VIII CHICOT, THE JESTER

Philip Gallatin had been mistaken. He did not know Jane when he saw her. For, ten minutes later, he met her face to face in one of the paths of the Park—looked her in the face and passed on unknowing. Like the hound in the fable, he was so intent upon the reflection in the pool that he let slip the substance. He was conscious that a girl had passed him going in the opposite direction, a girl dressed in a dark gray tailor-made suit, with a fur at her neck and a dark muff swinging in one hand—a slender girl beside whom two French poodles frisked and scampered, a handsome girl in fashionable attire, taking her dogs for an airing. He walked on and sat down on a bench which overlooked the lake. The sun had fallen below the Jersey hills and only the tops of the tall buildings to the eastward held its dying glow. The lawns were swathed in shadow and the branches of the trees, already half denuded of their foliage, emerged in solemn silhouette like a pattern of Irish lace against the purpling sky. A hush had suddenly fallen on the distant traffic and Gallatin was alone.

Out of the half-light an inky figure came bounding up to him and sniffed eagerly at his knees. It was a black poodle. Gallatin patted the dog encouragingly, upon which it whined, put its paws on his lap and looked up into his face.

“Too bad, old man,” he said. “Lost, aren’t you?” Then, as the memory came to him, “By George, your mistress[85] will be hunting. I wonder if we can find her.” He turned the nickel collar in his fingers and examined the name-plate. There in script was the name of the owner, and an address. Gallatin thrust the crook of his stick through the dog’s collar and rose. He must find Miss Jane Loring or return the animal to its home. Jane Loring? Jane—?

He stopped, bent over the excited dog and looked at the name plate again. Jane Loring—“J. L.” Why—it was Jane’s dog! He had passed her a moment ago—here—in the park. More perturbed even than the wriggling poodle, he rose and hurried along the path down which he had come. There could be no mistake. Of course, it was Jane! There was no possible doubt about it! That blessed poodle!

“Hi! there! Let up, will you?” he cried, as the dog twisted and squirmed away from him. A whistle had sounded shrilly upon Gallatin’s left and before he knew it the dog had escaped him and was dashing hotfoot through the leaves toward the spot where a dark figure with another dog on a leash was rapidly moving.

Gallatin followed briskly and came up a moment later, in the midst of the excitement of reunion and reconciliation.

“Down, Chicot, down, I say,” the girl was commanding. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to be giving so much trouble!” And as Gallatin approached, breathlessly, hat in hand, “I’m ever so much obliged. I ought to have had him in leash. He’s only a puppy and—” She stopped, mouth open, eyes wide as she recognized him. He saw the look she gave him and bowed his head.

“Jane!” he said, humbly. “Jane!”

The dogs were leaping around them both and Chicot[86] was biting joyously at his gloved hand, but Miss Loring had drawn back.

“You!” she said.

“Yes,” softly. “I—I’m so glad to see you.”

He held his hand before him as though to parry an expected blow.

“Don’t,” he muttered. “Give me a chance. There’s so much I’ve got to say,—so much——”

“There’s nothing for you to say,” she said decisively. “If you’ll excuse me—I—I must be going at once.”

She turned away quickly, but the dogs were putting her dignity in jeopardy for the puppy still nosed Gallatin’s hand and showed a determination to linger for his caress.

“You’ve got to listen,” he murmured. “I’m not going to lose you again——”

“Come, Chicot,” said the girl in a voice which was meant to be peremptory, but which sounded curiously ineffective. Chicot would not go until Gallatin caught him by the collar and followed.

“You see,” he laughed, “you’ve got to stand for me—or lose the puppy.”

But Miss Loring had turned abruptly and was moving rapidly toward the distant Avenue. Gallatin put on his hat and walked at her side.

“I want you to know—how it all happened to me—up there in the woods,” he muttered, through set lips. “It’s only justice to me—and to you.”

“Will you please leave me!” she said, in a stifled voice, her head stiffly set, her eyes looking straight down the path before her.

“No,” he replied, more calmly. “I’m not going to leave you.”

“Oh, that you would dare!”

[87]

“Don’t, Jane!” he pleaded. “Can’t you see that I’ve got to go with you whether——”

“My name is Loring,” she interrupted coldly, strongly accenting the word.

“Won’t you listen to me?”

“I’m entirely at your mercy—unfortunately. I’ve always thought that a girl was safe from intrusion here in the Park.”

“Don’t call it that. I’ll go in a moment, if you’ll only hear what I’ve got to say.”

“You’d offer an apology for—for that!” She could not find a tone that suited her scorn of him.

“No—not apology,” he said steadily. “One doesn’t apologize for the things beyond one’s power to prevent. It’s the miserere, Jane—the de profundis——”

“It comes too late,” she said, but she stole a glance at him in spite of herself. His head bent slightly forward, he was gazing, under lowered brows directly before him into the falling dusk. She remembered that look. He had worn it when he had sat by their camp-fire the night they had heard the voices.

“Yes, I know,” he went on slowly. “Too late for you to understand—too late to help, and yet——”

“I beg that you will not go on,” she broke in quickly. “It can do no good.”

“I must go on. I’ve got so much to say and such a little time to say it in. Perhaps, I won’t see you again. At least I won’t see you unless you wish it.”

“Then you’ll not see me again.”

He turned his head and examined her soberly.

“That, of course, is your privilege. Don’t be too hard, if you can help it. Try and remember me, if you can, as I was before——”

“I shall not remember you at all, Mr. Gallatin.”

[88]

He started as she spoke his name. “You knew?”

“Yes, I knew. You—your name was familiar to me.”

“You mean that you had heard of me?” he asked wonderingly.

She knew that she had said too much, but she went on coldly.

“In New York one hears of Philip Gallatin. I knew—there in the woods. I discovered your name by accident—upon your letters.”

She spoke shortly—hesitantly, as if every word was wrung from her by an effort of will.

“I see,” he said, “and what you heard of me—was not good?”

“No,” she said. “It was not good. But I had known you two days then, and I—I thought there must—have been some mistake—until—” she broke off passionately. “Oh, what is the use of all this?” she gasped. “It’s lowering to your pride and to mine. If I have said more than I meant to say, it is because I want you to know why I never want to see you—to hear of you again.”

He bowed his head beneath the storm. He deserved it, he knew, and there was even a bitter pleasure in his retribution, for her indifference had been hardest to bear.

“I understand,” he said quietly. “I will go in a moment. But first I mean that you shall hear what I have to say.”

She remembered that tone of command. He had used it when he had lifted her in his arms and carried her helpless to his camp-fire. The memory of it shamed her, as his presence did now, and she walked on more rapidly. Their path had been deserted, but they were now approaching the Avenue where the hurrying pedestrians and[89] vehicles proclaimed the end of privacy. A deserted bench was before them.

“Please stop here a moment,” he pleaded. “I won’t keep you long.” And when she would have gone on he laid a hand on her arm. “You must!” he insisted passionately. “You’ve got to, Jane. You’ll do me a great wrong if you don’t. I’ve kept the faith with you since then—since I was mad there in the wilderness. You didn’t know or care, but I’ve kept the faith—the good you’ve done—don’t undo it now.”

A passer-by was regarding them curiously and so she sat, for Gallatin’s look compelled her. She did not understand what he meant, and in her heart she knew she could not care whose faith he kept, or why, but she recognized in his voice the note of a deep emotion, and was conscious of its echo in her own spirit. Outwardly she was as disdainful as before, and her silence, while it gave him consent, was anything but encouraging. As he sat down beside her the puppy, “Chicot,” put his head upon Gallatin’s knees and looked up into his eyes, so Gallatin put his hand on the dog’s head and kept it there.

“I want you to know something about my people—about—the Gallatins——”

“I know enough, I think.”

“No—you’re mistaken. We are not all that you think we are. Let me go on,” calmly. “The Gallatins have always stood for truth of speech and honesty of purpose, and whatever their failings they have all been called honorable men. Upon the Bench, at the Bar, in the Executive chair, no word has ever been breathed against their professional integrity or their civic pride. My great grandfather was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, my grandfather a Governor of the State of New York, my father——”

[90]

Miss Loring made a gesture of protest.

“Wait,” he insisted. “My father was a great lawyer—one of the greatest this City and State have ever known—and yet all of these men, mental giants of their day and generation—had—had a weakness—the same weakness—the weakness that I have. To one of them it meant the loss of the only woman he had ever loved—his wife and his children; to another the sacrifice of his highest political ambition; to my father a lingering illness of which he subsequently died. That is my pedigree—of great honor—and greater shame. History has dealt kindly because their faults were those of their blood and race, for which they themselves were not accountable. This may seem strange to you because you have only learned to judge men by their performances. The phenomenon of heredity is new to you. People are taught to see the physical resemblances of the members of a family to its ancestors—but of the spiritual resemblance one knows nothing—unless—” his voice sunk until it was scarcely audible, “unless the spiritual resemblance is so strong that even Time itself cannot efface it.”

The girl did not speak. Her head was bowed but her chin was still set firmly, and her eyes, though they looked afar, were stern and unyielding.

“When I went to the woods, I was—was recovering—from an illness. I went up there at the doctor’s orders. I had to go, and I—I got better after a while. Then you came, and I learned that there was something else in life besides what I had found in it. I had never known——”

“I can’t see why I should listen to this, Mr. Gallatin.”

“Because what happened after that, you were a part of.”

“I?”

“It was you who showed me how to be well. That’s[91] all,” he finished quietly. He rubbed the dog’s ears between his fingers and got some comfort from Chicot’s sympathy, but went on in a constrained voice. “I was hoping you might understand, that you might give me charity—if only the charity you once gave to the carcass of a dead deer.”

There was a long silence during which he watched her downcast profile, but when at last she lifted her head, he knew that she was still unyielding.

“You ask too much, Mr. Gallatin,” she said constrainedly. “If you were dead you might have my pity—even my tears, but living—living I can only—only hold you in—abhorrence.”

She rose from the bench quickly and shortened in the leashes of her dogs.

“You—you dislike me so much as that?” he asked dully.

“Dislike and—and fear you, Mr. Gallatin. If you’ll excuse me——”

She turned away and Gallatin started up. Dusk had fallen and they were quite alone.

“I can’t let you go like this,” he whispered, standing in front of her so that she could not pass him. “I can’t. You mean that you fear me because of what—happened—My God! Haven’t I proved to you that it was madness, the madness of the Gallatin blood, which strikes at the happiness of those it loves the best? I love you, Jane. It’s true. Night and day——”

“You’ve told me that before,” she broke in fearlessly. “Must you insult me again. For shame! Let me pass, please.”

It was the assurance of utter contempt. Gallatin bowed his head and drew aside. There was nothing left to do.

[92]

He stood there in the dusk, his head uncovered, and watched her slender figure as it merged into the darkness. Only the dog, Chicot, stopped, struggling, at his leash, but its mistress moved on hurriedly without even turning her head and was lost in the crowd upon the street. Gallatin lingered a moment longer immovable and then turned slowly and walked into the depths of the Park, his face pale, his dark eyes staring like those of a blind man.

Night had fallen swiftly, but not more swiftly than the shadows on his spirit, among which he groped vaguely for the elements that had supported him. He crept into the night like a stricken thing, his feet instinctively guiding him away from the moving tide of his fellow-beings—one of whom had just denied him charity—without which his own reviving faith in himself was again in jeopardy. For two months he had fought his battle silently with her image in his mind—the image of a girl who had once given him faith and friendship, whose fingers had soothed him in fever, and whose eyes had been dark with compassion—the girl who had taught him the uses of responsibility and the glorification of the labor of his hands. That silent battle had magnified the image, vested it with sovereign rights, given it the gentle strength by which he had conjured, and he had fought joyfully, with a new belief in his own destiny, a real delight in conquest. His heart glowed with a dull wrath. Was it nothing that he had come to her clean-handed again? The image that he had conjured was fading in the sullen glow in the West out of which she had come to him. Was this Jane? The Jane he knew had sorrowed with the falling of a bird, mourned the killing of a squirrel and wept over the glazed eyes of a dead deer. Was this Jane? This disdainful woman with the modish hat and cold blue eye, this scornful[93] daughter of convention who sneered at sin and mocked at the tokens of repentance?

The image was gone from his shrine, and in its place a Nemesis sat enthroned—a Nemesis in dark gray who looked at him with the eyes of contempt and who called herself Miss Loring. He was resentful of her name as at an intrusion. It typified the pedantry of the conventional and commonplace.

The arc lamps died and flared, their shadows leaping like gnomes in and out of the obscurity. High in the air, lights punctured the darkness where the hotels loomed. Beside him on the drive gay turnouts hurried. The roar of the city came nearer. Arcadia was not even a memory.

The Pride of the Gallatins was a sorry thing that night. This Gallatin had bared it frankly, torn away its rugged coverings, that a woman might see and know him for what he was—the best and the worst of him. Even now he did not regret it; for bitter as the retribution had been, he knew that he had owed her that candor, for it was a part of the lesson he had learned with Jane—the other Jane—among the woods. This Jane remembered not; for she had struck and had not spared him, and each stinging phrase still pierced and quivered in the wound that it had made.

Out of the blackness of his thoughts reason came slowly. It was her right, of course, to deny him the privileges of her regard—the rights of fellowship—this he had deserved and had expected, but the carelessness of her contempt had been hard to bear. Mockery he had known in women, and intolerance, but no one of his blood had ever brooked contempt. His cheeks burned with the sudden flush of anger and his hand upon his stick grew rigid. A man might pay for such a thing as that—but a girl!

[94]

His muscles relaxed and he laughed outright. A snip of a girl that he’d kissed in the woods, who now came out dressed in broadcloth and sanctimony! How should it matter what she thought of him? Absurd little Puritan! Girls had been kissed before and had lived to be merry over it. He was a fool to have built this enchanted fabric into his brain, this castle of Micomicon which swayed and toppled about his ears. Miss Loring, forsooth!

He took out his cigarette case in leisurely fashion and struck a match, and its reflection sparkled gayly in his eyes. He inhaled deeply and bent his steps toward the nearest lights beyond the trees.