Randolph, whom he used to like so well years ago. Mr. Holt looked at me with hopeless, bleared eyes, and shook his head and complained in mumbling tones that dinner was not ready, that nobody took care of him, that he was neglected by wife and son.

Jack himself led his father to the table, and it was a hard task to guide the tottering footsteps, but not so hard perhaps as for the poor wife to tend him while he ate as if he were a baby. There are sad things upon which one may dwell, for some sorrows bring sweetness with them, and give meaning and perfume to a life, just as the night is almost lovelier in its shadows than the garish day; but I cannot write about Jack's troubles, for it was so pitiful to me to see this strong man so fretted, so bound, by the fine chains which duty sometimes forges for men. The meal we ate was of the poorest, but I think there is no bitterness in bearing personal deprivation, and I did not pity Jack that neither the taste of the palate nor the taste of the eye could be gratified at his board; but when I saw him playing backgammon with his father afterward I did pity him. The old man's hand shook so that his wife had to guide his wrist as he threw the dice, and he burst into senile tears if the throw did not suit him. But Jack was hopeful and cordial through it all, and would patiently tell his father little trifles of news about his business, and engage his attention so kindly that once or twice the heavy fallen features would almost gather expression again. At such times happy tears would start to Mrs. Holt's eyes. "I do believe father's getting better," she would say, looking at her son.

It was still early, however, when Jack and I were left alone. He had carried the poor old man to bed, and now for a few hours the burden had fallen from the son.

"Let us go out and walk about the old places," said he. "The house is dreary, is it not?"

"I have only thought of you all, Jack," was my answer. "My dreariness has not been induced by the look of the house. Still, when I do look around and see the rich carpets gone, the pictures, statues, all the thousand beautiful things we used to take pleasure in, I say to myself, 'This just man will have his reward.' Don't despond, Jack: I tell you, things will come right again."

"Thank you, Floyd," said he in his cool way. "I am better for having seen you. But let us talk of something besides my troubles to-night. It is a sweet evening."

He took my arm, and we walked out along the avenue into the street. It was a beautiful night, calm and warm, with a full moon shining down upon the deserted squares. We went up the hill and stood on the steps of the academy, then sat down upon a bench on the playground beneath the poplars, and found our initials there where we had cut them years before. Missing Dart in these old familiar places, it was natural for us to talk of him, for, well as Jack loved me, Harry was his dearest friend. A peculiar tenderness had always knit their hearts together, and it had been another sorrow to Holt that in all his trouble his cousin was too far away to give him a glance of his eyes, a grip of his strong hand.

I told him all I knew of Harry. We had not been mistaken in our estimate of his genius: he had not been in Rome three months before the famous Z–had become interested in him and allowed him to study in his atelier. Every one predicted success for the young artist, and dealers were already beginning to buy up his pictures, paying a mere song for studies to-day which years hence they expected to sell for a big sum on the strength of the reputation he would have gained. Harry's strong points were his unequalled distinctness of vision and his intensity of feeling for art. He put a passionate throb into every movement of his brush. When once an idea occurred to him as desirable to work out, it defined itself to his imagination with a reality, a power, an amplitude of detail, which blinded him for the time being to everything else, and he worked so faithfully that he stamped his conception and his meaning upon not only every figure, but every accessory of his picture; so that the most commonplace observer gazed at his canvas with some of the same feeling with which he gazed at an experience of life. But Z– was not yet satisfied to have him attempt compositions, and he was spending much time over the curious processes by which the perfection of skill in art is attained—productive analyses of coloring, light, shadow and the mellowed harmonies of time-worn pictures.

"We shall be proud of Harry by and by," said Holt as I paused. "I hope he won't stay too long abroad. I have missed you so, Floyd!" And we fell to telling stories of our boyhood, and again and again Jack's laugh broke the silence of the night, for there were droll tales to tell. We heard the chimes of midnight before we stirred from our seat, and then we moved with some reluctance, for the moonlight was rare, and the light upon the water where the sea-line showed through the interstices of the trees was a silvery radiance too blessed to lose. But at last we rose and moved carelessly homeward. We did not take the nearest way, but turned as with one intention through another street than that by which we came. Our feet knew the way to a little Gothic cottage on the hill, and we stood outside silently for a time. No sight or sound of any creature stirring in the world but ourselves met eyes or ears. No light was in the windows, and the blinds of a casement beneath the gable were close drawn. I wondered if a white hand had closed them a few hours before, and if a fair sleep-flushed face and bright disordered hair lay on the pillow inside. Just then some bird, brooding over her three eggs in her nest, stirred drowsily and cooed softly at some delicious dream of love or maternity. It broke the spell, and we turned to go away.

"Don't fancy," said Jack, "that this is a habit of mine. I have not been here before since December."

"Is she here?"

"I have no idea. I never hear her name, and when I am in church I never turn to look."

I left Belfield early the next morning, and pursued my way to The Headlands. I had many thoughts of Jack as I went on, wondering if this cruel and irremediable wrong which Fate had inflicted was to shadow all his life. Indeed, I felt disheartened, for I had warm sympathies; and besides, the cruel prose of his experience broke upon the easy, pleasure-loving harmony of my life like the sudden crash of kettledrums in the midst of moribund flute melody. I had always possessed too much leisure not to have become saddened and perplexed at times with doubts before the eternal problem of life; and they all returned now, and not until I reached The Headlands in the late afternoon did I rouse myself into an anticipation of the pleasant life I was to meet.

CHAPTER XV

I was not expected: no one met me at the station, and, finding no conveyance, I walked on myself to the place, and entered the grounds not more than an hour before sunset. Everything was curiously calm and at peace except the breakers, which moaned against the rocks below as the tide came in. The shadows were long upon the grass, and looked like things that had felt life all day, but now had coiled themselves up for sleep. Beyond the trees the fiery sun still shone, gilding the stately house with gold and resting lovingly upon the roses which clambered riotously over embrasures and abutments, lighting up the piazzas and columns with their bloom. I recognized a change at once in the aspect of the place: more windows and doors were open than formerly, and the porticoes showed signs of careless occupancy with their chairs and afghans, tables and a litter of books, papers and work. I stood before the door, gazing through the wide-columned vista of the hall, and the infinite seemed open before my eyes as I saw the blue and opal-tinted sea. But still there was no sound except the murmur from the shore, and nothing stirred except the sunbeams as they climbed the carved balustrade of the great staircase and gleamed on the frozen faces of a marble group in a niche. I did not ring at first, for it seemed as if my mother or Helen must come out—that they were close at hand, picking roses on the terrace or descending from their rooms. But it was Mills who presently issued from the dining-room and saw me. He greeted me as if I were one of the family, and ushered me into the library as he had done at the time of my first visit years before.

Sitting there quietly, I seemed for the first time to realize the fact of old Mr. Raymond's death. I saw his chair by the fireplace, and the low seat on which Helen and I had sat together many and many a time. I had not grieved at the old man's death, but had felt that weeping for the dead might sometimes be a less dreary task than bearing with the living; yet here I could not see these beautiful inanimate things, once his intimate surroundings, without a thrill of regret that he was gone.

A shadow fell across the doorway, and a young girl came in, one of the sunset gleams reflected from some of the endless mirrors of the house falling on her and lighting up her face. My first thought was, "She is almost a woman:" my second was, "I had never expected she would be so beautiful."

We had not spoken yet: she ran up to me eagerly and looked into my face, and I clasped her hands. When I saw that she was crying there seemed to me but one way of greeting the child. I took her in my arms and kissed her. It seemed strange, I think, to neither of us that we should meet in this way. But when we looked at each other now, I felt a curious glow over my face, and she hung her head and was blushing vividly, as I had never suspected the pale little Helen I had once known so well, with her aspect of almost severe purity, could ever blush. There was a new sort of beauty about her: a soft richness of tint and texture seemed added to cheek and lip, and the old imperious concentration of her glance was, for the moment, quite gone. Still, although I could easily see that she was frightened at her own temerity in allowing my more than brotherly freedom, I could not find it in my heart to repent it.

"Where is my mother, Helen?" I asked, taking her hand in mine to reassure her, for I saw that something was embarrassing her very much. "It seems I was not expected to-day?"

"Not so late as this," she explained; and presently I was talking freely with her, and she was listening without a particle of self-consciousness in her manner. It appeared that my mother and Mr. Floyd had gone out to drive, but would presently return to tea—that my mother had been longing for me, and they had all wondered why I had delayed coming. This was all very pleasant, uttered in the sweetest voice by my young hostess, and when she asked me if I would go out and see the sunset from the terrace, it was very easy to say that I would follow her anywhere.

She was a shy child still, I discovered, despite her tall figure, her pretty womanly shape and elegant air. My manhood was too recent a possession not to be rejoiced in when I saw that a woman's blushes came and went as she felt the weight of my glance. We went out of doors and saw the surges breaking on the shore, but the waves seemed happy that night, and lisped joyfully like children at their play. There was no voice of sorrow in all Nature: the birds circling about their nests began glad strains, then hushed them only to break forth again into fresh confused and joyful beginnings which they were too sleepy to finish. We talked of sorrow and loss, yet I think neither of us was very sorrowful, although Helen's tears flowed unchecked as she poured forth the simple narrative of her grandfather's last days—how he had never been so tender, so self-forgetful, as then; how he could not do enough to show his deep love for her; and then how, in the night, all at once, without a last look, word or caress, he was gone and his tenderness was but a memory.