The Victory of Love

THE VICTORY OF LOVE By Henry Nicol Adamson Rita finished off the last stitch in her embroidered work, and laid down her needle with a sigh of satisfaction. "There, mother, it is finished, and before the year is over I hope all our troubles will be, too! And when we have our liberty we'll soon make our pile. Now I'm going to get your luncheon." "Well, I'm sure you have worked hard enough, my dear, since you took that burden on your young shoulders," said Mrs. Southern plaintively. She was a delicate woman, with faded prettiness and a look of helplessness that had no counterpart in her strong, capable daughter's appearance. Rita was not pretty, but there was a vitality about her, a healthful out-of-door look that was very attractive. She had dark hair and eyes, but her one claim to real beauty was a lovely red color in her cheeks and lips that suggested roses at once to the observer — not blushing maiden blooms, but vivid, glowing, dark ones. She paused in her toast-making as she turned to answer her mother's last remark. "It is nothing to the load poor father carried," she said. "I wish he had lived to see the debt paid off — as it will be." "I wish you would take things a little easier in the mean while, my dearie," said her mother querulously. She herself was one of those who take life easily, and her daughter's strenuous attitude to it was almost a reproach. "You are working too hard, Rita. Don't over- do it, or you'll lose your looks. When did you last see Roth?" There was a note of anxiety in the utterance of the last words. "A week ago, mother," said Rita curtly. "Here is your luncheon." "A week ago?" repeated Mrs. Southern. "Take care, my dear, take care. Don't try his patience too much, or you will lose him." "I can't help that," said Rita doggedly. "I won't get married till that debt is paid off, and I told him so. If he has not patience to wait — well, I can't help it, mother!" Her voice rang with the determination that was written on her face. When the dishes were washed up she put on her hat and coat, and opened the bureau drawer, where she kept her locked cash-box. "I'm going to Eastbridge," she said. "I'll just be in time before Olson's office is closed. But when it comes to the last installment I am going to George McConaughy myself, and I'll tell him what I think of him. He'll take back what he said about poor father," she added, a little vindictively. , "Oh, my dear, guard your tongue." "Well, he had no right to say father was not an honest man,"

THE VICTORY OF LOVE 9 83 cried Rita hotly. "I'll make him rue it, hard as he is, and rocks on the road are not harder than he is." It was with a glow of satisfaction that she emerged from the lawyer's hot, airless office an hour later, and set off home with a light step. It was a fine spring evening, and a full moon like a great lamp reflected the lace-like tracing of the branches on the hard read. A young man was crossing it, evidently on his way to Eastbridge. "Why, Roth, is that you?" called Rita cheerfully. "Were you on your way to us? Well, here I am. You did not expect to see me here, did you?" "Well, no — that is — no. I was not coming out your way to- night, Rita," faltered the young fellow, obviously taken aback and ill at ease. It was not a lover-like greeting, and the girl was conscious of a vague uneasiness, like a chill mist on the sunshine of her happiness. She remembered her mother's words, but a dogged determination thrust all scruples away and a resolute pride upheld her. Nothing must come in the way or impede her in her resolution to clear her father's name by the payment of the debt. She remembered his poor bent shoulders and the broken spirit that looked out of his tired eyes before death set him free, and she needed no other goad to urge her on. "But I'll come along a part of the road with you, Rita," said Roth, rather lamely, as if to atone for the luke-warmness of his first greeting. "Thank you, no, Roth," said Rita briskly. "I am in a hurry, and will not take you out of your way." She was hurt and angry and had little difficulty in cutting short his not too eager expostulations. He was a fair, foppish lad, with effeminate good looks and no great strength of character. It must have been the attraction of op- posites that drew him to the strong, dark girl who was his promised wife. It was with an odd, dull feeling of pain at her heart that she sat down to her needlework next morning. "I saw Roth last night, mother," she said as she threaded her needle. "Why did you not bring him in for a little while?" asked her mother reproachfully. "You should not give him the cold shoulder in the way you are doing. He won't stand much of that sort of thing. How much have we still to pay? I'm sure if you would tell Miss Clara she'd let you have the money for your sewing now instead of later on. What is the odds to her?" "I'll not take a penny till her trousseau is finished and in her hands," said Rita firmly. She is to be married in March, and 1 promised to finish her things by the New Year. It was good of her to give me the job instead of handing it to some city shop."

984 IMPROVEMENT ERA "I think I ought to tell you," said her mother unheeding, "that I have heard it said that Roth is going a good deal with Elsie Morton. I did not like to say anything to you before, but — " "Oh, well, if it's to be, it's to be," said Rita wearily. "I can't do more than I am doing, mother." Again a chill mist seemed to darken the brightness of the day for her. Her needle was like lead in her fingers and her artist pride in her lovely work seemed to die away. It was a happy accident that had lifted her out of the dreary treadmill of village dressmaking and given her more lucrative and congenial work. Her extraordinary deftness with her needle, artistic eye, and real genius for her work brought into play qualities that had not hithrto been developed. The debt was not paid off by the New Year. An illness of her mother's intervened, and Rita's time was taken up with nursing. The snowdrops bloomed and the crocuses and the daffodils began to bud before the day came. It was a clear March evening, with a glowing western sky, and wintry cold. Rita had gone to pick the first daffodil, and see if there was a new-laid egg for her mother's supper, when the postman brought Clara Afton's letter, with its en- closed money order and grateful appreciation of Rita's needlecraft. There was another letter, too, in a sprawling, unlettered hand-writing that she had not seen of late. She tore it open and read it with an angry little laugh. Roth's wavering affections hastened to waver, and had settled on Elsie Morton, the grocer's daughter. He knew Rita would forgive him, and hoped she would remain his friend! "Mother," she said, in cold, level tones, "I have a letter from Roth telling me he is going to marry Elsie Morton." "Oh, my dear, my dear," wailed her mother, "I am heart sorry for you, that I am! Now, don't be grieving over him and making yourself ill. Oh, to think that this should happen to you, of all — " "Never mind about me, mother," interposed Rita, with a scornful, little laugh. "I knew it would happen, and I'm not caring. Here's Miss Clara's letter with my money. I'm going to cash the order at once, then I'll away out to George McConaughy, as I said I would, when it came to the last installment. And I'll go to bed to-night the happiest woman in the land." The cottage occupied by Mrs. Southern and her daughter was a good two miles from Eastbridge, and the nearest house was George McConaughy's lonely farm just over the hill. It was with a sense of angry triumph that she knocked at the door. The house-keeper opened it, a stout, unprepossessing woman, with black hair tightly strained back, and black eyes like dull boot buttons that stared rudely at the younger woman, who called at this untimely hour. "I want to see Mr. McConaughy on important business," said Rita, with cool civility and quite undismayed. She was ushered into the room where the head of the house was

THE VICTORY OF LOVE 9 85 seated at a desk. He arose with a puzzled expression to meet the visitor. He was an old young man, with a thin, hard-featured face and a forbidding expression. There were furrows on his face not due to age, and the hair on his temples was beginning to turn grey. Rita's trained eye took all this in at a glance, also the unlovely room, with its ashy fire in an ill-kept grate, its unventilated atmosphere, the not too clean window panes, all as offensive to her beauty-loving soul as the owner was. "I have come to tell you, Mr. McConaughy, that my father's debt to you is now completely discharged." "I am glad of that, Miss Southern," said McConaughy formally. "Not more than I am. And now I'll thank you to take back all the hard, cruel, and wholly untrue things you have said about my father, Mr. McConaughy." McConaughy, completely taken back, stared at her in dumb amazement, cudgelling his brain to remember what he could have said about foolish, inept James Southern, who had almost faded from his memory. "I am sorry," he faltered. "But what did I say?" "That he was not an honest man," flushed Rita. He was an un- fortunate one, but an honester man never trod the earth." "I don't think I ever said anything about your father's probity," said McConaughy, speaking in strange to say, gentler tones than his wont. "Your father was not a business man. He made mistakes." "Well, he was the loser by that himself," said Rita passionately. "You have not lost, anyway, and if he was unbusinesslike, what of the people with stronger heads that let him make mistakes — to their own profit!" "I am sorry," he said quietly, his gaze riveted by the glorious flush on the angry girl's face before him. "Like a red, red rose," was the thought that involuntarily oc- cured to him, and he heard only the words of the old song, only half heeding the denunciations that his visitor continued to hurl at him. "You may well be. He went to his grave with a broken heart. You deserve to suffer, as you made him suffer — and us into the bargain. Goodbye." She turned on her heel and left him. In her heart she was a little ashamed of her vindictive words, he had taken them so gently. George McConaughy reseated himself at his desk, and opened an old ledger. But he could not attend to his pages of figures. She had called him hard and cruel, had said that he, of all men, had made others suffer. He was a hard man, and deserved much of what was said of him, but he had been hardly dealt with, too. The part of the prodigal's brother is an ungracious one at all times, and he had played it to a family of thankless reprobates, himself the one upright member.

9 86 IMPROVEMENT ERA He alone had retrieved their disgraces, and been the support of a broken-hearted mother, who had not listened to his ultimate triumph over destiny. Since then he had accumulated land and wealth, and in the process had become self-righteous, and encased himself in the armor that had gained him the name of a hard man. But that he had ever made any one suffer had never once entered his mind in the remotest degree. His hands were unsteady, and the figures danced before his eyes as he tried to balance his columns. And in the dusty ledgers of his memory there awoke and stirred all sorts of dreams that quickened into life, and obliterated the arithmetical symbols before him, gardens of roses, sunlit blue seas, with flashes of white wings, dancing figures - — all sorts of dream pictures from his long lost youth. In his ears rang the melody of the old love song. * * * * An ordeal awaited Rita next day when an unsuspected visitor appeared at the cottage- — namely Elsie Morton, the girl who had sup- planted her. She was a showy, pert young woman, very much aware of her own good looks, and with a manner that tended to be in- solent, even when that was not intended. Rita was feeling tired and nervous after a sleepless night, for the reaction had brought weariness, depression, and tears. Her visitor's effrontery rendered her speechless with amazement. "I've lost no time in coming, Rita, because you see we are to be married at once, and I want my dress as soon as you can have it ready. If it were any one but you I'd have thought twice, but I know you'll bear no ill will. It's not my fault — he would have me." A cozy titter stopped her flow of words, while Rita hastily gathered herself together. Her love had died a slow, cruel death these last months, slain by neglect, unkindness, and a sense of her lover's weakness and inferiority. But that did not spare her a sense of humiliation and wounded pride. She tried to smother her in- ward resentment. "But Elsie," she said involuntarily, "Don't you know I have no time for outside work now. It takes me all my time working for my immediate customers." "Oh, yes, but then we are old school friends, and I thought you'd make an exception of my wedding dress." "I'll make your dress for the reason you give; however, you must choose your own style, and tell me exactly what to do, and I'll do it with pleasure." She smiled a little to herself when, later, she watched Mis. Morton's departure in discomfiture from the garden path. Then the smile changed, and she flushed again like a rose, and her heart gave a bound. George McConaughy was passing down the road, with his steady, swingirg gait. There was an appealing look in his glance,

THE VICTORY OF LOVE 98 7 as if he were pleading for forgiveness, and for the barriers of enmity to be broken down. And as her. old enemy, the object of her hate, went by, she felt that that enemity was in some unaccountable way dead. Somehow, the resentment about Miss Morton's wedding dress was forgotten, too. "I don't think he is such a hard man after all, mother," she said to Mrs. Southern. "He took all I said in a good part, and seemed so sorry. Perhaps I misjudged him. Perhaps he never really meant to injure poor father. And I'm sorry for him. Money has not brought happiness. He looks lonely and uncared for." In her abstraction, she hardly noticed her mother's white and wan appearance, which was becoming more marked every day. It was two days later that Mrs. Southern was taken ill, with an attack so serious and so violent that her daughter's ready wit and presence of mind failed her. It was late in the evening, after they had gone to bed — a dark, moonless night. Afterwards, in calmer moments Rita wondered what wild impulse led her, in her panic, to seek help from George McConaughy. It was he in person who answered her knock, having sat up late at his books. "Oh, Mr. McConaughy, I think mother is dying! Can you bring a doctor for her? Your motor will take you quicker than I can go — there is no time to be lost." "With pleasure, Miss Southern," he said. In a trice he had called up the housekeeper, and dispatched her to help Rita; while he drove into Eastbridge and brought the doctor. It was a nightmare time that ensued. In her panic and terror, Rita hardly realized the care and pro- tection that were spent on her, from the moment the doctor decreed "an instant removal to a specialist's care." It was not till the dread operation was over, and the patient con- valescent, that she began to wonder whose hand it was that had made the way smooth, had contrived ways and means of transporting the invalid, had found comfortable quarters close to the nursing home for Rita herself, had surrounded mother and daughter with every care. "How can I ever thank you for all you have done?" she said, when next they met. "And I have so misjudged you. How harsh, how rude I was to you that day!" "I had amends to make," he said briefly. Rita's heart gave a throb of something very like dissappointment. "Was that why?" she demanded, with sudden audacity. "No," he said, looking at her steadily, "not the whole reason." Then her glance dropped before the look in his eyes, and the lovely rose color suffused her face. "When you color like that, you are the lovliest woman in the world, Rita," he said, as he took her into his arms. "You are like a red, red rose."