The Purchase Price by Emerson Hough (ereader with android txt) 📖

to me! Leave this place. Let gossip quiet down. It has been cruel with you; yet the public soon forgets. To remain and appear in public would freshen gossip anew. Come, it is an adventure! I swear it does not lack its appeal to me! Ah, would only that I were younger, and that it were less seemly and sedate! Dear lady, I offer you my apology for coming as I have, but large plans work rapidly at times, and there is little time to wait. Now there is but one word I can say; that you have courage and decision, I know."

He had risen, and unconsciously the young woman also had risen,—balancing, measuring, watching, warding, in this contest, all too unequal. Suddenly, with a swift and most charming smile she approached him a half step and held out her hand.

"You are a great man, Sir. Your country has found you great. I have always found the greatest men the simplest and most frank. Therefore I know you will tell me—you will satisfy any doubt I may feel—If I should ask a question, you would not condemn me as presuming?"

"Certainly not. Upon the contrary, my dear Countess, I should feel flattered."

She looked at him for an instant, then came up to the side of the table beyond which he had taken his seat. Leaning her chin upon her hand, her elbow upon the table, in a sudden posture of encounter, she asked him a question whose answer took him swiftly far back into his own past, into another and forgotten day.

"Did you ever hear of Mr. John Parish, Sir?" she demanded.

The suave countenance before her was at first blank, then curious, then intent. His mind was striving to summon up, from all its many images, this one which was required. It was a brain which rarely forgot, even though years had passed; and had it been able to forget, so much had been the better for the plans of the gentleman from Kentucky, and for the success of his proposed European mission.

At last, slowly, a faint flush passed over the face she was regarding so intently. "Yes, I remember him very well," he replied. "He has not for very many years, been in this country. He died abroad, some years since. I presume you mean Mr. Parish of New York—he is the only one I recall of that name at least. Yes; I knew such a man."

"That was very long ago?"

"It was when I was much younger, my dear Countess."

"You knew him very well, then?"

"I may say that I did, Madam."

"And you'll tell me; then—tell me, was it true that once, as a wild rumor had it, a rumor that I have heard—that once you two played at cards—"

"Was that a crime?" he smiled.

"But with him, at cards with him, Mr. John Parish, a certain game of cards with him—one day,—a certain winter day years ago, when you both were younger—when the train was snowbound in the North? And you played then, for what? What were the stakes then, in that particular game with Mr. John Parish? Do you chance to recall?"

"Madam, you credit me with frankness. I will not claim even so much. But since you have heard a rumor that died out long years ago—which was denied—which even now I might better deny—since, in fact you know the truth—why should I deny the truth?"

"Then you two played a game, at cards,—for a woman? And Mr.
Parish won? Was it not true?"

A new and different expression passed over the face of the gentleman before her. Her chin still rested in her hand, her other arm, long, round, white, lay out upon the table before him. He could see straight into her wide eyes, see the heave of her throat now under its shining circlet, see the color of her cheek, feel the tenseness of all her mind and body as she questioned him about his long forgotten past.

"Why do you ask me this?" he demanded at last. "What has that to do with us? That was long ago. It is dead, it is forgotten. Why rake up the folly of a deed of youth and recklessness, long years dead and gone? Why, the other man, and the woman herself, are dead and gone now, both of them. Then, why?"

"I will tell you why. That happened once in my own experience."

"Impossible!"

"Yes, impossible. It should have been impossible among men at this day of the world. But it happened. I also had the distinguished honor to be the stake in some such game, and that because—indirectly because—I had won the enmity, the suspicions at least—well, we will say, of persons high in authority in this land."

"But, my dear young lady, the conditions can not have been the same. Assuredly the result was not the same!"

"By whose credit, then? Who thinks of a woman? Who is there whose hand is not raised against her? Each member of her own sex is her enemy. Each member of the opposite sex is her foe. One breath, one suspicion, and she becomes fair game, even under the strictest code among men; and then, the man who did not dare would be despised because he would not dare. Her life is one long war against suspicion. It is one long war against selfishness, a continued defense against desire, gratification. She is, even to-day, valued as chattel—under all the laws and conventions built about her runs the chattel idea. She is a convenience. Is that all?"

"My dear lady, it is not for me to enter into discussion of subjects so abstruse, so far removed at least from my proper trend of thought—our proper trend of thought, if you please. I must admit that act of folly, yes. But I must also end the matter there."

"Then why should not I end our matter there, Sir? It seems to me that if in any usual way of life, going about her business honestly, paying her obligations of all sort—even that to her crucifix at night—a woman who is clean wishes to remain clean, to be herself,—why, I say, if that may not be, among men great or small, distinguished or unknown, then most fortunate is she who remains aloof from all chance of that sort of thing. Sir, I should not like to think that, while I was in my room, for the time removed from the society of the gentlemen who should be my protectors, there was going on, let us say, somewhere in the gentlemen's saloon, a little enterprise at chance in which—"

"But, my dear lady, you are mad to speak in this way! Lightning, even lightning of folly, does not strike twice in the same place."

"Ah, does it not? But it has!"

"What can you mean? Surely you do not mean actually to say that you yourself ever have figured in such an incident?"

She made no answer to him, save to look straight into his eyes, chin in hand still, her long white arm lying out, motionless, her posture free of nervous strain or unrest. Slowly her lips parted, showing her fine white teeth in a half smile. Her eyes smiled also, with wisdom in their look.

The venerable statesman opposed to her all at once felt his resources going. He knew that his quest was over, that this young woman was after all able to fend for herself.

"What would you do?" she demanded of him. "If you were a woman and knew you were merely coveted in general, as a woman, and that you had been just cheaply played for in a game of cards, in a public place—what would you do, if you could, to the man who lost—or the man who won? Would you be delivered over? That woman, was she—but she could not help herself; she had no place to turn, poor girl? And she paid all her life, then, for some act earlier, which left her fair game? Was that it?"

"But you, my dear girl! It is impossible!"

"I was more fortunate, that is all. Would you blame me if I dreaded the memory of such an incident; if I felt a certain shrinking from one who ever figured in such an incident? If I could trust—but then, but then—Are you very sure that Mr. Parish loved that woman?"

"I am sure of it," answered the old man soberly. "Did he use her well?"

"All her life. He gave her everything—"

"Oh, that is nothing! Did he give her—after he had learned, maybe, that she was not what he had thought—did he give her then—love—belief, trust? Did he—are you very sure that any man in such case, after such an incident, could have loved, really loved, the woman whom he held in that way—"

"I not only believe he might, my dear girl, but I know that in this one case—the only one of my experience"—he smiled—"such was the truth. There was some untold reason why they two did not, or could not, marry. I do not go into that.

"Consider, my dear girl," he resumed; "you are young, and I am so old that it is as though I too were young now and had no experience—so we may talk. Our life is a contest among men for money and for love; that is all success can bring us. In older days men fought for that. To-day we have modified life a little, and have other ways; but I fancy the game in which that certain lady figured was only one form of contest—it was a fight, the spoils to go to the victor."

"Horrible! But you might have been the victor? In that case, would you have loved her, would you have used her well, all your life, and hers?"

He drew back now with dignity. "Madam, my position in later years defends me from necessity of answering you. You are young, impulsive, but you should not forget the proprieties even now—" His face was now hotly flushed.

"I ask your pardon! But would you?"

He smiled in spite of himself, something of the old fire of gallantry still burning in his withered veins. "My dear girl, if it were yourself, I would! And by the Lord! I'd play again with Parish, or any other man, if my chance otherwise, merely by cruel circumstances, had been left hopeless. Some one must win."

"But how could the winner be sure? How could the—how did she—I would say—"

"Dear girl, let us not be too cold in our philosophy, nor too wise. I can not say how or why these things go as they do. All I know is that the right man won in that case, and that he proved it later, by each act of kindness he gave her, all her life. This, my dear, is an odd world, when it comes to all that."

"Was he—did he have anybody else in the world who—"

"Oh, only a wife, I believe, that was all!"

"Did she die, soon? Was there ever—"

"How you question! What do you plan for yourself? My word! You are putting me through a strange initiation on our first acquaintance, my dear Countess! Let us not pursue such matters further, or I shall begin to think your own interest in these questions is that of the original Eve!"

"To the victor does not always belong the spoils," she said slowly. "Not till he has won—earned them—in war, in conquest! Perhaps conquest of himself."

[Illustration: "To the victor does not always belong the spoils."]

"You speak in enigmas for me, my dear Countess."

She shook her head slowly, from side to side. "That poor girl! Did she ever feel she had been won in the real game, I wonder? To whom would belong herself—if she felt that she had something in her own life to forget, some great thing to be done, in penance perhaps, in eagerness perhaps, some step to take, up—something to put her into a higher plane in the scheme of life? To do something, for