Chapter 18

THE STRINGS OF DESTINY

When Phil's pal left us he went wandering down the hillside, talking to
himself. Long afterwards he told me how he felt, and I reproduce his
phrases as nearly as I can.

"Knocked 'em, I guess," he said, "with that about Jo Brackenbury. . . .
Poor Jo! Stuck together, him and me did, after she got the steel in her
heart." . . . He pulled himself together, shuddering. . . . "Went back on
me, she did, and took up with a cursed swell, and got it cold--cold. And
I? By Judas! I never was shut of that. I've known women, many of 'em, all
countries, but she was different. I expect now, after all these years,
that if I got my hand on the devil that done for her, I'd rattle his
breath in his throat. There's things that clings. She clings, Jo
Brackenbury clings, and Phil Boldrick clings; and they're gone, and I'm
left to go it alone. To play the single hand--what!--by Jiminy!"

He exclaimed thus on seeing two women approach from the direction of the
valley. He stood still, mouth open, staring. They drew near, almost
passed him. But one of them, struck by his intense gaze, suddenly turned
and came towards him.

"Miss Falchion! Miss Falchion!" he cried. Then, when she hesitated as if
with an effort of memory, he added: "Don't you know me?"

"Ah," she replied abruptly, "Sam Kilby! Are you Sam Kilby, Jo
Brackenbury's friend, from Samoa?"

"Yes, miss, I'm Jo Brackenbury's friend; and I've rowed you across the
reefs with him more than once I guess so! But it's a long way from Apia
to the Rockies, and it's funny to meet here."

"When did you come here--and from where?"

"I come to-day from the Hudson's Bay post at Danger Mountain. I'm Phil
Boldrick's pal."

"Ah," she said again, with a look in her eyes not pleasant to see, "and
what brings you up here in the hills?" Hers was more than an ordinary
curiosity.

"I come to see the Padre who was with Phil--when he left. And the Padre's
a fair square sort, as I reckon him, but melancholy, almighty
melancholy."

"Yes, melancholy, I suppose," she said, "and fair square, as you say. And
what did you say and do?"

"Why, we yarned about Phil, and where I'd get the legacy to-morrow; and I
s'pose I had a strong breeze on the quarter, for I talked as free as if
we'd grubbed out of the same dough-pan since we was kiddies."

"Yes?"

"Yes siree; I don't know how it was, but I got to reelin' off about
Jo--queer, wasn't it? And I told 'em how he went down in the 'Fly Away',
and how the lovely ladies--you remember how we used to call the whitecaps
lovely ladies--fondled him out to sea and on to heaven."

"And what did--the Padre--think of that?"

"Well, he's got a heart, I should say, and that's why Phil cottoned to
him, maybe,--for he looked as if he'd seen ghosts. I guess he'd never had
a craft runnin' 'tween a sand-bar and a ragged coral bank; nor seen a
girl like the 'Fly Away' take a buster in her teeth; nor a man-of-war
come bundlin' down upon a nasty glacis, the captain on the bridge,
engines goin' for all they're worth, every man below battened in, and
every Jack above watchin' the fight between the engines and the
hurricane. . . . Here she rolls six fathoms from the glacis that'll rip
her copper garments off, and the quiverin' engines pull her back; and she
swings and struggles and trembles between hell in the hurricane and God
A'mighty in the engines; till at last she gets her nose at the neck of
the open sea and crawls out safe and sound. . . . I guess he'd have more
marble in his cheeks, if he saw likes o' that, Miss Falchion?"

Kilby paused and wiped his forehead.

She had listened calmly. She did not answer his question. She said:
"Kilby, I am staying at the summer hotel up there. Will you call on
me--let me see . . . . say, to-morrow afternoon?--Some one will tell you
the way, if you do not know it. . . . Ask for MRS. Falchion, Kilby, not
Miss Falchion. . . . You will come?"

"Why, yes," he replied, "you can count on me; for I'd like to hear of
things that happened after I left Apia--and how it is that you are Mrs.
Falchion, for that's mighty queer."

"You shall hear all that and more." She held out her hand to him and
smiled. He took it, and she knew that now she was gathering up the
strings of destiny.

They parted.

The two passed on, looking, in their cool elegance, as if life were the
most pleasant thing; as though the very perfume of their garments would
preserve them from that plague called trouble.

"Justine," said Mrs. Falchion, "there is one law stranger than all; the
law of coincidence. Perhaps the convenience of modern travel assists it,
but fate is in it also. Events run in circles. People connected with them
travel that way also. We pass and re-pass each other many times, but on
different paths, until we come close and see each other face to face."

She was speaking almost the very words which Roscoe had spoken to me. But
perhaps there was nothing strange in that.

"Yes, madame," replied Justine; "it is so, but there is a law greater
than coincidence."

"What, Justine?"

"The law of love, which is just and merciful, and would give peace
instead of trouble."

Mrs. Falchion looked closely at Justine, and, after a moment, evidently
satisfied, said: "What do you know of love?"

Justine tried hard for composure, and answered gently: "I loved my
brother Hector."

"And did it make you just and merciful and--an angel?"

"Madame, you could answer that better. But it has not made me be at war;
it has made me patient."

"Your love--for your brother--has made you that?" Again she looked
keenly, but Justine now showed nothing but earnestness.

"Yes, madame."

Mrs. Falchion paused for a moment, and seemed intent on the beauty of the
pine-belted hills, capped by snowy peaks, and wrapped in a most hearty
yet delicate colour. The red of her parasol threw a warm soft ness upon
her face. She spoke now without looking at Justine.

"Justine, did you ever love any one besides your brother?--I mean another
man."

Justine was silent for a moment, and then she said: "Yes, once." She was
looking at the hills now, and Mrs. Falchion at her.

"And you were happy?" Here Mrs. Falchion abstractedly toyed with a piece
of lace on Justine's arm. Such acts were unusual with her.

"I was happy--in loving."

"Why did you not marry?"

"Madame--it was impossible--quite." This, with hesitation and the
slightest accent of pain.

"Why impossible? You have good looks, you were born a lady; you have a
foolish heart--the fond are foolish." She watched the girl keenly, the
hand ceased to toy with the lace, and caught the arm itself--"Why
impossible?"

"Madame, he did not love me, he never could."

"Did he know of your love?"

"Oh no, no!" This with trouble in her voice.

"And you have never forgotten?"

The catechism was merciless; but Mrs. Falchion was not merely malicious.
She was inquiring of a thing infinitely important to her. She was
searching the heart of another, not only because she was suspicious, but
because she wanted to know herself better.

"It is easy to remember."

"Is it long since you saw him?"

The question almost carried terror with it, for she was not quite sure
why Mrs. Falchion questioned her. She lifted her eyes slowly, and there
was in them anxiety and joy. "It seems," she said, "like years."

"He loves some one else, perhaps?"

"Yes, I think so, madame."

"Did you hate her?"

"Oh no; I am glad for him."

Here Mrs. Falchion spoke sharply, almost bitterly. Even through her soft
colour a hardness appeared. "You are glad for him? You would see another
woman in his arms and not be full of anger?"

"Quite."

"Justine, you are a fool."

"Madame, there is no commandment against being a fool."

"Oh, you make me angry with your meekness!" Here Mrs. Falchion caught a
twig from a tree by her, snapped it in her fingers, and petulantly threw
its pieces to the ground. "Suppose that the man had once loved you, and
afterwards loved another--then again another?"

"Madame, that would be my great misfortune, but it might be no wrong in
him."

"How not a wrong in him?"

"It may have been my fault. There must be love in both--great love, for
it to last."

"And if the woman loved him not at all?"

"Where, then, could be the wrong in him?"

"And if he went from you,"--here her voice grew dry and her words were
sharp,--"and took a woman from the depths of--oh, no matter what! and
made her commit--crime--and was himself a criminal?"

"It is horrible to think of; but I should ask myself how much I was to
blame. . . . What would you ask yourself, madame?"

"You have a strain of the angel in you, Justine. You would forgive Judas
if he said, 'Peccavi.' I have a strain of Satan--it was born in me--I
would say, You have sinned, now suffer."

"God give you a softer heart," said Justine, with tender boldness and
sincerity.

At this Mrs. Falchion started slightly, and trouble covered her face. She
assumed, however, a tone almost brusque, artificially airy and
unimportant.

"There, that will do, thank you. . . . We have become serious and
incomprehensible. Let us talk of other things. I want to be gay. . . .
Amuse me."

Arrived at the hotel, she told Justine that she must not be disturbed
till near dinner-time, and withdrew to her sitting-room. There she sat
and thought, as she had never done in her life before. She thought upon
everything that had happened since the day when she met Galt Roscoe on
the 'Fulvia'; of a certain evening in England, before he took orders,
when he told her, in retort to some peculiarly cutting remark of hers,
that she was the evil genius of his life: that evening when her heart
grew hard, as she had once said it should always be to him, and she
determined again, after faltering many times, that just such a genius she
would be; of the strange meeting in the rapids at the Devil's Slide, and
the irony of it; and the fact that he had saved her life--on that she
paused a while; of Ruth Devlin--and here she was swayed by conflicting
emotions; of the scene at the mill, and Phil Boldrick's death and
funeral; of the service in the church where she meant to mock him, and,
instead, mocked herself; of the meeting with Tonga Sam; of all that
Justine had said to her: then again of the far past in Samoa, with which
Galt Roscoe was associated, and of that first vow of vengeance for a
thing he had done; and how she had hesitated to fulfil it year after year
till now.

Passing herself slowly back and forth before her eyes, she saw that she
had lived her life almost wholly alone; that no woman had ever cherished
her as a friend, and that on no man's breast had she ever laid her head
in trust and love. She had been loved, but it had never brought her
satisfaction. From Justine there was devotion; but it had, as she
thought, been purchased, paid for, like the labour of a ploughboy. And if
she saw now in Justine's eyes a look of friendship, a note of personal
allegiance, she knew it was because she herself had grown more human.

Her nature had been stirred. Her natural heart was struggling against her
old bitterness towards Galt Roscoe and her partial hate of Ruth Devlin.
Once Roscoe had loved her, and she had not loved him. Then, on a bitter
day for him, he did a mad thing. The thing became--though neither of them
knew it at the time, and he not yet--a great injury to her, and this had
called for the sharp retaliation which she had the power to use. But all
had not happened as she expected; for something called Love had been
conceived in her very slowly, and was now being born, and sent, trembling
for its timid life, into the world.

She closed her eyes with weariness, and pressed her hands to her temples.

She wondered why she could not be all evil or all good. She spoke and
acted against Ruth Devlin, and yet she pitied her. She had the nettle to
sting Roscoe to death, and yet she hesitated to use it. She had said to
herself that she would wait till the happiest moment of his life, and
then do so. Well, his happiest moment had come. Ruth Devlin's heart was
all out, all blossomed--beside Mrs. Falchion's like some wild flower to
the aloe. . . . Only now she had come to know that she had a heart.
Something had chilled her at her birth, and when her mother died, a
stranger's kiss closed up all the ways to love, and left her an icicle.
She was twenty-eight years old, and yet she had never kissed a face in
joy or to give joy. And now, when she had come to know herself, and
understand what others understand when they are little children in their
mother's arms, she had to bow to the spirit that denies. She drew herself
up with a quiver of the body.

"O God!" she said, "do I hate him or love him!" Her head dropped in her
hands. She sat regardless of time, now scarcely stirring, desperately
quiet. The door opened softly and Justine entered. "Madame," she said,
"pardon me; I am so sorry, but Miss Devlin has come to see you, and I
thought--"

"You thought, Justine, that I would see her." There was unmistakable
irony in her voice. "Very well. . . . Show her in."

She rose, stretched out her arms as if to free herself of a burden,
smoothed her hair, composed herself, and waited, the afternoon sun just
falling across her burnished shoes, giving her feet of gold. She chanced
to look down at them. A strange memory came to her: words that she had
heard Roscoe read in church. The thing was almost grotesque in its
association. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who
bringeth glad tidings, who publisheth peace!"

Ruth Devlin entered, saying, "I have come, to ask you if you will dine
with us next Monday evening?"

Then she explained the occasion of the dinner party, and said: "You see,
though it is formal, I am asking our guests informally;" and she added as
neutrally and as lightly as she could--"Mr. Roscoe and Dr. Marmion have
been good enough to say that they will come. Of course, a dinner party as
it should be is quite impossible to us simple folk, but when a
lieutenant-governor commands, we must do the best we can--with the help
of our friends."

Mrs. Falchion was delighted, she said, and then they talked of trivial
matters, Ruth smoothing out the folds of her riding-dress with her whip
more earnestly, in preoccupation, than the act called for. At last she
said, in the course of the formal talk: "You have travelled much?"

"Yes, that has been my lot," was the reply; and she leaned back in the
gold-trimmed cane chair, her feet still in the belt of sunlight.

"I have often wished that I might travel over the ocean," said Ruth, "but
here I remain--what shall I say?--a rustic in a bandbox, seeing the world
through a pin-hole. That is the way my father puts it. Except, of course,
that I think it very inspiring to live out here among wonderful
mountains, which, as Mr. Roscoe says, are the most aristocratic of
companions."

Some one in the next room was playing the piano idly yet expressively.
The notes of Il Trovatore kept up a continuous accompaniment to their
talk, varying, as if by design, with its meaning and importance, and yet
in singular contrast at times to their thoughts and words. It was almost
sardonic in its monotonous persistence.

"Travel is not all, believe me, Miss Devlin," was the indolent reply.
"Perhaps the simpler life is the happier. The bandbox is not the worst
that may come to one--when one is born to it. I am not sure but it is the
best. I doubt that when one has had the fever of travel and the world,
the bandbox is permanently habitable again."

Mrs. Falchion was keen; she had found her opportunity.

On the result of this duel, if Ruth Devlin but knew it, depends her own
and another's happiness. It is not improbable, however, that something of
this was in her mind. She shifted her chair so that her face was not so
much in the light. But the belt of sunlight was broadening from Mrs.
Falchion's feet to her dress.

"You think not?" Ruth asked slowly.

The reply was not important in tone. Mrs. Falchion had picked up a paper
knife and was bending it to and fro between her fingers.

"I think not. Particularly with a man, who is, we will say, by nature,
adventurous and explorative. I think if, in some mad moment, I determined
to write a novel, it should be of such a man. He flies wide and far; he
sees all; he feeds on novelty; he passes from experience to
experience--liberal pleasures of mind and sense all the way. Well, he
tires of Egypt and its flesh-pots. He has seen as he hurried on--I hope I
am not growing too picturesque--too much of women, too many men. He has
been unwise--most men are. Perhaps he has been more than unwise; he has
made a great mistake, a social mistake--or crime--less or more. If it is
a small one, the remedy is not so difficult. Money, friends, adroitness,
absence, long retirement, are enough. If a great one, and he is
sensitive--and sated--he flies, he seeks seclusion. He is afflicted with
remorse. He is open to the convincing pleasures of the simple and
unadorned life; he is satisfied with simple people. The snuff of the
burnt candle of enjoyment he calls regret, repentance. He gives himself
the delights of introspection, and wishes he were a child again--yes,
indeed it is so, dear Miss Devlin."

Ruth sat regarding her, her deep eyes glowing. Mrs. Falchion continued:
"In short, he finds the bandbox, as you call it, suited to his
renunciations. Its simplicities, which he thinks is regeneration, are
only new sensations. But--you have often noticed the signification of a
'but,'" she added, smiling, tapping her cheek lightly with the ivory
knife--"but the hour arrives when the bandbox becomes a prison, when the
simple hours cloy. Then the ordinary incident is merely gauche, and
expiation a bore.

"I see by your face that you understand quite what I mean. . . . Well,
these things occasionally happen. The great mistake follows the man, and,
by a greater misery, breaks the misery of the bandbox; or the man
himself, hating his captivity, becomes reckless, does some mad thing, and
has a miserable end. Or again, some one who holds the key to his mistake
comes in from the world he has left, and considers--considers, you
understand!--whether to leave him to work out his servitude, or,
mercifully--if he is not altogether blind--permit him the means of escape
to his old world, to the life to which he was born--away from the bandbox
and all therein. . . . I hope I have not tired you--I am sure I have."

Ruth saw the full meaning of Mrs. Falchion's words. She realised that her
happiness, his happiness--everything--was at stake. All Mrs. Falchion's
old self was battling with her new self. She had determined to abide by
the result of this meeting. She had spoken in a half gay tone, but her
words were not everything; the woman herself was there, speaking in every
feature and glance. Ruth had listened with an occasional change of
colour, but also with an outward pride to which she seemed suddenly to
have grown. But her heart was sick and miserable. How could it be
otherwise, reading, as she did, the tale just told her in a kind, of
allegory, in all its warning, nakedness, and vengeance? But she detected,
too, an occasional painful movement of Mrs. Falchion's lips, a kind of
trouble in the face. She noticed it at first vaguely as she listened to
the music in the other room; but at length she interpreted it aright, and
she did not despair. She did not then follow her first impulse to show
that she saw the real meaning of that speech, and rise and say, "You are
insulting," and bid her good-day.

After all, where was the ground for the charge of insult? The words had
been spoken impersonally. So, after a moment, she said, as she drew a
glove from a hand slightly trembling: "And you honestly think it is the
case: that one having lived such a life as you describe so unusually,
would never be satisfied with a simple life?"

"My dear, never--not such a man as I describe. I know the world."

"But suppose not quite such an one; suppose one that had not been
so--intense; so much the social gladiator; who had business of life as
well,"--here the girl grew pale, for this was a kind of talk unfamiliar
and painful to her, but to be endured for her cause,--"as well as 'the
flesh-pots of Egypt;' who had made no wicked mistakes--would he
necessarily end as you say?"

"I am speaking of the kind of man who had made such mistakes, and he
would end as I say. Few men, if any, would leave the world for--the
bandbox, shall I still say? without having a Nemesis."

"But the Nemesis need not, as you say yourself, be inevitable. The person
who holds the key of his life, the impersonation of his mistake--"

"His CRIMINAL mistake," Mrs. Falchion interrupted, her hand with the
ivory knife now moveless in that belt of sunlight across her knees.

"His criminal mistake," Ruth repeated, wincing--"might not it become
changed into mercy, and the man be safe?"

"Safe? Perhaps. But he would tire of the pin-hole just the same. . . . My
dear, you do not know life."

"But, Mrs. Falchion," said the girl, now very bravely, "I know the crude
elements of justice. That is one plain thing taught here in the
mountains. We have swift reward and punishment--no hateful things called
Nemesis. The meanest wretch here in the West, if he has a quarrel,
avenges himself openly and at once. Actions are rough and ready, perhaps,
but that is our simple way. Hate is manly--and womanly too--when it is
open and brave. But when it haunts and shadows, it is not understood
here."

Mrs. Falchion sat during this speech, the fingers of one hand idly
drumming the arm of her chair, as idly as when on board the 'Fulvia' she
listened to me telling that story of Anson and his wife. Outwardly her
coolness was remarkable. But she was really admiring, and amazed at
Ruth's adroitness and courage. She appreciated fully the skilful duel
that had kept things on the surface, and had committed neither of them to
anything personal. It was a battle--the tragical battle of a
drawing-room.

When Ruth had ended, she said slowly: "You speak very earnestly. You do
your mountains justice; but each world has its code. It is good for some
men to be followed by a slow hatred--it all depends on themselves. There
are some who wish to meet their fate and its worst, and others who would
forget it. The latter are in the most danger always."

Ruth rose.

She stepped forward slightly, so that her feet also were within the
sunlight. The other saw this; it appeared to interest her. Ruth
looked--as such a girl can look--with incredible sincerity into Mrs.
Falchion's eyes, and said: "Oh, if I knew such a man, I would be
sorry--sorry for him; and if I also knew that his was only a mistake and
not a crime, or, if the crime itself had been repented of, and atonement
made, I would beg some one--some one better than I--to pray for him. And
I would go to the person who had his life and career at disposal, and
would say to her, if it were a woman, oh, remember that it is not he
alone who would suffer! I would beg that woman--if it were a woman--to be
merciful, as she one day must ask for mercy."

The girl as she stood there, all pale, yet glowing with the white light
of her pain, was beautiful, noble, compelling. Mrs. Falchion now rose
also. She was altogether in the sunlight now. From the piano in the next
room came a quick change of accompaniment, and a voice was heard singing,
as if to the singer's self, 'Il balen del suo sorris'. It is hard to tell
how far such little incidents affected her in what she did that
afternoon; but they had their influence. She said: "You are
altruistic--or are you selfish, or both? . . . And should the woman--if
it were a woman--yield, and spare the man, what would you do?"

"I would say that she had been merciful and kind, and that one in this
world would pray for her when she needed prayers most."

"You mean when she was old,"--Mrs. Falchion shrank a little at the sound
of her own words. Now her careless abandon was gone; she seemed to be
following her emotions. "When she was old," she continued, "and came to
die? It is horrible to grow old, except one has been a saint--and a
mother. . . . And even then--have you ever seen them, the women of that
Egypt of which we spoke--powdered, smirking over their champagne, because
they feel for an instant a false pulse of their past?--See how eloquent
your mountains make me!--I think that would make one hard and cruel; and
one would need the prayers of a churchful of good women, even as good--as
you."

She could not resist a touch of irony in the last words, and Ruth, who
had been ready to take her hand impulsively, was stung. But she replied
nothing; and the other, after waiting, added, with a sudden and wonderful
kindness: "I say what is quite true. Women might dislike you--many of
them would--though you could not understand why; but you are good, and
that, I suppose, is the best thing in the world. Yes, you are good," she
said musingly, and then she leaned forward and quickly kissed the girl's
cheek. "Good-bye," she said, and then she turned her head resolutely
away.

They stood there both in the sunlight, both very quiet, but their hearts
were throbbing with new sensations. Ruth knew that she had conquered,
and, with her eyes all tearful, she looked steadily, yearningly at the
woman before her; but she knew it was better she should say little now,
and, with a motion of the hand in good-bye,--she could do no more,--she
slowly went to the door. There she paused and looked back, but the other
was still turned away.

For a minute Mrs. Falchion stood looking at the door through which the
girl had passed, then she caught close the curtains of the window, and
threw herself upon the sofa with a sobbing laugh.

"To her--I played the game of mercy to her!" she cried. "And she has his
love, the love which I rejected once, and which I want now--to my shame!
A hateful and terrible love. I, who ought to say to him, as I so long
determined: 'You shall be destroyed. You killed my sister, poor Alo; if
not with a knife yourself you killed her heart, and that is just the
same.' I never knew until now what a heart is when killed."

She caught her breast as though it hurt her, and, after a moment,
continued: "Do hearts always ache so when they love? I was the wife of a
good man oh! he WAS a good man, who sinned for me. I see it now!--and I
let him die--die alone!" She shuddered. "Oh, now I see, and I know what
love such as his can be! I am punished--punished! for my love is
impossible, horrible."

There was a long silence, in which she sat looking at the floor, her face
all grey with pain. At last the door of the room softly opened, and
Justine entered.

"May I come in, madame?" she said.

"Yes, come, Justine." The voice was subdued, and there was in it what
drew the girl swiftly to the side of Mrs. Falchion. She spoke no word,
but gently undid the other's hair, and smoothed and brushed it softly.

At last Mrs. Falchion said: "Justine, on Monday we will leave here."

The girl was surprised, but she replied without comment: "Yes, madame;
where do we go?"

There was a pause; then: "I do not know. I want to go where I shall get
rested. A village in Italy or--" she paused.

"Or France, madame?" Justine was eager.

Mrs. Falchion made a gesture of helplessness. "Yes, France will do. . . .
The way around the world is long, and I am tired." Minutes passed, and
then she slowly said: "Justine, we will go to-morrow night."

"Yes, madame, to-morrow night--and not next Monday."

There was a strange only half-veiled melancholy in Mrs. Falchion's next
words: "Do you think, Justine, that I could be happy anywhere?"

"I think anywhere but here, madame."

Mrs. Falchion rose to a sitting posture, and looked at the girl fixedly,
almost fiercely. A crisis was at hand. The pity, gentleness, and honest
solicitude of Justine's face conquered her, and her look changed to one
of understanding and longing for companionship: sorrow swiftly welded
their friendship.

Before Mrs. Falchion slept that night, she said again: "We will leave
here to-morrow, Justine, for ever."

And Justine replied: "Yes, madame, for ever."

Chapter 18

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