Winged Victory/Chapter 10

“All the trees are gone,” the boy said wistfully.

Eileen nodded. They stood together by the open window, looking over the once-beautiful landscape. Where there had been wide stretches of lawn, there was now nothing but a barren open space, and where old oak trees had spread their shadow, a huge shed had been erected, from whence came the monotonous clang of hammers.

“Yes—all gone!” Eileen repeated to herself.

The brief phrase rang familiar in her own ears. That had been her answer to Fenton's pleading seven years ago. Then the “all” had stood for the restless pleasures, the luxuries and feverish excitements of a spoiled woman's life. Now it stood for something different—something too vague and intangible for words. The beautiful stretch of country had been ruthlessly marred, and in her own life the best. in her had been as ruthlessly destroyed. And there was to be no atonement. The dead cannot forgive, and the man she had loved and wronged would never know.

From the door of the shed opposite a tall, misshapen figure came out, and, limping across the intervening space, approached the steps that led up to the window. Eileen Delisle drew herself up as if to turn away. The advent of this man into her life had brought with it a strange unrest. She told herself that she hated him. It was his brain that was piecing together Fenton's secret, his will that had built up the great workshop opposite. Silent, indomitable, his ugly shadow had crept over her world. She avoided him in voluntarily as she was trying to avoid him now.

But her son was of another mind. With a delighted exclamation, he freed himself and ran to meet the newcomer, flinging himself into the outstretched arms with a gay, childish recklessness. Whereat Eileen Delisle waited, haughtily patient and seemingly indifferent.

The strangely assorted pair came on together, laughing and talking, the child perched on one broad shoulder. A ray of sunlight fell on the man's bearded face, and for a moment it seemed less ugly, less distorted. The great marring scar that ran diagonally from chin to forehead seemed less distinct, as if the momentary lifting of the man's usual somber reserve had transformed him. As he reached the topmost step, he set his burden gently on the ground. The smile still lingered in his eyes as he turned to the woman who was watching him.

“I've come with good news,” he said. “The first stages of our practical experimenting are over. The end is in sight.” She made no answer, and there was no change in her set features, “I thought you would be pleased,” he went on in the low tone that never altered. “It will be something to have one's husband hailed as the greatest inventor of the century, will it not?”

“You have done the work,” she returned coldly. “You know as well as I do that, were it not for your help, the monoplane would be where it was a year ago—an incoherent riddle. You have unraveled it”

“And you do not love me on that account, Mrs. Delisle?”

She had turned away from him, preparatory to leaving the room, but the tone of his voice arrested her. Her startled eyes sought his face.

“I don't know what you mean,” she said proudly. “If I have shown by any discourtesy”

“That you hate me? Mrs. Delisle, you have never been discourteous. But you avoid me as you would something hateful. You shrink together every time your son runs to meet me. Is that not so? Come”—he laughed out roughly—“be honest! I am only the wreck of a man. And a refined, delicate woman such as you are shrinks naturally from the ugly, the monstrous”

“That is an insult!” she broke in with such passion that the mockery in his eyes faded. “Have you so low an opinion of me, Mr. Rogers?”

“I know something of women,” he returned deliberately. “I know what they value in life. A man's honest endeavor doesn't count in their eyes. It is what he appears to be, what he can give them”

“Have I given you the right to say that?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I only know that since your husband sent for me to help him, I have toiled honestly for his success. I have not asked much for myself in return—neither profit nor honor. But I have done my best—and you hate me. I see you shrink from me. It's absurd that I should care. Wrecks are too easily blown from their course.”

He turned away from her, but at that moment a small, hot hand thrust itself into his.

“You're not nice to my pal, mother,” the child said clearly.

There was a moment's silence. The man and woman faced each other, and suddenly the tears rushed to her eyes.

“I've been unkind,” she said brokenly. “You're ill, Mr. Rogers. You've worked yourself to death, and I have never noticed or cared. I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?”

He did not seem to see her outstretched hand.

“It's nothing,” he said curtly. “Since my accident I am easily tired. That doesn't matter. I've been a fool to give myself away as I have done. There's a certain amount of—what shall I call it?—vanity in the ugliest brute, and I was stung by your obvious dislike. I apologize. I won't trouble you again.”

“Wait!” She held out her hand in a detaining gesture. “I won't let you go like that. I can't let you think so meanly of me. I don't hate you. I've been afraid of you—God alone knows why—but I have not hated you.”

“You have hated my work, then?”

“I don't understand.”

“You have hated my part in the success that is coming”

“I have hated every living man's part in it!”

She broke off. She was breathing quickly, and her eyes shone with a reckless revelation of misery that roused him from his cynical calm. He took an involuntary step toward her.

“You don't wish for that success?” he asked roughly.

“No.”

“Why not? Come, if we are to be friends, you must be honest with me, Mrs. Delisle. When a woman wishes for her husband's failure”

“When she brings it about, as I have done,” she interrupted, “then the curse of remorse is on her all her life.”

“Mrs. Delisle, I don't understand.”

She did not answer for a moment. Then she lifted her eyes steadily to his.

“We won't fence with each other,” she said. “We have gone too far not to be quite open. You know as well as I do that the monoplane is not Captain Delisle's invention. You know that you have been helping to piece together a work of genius of which Captain Delisle is incapable. It was the work of a dead man—a man I ruined.”

“You!”

“I could have helped him,” she said brokenly. “He was my husband, and it was at least my duty. I could have supported him in his bad hour—I could have made it possible for him to win. But I deserted him—I turned against him. I let my bitterness against him, my thirst for the things his act had denied me, blind my judgment”

“What had he denied you?” Rogers interrupted sharply.

“He had led my father into financial disaster.”

“You know that? Who told you?”

She made no answer, and he recovered himself instantly under the anguished trouble in her eyes.

“Forgive me. I'm asking more than I have the right to ask, but what you have told me is difficult to understand. Even if he had been guilty, it would still be difficult to understand.”

“I was a child,” she said gravely. “Children: are selfish and sometimes cruel and always harsh in their judgments. Since my son came—I have understood things better.”

He was silent, his face averted, his hands clenched at his sides.

“You could not have cared much for him,” he said.

“I loved him,” she answered simply.

“I understand—I've been told you married within a year of his death.”

She made no answer, and he turned slowly to look at her. She had drawn little Fenton closer to her, and in that involuntary gesture there was a significance, Rogers' clenched hands relaxed.

“My God!” he said under his breath.

She smiled wearily.

“You see—it's so easy to be unjust,” she said,

“And we find out our injustice too late!”

“It's always too late,” she said.

He nodded, and there was again silence. The door of the great workshop opposite had opened and Delisle came out and toward the window. He walked unsteadily, with bent head, and for a moment the two watchers were silent, stricken by the same thought. Suddenly Rogers turned. He laid his rough, scarred hand on hers as it rested on the child's shoulder.

“It's not too late!” he said. “Don't believe that. Don't let there be any curse in your life. You can atone. We will make good what has been—together. The dead rest in peace. Perhaps they never sought honor and glory for themselves, but only for their country and for those they loved. And that is still possible. There is his son, Mrs. Delisle—his son and yours. And he shall inherit—I promise you. I have the power to give him his heritage.”

“How?” she demanded.

“I hold the last threads of the idea, without which the whole scheme collapses,” was the significant answer. “Captain Delisle will listen to me.”

“You will do that?”

“For your sake and for his.”

“For all that—it's too late!” she cried out. “He will never know—never know what he meant to me, or the remorse—the awful need of forgiveness.”

“You can't be sure that he doesn't know. You may be sure that he has forgiven.”

His hand dropped from hers. Delisle had come up the steps, and his heavy, bloodshot eyes passed from one face to the other. Then he laughed coarsely with an inflection of sneering good nature.

“So you two have been making friends, eh? A hard job, Rogers, to make friends with my wife. There, give me some of that brandy over there and let's drink to the day's work.”

He stumbled across the room, and, filling a glass, raised. it above his head. In that moment his face was turned to the light, and to the woman who watched him the downward course of the last months was written upon it with a terrible distinctness.

“Oscar!” she exclaimed pleadingly.

He looked across at her over the edge of the empty tumbler, his features flushed with a sudden rush of passion.

“What? Do you want to deprive me of that, too!” he stammered. “Can't I drink to the monoplane's triumph?” Then he laughed again. “I suppose Rogers has told you. In a few weeks the world will ring with it. But a lot you care!”

She met Rogers' eyes steadily.

“I care now with all my heart,” she said.