Mostyn went to his room across the hall. He bathed his bloodless face and hands and automatically brushed his hair before the gla.s.s, eying his features critically. "Can that actually be me?" he whispered to the grim reflection. "I look like a man of sixty. I'm as old and decrepit as--Jeff Henderson. Why did I think of him? Why am I constantly thinking of that old man, unless it is because he has predicted my ruin so confidently? He seems as sure of it as he is of the air he breathes.

If evil thought bearing on a man can hurt him, as the mental scientists believe, Henderson's will eventually get me down. He would give his life to permanently injure me. So would Marie. She can't forgive me for ignoring her. She can't understand any more than I do _why_ I ignore her."

There was a rap on the door. It was a servant to ask if he wanted his supper.

"Not now," he answered. "Keep it for me. I'll be in later."

CHAPTER III

He went down to the lawn, lighted a cigar, and began to smoke, striding nervously back and forth. A smart pair of horses. .h.i.tched to a trap whirled into the carriage-drive and stopped in the porte-cochere. In the rays from the overhead lamp Mostyn saw Buckton alight and ascend the steps to the veranda. A half-smoked cigar cast into the shrubbery emitted a tiny shower of sparks. Mostyn saw the young man peering in at the window of the lighted drawing-room. He noted the spick-and-span appearance, the jaunty, satisfied air of expectancy, and his blood began to boil with rage.

"My G.o.d!" he groaned. "She may be falling in love with him--if she has not _always_ loved him, and he now knows it. She may have told him so.

And when they are alone together, as they will be in a few minutes on the road, what more natural than that he should caress her? I would have done it with any man's wife if I had felt an inclination. I am the joke of the town and must bear it. I must stand by and let my wife and another man--"

Buckton was at the door speaking to the maid who had answered his ring.

"No; tell her, please, that I'll wait out here on the lawn." Mostyn remarked the note of curbed elation in the voice, and saw Buckton turn down the steps.

A match flared in the handsome face as another cigar was lighted.

Fearing that he might have been seen from the drive, Mostyn was compelled to step forward and greet the man with the conventional unconcern he had been able to summon to his aid on former occasions.

"h.e.l.lo," he heard himself saying, automatically, as he strode across the gra.s.s to the other smoker. "Fine evening for your shindig."

"Tiptop," Buckton said, with a sort of restraint Mostyn inwardly resented. "Couldn't have turned out better. Sorry you've cut out the giddy whirl, old man. As I pa.s.sed your bank this morning I thought of asking you, but you have refused so many times that--"

"Oh no." Mostyn heartily despised the role he was playing. "I am no longer good at that sort of thing."

"Had your day, I see," Buckton laughed, significantly. "You certainly kept the pace, if all tales are true. The sort of thing we do these days must be tame by comparison."

"Oh, I don't know," Mostyn returned, with enforced carelessness. "Men are the same the world over. I have not yet had a chance to congratulate you on your recent good fortune."

"Thanks, old man." Buckton puffed his smoke into the still moonlight.

"It certainly was a lift to me. I was never cut out for business, and I was at the end of my row. I confess I am not complaining now. I am just at the age to know how to spend money."

The talk languished. Both men seemed suddenly burthened by obtrusive self-consciousness. Buckton twisted his mustache nervously and flicked at the ashless tip of his cigar, glancing toward the house. "Oh, I quite forgot to deliver Miss Kitty's message to Irene--to Mrs. Mostyn, I should say. She was to drive out with us, but at the last minute Dr.

Regan found that he could get off and asked her to go in his car."

"Arranged between them," Mostyn thought, darkly. "I know the trick.

Regan doesn't care a rap for Kitty. It is part of the game, and I am the tool."

"I understand you have a new car yourself," Mostyn said, aloud.

"Yes, and experts tell me that it is the best in town. I'll run around and take you out some day. But I really care more for horses. It may be due to my Virginia blood. I wouldn't swap this pair for all the cars in town. For a trip like this to-night horses come handy. There are some rough places between here and my home."

"It does away with the chauffeur," Mostyn said, inwardly, as his tongue lay dead in his mouth. He glanced toward the open doorway. "Irene may be ready," he remarked, moving toward the house.

"Yes, I see her coming down the stairs," answered Buckton, dropping his cigar, a look of boyish eagerness capturing his face. "I'll run on and help her with her wraps. So long, old man."

Mostyn made some inarticulate response of no import in particular, and dropped back, allowing Buckton to stride on to the veranda, his hat jauntily swinging at his side. Irene was now in the doorway, poised like a picture in a frame.

Slinking farther away beneath the trees and behind shrubbery, Mostyn heard the greetings between the two, and saw them shaking hands, standing face to face. Irene looked so young, so different from the calculating woman who had just a.s.serted her financial and marital rights in her chamber. No wonder that her escort was fascinated when she had so long been withheld from him! Mostyn told himself that he well knew the "stolen-sweets" sensation. He peered above a clump of boxwood like a thief, upon grounds to which he was unaccustomed, and watched them as they got into the trap. Irene's rippling laugh, and Buckton's satisfied response as he tucked the robes about her, seemed things of Satanic design. They were off. The restive pair, with high-reined, arching necks, trotted down the drive to the street, and a moment later were out of sight.

Mostyn went into the house, back to the desolate dining-room, and sat down in his chair at the head of the table. The maid who came to receive his order and turn on a fuller light had a look in her eyes which indicated that she was aware of his mood. He would have resented it had he dared, but it was only one of many things which had of late grated on him but could not be prevented.

"Has Mr. Mitch.e.l.l had his supper?" Mostyn asked, applying himself reluctantly to the simple repast before him.

"Yes, sir, and gone up to his room," the girl answered. "He is out of sorts to-day. I have never seen him so troublesome. He has threatened to discharge us all."

"Don't mind him." Mostyn's voice sounded to him as if uttered by some tongue other than his own. He half fancied that the maid, for reasons peculiar to her cla.s.s, had a sort of contempt for him. She, as well as the other servants, no doubt thought of him as having married for money, Mitch.e.l.l's fortune being so much larger than his own diminished and ever-lessening capital.

Supper over, he went back to the veranda. Should he go to the club, as he sometimes did to pa.s.s an evening? He had a feeling against it. He did not care for cards or drinking, and they were the chief amus.e.m.e.nts indulged in by the habitual loungers about the rooms. There might be some summer play on at one of the theaters, but as a rule they were very poor at that season of the year, and he knew he had a frame of mind which could not be diverted. At this juncture he became conscious of something of an almost startling nature. It was an undefinable, even maternal feeling that he ought to stay with his child. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the sheer absurdity of the idea, yet it clung to him persistently. He tried to a.n.a.lyze it; it eluded a.n.a.lysis. It had haunted him before, and the time had always been when Irene was away.

Was it some strange psychic sympathy or bond of blood between his motherless offspring and himself? Was his guilty soul whispering to him that he was responsible for the deserted human bud, and that he, man though he was, should give it the care and love denied it?

Obeying an impulse he could not put down, he turned into the house and softly ascended the stairs. The door of the nursery was open. A low-turned light was burning in a night-lamp on the bureau. The nurse was below eating with the other servants. He was alone and un.o.bserved.

The child was asleep in its little white bed, and he crept forward and looked down upon it. The night being warm, little Richard was not covered, and, with his shapely legs and fair breast exposed, he lay asleep. There was a suggestion of a smile on the beautiful face, the pink lips were parted, the dainty fingers were clutched as if holding some dream-object tight in their clasp.

With a sigh that was almost audible the father turned away. At the door he glanced back, having noted the intense warmth of the room. The nurse, as many of her tropical race are apt to do, had forgotten to ventilate the chamber. The two windows were closed. Angrily he crept across the carpeted floor and noiselessly raised the sashes as high as they would go, feeling the fresh air stream in. With a parting glance at the sleeper he withdrew.

Descending the stairs, he went out on the lawn again. Even that sc.r.a.p of Nature's realm had a tendency to soothe his snarled sensibilities.

It might have been the dew which was rising and cooling his feet, or the pale, blinking stars, the sedative rays of which seemed to penetrate to his seething brain. He remembered John Leach's sermon that day in the mountains at the cross-roads store. The fellow had found something. He had found the way of the life spiritual, and it had come to him through sin, suffering, humiliation, and final self-immolation.

Mostyn recalled the resolutions he had made under the influence of the man's compelling eloquence; he recalled the breaking of the resolutions. He thought of Dolly Drake, and groaned in actual pain of body and soul. He told himself that he had then deliberately trampled under foot his last spiritual opportunity. "Dolly Drake, Dolly Drake!"

the words, unuttered though they were by lips which he felt were too profane for such use, seemed to float like notes of accusing music.

Saunders had said she was more beautiful than ever. She might have been his but for his weakness. Perhaps she still thought of him now and then. If she could know of this unconquerable despair, she would pity him. How sweet such pity as hers would be! A sob struggled up within him and threatened to burst; he felt the sharp pain of suppression in his breast. It was as if his soul was urging his too-callous body to weep. Dolly was as un.o.btainable as the heaven of the tramp preacher's vision. For Mostyn only protracted evil was now available, and that was sickening to his very thought.

He wondered, seeing that it was now ten o'clock, if he could go to sleep. In deep sleep he would be able to forget. He decided to try. He went up to his room, and, aided only by the moonlight, which fell through the windows, he undressed and threw himself down on his bed.

For an hour he was wakeful. He was just becoming drowsy when he heard voices in the nursery across the hall. He recognized the sharp, scolding voice of the nurse, and the timid reply of the child. Rising, Mostyn went to the open door of the nursery and looked in.

"What is it?" he asked.

"He is begging to go to your bed," the woman answered, peevishly.

"You've spoiled him, Mr. Mostyn. He wants to do it every night. He is getting worse and worse."

A thrill of delight, yearning delight, pa.s.sed over the father. He stood silent for a moment, ashamed to have even the black servant suspect what he so keenly desired.

"Daddy, d.i.c.k wants you," a voice soft, tremulous, and unspeakably appealing came from the little bed.

"Hush, and go to sleep!" the nurse called out. "You are a bad boy, keeping us awake like this."

"No, let him come," Mostyn said, in a voice which was husky, and shook against his will. "Come, d.i.c.k!"

The little white-robed form slid eagerly from the bed and fairly ran to the arms which were hungrily outstretched. With the soft body against his breast, a confident arm about his neck, the father bore him to his room and put him down on the back side of the wide bed.

"Now you will sleep, won't you?" he said, his voice exultantly tender.

"Yes, Daddy." d.i.c.k stretched his pretty legs out straight. Silence filled the room; the mystic rays of moonlight falling in at the window seemed to bring with them the despondent murmur of the city outside.