XXI TEMPTATION

Philip Gallatin had a bad night. From the Loring house he trudged forth into the rain and sleet of the Park where he walked until his anger had cooled; then dined alone in a corner at the Cosmos, avoiding a group of his familiars who were attuned to gayety. From there he went directly to his rooms.

The house of his fathers was in a by-street in the center of the fashionable shopping district, and this dwelling, an old-fashioned double house of brown stone, was the only relic that remained to Phil of the former grandeur of the Gallatins. Great lawyers, however successful in safeguarding the interests of their clients, are notable failures in safeguarding the interests of their own. Philip Gallatin, the elder, had inherited a substantial fortune, but had added nothing to it. He had lived like a prince and was known as the most lavish host of his day. He consorted with the big men of his generation when the Gallatin house was famous alike for its cellar and kitchen. Here were entertained presidents and ex-presidents of the United States, foreign princes, distinguished artists and literary men, and here it was claimed, over Philip Gallatin’s priceless Madeira, the way had been paved for an important treaty with the Russian government.

Philip Gallatin, the second, had made money easily and spent it more easily, to the end that at the time of his death it was discovered that the home was heavily mortgaged, and that his holdings in great industrial corporations,[248] many of which he had helped to organize, had been disposed of, leaving an income which, while ample for Mrs. Gallatin and her only child during the years of his boyhood, when the taste of society was for quieter things, was entirely inadequate to the growing requirements of the day. At his mother’s death, just after he came of age, Phil Gallatin had found himself possessed of less than eight thousand a year gross, and a mortgage which called for almost one-half that sum. But he resolutely refused to part with the house, for it had memories and associations dear to him.

Three years ago, with a pang which he still remembered, he had decided to rent out the basement and lower floors for business purposes and apply the income thus received to taxes and sinking fund, but he still kept the rooms on the third floor which he had always occupied, as his own. An old servant named Barker, one of the family retainers, was in attendance. Barker had watched the tide of commerce flow in and at last engulf the street which in his mind would always be associated with the family which he had served so long. But he would not go, so Philip Gallatin found a place for him. In the building he was janitor, engineer, rent collector, and valet. He cooked Phil’s breakfast of eggs and coffee and brought it up to him, made his bed and kept his rooms with the same scrupulous care that he had exercised in the heydey of prosperity. He was Phil’s doctor, nurse and factotum, and kept the doors of Gallatin’s apartments against all invaders.

Phil Gallatin wearily climbed the two long flights which led to the rooms. He had had a trying day. All the morning had been spent with John Sanborn, and a plan had been worked out based upon the labors of the past three weeks. One important decision had been[249] reached, and a concession wrung at last from his clients. He had worked at high tension since the case had been put into his hands, traveling, eating when and where he could, working late at the office, sleeping little, and in spare moments had written to or thought of Jane. The strain of his anxiety was now beginning to tell. The events of the afternoon had filled him with a new sense of the difficulties of his undertakings. Loring would fight to the last ditch. All the more glory in driving him there!

But of Jane he thought with less assurance. His own mind had been so innocent of transgression, his own heart so filled with the thought of her, that her willingness to believe evil of him and of Nina had caused a singular revulsion of feeling which was playing havoc with his sentiments. It had not mattered so much when Jane’s indictment had been for him alone; that, he had deserved and had been willing to stand trial for; but with Nina’s reputation at stake Jane’s intolerance took a different aspect. Whatever Nina Jaffray’s faults, and they were many, Phil Gallatin knew, as every one else in the Cedarcroft crowd did, that they were the superficial ones of the day and generation and that Nina’s pleasure was in the creation of smoke rather than flame.

The failure of the motor after the “Pot and Kettle” party had been unfortunate, and the lack of oil subsequently explained by the drunkenness of the chauffeur who had been discharged on Miss Jaffray’s return to town. Phil Gallatin had found a farmhouse, where Nina had been made comfortable. There was no gasoline within five miles of the place. The chauffeur was unable to cope with the situation and there was nothing for it but to wait until morning, when the farmer himself drove Gallatin to the nearest village for the needed fuel.

Under other circumstances it might have been an[250] amusing experience, but the events of the evening had put a damper on them both. Nina’s impudence was smothered in her fur collar, and she had sat sulkily through the hours of darkness, gazing at the stove, saying not a word, and the delinquent chauffeur had meanwhile gone to sleep on the floor of the kitchen. Morning saw them safe in town at an early hour, and it had been at Nina’s request that the incident had not been mentioned. Until to-day Gallatin had not given it a thought. He had not seen Nina, and while he had frequently thought of her, the flight of time and the press of affairs had given her singular confession a perspective that took something from its importance. But Jane’s attitude had suddenly made Nina the dominant figure in the situation. Whatever mischief she had created in his own affairs, she had not deserved this!

He entered his rooms filled with bitterness toward Henry Loring, dull resentment toward Jane. Everything in the world that he hoped for had centered about her image, and he loved her for what she had been to him, what she had made of him and for what he had made of himself, but in his mind a definite conviction had grown, that in so far as he was concerned their relations were now at an end. He had abased himself enough and further efforts at a reconciliation could only demean his dignity, already jeopardized, and his pride, already mortally wounded.

He threw himself heavily into his Morris chair and tried to think about other things. Upon the table there was a legal volume which he had brought up from the office the night before, filled with slips of paper for the reference pages which Tooker had placed there for him. He took it up and began to read, but his mind wandered. The type swam before his eyes and in its place Jane’s[251] face appeared, ivory-colored as he had last seen it, and her eyes dark with pain and incomprehension looked scornfully out of the page. He closed the book and gazed around the room, into the dusty corners, with their mementos of his career: the oar that had been his when he had stroked the crew of his university, boxing gloves, foils and mask, photographs of football teams in which he had been interested, a small cabinet of cups—golf and steeplechase prizes, a policeman’s helmet, the spoils of a college prank, his personal library (his father’s was in a storage warehouse), trinkets of all sorts, steins innumerable, a tiny satin slipper, some ivories and—a small gold flask.

He got out of his chair, picked the flask up, and examined it as if it had been something he had never seen before. He ran his fingers over the chasing of the cup, noted the dents that had been made when it had fallen among the rocks, and the dark scar made in the embers of their fire.

Their fire! His fire and Jane’s—burned out to ashes.

He put the flask back in its place and began slowly to pace the floor, his hands behind his back, his head bent forward, his eyes peering somberly. He stopped in his walk and put a lump of coal into the grate. He was dead tired and his muscles ached as though with a cold. In the next room his bed invited him, but he did not undress, for he knew that if he went to bed it would only be to lie and gaze at the gray patch of light where the window was. He had done that before and the memory of the dull ache in his body during the long night when he had suffered came to him and overpowered him. He had that pain now—coming slowly, as it had sometimes done before when he had been working on his nerve. It didn’t grip him as once it had done, with its clutch of fire, driving everything else from his thoughts. But he was conscious that the[252] craving was still there, and he knew that the thing he wanted was the panacea for the thoughts that oppressed him. By its means all the aches of his body would be cured and the pain of his thoughts. Yes! He stopped at the table and took up a cigarette. But there was one thing in him, one thing more important than physical pain, than physical exhaustion or singing nerves, one small celestial spark that he had kindled, fostered, and tended which had warmed and comforted his entire being—the glow of his returning self-respect; and this thing he knew, if those physical pangs were cured, would die.

He took up his measured tread of the floor, counting his footsteps from window to door and back again, watching the patterns in the rug and picking out the figures upon which he was to put his feet. Once or twice his footsteps led him as though unconsciously to the cabinet in the corner, where he stopped with a short laugh. He had forgotten that there was no panacea there. Later on he rang the bell for Barker, only to remember that the man had gone away for the night. He wanted some one to talk to—some one—any one who could make him forget. What was the use? What did it matter to any one but himself if he forgot or not? What was he fighting for? For himself? Yesterday and the days before he had been fighting for Jane, fighting gladly—downtown, in his clubs, at people’s houses, in the Enemy’s country, where the Enemy was to be found at every corner, at his very elbow, because he knew that nothing could avail against his purpose to win Jane back to him.

Now he had no such purpose. Jane had turned from him because some one had lied about him, turned away and left him here alone in the dark with this hideous thing that was rising up in him and would not let him think.

He went to the table and filled a pipe with trembling[253] fingers. A terror oppressed him, the imminence of a danger. It was the horror of being alone, alone in the room where this thing was. He knew it well. It had been here before and it had conquered him. It lurked in the dark corners and grinned from his bookshelves and laughed in the crackling of his fire. “Come,” he could hear it say, “don’t you remember old Omar?
“Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling; The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”

His pulses throbbed and his head was burning, though a cold sweat had broken out on his brows and temples, and his feet were cold—ice cold. The tobacco had no taste, and it only parched his throat the more. He stumbled into the bathroom and bathed his head and hands in the cold water, and drank of it in huge gulps. That relieved him for a moment and he went back to his chair and took up his book.

His sickness came back upon him slowly, a premonitory faintness and then a gripping, aching fire within. The book trembled in his hands and the type swam in strange shapes. He clenched his fingers, threw the book from him and rose with an oath, reaching for his hat and coat and stumbling toward the door. Downstairs, less than a block away——

Beside the bookcase he caught a glimpse of his image in the pier glass. He stopped, glared at himself and straightened.

“Where are you going, d——n you? Where? Like a thief in the night? Look at me! You can’t! Where are you going?”

[254]

There was no answer but the laughter of the flames and the sneer of a motor in the Avenue.

His hand released the knob and he turned back into the room, with eyes staring, teeth set and face ghastly.

“No, by G——. You’ll not go, Phil Gallatin, not from this room to-night—not for that. Do you hear? You’ll fight this thing out here and now.”

He dropped his coat and hat and strode like a fury to the window. There he lay across the sill, and throwing the sash open wide, drank the night air into his lungs in deep breaths.

In a moment the crisis had passed. After a while he closed the window, came back into the room and sank into his chair, utterly exhausted. His mind comprehended dully that he had fought and won, not for Jane, nor for his future, but for that small fire that was still glowing in his breast. He closed his eyes and relaxed his clenched fingers. His nerves still tingled but only slightly like the tremor of harpstrings in a passing storm. He was very tired and in a moment he fell asleep.

When he awoke, the light of dawn was filtering in at the windows. The lamp had gone out. He struck a match and made a light. It was six o’clock. He had slept seven hours. He yawned, stretched himself and looked at his disordered reflection in the mirror, suddenly awake to the beginning of a new day. The aches in his body had gone and his mind was clear again. He leaned forward upon the mantel and silently apostrophized his image.

“You’re going to win, Phil Gallatin. Do you hear? You’re not afraid. You don’t care what the world says. You’re not fighting for the world’s opinion. It’s only your own opinion of yourself that matters a d——n. If you win that, you’ve won everything in the world worth winning.”

[255]

He laughed pleasantly and his image smiled back at him.

“Salut! Monsieur! You’re a good sort after all! You’ve got more sand than I thought you had. I’m beginning to like you a great deal. You can look me in the eye now, straight in the eye. That’s right. We understand each other.”

He faced around into the room which had been the scene of so many of his failures, and of his last and greatest success. The light from the windows was growing brighter. It was painting familiar objects with pale violet patches, glinting on glassware and porcelain like the cold light of intellect, which now dominated the merely physical. He swept the room with a glance. Before the light the shadows were fading. The Enemy——

There was no Enemy!

Gallatin poked down the embers of the fire and heaped on wood and coal. He stripped to his underclothes, did twenty minutes with dumb-bells and chest weights, and then went in to draw his bath, singing. He soused himself in the cold water and came out with chattering teeth, but in a moment his body was all aglow.

“It’s a good body,” he mused as he rubbed it, “a perfectly good body, too good to abuse. There’s a soul inside there, too. Where, nobody seems to know, but it’s there and it isn’t in the stomach, and that’s a sure thing, though that’s where the stomach thinks it is. We’ll give this body a chance, if you please, a square deal all around.”

He chuckled and thumped himself vigorously, as though to assure himself of the thoroughness of his recuperation. Seven o’clock found him on the street walking vigorously in the direction of the Park. He knew that there was no chance of meeting Jane Loring at this hour[256] of the morning, but he chose the west side that he might not even see the marble mass where she was sleeping, for the memory of what had happened there yesterday rankled like an angry wound.

He breakfasted at the Cosmos at eight, and before nine was at the office where he finished the morning mail before even Tooker and the clerks were aware of his presence there. There were many threads of the Sanborn case still at a loose end and he spent a long while writing and dictating to his stenographer, who was still at his side, when, at about eleven o’clock, the office boy brought in Nina Jaffray’s card.

He was still looking at it when Nina entered.

“I was afraid you might be busy, Phil,” she said calmly, “but I wanted to see you about something.”

He nodded to his stenographer and she took up her papers and went.

“The mountain wouldn’t come to Mahomet and so——”

“Do sit down, Nina.”

“I’m not interrupting you very much, am I?”

He laughed.

“No. I’m glad you came, if only to prove to my friends that I really do work.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“No. I’m glad to see you for other reasons.”

“I’m curious to know them.”

“To be assured, for one thing, that you’ve forgiven me for my boorishness——”

“Oh, that! Yes. Of course.”

“And for another—that your mood will spare me the pains of further making a fool of myself.”

Nina shrugged lightly and laughed at him.

[257]

“Of course you know your limitations, Phil. How could I promise you that?”

Gallatin smiled at her. She was very fetching this morning in a wide dark beaver hat with a lilac veil, and her well-cut tailor-made, snugly fitting in the prevailing mode, defined the long lines of her slim figure which seemed in his office chair to be very much at its ease.

“Will you be serious?”

“In a moment. For the present I’m so overjoyed at seeing you, that I’ve forgotten what I came for. Oh, yes—Phil, I’m hopelessly compromised and you’ve done it. Don’t laugh and don’t alarm yourself. You’re doing both at the same time—but I really am—seriously compromised. There’s a story going around that you and I——”

“Yes, I’ve heard it,” he said grimly.

“What interest people can possibly discover in the mishaps of a belated platonic couple in a snowstorm is more than I can fathom. Of course, if there had been anything for them to talk about, I’d have come off scot-free. As it is I’m pilloried in the market place as a warning to budding innocence! Imagine it! Me! I’m everything that’s naughty, from Eve to Guinevere. It would be quite sad, if it wasn’t so amusing. Weren’t we the very presentment of amatory felicity? Can’t you see us now, swathed in our fur coats, sitting like two bundled mummies upon each side of that monstrosity they called a stove, ‘The Parlor Heater,’ that was the name, from Higgins and Harlow, Phila., Pa., done in nickel at the top. Can’t you see us sitting upright on those dreadful hair-cloth chairs, silent and so miserable? That, my dear Philip, was the seductive hour in which I fell from grace. Touching picture, isn’t it?”

Gallatin refused to smile.

“Who told this story, Nina?”

[258]

“The chauffeur probably. I discharged him the next day.”

“Of course—that was it. But it’s such a silly yarn. Who will believe it——?”

She threw up her hands in mock despair.

“Every one—unfortunately. You see Coley Van Duyn didn’t help matters any by telling about your kissing me on the stairs.”

“D——n him,” said Phil, through his teeth.

“Besides, I’ve been careless of their opinion for so long that people are only glad to get something tangible.”

“But it isn’t tangible. That farmer out there could——”

Nina raised her hand.

“Denial is confession, my dear. I shall deny nothing. I shall only smile. In my saddest moments the memory of Higgins and Harlow’s parlor heater with its nickel icicles around the top will restore my equanimity. I don’t think I’ve ever before really appreciated the true symbolism of the nickel icicle.”

Gallatin had risen and was pacing the floor before her.

“This gossip must be stopped,” he said scowling at the rug. “If I can’t stop it in one way, I can in another.”

“And drag my shattered fabric into the rumpus? No, thanks. J’y suis—j’y reste. The r?le of martyr becomes me. In my own eyes I’m already canonized. I think I like the sensation. It has the merit of being a novel one at any rate.”

“Nina, do stop talking nonsense,” he put in impatiently. “I’m not going to sit here placidly and let them tell this lie.”

“Well,”—Nina leaned back in her chair and tilted[259] her head sideways—“what are you going to do about it?”

“I’ll make them answer to me—personally. It was my fault. I ought to have walked home, I suppose.”

“But you didn’t—that’s the rub. They won’t answer to you personally anyway, at least nobody but the chauffeur, and he might do it—er—unpleasantly.”

“I’ll thrash him—I’ll break his——”

“No, you won’t. It wouldn’t do the least bit of good, and besides it would make matters worse if he thrashed you. There’s only one thing left for you to do, my friend.”

“What?”

“Marry me!”

Phil Gallatin stopped pacing the floor and faced her, frowning.

“You still insist on that joke?”

“I do. And it’s no joke. It seems to be the least thing that you can do, under the circumstances.”

“Oh, is it?”

“Of course. You wouldn’t leave things as they are, would you? Think of my shrinking susceptibilities, the atrocious significance of your negligence. Really, Phil, I don’t see how you can refuse me!”

Gallatin laughed. He understood her now.

“I’m immensely flattered. I’ll marry you with great pleasure——”

“Oh, thanks.”

“If I ever decide to marry any one.”

“Phil!”

She glanced past him out of the window, smiling. “And you’re not going to marry—any one?”

“No.”

“I was afraid you might be.” She rose and took up[260] her silver bric-a-brac which clanked cheerfully. She had learned what she came for.

“Oh, well, I won’t despair. I’m not half bad, you know. Think it over. Some day, perhaps.”

“It would be charming, I’m sure,” he said politely.

“And, Phil——” She paused.

“What?”

“Come and see a fellow once in a while, won’t you? You know, propinquity is love’s alter ego.”

“I’m sure of it. Perhaps that’s why I’m afraid to come.”

She laughed again as she went out and he followed her to the door of the outer office where Miss Crenshaw and Miss Gillespie scrutinized her perfectly appointed costume and then tossed their heads the fraction of an inch, adjusted their sidecombs and went on with their work.