The Just and the Unjust. Vaughan Kester
This did not seem to North to call for an answer, and he attempted none. He turned and moved toward the front of the store, followed by the old merchant. At the door he paused.
"Thank you for your kindness, Mr. McBride!"
"It was no kindness, just a matter of business" said McBride hastily. "I'm no philanthropist, John, but just a plain man of business who'll drive a close bargain if he can."
"At any rate, I'm going to thank you," insisted North, smiling pleasantly. "Good-by," and he extended his hand, which the old merchant took.
"Good-by, and good luck to you, John, and you might drop me a line now and then just to say how you get on."
"I will. Good-by!"
"I know you'll succeed, John. A bit of application, a bit of necessity to spur you on, and we'll be proud of you yet!"
North laughed as he opened the door and stepped out; and Archibald McBride, looking through his dingy show-windows, watched him until he disappeared down the street; then he turned and reëntered his office.
Meanwhile North hurried away with the remnant of his little fortune in his pocket. Five minutes' walk brought him to the building that had sheltered him for the last few years. He climbed the stairs and entered the long hail above. He paused, key in hand, before his door, when he heard behind him a light footfall on the uncarpeted floor and the swish of a woman's skirts. As he turned abruptly, the woman who had evidently followed him up from the street, came swiftly down the hall toward him.
"Jack!" she said, when she was quite near.
The short winter's day had brought an early twilight to the place, and the woman was closely veiled, but the moment she spoke North recognized her, for there was something in the mellow full-throated quality of her speech which belonged only to one voice that he knew.
"Mrs. Langham!—Evelyn!" he exclaimed, starting back in dismay.
"Hush, Jack, you needn't call it from the housetops!" As she spoke she swept aside her veil and he saw her face, a superlatively pretty face with scarlet smiling lips and dark luminous eyes that were smiling, too.
"Do you want to see me, Evelyn?" he asked awkwardly.
But she was neither awkward nor embarrassed; she was still smiling up into his face with reckless eyes and brilliant lips. She pointed to the door with her small gloved hand.
"Open it, Jack!" she commanded.
For a moment he hesitated. She was the one person he did not wish to see, least of all did he wish to see her there. She was not nicely discreet, as he well knew. She did many things that were not wise, that were, indeed, frankly imprudent. But clearly they could not stand there in the hallway. Gilmore or some of Gilmore's friends might come up the stairs at any moment. Langham himself might be of these.
Something of all this passed through North's mind as he stood there hesitating. Then he unlocked the door, and standing aside, motioned her to precede him into the room.
This room, the largest of several, he occupied, was his parlor. On entering it he closed the door after him, and drew forward a chair for Evelyn, but he did not himself sit down, nor did he remove his overcoat.
He had known Evelyn all his life, they had played together as children; more than this, though now he would have been quite willing to forget the whole episode and even more than willing that she should forget it, there had been a time when he had moped in wretched melancholy because of what he had then considered her utter fickleness. Shortly after this he had been sent East to college and had borne the separation with a fortitude that had rather surprised him when he recalled how bitter a thing her heartlessness had seemed.
When they met again he had found her more alluring than ever, but more devoted to her pleasures also; and then Marshall Langham had come into her life. North had divined that the course of their love-making was far from smooth, for Langham's temper was high and his will arbitrary, nor was he one to bear meekly the crosses she laid on him, crosses which other men had borne in smiling uncomplaint, reasoning no doubt, that it was unwise to take her favors too seriously; that as they were easily achieved they were quite as easily forfeited. But Langham was not like the other men with whom she had amused herself. He was not only older and more brilliant, but was giving every indication that his professional success would be solid and substantial. Evelyn's father had championed his cause, and in the end she had married him.
In the five years that had elapsed since then, her romance had taken its place with the accepted things of life, and she revenged herself on Langham, for what she had come to consider his unreasonable exactions, by her recklessness, by her thirst for pleasure, and above all by her extravagance.
Through all the vicissitudes of her married life, the smallest part of which he only guessed, North had seen much of Evelyn. There was a daring dangerous recklessness in her mood that he had sensed and understood and to which he had made quick response. He knew that she was none too happy with Langham, and although he had been conscious of no wish to wrong the husband he had never paused to consider the outcome of his intimacy with the wife.
Evelyn was the first to break the silence.
"You wonder why I came here, don't you, Jack?" she said.
"You should never have done it!" he replied quickly.
"What about my letters, why didn't you answer them?" she demanded. "I hadn't one word from you in weeks. It quite spoiled my trip East. What was I to think? And then you sent me just a line saying you were leaving Mount Hope—" she drew in her breath sharply. There was a brief silence. "Why?" she asked at length.
"It is better that I should," he answered awkwardly.
He felt a sudden remorseful tenderness for her; he wished that she might have divined the change that had come over him; even how worthless a thing his devotion had been, the utter selfishness of it.
"Why is it better?" she asked. He was near enough for her to put out a small hand and rest it on his arm. "Jack, have I done anything to make you hate me? Don't you care any longer for me?"
"I care a great deal, Evelyn. I want you to think the best of me."
"But why do you go? And when do you think of going, Jack?" The hand that she had rested there a moment before, left his arm and dropped at her side.
"I don't know yet, my plans are very uncertain. I am quite at the end of my money. I have been a good deal of a fool, Evelyn."
Something in his manner restrained her, she was not so sure as she had been of her hold on him. She looked up appealingly into his face, the smile had left her lips and her eyes were sad, but he mistrusted the genuineness of this swift change of mood, certainly its permanence.
"What will there be left for me, Jack, when you go? I thought—I thought—" her full lips quivered.
She was realizing that this separation which her imagination had already invested with a tragic significance, meant much less to him than she believed it would mean to her; more than this, the cruel suspicion was certifying itself that in her absence from Mount Hope, North had undergone some strange transformation; was no longer the reckless, dissipated, young fellow who for months had been as her very shadow.
"I am going to-night, Evelyn," he said with sudden determination.
She gave a half smothered cry.
"To-night! To-night!" she repeated.
He changed his position uncomfortably.
"I am at the end of my string, Evelyn," he said slowly.
"I—I shall miss you dreadfully, Jack! You know I am frightfully unhappy; what will it be when you go? Marsh has made a perfect wreck of my life!"
"Nonsense, Evelyn!" he replied bruskly. "You must be careful what you say to me!"
"I haven't been careful before!" she asserted.
He