Scott Leroy
To Him That Hath

CHAPTER IV
THE ORDEAL OF KATE MORGAN

That night David and Rogers had a long talk. In consequence, correspondence was re-opened with the sanitarium at Colorado Springs, and David began to spend part of his time in helping equip Rogers for the distant struggle against death.

During the two weeks since his exposure Rogers had not railed; he had borne his defeat in grim, quiet despair. His bitterness did not now depart; he had not forgotten his defeat, and he had not forgiven the world. But his life now had an object, and the hope, which the really brave always save from even the worst wreck, began to stir within him.

The next two weeks David worked with his pen as he had never worked before. He was in that rare mood when things flow from one. Before the end of the two weeks he turned in to Mr. Osborne two short stories which Mr. Osborne, with the despatch a publisher gives a new author he is desirous of holding, immediately examined, accepted and paid for at a very respectable rate. Mr. Osborne suggested a series of articles for his magazine, spoke of more stories, assured David he would have no difficulty in marketing his writing elsewhere; and when David left the publisher's office it was with the exultant sense that financially his future was secure.

Mr. Osborne assured him his book was going to turn much serious thought to our treatment of the criminal and other wasted people, and that his shorter writings were going to help to the same end. His publisher asked him to speak before a club interested in reform measures, and his talk, straight from the heart and out of his own experience, made a profound impression. The success of this speech suggested to him another means of helping – the spoken word. He felt that at last his life was really beginning to count.

But he realised he was still only at the beginning. Before him was that giant's task, conquering the respect of the world – with the repayment of St. Christopher's as the first step. The task would require all his mind and strength and courage and patience, for years and years and years – with success at the end no more than doubtful.

The more David pondered upon the ills he saw about him, the less faith did he have in superficial reforms, the deeper did he find himself going for the real cure. And gradually he reached the conclusion that the idea behind the present organization of society was wrong. That idea, stripped to its fundamentals, was selfishness – and even a mistaken selfishness: for self to gain for self all that could be gained. Under this organization they that have the greatest chance are they that are strong and cunning and unscrupulous, and he that is all three in greatest measure can take most for himself. So long as the world and its people are at the mercy of such an organization, so long as self-interest is the dominant ideal – just so long will the great mass of the people be in poverty, just so long will crime and vice remain unchecked.

He began to think of a new organization of society, where individual selfishness would be replaced as the fundamental idea by the interest of the whole people – where "all men are born free and equal" would not be merely a handsome bit of rhetoric, but where there would be true equality of chance – where the development of the individual in the truest, highest sense would be possible – where that major portion of vice and crime which spring from poverty and its ills would be wiped out, and there would remain only the vice and crime that spring from the instincts of a gradually improving human nature. And so, without losing interest in immediate changes that might alleviate criminal-making conditions, David set his eyes definitely upon the great goal of a fundamental change.

Since Rogers would soon be gone, David began to look for new quarters. His pride shrunk from a boarding-house, where he knew he would be liable to snubs and insults. As money matters troubled him no longer, he leased a small flat with a bright southern exposure, in an apartment house just outside the poorer quarter. If he and Tom prepared most of their own meals they could live here more cheaply than in a boarding-house, and he could save more to quiet Lillian Drew and to pay off the debt to St. Christopher's.

One afternoon, while David was at the Pan-American talking to the Mayor, and Kate was at her desk type-writing a manuscript, the office door opened and closed, and a low, satiric voice rasped across the room:

"Hello, little girl!"

Kate looked about, then quickly rose. Her cheeks sprang aflame. At the door stood Lillian Drew, smiling mockingly, her face flushed with spirits.

"Hello, little girl!" she repeated.

Kate's instinctive hatred of this woman, founded partly on what Lillian Drew obviously was, but more on the certainty that she had some close and secret connection with David's life, made Kate tremble. A year before the wrathful words that besought to pass her lips would have burst forth unchecked. But she controlled herself.

"What do you want?" she demanded.

To pain a person who stirred her antagonism, this twenty uncurbed years had made one of Lillian Drew's first instincts. She had observed before that Kate disliked her and stung under her "little girl;" consequently to inflict her presence and the phrase on Kate was to gratify instinct.

She walked with a slight unsteadiness to David's chair, sat down and smiled baitingly up into Kate's face. "I've just come around to have a visit with you, little girl. Sit down."

Kate grew rigid. "If you want Mr. Aldrich, he's not here."

"Oh, yes, he is. But I don't want him just yet. I want to have a visit with you." She looked Kate up and down. "Well, now, for such a little girl, you're not so bad."

Kate's eyes blazed. "I tell you he's not here. There's no use of your waiting."

"I'm in no hurry at all. But you're too thin. You've got to put on ten or fifteen pounds if you expect to catch his eye."

Kate pointed to the door. "Get out of here! – with that breath of yours!"

The vindictive fire gathered in Lillian Drew's eyes; the return blow of her victim had roused her pain-giving desire into wrath.

"Oh, you want to catch him, all right!" she laughed, malignantly. "I saw that in a second the other day from the way you looked at him. But d'you think he'll care for a girl like you? I came the other day and found no one around but that nice father of yours. I had a little talk with him, and – well, I've got you sized up just about right. And you think you're the girl for him!"

Kate took one step forward and drew back her open hand. But the hand paused in mid-blow. "You drunken she-devil!" she blazed forth, "get out of here! – or I'll have the police put you out!"

Lillian Drew sprang up, as livid as if the hand had indeed cracked upon her cheek, and glared at the flame of hatred and wrath that was Kate Morgan. Rage, abetted by liquor, had taken away every thought, every desire, save to strike this girl down. Her hands clenched; but blows make only a passing hurt. All her life she had used words; words, if you have the right sort, are a better weapon – their wound is deep, permanent.

"You little skinny alley-cat!" she burst out furiously. "You think you're going to marry him, don't you. You marry him! Oh, Lord!"

Kate shivered with her passion. "Get out!"

Lillian Drew gave a sharp, crunching, gloating laugh. "That's it! – you think you're going to marry him. You think he's a thief, don't you. You think you're in his class. Well – let me tell you something."

She drew close to Kate and her eyes burned upon Kate with wild vindictive triumph. "He's not a thief – he never was one!"

"It's a lie!" cried Kate.

"Oh, he says he is, but he's not. He never took that five thousand dollars from St. Christopher's. He pretends he did, but he didn't. You hear that, little girl? – he didn't. Phil Morton took it. I know, because I got it. – D'you understand now? – that he's not a thief? – that he's ten thousand miles above you? And yet you, you skinny little nothing, you've got the nerve to think you're going to catch him! Oh, Lord!"

"You're drunker than I thought!" sneered Kate.

"If it wasn't true, d'you suppose he'd be paying me to keep still about it?"

"Pay you to keep still about his not being a thief! And you want me to believe that too?" Kate laughed with contempt. Then she inquired solicitously: "Would you like a bucket of water over you to sober you a bit?"

At this moment the hall door opened and David entered the room. He paused in astonishment. "What's the matter?" he asked sharply.

The two had turned at his entrance, and, their faces ablaze with anger, were now glaring at him. Kate was the first to speak, and her words tingled with her wrath.

"Nothing. Only this charming lady friend of yours – don't come too near her breath! – has been telling me that you didn't take the money from the Mission – that Mr. Morton did – that she got it – that you're paying her not to tell that you're innocent."

The colour slowly faded from David's face. He held his eyes a moment on Kate's infuriate figure, and then he gazed at Lillian Drew. She gazed back at him defiantly, but the thought that her betrayal of the secret might cut off her supplies began to cool her anger. David thought only of the one great fact that the truth had at last come out; and finally he exclaimed, almost stupidly, more in astoundment than wrath:

"So this's how you've kept it secret!"

Kate paled. Her eyes widened and her lips fell apart. She caught herself against her desk and stared at him.

"So – it's the truth!" she whispered with dry lips.

But David did not hear her. His attention was all pointed at Lillian Drew. "This is the way you've kept it, is it!" he said.

"She's the only one I've told," she returned uneasily.

Her effrontery began to flow back upon her. "She's only one more you've got to square things with. Come, give me a little coin and I'll get out, and give you a chance to settle with her."

"You've had your last cent!" he said harshly.

"Oh, no, I haven't. I don't leave till you come up with the dough!" She sat down, and looked defiantly at him.

Kate moved slowly, tensely, across to David, gripped his arms and turned her white, strained face upon his.

"So – you never took that Mission money!" Her voice was an awed, despairing whisper.

Her tone, her fierce grip, her white face, sent through him a sickening shiver of partial understanding. "I'm sorry – but you know the truth."

She gazed wide-eyed at him; then her voice, still hardly more than a whisper, broke out wildly: "Yes – yes – you took it, David! Say that you took it!"

He was silent for a moment. "If I said so – would you believe me?" he asked.

Her head slowly sank, and her hands fell from his arms. "Oh, David!" she gasped – a wild, choked moan of despair. She took her hat and jacket from their hooks, and not stopping to put them on, not hearing the triumphant "Good-bye, little girl" of Lillian Drew, she walked out of the office.

She moved through the acid-sharp November air, a white-faced automaton. She felt a vague, numb infinity of pain. She perceived neither the causes of the blow nor its probable results; she merely felt its impact, and that impact had made her whole being inarticulate.

But presently her senses began to rouse. She began to see the outlines of her disaster, its consequences; her great vague pain separated into distinct pangs, each agonisingly acute. She felt an impulse to cry out in the street, but her instinctive pride closed her throat. She turned back and hurried to her room, locked herself in, and flung her hat upon the floor and herself upon the bed.

But even here she could not cry. All her life she had been strong, aggressive, self-defending; she had cried so rarely that she knew not how. So she lay, dry-eyed, her whole body clenched, retched with sobs that would not come up.

Lillian Drew's words, "He's ten thousand miles above you," sat upon her pillow and cried into her ear. She had seen David's superior quality and his superior training; but she and he had both been thieves – they were both struggling to rise clear of thievery. This commonness of experience and of present effort had made him seem very near to her – very attainable. It was a bond between them, a bond that limited them to one another. And she had steadfastly seen a closer union a little farther ahead.

But now he was not a thief. The bond was snapped – he was ten thousand miles above her! Her despair magnified him, diminished herself; and when she contrasted the two she shrunk to look upon the figure of her insignificance. He must see her as such a pigmy – how could he ever care for such paltriness? He never could. He was lost to her – utterly lost!

All that afternoon she was tortured by her hopelessness. In the evening she became possessed by an undeniable craving to see David, and she went to David's house and asked him to walk with her. For the first minute after they were in the street the silence of constraint was between them. David could but know, in a vague way, of Kate's suffering; he was pained, shamed, that he was its cause.

In the presence of her suffering, to him, with his feeling of guilt, all else seemed trivial. But there was one matter that had to be spoken of. "You've not told a soul, have you, what you learned this afternoon?" he asked.

"No," she returned, in a muffled voice.

"I was sure you hadn't. I was afraid this afternoon that Rogers had overheard, but he didn't; either you talked in low voices, or he was asleep. No one must ever know the truth – no one – and especially Rogers."

"Why him especially?" she asked mechanically.

David hesitated. "Well, you see one thing that makes him feel close to me is that he believes we have both been in the same situation. In a way that has made us brothers. If he knew otherwise, it might make a difference to him."

"I understand!" said Kate's muffled voice.

She asked him details of the story Lillian Drew had revealed, and since she already knew so much, he told her – though he felt her interest was not in what he told her.

At length – he had yielded himself to her guidance – they came out upon the dock where they had talked a month before. She had wanted to be with him alone, and she had thought of no better place. Despite the wind's being filled with needles, they took their stand at the dock's end.

They looked out at the river that writhed and leaped under the wind's pricking – black, save beneath the arc lamps of the Williamsburg bridge, where the rearing little wave-crests gleamed, sunk, and gleamed again. For several minutes they were silent. Then the choked words burst from her:

"I'm not fit to be your friend!"

"You mustn't let this afternoon make a difference, Kate," he besought. "It doesn't to me. Fit to be my friend! You are – a thousand times over! I admire you – I honour you – I'm proud to have you for a friend!"

She quickly looked up at him. The light from the bridge lamps, a giant string of glowing beads, lay upon her face. In it there gleamed the sudden embers of hope.

"But can you love me – some time?" she whispered.

It was agony to him to shake his head.

"I knew it!" she breathed dully.

When he saw the gray, dead despair in her face, he cried out, in his agony and abasement:

"Don't take it so, Kate! I'm not worthy to be the cause of so much pain."

She looked back at the river; the wind had set her shivering, but she did not know she was cold. He saw that she was thinking, so he did not speak. After several minutes she asked in a low voice:

"Do you still love Miss Chambers?"

He remained silent.

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"As much as I love you?"

"Yes."

There was a pause. When she next spoke she was looking him tensely in the face.

"Would she love you if she knew the truth?"

"I shall never tell her."

"But would she love you?" she repeated, fiercely. She clutched his arms and her eyes blazed. "She'd better not! – I'd kill her!"

The face he looked down into was that of a wild animal. He gazed at it with fear and fascination.

The vindictive fire began slowly to burn lower, then, at a puff, it was out. "No! – No!" she cried, convulsively, gripping his arms tighter. "I wouldn't! You know I wouldn't!"

The face, so rageful a minute before, was now twitching, and the tears, that came so hard, were trembling on her lashes. Her eyes embraced his face for several moments.

"Ah, David!" she cried, and her words were borne upward on the sobs that now shook her, "even if you don't love me, David – I want you to be happy!"

CHAPTER V
THE COMMAND OF LOVE

Mr. Allen put down his teacup and gazed across the table at Helen. Since Mrs. Bosworth had left the drawing-room, ten minutes before, they had been arguing the old, old point, and both held their old positions.

"Then you will never, never give your ideas up?" he sighed, with mock-seriousness that was wholly serious.

"Then you will never, never give your ideas up?" she repeated in the same tone.

"Never, never."

"Never, never."

They looked at each other steadily for a moment, then their make-believe lightness fell from them.

"We certainly do disagree to perfection!" he exclaimed.

"Yes. So perfectly that the more I think of what you've asked for, the more inadvisable does it seem."

"But you'll change yet. A score of drawn battles do not discourage me of ultimate victory."

"Nor me," she returned quietly.

Their skirmish was interrupted by the entrance of a footman. Helen took the card from the tray and glanced at it.

"Show her into the library and tell her I'll join her soon." She turned back to Mr. Allen. "Perhaps you remember her – she was a maid at your house a little while – a Miss Morgan."

"I remember her, yes," he said indifferently.

His face clouded; he made an effort at lightness, but his words were sharp. "Where, oh where, are you going to stop, Helen! You are at St. Christopher's twice a week, not counting frequent extra visits. Two days ago, so you've just told me, that Mr. Aldrich was here. To-day, it's this girl. And the week's not yet over! Don't you think there might at least be a little moderation?"

"You mean," she returned quietly, "that, if we were married, you would not want these friends of mine to come to your house?"

"I should not! And I wish I knew of some way to snap off all that side of your life!"

She regarded him meditatively. "Since there's so much about me you don't approve of, I've often wondered why you want to marry me. Love is not a reason, for you don't love me."

The answers ran through his head: He admired her; she had beauty, brains, social standing, social tact, and, last of all but still of importance, she had money – the qualities he most desired in his wife. But to make a pretence of love, whatever the heart may be, is a convention of marriage – like the bride's bouquet, or her train. So he said:

"But I do love you."

"Oh, no you don't – no more than I love you."

"Then why would you marry me? – if you do."

"Because I like you; because I admire your qualities; because I believe my life would be richer and fuller and more efficient; and because I should hope to alter certain of your opinions."

"Well, I don't care what the reasons are – just so they're strong enough," he said lightly. He rose and held out his hand; his face grew serious; his voice lowered. "I must be going. Four more days, remember – then your answer."

After he had gone she sat for several minutes thinking of life with him, toward which reason and circumstances pressed her, and from which, since the day he had declared himself, she had shrunk. This marriage was so different from the marriage of her dreams – a marriage of love, of common ideals; yet in it, her judgment told her, lay the best use of her life.

She dismissed her troubling thoughts with a sigh and walked back to the library. As she entered Kate rose from a high-backed chair behind the great square library-table, whose polished top shone with the light from the chandelier. Kate's face was white, the mouth was a taut line, the eyes gleamed feverishly amid the purpled rings of wakeful nights.

Helen came smiling across the noiseless rug, her hand held out.

"I'm very happy to see you, Miss Morgan."

Kate did not move. She allowed Helen to stand a moment, hand still outheld, while her dark eyes blazed into Helen's face. Then she abruptly laid her hand into the other, and as abruptly withdrew it.

"I want to speak to you," she said.

"Certainly. Won't you sit down?"

Kate jerked a hand toward the wide, curtained doorway through which Helen had entered.

"Close the door."

"Why?" asked Helen, surprised.

"Close the door," she repeated in the same low, short tone. "Nobody must hear."

The forced voice, and the repressed agitation of Kate's bearing, startled Helen. She drew together the easy-running doors, and returned to the table.

Kate jerked her hand toward the open plate-glass door that led into the conservatory.

"And that door."

"There's no one in there." But Helen closed the heavy pane of glass.

"Won't you sit down," she said, when this was done, taking one of the richly carved chairs herself.

"No."

Kate's eyes blazed down upon Helen's face; her breath came and went rapidly, with a wheezing sound; her hands, on the luminous table-top, were clenched. Her whole body was so rigid that it trembled.

The colour began to leave Helen's face. "I'm waiting – go on."

Kate's lips suddenly quivered back from her teeth. She had to strike, even if she struck unjustly.

"People like you" – her voice was harsh, tremulous with hate – "you always believe the worst of a man. You throw him aside – crush him down – walk on him. You never think perhaps you've made a mistake, perhaps he's all right. Oh, no – you never think good of a man if you can think bad." She leaned over the corner of the table. "I hate your kind of people! I hate you!"

"Is this the thing you wanted no one to hear?" Helen asked quietly.

Kate slowly straightened up. After two days and two nights – a long, fierce, despairing battle between selfish and unselfish love – she had decided she must come here; but now her rehearsed sentences all left her. For a moment she stood choking; then the bald words dropped out:

"He's not a thief – never was one."

"Who?"

"David Aldrich."

Helen came slowly to her feet. Her face was white, her eyes were wide. For a moment she did not speak – just stared.

"What do you mean?"

"He did not take the money from the Mission."

Helen moved from the corner of the table, her wide eyes never leaving Kate's gleaming ones, and a hand clutched Kate's arm and tightened there.

"Tell me all."

"You hurt me."

Helen removed her hand.

Kate crept closer and stared up into her face.

"Does it make any difference to you?" she breathed, tensely.

"Tell me all!"

Kate drew back a pace, and leaned upon her clenched hands. "You knew Mr. Morton," she said, in a quick strained monotone. "When he was young, he lived with a woman. He wrote her a lot of letters – love letters. She turned up again a few months before he died, and threatened to show the letters if he didn't pay her. He had no money; he took money from the Mission and paid her. Then he died. His guilt was about to be found out. But David Aldrich said he took the money and went to prison. He did it because he thought if Mr. Morton's guilt was found out, the Mission would be destroyed and the people would go back to the devil. You know the rest. That's all."

Helen continued motionless – silent.

"It's all so," Kate went on. "The woman herself told me. She knew the truth. She'd been making David pay her to keep from telling that he was innocent. She told me before him. He had to admit it."

Kate leaned further across the corner of the table. "He made me promise never to tell." For a moment of dead quiet she gazed up into Helen's fixed face. "And why do you think I've broken my promise?" she asked in a low voice, between barely parted lips.

Helen rested one hand on the back of a chair and the other on the table. She trembled slightly, but she did not reply.

"Because" – there was a little quaver in Kate's voice – "I thought it might sometime make him happy."

There was another dead silence, during which Kate gazed piercingly into Helen's face.

"Do you love him?" she asked sharply.

Helen's arms tightened. After a moment her lips moved.

"You love him yourself."

"Me? – it's a lie. I don't!"

Kate moved round the corner of the table and laid a fierce hand on Helen's arm.

"Do you love him?" she demanded.

Silence. "Thank you – for telling me."

Kate laughed a low, harsh laugh, and flung Helen's arm from her.

"You! – you think you're way above him, don't you! Well – you're not! You're not fit for him!" Her eyes leaped with flame. "I hate you!"

Again a moment of silence. A tremor ran through Helen. She moved forward, and her hands reached out and fell upon Kate's shoulders.

"I love you," she whispered.

Kate shrunk sharply away. Her eyes never leaving Helen's face, she backed slowly toward the doors. She pushed them apart, and gazed at Helen's statued figure. Kate's face had become ashen, drawn. After a moment she slipped through the doors and drew them to.

As the doors clicked, Helen swayed into a chair beside the table, and her head fell forward into her arms.