The Tyranny of Weakness | Page 4

deeper sense of the portentous moment. With his chin
high and his face calm in its stricken dignity he felt that no lady with a
heart in her soft bosom could fail to extend proffers of conciliation. In a
moment more they would meet in the narrow road. His face paled a
shade or two under the tension--then they were abreast and his heart
broke and the apple of life was dead sea fruit to his palate. She had
spoken. She had even smiled and waved her riding crop, but she had
done both with so superlative an indifference that it seemed she had not
really seen him at all. She was chatting vivaciously with Jimmy and
Jimmy had been laughing as raucously as a jackal--and so they had
passed him by. The event which had spelled tragedy for him; robbed
him of sleep and withered his robust appetite had not even lingered
overnight in her memory. The dirk was in Stuart Farquaharson's breast,
but it was yet to be twisted. Pride forbade his shaking Johnny Reb into
a wild pace until he was out of sight. The funereal grandeur of his
measured tread must not be broken, and so he heard with painful
distinctness the next remark of Jimmy Hancock.

"What in thunder's eatin' on Stuty--" (sometimes, though not
encouraged to do so, young Mr. Farquaharson's intimates called him by
that shameful diminutive.) "He looks like a kid that's just been taken
back to the barn and spanked."
"Did he?" asked the young lady casually, "I really didn't notice."
Ye Gods! He, wearing his misery like a Cæsar's toga, compared by this
young buffoon to a kid who had been spanked! She had not noticed it.
Ye Gods! Ye Gods!
Ten days passed and the visit of Conscience Williams was drawing to
an end. Soon she would go back to those rock-bound shores of New
England where in earlier days her ancestors had edified themselves
with burning witches. She would pass out of his life but never out of
his memory. His heart would go with her, but though it killed him he
would never modify the rigors of his self-appointed exile from her
presence until an advance came from her.
Each night he secretly stole over to a point of ambuscade from which
he could see the shimmery flash of her dress as she moved about the
porch, cavaliered by the odious Jimmy and his fellows. On these
nocturnal vigils he heard the note of her heedless laughter while he
crouched embittered and hidden at a distance. There was in those merry
peals no more symptom of a canker at her heart than in the carol of a
bird greeting a bright day. She did not care and when the one maiden
whom he wished to worship by years of noble deeds did not care--again
the only answer was "Ye Gods!"
These were not matters to be alleviated by the comforting support of a
confidant and he had no confidant except Cardinal Richelieu. The
cardinal was more frequently addressed as Ritchy and his nature was as
independent of hampering standards as his origin warranted. The
Cardinal's face--a composite portrait of various types of middle-class
dog-life--made pretense useless and early in his puppy career he
seemed to realize it and to abandon himself to a philosophy of
irresponsible pleasure. But Ritchy's eye had taken on a saddened cast
since the blight had fallen on his master. He no longer frisked and

devised, out of his comedian's soul, mirth-provoking antics. It was as
though he understood and his spirit walked in sorrow.
A night of full-mooned radiance came steeping the souls of the young
Knight and the young Cardinal in bitter yet sweet melancholy. Two
days more and Conscience would be gone from the Valley of
Virginia--returning to Cape Cod. Then Stuart would write over the door
of his life "Ichabod, the glory is departed." To-night he would stalk
again to his lonely tryst beneath the mock-orange hedge, which gave
command of the yard and porch, and when she had gone to her room,
he could still gaze upon the lighted window which marked a sacred
spot. At a sedate distance in the rear proceeded the Cardinal, who had
judiciously made no announcement of his coming. He knew that there
was an edict against his participation in these vigils, based on a theory
that he might give voice and advertise his master's presence, but it was
a theory for which he had contempt and which he resented as a slur
upon his discretion.
When Stuart Farquaharson crouched in the lee of heavily shadowed
shrubbery the Cardinal sat on his haunches and wrinkled his unlovely
brow in contemplative thought. Not far away masses of honeysuckle
climbed over a rail fence festooned with blossom.