which they belonged, the Kinnears would have been regarded as rich.
But in the company they kept, their strainings and strugglings to hold
the pace were the subject of many a jest and gibe. Had they not been
of such superior birth--not merely Colonial but Tory and forced to do
exceeding shrewd and heavy bribing to get back the estates forfeited to
low-born Patriots--they would have ranked almost as hangers-on. Another
generation, another dividing up of those meager millions, and the
Kinnears would cease to make any part of the blaze of plutocracy’s high
society, would shine as modest satellites, by reflected light. Thus,
it was necessary that lovely Alicia Kinnear marry money--big money.
Beatrice Richmond’s brother Hector was about as good a catch as there
was going; so, Beatrice and Allie became friends at school--Alicia,
being a sensible girl sensibly trained from the cradle, needed no
specific instruction from her mother in the noble and useful art of
choosing friends. The friendship grew into intimacy, and Alicia saw
to it that nothing occurred to produce even temporary coolings--this,
with not the least show of sycophantry, which would immediately have
disgusted Beatrice; on the contrary, what Beatrice most admired in dear
Alicia was her independence, her absolute freedom from the faintest
taint of snobbishness. If Beatrice had been more experienced she might
perhaps have become suspicious of this unalloyed virtue. There is
always good ground for suspicion when we find a human being apparently
entirely without a touch of any universal human failing; Nature has
so arranged it that each of us has a little of everything in his
composition, and the elements that show in a character are rarely so
important as those deep out of sight. However, Alicia was a sweet and
generous girl, and gave a very pleasant and praiseworthy quality of
liking where she felt that her station and circumstances permitted her
to like--and how many of us can make a better showing?
When Beatrice, with Valentine, her maid, and two trunks, entered the
big, old house in Park Avenue where the Kinnears maintained upper-class
estate, Alicia was waiting with open arms. “Your telegram only just
came,” said she, hugging and kissing Beatrice delightedly. “But the
rooms are ready--your rooms--and we’ve got Peter coming to dinner
to-night.”
“Peter!” Beatrice made a face. “Give me anyone else--_any_one else.”
Alicia’s blue eyes--beautiful eyes they were, so clear, so soft, so
delicately shaded--opened wide. “Why, Trixy, I thought----”
“So it was,” cut in Beatrice. “But that’s off. Close the door”--they
had just entered the sitting room of the charming suite set aside for
“darling Beatrice”--“and I’ll tell you all about it--that is, all I can
tell just now.”
“Oh, you and Hanky will make it up----”
“Never! Whoever I may marry, it’ll not be he.”
Alicia looked shocked, grieved. And she was shocked and grieved. But
underneath this propriety of friendly emotion she had already begun
to consider that, if this were really true, Peter would return to the
ranks of the eligibles--and he was through Harvard, while Heck Richmond
was a junior and only a few months older than herself. An inexcusable
duplicity--that is, inexcusable in any but a human being circumstanced
as was Alicia.
Beatrice laughed at her bosom friend’s mournful expression. “Oh, drop
it,” cried she. “You know Peter is no real loss. He’s all right, of
course--a clean, decent fellow, with a talent for dressing himself
well. But no one would ever get excited about him.”
“Does anybody get excited about anybody, nowadays?” laughed Alicia.
Beatrice nodded; into her eyes and out again flashed a look that could
not but put so shrewd and sympathetic a friend as Allie into possession
of her secret.
“Who?” said Allie breathlessly. “The Count? Oh, Trixy, you’re not going
to marry away off----”
“Not the Count,” was Beatrice’s quick, disdainful interruption. “What
do you take me for? He’s shorter than I and horribly old--over forty.”
“I don’t think age matters in a _man_,” observed the charitable Alicia.
“I do,” retorted Beatrice. “Not, of course, if one’s marrying for--for
other things than love. But I couldn’t love an elderly man.”
“Is forty elderly?”
“Isn’t it?” replied Beatrice.
“But who is he?” implored Allie, all a-quiver with curiosity.
Beatrice permitted a beatific expression bordering on fatuous folly
to overspread her fair, young face. “Do you remember--down at Red
Hill--the last time you were there--the biggest, grandest, handsomest
man you ever saw----”
“The artist!” cried Allie in dismay. “Oh, dearest, I thought you
were just flirting. And you are. You wouldn’t-- Your mother’d
never--never--consent. Isn’t he--poor?”
“How can you talk like that?” exclaimed Beatrice, with all the new
convert’s energy in indignation.
“Well--one has got to live, you know,” urged Allie. “And if he’s
poor--and your father doesn’t consent----”
Beatrice laughed curtly--she had many mannerisms that reminded one of
her father. “I’m not married yet--nor engaged.”
“Have you talked with your father and mother?” inquired her worldly
wise friend.
Miss Richmond again gave a sweetened and feminine version of her
father’s sardonic laugh. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve broken with father.”
“Oh, Trixy!” exclaimed Allie in terror. “You _can’t_ do that!”
“Oh, yes, I can. I have.” She beamed on her friend. “And I’ve come
to ask you to give me shelter for a few days--till I can look about.
Father wanted me to marry Peter. I refused. He insulted me. Here I am.”
Alicia kissed her with enthusiasm. “What a _strong_ dear you are!”
cried she. This remark seemed to her a wise and friendly--and
discreet--compromise. It did not approve unfilial conduct. It did not
encourage Beatrice to weaken her opposition to Hanky Vanderkief. It
did not commit the Kinnears to anything whatsoever. “But you must dress
for dinner. Of course I’ll give you another man. I’ll change my man to
you and take Peter. It’s good to have you here. I _must_ rush away to
dress.”
But Miss Kinnear was not in such mad haste that she could not look in
on her mother, who was being hooked up by her maid. “I’ll finish mamma,
Germaine,” said Alicia. “I want to say something to her.” And the
instant they were alone she came out with it: “Beatrice has broken with
her father because she doesn’t want to marry Peter. And she has come to
stay with us.”
Alicia hooked; her mother stood patiently, apparently studying in the
long mirror the way Germaine had done her soft, gray hair. Of all the
women in New York who led the fashionable life, not one was able to
invest the despicable arts of prudence and calculation with so much
real grace and virtue as Mrs. John Kinnear.
“What shall I do, mother?” Alicia finally asked.
“Nothing,” replied Mrs. Kinnear, in the tone of one who has deliberated
and decided. “We’ll wait and see. Certainly, that dreadful, dangerous
devil of a father of hers can’t object to us giving his daughter
shelter--while we wait for him to try and get her back.... Beatrice is
very obstinate.”
“Like iron--like steel. She says she’s in love with an artist. He is
terribly handsome, but not the sort of man one would marry.”
“Foreigner?”
“No, American. I never heard of him. I can’t remember his name.”
“Good Lord, the girl’s crazy,” said Mrs. Kinnear. “Why did Mrs.
Richmond let a man of that sort have a chance to get well acquainted
with her daughter? Still, who’d have thought it of Beatrice? I’d as
soon have expected _you_ to do it.”
“Beatrice has got a queer streak in her,” explained Alicia. “You know,
her father is--or was--very ordinary.”
“No, that’s not it,” replied Mrs. Kinnear reflectively. “Those things
aren’t matters of birth and breeding. I’ve seen the lowest kind of
tastes in people of excellent blood.”
“How sweet you look!... I must dress. You advise me to do nothing? She
didn’t want Peter at dinner. So--I’ll take him.”
That little rest between the “so” and the “I’ll” was an excellent
instance of the way mother and daughter had of conveying to each other
those things impossible of speech--the things that sound vulgar or
shocking or basely contriving if put into words. And in no respect does
the difference between the well bred and the common display itself so
signally as in these small-large matters of what to say and what to
imply. By this significance of silences mother and daughter were in the
position--the happy position--of being able most sincerely and most
virtuously, to deny even to themselves any and all intent of subtle or
snobbish or intriguing thought. To impute such thoughts to such people
is to excite their just indignation. As Allie departed to dress, her
mother sent after her a glance of admiring love. She had brought her
daughter up not as daughter, but as bosom friend, and she was reaping
the rich reward; for Allie Kinnear, caring so little about everyone
else that at bottom she neither strongly liked nor strongly disliked
anybody, reserved and poured upon her mother all the love of her heart.
When the five women at the dinner were in the drawing-room afterwards
waiting for the men, Mrs. Kinnear found an opportunity to say to Allie:
“Richmond telephoned just before I came down. He is delighted that
Beatrice is with us--wants us to keep her until he comes.”
“She says she won’t see him,” said Alicia.
“I think I can persuade her.”
Mrs. Kinnear was right. When Richmond called the following afternoon
and Beatrice reiterated her refusal, Mrs. Kinnear said in her
inimitable way, sweet, sensible, friendly: “My dear, don’t you see that
you are putting yourself in the wrong?”
“Why quarrel with him?” objected Beatrice. “Why stupidly repeat again
and again that I will not marry Peter? My mind is made up. I shall not
change, and he knows it.”
Mrs. Kinnear had already debated--without letting herself know what
she was about--whether or not to do all in her power to maintain the
strained relations of father and daughter, “and help save poor Beatrice
from the misery of marriage with a man she hates--a man who deserves a
good wife.” She had decided against siding with the girl because of the
dangers in incurring the relentless wrath of powerful Richmond. So, her
reply now was: “Dear Beatrice, you needn’t be _afraid_ of your father.”
She had calculated well. Beatrice reared proudly. “Perhaps it does look
as if I were afraid to face him,” said she, all unconscious that Mrs.
Kinnear was bending her to her will as easily as a basket maker bends
an osier withe. “Yes--I’ll go down.”
And down she swept, to pause in statuelike coldness upon the threshold
of the drawing-room, where her small, wiry father was pacing
agitatedly. “Well, father?” said she.
They looked at each other in silence--measuring each other--or, rather,
daughter submitting calmly to her father’s keen, measuring eyes, while
she wondered how a man so strong and daring as he could have such a
pitiful weakness as snobbishness. At last Richmond said pleasantly:
“Beatrice, I’ve come to take you back home.”
She advanced to a chair, into which she dropped with graceful
deliberation. “I thought you had come to apologize.” Her tone was a
subtle provocation.
He flushed a little--a faint glow upon his dry, wrinkled face with its
huge forehead, its huge nose and its dwindling and wily little chin.
“That, too,” said he with astonishing self-restraint. “I was so mad
yesterday that I lost my head. My digestion isn’t what it once was. My
nerves are frayed out.”
“You admit you wronged Roger Wade?”
Richmond winced, but held to the game he had decided upon. “I admit
I know nothing about him--except, of course, what D’Artois said. But
I can’t honestly say I believe in him. I still feel he is a fortune
hunter.”
“I can understand that,” said Beatrice, unbending a little. “I
suspected him, myself.”
“Trust to your intuition, Beatrice,” cried Richmond cordially. “It
always guides right.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” observed his daughter. “For my
intuition was that he was simple as a baby about money matters. The
nasty suspicion came afterwards--when I was piqued because he had
refused me.”
Richmond made a large, generous gesture, strove--not unsuccessfully--to
accompany it with a large, generous expression. “Well--that’s all past
and gone. Are you ready to go home?”
“I am not going home, father,” said Beatrice in an ominously quiet tone.
Richmond ignored. “Oh, you want to stay with Allie a few days? Why
not take her down with you?... The fact is”--Richmond cleared his
throat--“the place seems lonely without you.”
Beatrice’s glance fell. Her sensitive, upper lip moved nervously--the
faintest tremor quickly controlled.
“My car’s at the door,” he went on, an old man’s fear-laden eagerness
in his voice. “It’ll take us straight to the station.” He glanced at
his watch. “We’ll be in time for that first express.”
Beatrice did not dare look at him. She said insistently: “You will say
nothing more about my marrying Peter? You leave me free to marry whom
I please?”
Richmond drew down his brows. Temper began to tug at the corners of
his cruel mouth. Really, this insurgent child of his was exceeding the
outermost limits of fond, paternal forbearance. “You’ve had time to
think things over,” said he in a voice of restraint. “You’re a sensible
girl at bottom. And I know you have decided to act sensibly.”
Beatrice rose. “Yes, I have,” said she.
“Then--come on,” said Richmond, though he knew perfectly well that was
not what she meant.
“You read my note to mother?”
“I pay no attention to hysteria. I waited for your good sense to get a
hearing.”
“I shall stay in New York,” she said gently. “I am of age. I intend to
be free.”
“What nonsense!” cried he, with an attempt at good humor. “Where’ll you
stay?”
“Here for the present.”
“Do you think the Kinnears will harbor you?”
“I’m always welcome here.”
“As my daughter. But just as soon as they--any of the people you know,
for that matter--find out that I regard anyone who’s receiving you as
abetting you in your folly and disobedience----”
“The Kinnears are _my_ friends,” said Beatrice coldly. “You exaggerate
yourself, papa--or, rather, your money.”
Richmond laughed--a vain, imperious, ugly laugh. “I can make the old
woman upstairs put you out of the house in two minutes--and Allie will
be afraid to speak to you.”
Beatrice gave a disdainful smile.
“These Kinnears--and about everyone you know--have large investments in
the things I control.” And his tone and the twinkle in his eyes made
the words conjure dire visions of possible catastrophe.
“Oh!” exclaimed Beatrice, paling. She looked at him with startled eyes.
“I see.... I see.” She was calm and self-contained again. “I must not
get my friends into trouble. Yes--I’ll leave at once. I’ll go to a
hotel.”
At this he lost patience. “You force me to be severe with you,” said
he, coming close to her and shaking his fist in her face. “Now listen,
young lady. You are going home with me. And you are going to marry
Vanderkief within six weeks.”
Beatrice’s expression was, in its way, quite as unpleasant as her
father’s. “You can’t ruin _me_, father,” said she with an ugly little
laugh. “What you gave me is invested in Governments.”
Richmond ground his teeth. “Don’t remind me of my infernal folly. But
I’ve had a valuable lesson. Not another cent do I give away till I’m
dead.”
“As soon as I can support myself,” said Beatrice, “you’ll get back what
you gave me.”
“Support yourself!” Richmond laughed--with real heartiness. He was
surveying her standing there, in a fashionable carriage dress and
looking engagingly fine and useless. “What could _you_ do?”
“That remains to be seen,” said Beatrice, flushing with mortification.
“Enough of this!” cried Richmond. “You certainly can’t think me so weak
and meek that I’d let you marry that fortune-hunting painter chap. I’ll
explain.”
“Not to me,” said Beatrice, walking calmly to the door. “Good-by,
father.”
“If you don’t do as I say,” exclaimed Richmond, “I’ll ruin him.”
Beatrice stopped short. She did not turn round, but from the crown of
her head to the sweep of her skirt her whole figure expressed attention.
“He has a small competence--left him by an aunt,” pursued Richmond,
tranquil now. “I’ll wipe it out. I’ll make him a beggar, and then I’ll
see that he is driven from the country.”
Beatrice turned round. “You--would do--_that_!” she said slowly.
“Just that--and probably more,” her father assured her genially. “I
think I have a little power--despite the belief of certain members of
my family to the contrary.”
“But he has done nothing!” cried she. “I’ve told you he refused
me--again and again. He has done everything to discourage me. He has
wounded my pride. He has trampled on my vanity. He has told me plainly
that in no circumstances would he burden himself with me.”
“Then why do you persist?” said her father shrewdly.
She did not answer. Her head drooped.
Richmond laughed. “You see, your story doesn’t hold together. This is
Rhoda and Broadstairs over again. They conspired together to bleed me
out of more than he had asked in the first place. I let them do it.
But I knew what they were about. This is a different case.” White and
shaking, he waved outstretched arms at her. “You and your vagabond will
never get a cent out of me, living or dead. And he knows it. I told
him.”
“You saw him?” said Beatrice eagerly. “What did he say?”
Richmond grew fiery red at the recollection of that interview, thus
brought vividly back to him. “No matter,” said he roughly. “You’ll find
that he wants nothing more to do with you. And when I get through with
him he’ll be glad to hide himself in some dark, cheap corner of Paris.
He’ll have to beg his passage money.”
“Father, I told you the truth,” said the girl with passionate
earnestness. “He has never sought me. I have no hope of marrying him. I
persisted--persist--because”--she drew her figure up proudly--“I love
him!”
“A lot of pride _you’ve_ got,” sneered her father.
“Yes, I have,” replied she. “I love him so much that I’d not be ashamed
for the whole world to know it. I’m not one of those milk-and-water,
cowardly women who have to wait till they’re loved before they begin to
give what they call love. I love him because he is the best all-round
man I ever saw--because he is big and broad and simple--because he’s
honest and sincere--because he--because I _love_ him!”
Richmond was silenced. She looked fine as she said this--the sort of
woman an intelligent, appreciative man is mighty proud to have as a
daughter. He was moved so powerfully that he could not altogether
conceal it. But that was an impulse from a part of his nature deeply
sepulchered and almost dead--quite dead so far as influence upon action
or practical life was concerned. “You’re stark mad, Beatrice!” he
cried. “This has got to be cured at once. Come home with me!”
“Father,” she pleaded, “you never denied me anything in my life. And
this I want more than all----”
“I thought you said you had no hope,” cried her father, encouraged
to see weakness in the feminine pathos of her tones. “Now, drop this
nonsense! Come with me and marry Vanderkief or I’ll beggar that artist
and drive him out in disgrace. Take your choice. And be quick about it.
I’ll not make this offer again, and I’ll not stop the wheels once I set
them in motion. In two days I can have him made penniless.”
Beatrice looked at her father; her father looked at her. She laughed--a
quiet, cold laugh. “You win,” said she. “I’ll go.”
And five minutes later she, having passively submitted to Allie’s and
Mrs. Kinnear’s farewell embraces, descended to enter her father’s
automobile. Richmond took the seat beside her with an expression of
mere tranquility upon his shrewd, dangerous face.
He had accomplished only what he felt assured in advance he would
accomplish. Whenever he played trumps they won.
XI
PETER VISITS THE PRISON
We may hesitate, back and fill, creep forward with trembling caution,
in matters affecting our own affairs. But we show no such nervousness
when it comes to interfering in the affairs of another. There we are
swift and sure. We give advice freely; we say “ought” in authoritative
tones; we even enforce judgment if we have the power. Why not? If
matters do not turn out well the fault will lie not upon our advice,
but upon the blundering way our advice was executed. Besides, we shall
not be called on to pay the bill; destiny never settles its accounts in
consequences vicariously. Richmond had given far less thought to his
daughter’s affairs than he habitually bestowed upon the small details
of a small business deal. He felt he did not need to think about them;
he knew what was good for her. Was he not her father?--and was it not a
father’s duty and privilege to know what was best for a daughter? So,
the obstacle to the fulfillment of the destiny he had ordained for her
must be swept away.
He was a man who looked at ends, not at means. Taking all the
circumstances into account, he was rather inclined to believe that
his daughter was right about Roger Wade’s not wishing to marry her;
that for some mysterious reason the poor artist was firmly set against
marrying her--perhaps was in love with some other woman, perhaps had
a wife hidden away somewhere. But Roger’s innocence or guilt was
aside from the point--the said point being that his daughter must
marry Vanderkief and so contribute her share toward broad and solid
foundations for the family he was building. Thus, guilty or innocent,
this artist who had had the misfortune to cross his path must be
sacrificed if necessary.
He felt neither pity nor hatred for Roger Wade as he contemplated the
possibility of having to ruin him. Richmond was as impersonal as are
all the large forces of destiny, self-appointed or impressed--cholera
germs or conquerors, cyclones or captains of industry. When he raised
or lowered the price of a stock or of a necessity of life, destroyed an
industry or annexed a railway, he looked on it as a destiny-ordained
transaction; effects upon the happiness or misery of unknown
fellow-beings did not enter his head. The suicides that followed his
wrecking and looting of the M. M. & G. made no impression on him. If a
man of action paused for such refinements of sensibility as incidental
evil effects from his great designs there would be no action. If the
Almighty were a sentimentalist how long would chaos be postponed? “The
larger good” was Richmond’s motto, and those who attacked his right
to set himself up as judge in so high and difficult a matter were
silenced by his pointing to his triumphant success in establishing and
maintaining himself in destiny’s American board of directors.
Beatrice, observing this relentlessness of his in a romantic,
impersonal way, and thinking only about his exhibition of power and
about the glories of victory, had often admired, had been filled with
pride. But now that she had personal illustration of the meaning of
that sonorous word, relentless, she was feeling rather differently. And
hand in hand with horror of her father there entered her heart a great
fear of him. She had fancied herself free! She had gone haughtily away,
had stepped proudly about, had admired herself for superior strength
and courage. Here she was, back at Red Hill, as much in chains as her
mother and her brothers and Rhoda, Countess of Broadstairs. Through
and through she was afraid of this man who would stop at nothing--and
whom nothing could stop. Bitterly and vividly and in self-scorn she
was realizing the truth so compactly presented by Montaigne where he
reminds us that the pedestal is not part of the bust.
But, although she could not lie to herself about her fear, she
resolutely hid it. Her front was calm and undaunted. She accepted her
check like her father’s own daughter--with neither whimper nor frown.
She was chattering gayly all the way down on the train. She greeted her
mother as if she had merely been away for a day’s shopping. She was the
life of the dinner table, played bridge afterwards with her old-time
skill--and that meant undivided attention upon the game.