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put yours, Teddy, under mine. Don t you know, that when two
women are in love, they know it one from another, without a word.
Of course, Mother knew all about how I felt, I used to catch her
looking at me, oh, so wistfully but she never dreamed that wise
little daughter had guessed her secret oh, no mothers never
realize that their little chick-children have grown to be big geese.
But, I know, and, well, Teddy, as you know, if he doesn t ask her
pretty soon, I ll go and ask him myself and he never refuses me
anything. I shall say, Dear old Marcus, Teddy and I wish you d
hurry up and ask Mother to marry you. We have set our hearts on
picking out our own steps. We think of being married in June, and
we want it all settled. There, she said with a radiant blush, I ve
answered all your questions have you another problem?
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Out of the Ashes
XIX
Left alone before the empty space reserved for the masterpiece the
expression on Gard s face changed. Grave and purposeful, he
continued to regard the blank wall, then, turning, he caught up the
desk telephone, gave Mrs. Marteen s private number and waited.
A moment later the sweet familiar voice thrilled him.
It s I Marcus, he said. I am coming for you this morning. Yes,
I m taking a holiday, and I m going to bring you back to the library
to see a new acquisition of mine that will interest you. Then you
and Dorothy will lunch with Polly. Dorothy can join us at one
o clock. This is a private view for you alone.... You will? That s
good! Good-by.
Noises in the resonant hall and the opening of the great doors
announced the arrival of the moving van and its precious contents,
before Saunders, his eyes bulging with excitement, rushed in with
the tidings of the coming of the world famous Heim Vandyke. With
respectful care the great canvas was brought in, unwrapped and
lifted to its chosen hanging place.
Seated in his armchair, Gard with mixed emotions watched it
elevated and straightened. The pictured face smiled down at him
impersonal yet human, glowing, vivid with color, alive with that
suggestion of eternal life that art alone in its highest expression can
give. Card s smile was enigmatical; his eyes were sad. His
imagination pictured to him Mrs. Marteen as she had sat before him
in her self-contained stateliness and announced with indifferent calm
that the Vandyke had been but a ruse to gain his private ear.
Gard rose, approached the picture, and for an instant laid his fingers
upon its darkened frame. The movement was that of a worshiper
who makes his vow at the touch of some relic infinitely holy.
Then he returned to his seat and for some time remained wrapped in
thought. These moments of introspection, of deep self-questioning,
had become more and more frequent. He had made in the past few
months a new and most interesting acquaintance himself. All the
years of his over-hurried, over-cultivated, ambitious life he had
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Out of the Ashes
delved into the psychology of others. It had been his pride to divine
motives, to dissect personalities, to classify and sort the brains and
natures of men. Now for the first time he had turned the scalpel
upon himself. He was amazed, he was shocked, almost frightened.
He could not hide from himself, he was no longer blind, the
searchlight of his own analysis was inexorably focused on his own
sins and shortcomings his powers misused, his strength
misdirected, his weaknesses indulged, because his strength
protected them. In these hours of what he had grown to grimly call
his stock taking, he had become aware of a new and all-important
group of men. Where before he had reckoned values solely by
capacities of brain and hand, he found now a new factor the
capacity of heart. Ideals that heretofore had borne to his mind the
stamp of weakness, now showed themselves as real bulwarks of
character. The men who had fallen by the wayside in the advance of
his pitiless march to power, were no longer, to his eyes, types of the
unfit, to be thrust aside. Some were men, indeed, who knew their
own souls, and would not barter them.
In his mind a vast readjustment had taken place. Words had become
bodied, the unseen was becoming the visible Responsibility,
Honesty, Fairness, Truth! they had all been words to conjure with
for use in political speeches, in interviews because they seemed to
exercise an occult influence upon the gullible public. Law,
Peace, Order, The Greatest Good to the Greatest Number, he
had used them all as an Indian medicine-man shakes bone rattles,
and waves a cow s tail before the tribe, laughing behind his gaping
mask at the servile acceptance of his prophecies. One and all these
Cunjar Gods he had believed to be only bits of shell and plaited rope,
had come to life they were gods, real presences, real powers. He
had invoked them only to deceive others and, behold! he it was
who knew not the truth.
The high tower of his heaven-grasping ambitions seemed suddenly
insecure and founded upon shifting sands. The incense the
sycophant world burned before him became a stench in his nostrils.
The fetishes he had tossed to the crowd now faced him as real gods;
and they were not to be blinded with dust, nor bought with gold.
The specious and tortured verbiage of twisted law never for one
moment deceived the open ears of Justice, even though it tied her
hands, and her voice was the voice of condemnation. Honor he had
sold it. Faith he had not kept it. Truth he had distorted to fit
whatever garb he had chosen for her to wear. And, withal, he had
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Out of the Ashes
hailed himself conqueror; had placed his laurels himself upon his
head, ranking all others beneath him. The clamor of the mob he had
interpreted as acclaim. Now he heard above the applause the hoarse
chorus of disdain and fear. It had been his pride to see men fall back
and make way at the very mention of his name. Now he felt that
they shrank from him not before his greatness, but from his very
contact. He had driven his fellow creatures from him, and in return,
they withdrew themselves.
If they came to him fawning, they but showed their lower natures.
He had not called forth the power for good, from these the
necromancy of his personality had touched. He had conjured evil, he
had pandered to base forces.
The realization had not come easily. His habits of thought would
return and blind him as of old. He had laughed at himself; he had
derided the new gods, he had disobeyed them and their strange
commands only to return crestfallen, contrite, feeling himself
unworthy. He became aware that he had run a long and victorious
race for a prize he had craved only to find that the goal to which it
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