Part 2 (1/2)
He looked at Van Bibber, but Van Bibber's eyes were still turned towards the open window and the night.
”And after the divorce--and she was free to go where she pleased, and to live as she pleased and with whom she pleased, without bringing disgrace on a husband who honestly loved her--I swore to my G.o.d that I would never see her nor her child again. And I never saw her again, not even when she died. I loved the mother, and she deceived me and disgraced me and broke my heart, and I only wish she had killed me; and I was beginning to love her child, and I vowed she should not live to trick me too. I had suffered as no man I know had suffered; in a way a boy like you cannot understand, and that no one can understand who has not gone to h.e.l.l and been forced to live after it. And was I to go through that again? Was I to love and care for and wors.h.i.+p this child, and have her grow up with all her mother's vanity and animal nature, and have her turn on me some day and show me that what is bred in the bone must tell, and that I was a fool again--a pitiful fond fool? I could not trust her. I can never trust any woman or child again, and least of all that woman's child. She is as dead to me as though she were buried with her mother, and it is nothing to me what she is or what her life is. I know in time what it will be. She has begun earlier than I had supposed, that is all; but she is nothing to me.” The man stopped and turned his back to Van Bibber, and hid his head in his hands, with his elbows on the mantel-piece. ”I care too much,” he said. ”I cannot let it mean anything to me; when I do care, it means so much more to me than to other men. They may pretend to laugh and to forget and to outgrow it, but it is not so with me. It means too much.” He took a quick stride towards one of the arm-chairs, and threw himself into it. ”Why, man,” he cried, ”I loved that child's mother to the day of her death. I loved that woman then, and, G.o.d help me! I love that woman still.”
He covered his face with his hands, and sat leaning forward and breathing heavily as he rocked himself to and fro. Van Bibber still stood looking gravely out at the lights that picketed the black surface of the city. He was to all appearances as unmoved by the outburst of feeling into which the older man had been surprised as though it had been something in a play. There was an unbroken silence for a moment, and then it was Van Bibber who was the first to speak.
”I came here, as you say, on impulse,” he said; ”but I am glad I came, for I have your decisive answer now about the little girl. I have been thinking,” he continued, slowly, ”since you have been speaking, and before, when I first saw her dancing in front of the footlights, when I did not know who she was, that I could give up a horse or two, if necessary, and support this child instead. Children are worth more than horses, and a man who saves a soul, as it says”--he flushed slightly, and looked up with a hesitating, deprecatory smile--”somewhere, wipes out a mult.i.tude of sins. And it may be I'd like to try and get rid of some of mine. I know just where to send her; I know the very place. It's down in Evergreen Bay, on Long Island. They are tenants of mine there, and very nice farm sort of people, who will be very good to her. They wouldn't know anything about her, and she'd forget what little she knows of this present life very soon, and grow up with the other children to be one of them; and then, when she gets older and becomes a young lady, she could go to some school--but that's a bit too far ahead to plan for the present; but that's what I am going to do, though,” said the young man, confidently, and as though speaking to himself. ”That theatrical boarding-house person could be bought off easily enough,” he went on, quickly, ”and Lester won't mind letting her go if I ask it, and--and that's what I'll do. As you say, it's a good deal of an experiment, but I think I'll run the risk.”
He walked quickly to the door and disappeared in the hall, and then came back, kicking the door open as he returned, and holding the child in his arms.
”This is she,” he said, quietly. He did not look at or notice the father, but stood, with the child asleep in the bend of his left arm, gazing down at her. ”This is she,” he repeated; ”this is your child.”
There was something cold and satisfied in Van Bibber's tone and manner, as though he were congratulating himself upon the engaging of a new groom; something that placed the father entirely outside of it.
He might have been a disinterested looker-on.
”She will need to be fed a bit,” Van Bibber ran on, cheerfully. ”They did not treat her very well, I fancy. She is thin and peaked and tired-looking.” He drew up the loose sleeve of her jacket, and showed the bare forearm to the light. He put his thumb and little finger about it, and closed them on it gently. ”It is very thin,” he said.
”And under her eyes, if it were not for the paint,” he went on, mercilessly, ”you could see how deep the lines are. This red spot on her cheek,” he said, gravely, ”is where Mary Vane kissed her to-night, and this is where Alma Stantley kissed her, and that Lee girl. You have heard of them, perhaps. They will never kiss her again. She is going to grow up a sweet, fine, beautiful woman--are you not?” he said, gently drawing the child higher up on his shoulder, until her face touched his, and still keeping his eyes from the face of the older man. ”She does not look like her mother,” he said; ”she has her father's auburn hair and straight nose and finer-cut lips and chin.
She looks very much like her father. It seems a pity,” he added, abruptly. ”She will grow up,” he went on, ”without knowing him, or who he is--or was, if he should die. She will never speak with him, or see him, or take his hand. She may pa.s.s him some day on the street and will not know him, and he will not know her, but she will grow to be very fond and to be very grateful to the simple, kind-hearted old people who will have cared for her when she was a little girl.”
The child in his arms stirred, s.h.i.+vered slightly, and awoke. The two men watched her breathlessly, with silent intentness. She raised her head and stared around the unfamiliar room doubtfully, then turned to where her father stood, looking at him a moment, and pa.s.sed him by; and then, looking up into Van Bibber's face, recognized him, and gave a gentle, sleepy smile, and, with a sigh of content and confidence, drew her arm up closer around his neck, and let her head fall back upon his breast.
The father sprang to his feet with a quick, jealous gasp of pain.
”Give her to me!” he said, fiercely, under his breath, s.n.a.t.c.hing her out of Van Bibber's arms. ”She is mine; give her to me!”
Van Bibber closed the door gently behind him, and went jumping down the winding stairs of the Berkeley three steps at a time.
And an hour later, when the English servant came to his master's door, he found him still awake and sitting in the dark by the open window, holding something in his arms and looking out over the sleeping city.
”James,” he said, ”you can make up a place for me here on the lounge.
Miss Caruthers, my daughter, will sleep in my room to-night.”
VAN BIBBER'S MAN-SERVANT
Van Bibber's man Walters was the envy and admiration of his friends.
He was English, of course, and he had been trained in the household of the Marquis Bendinot, and had travelled, in his younger days, as the valet of young Lord Upton. He was now rather well on in years, although it would have been impossible to say just how old he was.
Walters had a dignified and repellent air about him, and he brushed his hair in such a way as to conceal his baldness.
And when a smirking, slavish youth with red cheeks and awkward gestures turned up in Van Bibber's livery, his friends were naturally surprised, and asked how he had come to lose Walters. Van Bibber could not say exactly, at least he could not rightly tell whether he had dismissed Walters or Walters had dismissed himself. The facts of the unfortunate separation were like this:
Van Bibber gave a great many dinners during the course of the season at Delmonico's, dinners hardly formal enough to require a private room, and yet too important to allow of his running the risk of keeping his guests standing in the hall waiting for a vacant table.
So he conceived the idea of sending Walters over about half-past six to keep a table for him. As everybody knows, you can hold a table yourself at Delmonico's for any length of time until the other guests arrive, but the rule is very strict about servants. Because, as the head waiter will tell you, if servants were allowed to reserve a table during the big rush at seven o'clock, why not messenger boys? And it would certainly never do to have half a dozen large tables securely held by minute messengers while the hungry and impatient waited their turn at the door.
But Walters looked as much like a gentleman as did many of the diners; and when he seated himself at the largest table and told the waiter to serve for a party of eight or ten; he did it with such an air that the head waiter came over himself and took the orders. Walters knew quite as much about ordering a dinner as did his master; and when Van Bibber was too tired to make out the menu, Walters would look over the card himself and order the proper wines and side dishes; and with such a carelessly severe air and in such a masterly manner did he discharge this high function that the waiters looked upon him with much respect.