Constance Trescot

Mrs. Trescot received no acknowledgment of the receipt of her letter, nor had the unhappy woman to whom it was sent any intention of answering it. She desired never again to hear of the writer.

Making such excuses as were possible to her astonished friends, Miss Wilson took the train to the North on the day after her visit to Mr. Kent, and thence returned to Sacramento. She was wise enough to avoid a meeting with Greyhurst.

From Chicago she wrote to Mr. Kent a note of renewed thankfulness, and earnestly asked that he would not feel it necessary to mention to Mr. Greyhurst what he, Mr. Kent, had told her. “I am most grateful to you,” she wrote, “for the courage of what you did for me, a stranger; but I cannot rest easy under the idea that, in his anger and disappointment, a man as passionate may again do something as rash as that which has parted us forever. It will be altogether unnecessary for you to speak of what you said to me, because Mrs. Trescot’s letter will suffice to explain to him the reasons for my decision. It is an unfeeling letter, but it will so justify my decision as to relieve you from need to speak.”

Her request had no effect on Kent’s intention. He had taken on himself a grave responsibility, and meant to abide by it. He had neither fear of unpleasant consequences nor belief that they would occur. The thought that Mrs. Trescot’s letter would reach Greyhurst made him far more uneasy. He resolved to speak to the lawyer on his return, which took place two days later.

Greyhurst had found difficulty in satisfying the bankers on whom he relied. The money-market was unsettled, and men were indisposed to go into even the most promising ventures. He was advised to wait, to return in a month. He left New York a much disappointed man, and went home to meet conditions which he knew must result in ruin.

Thinking sadly of his affairs, and with some relieving hope in regard to Jeanette Wilson, whom he very honestly loved and sincerely respected, he left the station at St. Ann. The phantom face had been seen of late but rarely, and had lost distinctness.

On his way he called to see Colonel Dudley. His wife was in the hall. “Glad to see you back,” she said. “My husband is out.”

“Tell the colonel that I was detained in New York. I will call to-night.”

“You have just missed Miss Wilson.”

“Miss Wilson! Has she been in St. Ann?”

“Yes; but she stayed only two or three days. She has gone.”

“Did you see her, Mrs. Dudley?”

“Oh, yes; she was looking very pretty and very well. We had a little talk. I hope I may soon be able to congratulate you.”

If she desired to make him speak of Miss Jeanette, she was mistaken.

“You may not,” he returned abruptly.

He knew Mrs. Dudley well and disliked her. Something in her face and manner, and what she had mentioned, made him uncomfortable. He said good-by and went on to his office. He unlocked it and went in. His clerk had left a number of letters on his table. None of them were very reassuring. The people from whom he had bought the river-frontage, in his hope of adding the strip Mrs. Trescot had taken from him, were urgent for payment of interest upon a mortgage left on the property. There were other claims as pressing: notice of a note gone to protest, two unpaid bills for the schooling of his daughter. He tossed the papers aside, and, turning over his other letters in eager haste, fell upon one in a hand he knew and loved. He tore it open and read:

He turned with sudden anger to the inclosed letter from Mrs. Trescot. He read that also. He let it fall and lay back in his chair. As he read, the remembrance of the young man walking toward him, with the smile of what he had taken to be triumph, came back to him. He looked up and saw once more the silvery phantom, for some weeks absent at times or indistinct. It, too, was smiling. He took up Jeanette Wilson’s letter and read it and re-read it. When at last he laid it down the paper was wet from his sweating hands. He knew her too well to have the slightest hope. She herself could never have had any conception of the passion with which he loved her, nor could she have fully appreciated what to him would be this ending of his hopes for a life that would atone for the past and satisfy her ideals. And this was that woman’s work! He cursed her with oaths too dreadful to repeat. She had brought him to the verge of ruin, had tortured him into impossibility of forgetfulness, and now she had taken away from him the one real love of his unhappy life.

He rose, seeing the face as before. “My God!” he cried, staring at the phantom, “George Trescot, you ought to thank me!” As he stood up he staggered with a return of the old vertigo, and seized a chair back until it passed away. It did not now alarm him. He caught up his traveling-cap, and as he passed out left the door open. In the street he was recognized by two or three men. One said, “He has been drinking.” He went on his way, turning down West Street toward his house, which, in his absence, had been closed. Walking rapidly, he went past the church at the corner, and crossed to the south side of the street. Kent had just come out of his study and stood still, enjoying the splendor of scarlet above the setting sun, and the strange colors cast on the yellow waters of the mighty river below. It was unusual, and, becoming more and more intense, was changing from moment to moment.

Kent wondered if Susan Hood were feeling the mysterious awe which for him vast masses of red created. No other color so affected him. He wished her to share with him the solemn beauty of the fading day, and while hastening to find her at her home, he saw Greyhurst in front of him.

Glad of an early chance to free his mind, he quickened his pace and overtook him. He said, as he joined him:

“Good evening, Mr. Greyhurst.”

Without turning his head, the man beside him said, “Good evening,” and leaving him, abruptly crossed the street.

Kent was surprised, and said to himself, “He must have heard, but how could he have heard?”

With increase of interest he saw Greyhurst stop, look over at Mrs. Trescot’s, and pass on. Still more amazed, he, too, went by the house and, pausing, observed Greyhurst go up his own steps and, as it seemed, try the door. Apparently finding himself unable to enter, he went around the house, through the garden, and was lost to view. Kent thought it all rather odd; but, like the man on the main street, concluded that Greyhurst must have been drinking, and turned back to seek Susan Hood.

The March day in this warm clime was already rich with the young buds of spring. He picked an opening rose, and, ringing the bell, stood at the door, left open for the cooler air of evening to sweep through the hall. He saw how the vast flood of scarlet to westward was slowly darkening to orange.

The maid said Miss Susan had just come in and was up-stairs. Mrs. Trescot was in the parlor. He hesitated a moment and then went in.

Mrs. Trescot was seated at the western window in a listless attitude, her hands in her lap. She turned as he entered saying, “What a glory of color!”

“Yes,” she said; “but I do not like it. I dislike red. I always did, even when a child.”

“Well,” he said, smiling, “Nature is generously respectful; she is shifting her scenery.”

“And then,” she said, “it will be night, and I do not love darkness. I should like to live in endless daylight.”

He thought singular both her moody manner and the feeling she expressed.

“The Northland would suit you for half the year, but not me. I hope Miss Hood did not miss the sunset.”

“I do not know.”

For a moment there was silence,—the woman gazing at the slowly darkening pall above the dying day, the man resolute to fulfil a long-held purpose.

“I do not know whether you can understand the great pleasure you gave me the other day when you said I have some likeness to my cousin. It has been noticed by others, but for you to see it meant much to me. If in all ways I could be like him I should be well satisfied with myself.”

“You are like him,” she said, turning toward him. “It pleased me, and I wondered that I had not seen it before. It is in manner more than in face.”

He returned earnestly: “May not that give me the privilege of taking with you a liberty greater than our brief acquaintance justifies?”

“Oh, yes, if you want to.” She would have said no in some form if there had not been something sadly familiar in the grave gentleness of Kent’s approach; something which forbade her to deny him. She was deeply moved as, in the lessening light, she heard him say:

“I want to speak to you as a man, not as a clergyman.”

“Go on,” she returned faintly.

“Thank you. You cannot know—you cannot have known—the pain you have given to Miss Susan and to the many whom you have helped in St. Ann. May I not ask you to think how it will end. I should feel glad, for you and others, that it should end.”

“Yes, it must end. I fear that now it is at an end.”

Her voice lost its languor. She ceased to regard either the sunset or the man, and sat up, a little excited, looking straight in front of her.

“If,” she continued, “it had not been at an end, I do not think I should have been willing to listen to you. I have allowed no one to interfere with my actions—not even my sister; but now I do not care. I have made that man suffer. I have taken from him the power to forget. I have ruined him financially, and I believe—yes, I am sure—that I have taken from him the love of a woman; and now you ask me how it will end! If you had talked to me about my soul, and of the sin of punishing a murderer, I should have laughed at you. You did not. You have done what you think a duty. You have talked as George would have done, and so I answer that I know nothing more I can do. If there were anything I could do to injure or to punish, I should do it eagerly. There is nothing.”

“And,” he said, “are you satisfied?”

“No, I am not. If I could fill his days with grief like mine,—oh, to his latest hour,—if I could make his nights, like mine, one long anguish of yearning and unrest, I should be satisfied.”

He touched the thin, white hand which lay on her knee. He made no other reply. The malady was past his helping. She turned and looked at him steadily. A certain tender sweetness in his silent failure to respond, some fresh recognition of resemblance, disturbed her as she said:

“For good or ill, I suppose it is at an end.”

Then, as he heard a heavy footfall behind him, she was on her feet. John Greyhurst was standing in the doorway. Tall, broad-shouldered, pale, and with eyes deeply congested, he came quickly to the middle of the room and stood still as Mrs. Trescot leaped to her feet and faced him.

Kent laid a hand on his arm. “This,” he said, “is the last house you should dare to enter.”

“What do you want?” said Mrs. Trescot, faintly; and then, in sudden anger, “Out of this, murderer—go!”

He shook off Kent’s arm and said in unnaturally measured tones:

“No; this is my hour, not yours. For these many months you have driven me to despair. You have taken from me, at last, all that was left to me—a woman’s love. I am here to end it—to settle my debt.”

As he spoke, and his hand dropped to his pocket, Kent instantly threw himself before him. The woman stood still, glad of the swift coming of death.

With his left arm Greyhurst threw Kent violently from him across the room, and as the young man fell, stunned for the moment, he covered her with his revolver. She stood motionless.

“Thank you,” she said; “I am glad—glad to die!”

He laughed. “You fool!” he cried, and turning the pistol to his temple, fired. His arm dropped in jerks. For a moment he stood, staring, and then fell as a tree falls, shaking the room with his bulk.

The woman staggered back, caught behind her with both hands the edge of a table, and stared at the man at her feet—dead.

As the servants ran in and out again, screaming, Kent was on his feet. He knelt beside Greyhurst, and then looked up as Susan ran in and stood still, terrified.

“Is he dead?” asked Constance.

“Yes, he is dead.”

“Then he is gone, and I am alive. Will you have it taken away—quick, quick—out of my house?”

Kent caught her as she staggered to the door, swaying and crying, “Take him away, take him away, out of this house—anywhere!” She pushed Kent aside, passed into the study, and, as Susan followed her, fell on to a lounge. The house filled with a crowd of neighbors. Susan, always most quiet when others lost their heads, shut the door. Kent, having said a word of explanation to those in the parlors, reëntered the study.

Constance was breathing fast, her eyes wide open. Leaving a scared maid beside her, Kent led Susan into the hall, and in as few words as possible told her what had happened.

“And this is the end,” she said. “How terrible! My poor Conny! Did he mean to kill her, Reginald?”

“I thought so for a moment; I do not know. I struck my head as he threw me, and what followed I did not fully see. I will go for Dr. Eskridge and send for General Averill. Shall you mind my leaving you alone with her?”

“Oh, no; I think there is no danger. She seems conscious. I will get her up to bed. Come back soon.”

As he went out he cast his eyes on the sword upon the table, the Bible with its marking glove, the dead flower-petals, the sacredly guarded room. “I wonder,” he thought, as he hurried up the street, “what this woman would have been had George Trescot lived.”

As he hastened to find the doctor he sought to recall just what had happened. Surely the man meant to kill Constance Trescot and then himself. She most plainly was glad to die. Yes, she had said so; on which he had turned the pistol on himself, saying, “You fool!” What did he mean? Did he not want to kill her because she wished to die? “Ah, poor lady!” he said. “Perhaps George Trescot was fortunate—and my poor Susan!”